From Christina's Perspective

"Well, this is weird." I can't help it. I've been in this room almost four hours without saying a word, and I can't take it any longer. We're guarding Four, and some factionless man he brought back with him.

"Max told us no talking." Lynn warns me. Will looks away, saying nothing.

"I don't care. I need the truth." I tell them.

"You never did know when to keep your mouth shut," Four says.

"What happened to you? And where are Zeke and the others?" I ask him.

Four looks surprised. "What do you mean?"

"Zeke, Uriah, and Shauna went missing around the same time you did. Weren't you together?"

Four looks confused, like he's struggling to understand what I'm saying. "I don't know…" He murmurs.

I press him further, though. "What did they do to you in Erudite? How did you get out?"

Four is shaking his head. "I don't even know anymore."

I glance back at Will and the alarm on his face matches what I'm feeling. This is Four, our instructor. It's shocking to see him confused and broken.

I have a thousand more questions but I don't get the chance to ask them, because at that moment, Max bursts into the room. Harrison and Andrasta are right behind him. Max is anxious, and I sense he's in a hurry. He points at the factionless man. "Take him out into the hallway."

We obey without question. Will steps forward and pulls him up by his handcuffs, and Lynn and I keep our rifles trained on him. We're barely all into the hallway when the door slams shut behind us. I want to know what's going on, so I press my ear to the door.

"Get away from there!" whispers Lynn.

"Shhh! I can't hear!"

I turn back to the door, but not without first catching the eye of the factionless man. There's something not right about him. I can't put my finger on it, but he seems far too calm. I waste no further time on him, though. I cup my ear, and hear a few snatches of the exchange inside. Max is doing most of the talking.

"You're sure it was Eric who tortured you?"

"Yes."

"And he was working for Jeanine the whole time?"

"Yes."

"Can we trust her?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know. She's your mother."

Silence. I step away from the door at exactly the right moment. A second later, and I'd have been knocked to the ground when Max through the door open.

"Will, Christina – you stay here and guard them. Lynn, you're with us."

Will pushes the prisoner through the door, but I linger in the hallway long enough to hear one last sentence from Max.

"I say we go. Now. We'll never know the truth otherwise."

Andrasta opens her mouth to speak, but sees me staring and slams the door in my face. I never hear her reply.

I don't have long to wait, though. I soon hear the alarm ringing, summoning everyone to the Pit. They're going to attack Erudite. I look to Will, and see that he's already figured it out.

"You were Erudite?" the factionless man asks.

"Candor." I reply.

"That was obvious. I was asking him." He gestures toward Will with his bound hands.

"Yes." Will answers, through clenched teeth.

"Don't worry. It's not going to be like Abnegation. They're going to be in and out. They're just looking for some plans and for evidence. They're not going to have to kill anyone."

This time Will answers. "We don't know anything about you."

"True, but if we're lying, Max will probably kill us. Do I look worried?"

This seems to mollify Will, but I'm less sure. I look to Four, and like me, he seems troubled, rather than satisfied, by the man's calm. I wish I knew what was happening in the Pit, but we are stuck here, completely blind to the outside world.

It's as if Will has read my mind. He turns around and starts searching the console on Max' desk. "There has to be a way we can find out what's going on."

"Unlikely." says Four. "I could probably tunnel into the control room mainframe from here, but that would only give us views inside Dauntless. We don't have cameras inside Erudite. Jeremy, is there any way to access the factionless surveillance system?"

I can't stop myself. "What? You've been watching the factions?"

"Mostly the Erudite." Jeremy responds, ignoring my anger. "Aren't you glad somebody knows what's going on?"

"Well?" Presses Four.

Jeremy shakes his head. "Sorry man – maybe if David were here. We just have to wait it out. It won't take long."

For some reason, I find the words the most disturbing of all. It won't take long.

Will sighs with exasperation. Four closes his eyes tightly, as if he's trying to remember something.

"How can we trust you when you admit you've been spying on us?" Will presses Jeremy.

"The Erudite had cameras everywhere, too." Four interjects.

"Did the factionless tell you that?" I ask him.

"No."

"Who, then? Jeanine?"

Four hesitates for a split second. "Yes."

I look to see if Will noticed it, but his eyes are trained on Jeremy. Four is lying. Why? I rack my brain. Everything else he's said is true. Why would he lie about this, then? Knowing Four, he's protecting someone, but who? A fragment of a memory from Samhain bubbles its way to the surface. I had been very drunk. I have a hazy memory of seeing Four taking his shirt off, but there's something else strange about that picture. Finally it comes to me.

"Four, who was that girl with you at the Samhain bonfire?"

Panic fills his eyes, but just for a moment. "I don't know, she had a mask on." Lying again. He'd been dancing very close with her. There was absolutely no chance they'd been strangers to each other. Four wasn't like that.

The seconds tick by. They become minutes. Jeremy hums a soft tune under his breath, one I've never heard. I want to know more about him.

"Were you always factionless?" I ask him.

"No."

"So what were you?"

"Unwanted."

"No, I meant what faction were you?"

"I know what you meant."

"OK, so…"

"It wasn't Candor."

"Yeah, I figured that out."

His calm demeanor drops for just a moment. "Is that all you care about? All you need to know about a person? What faction I was?" His eyes narrow now. "You have no idea how ridiculous you sound." As soon as the words are out, though, he leans back in his chair and resumes humming.

I glance at Will, but he just shrugs and turns back to the Max' console.

"Any luck?" I ask him. He shakes his head.

Another hour goes by, save for the occasional humming from Jeremy. It's maddening. Then another. Then another.

Just when I think I'm going to scream, Max bursts into the room once again. His jacket is torn and his eyes are wild. I look back at Jeremy and am shocked to see his hands are no longer bound and he's got a knife at Four's throat. Where did it come from? How did he move so quickly? I have only a split second to act. It's clear he came here knowing he'd never leave. I don't even aim, I just fire. Jeremy goes limp, his knife leaving only a small nick in Four's throat.

"He was here to kill me after you left for Erudite." Four speaks, quietly.

"You knew this the whole time?

Four shakes his head. "I hoped he was here only to keep me from telling you more about the factionless."

Will turns to Max. "What happened in Erudite?"

"Evelyn lied to us. She had more than enough manpower to take Erudite. She slaughtered them. Just like we slaughtered the Abnegation. She promised to give us the hydrosynthesis plans and whatever evidence she found. It was all a lie. It was over in minutes. They killed everyone they found, and then they torched the entire building. We were just there to take the blame." Max spits the words at Four, and I expect him to lunge at him. But he doesn't. Instead, he points his gun at Four's head.

"Answer me now. Did Evelyn engineer the attack on Abnegation?"

"I don't think so. That was Jeanine. What I told you was true. She and Eric tortured me."

"Well, she's dead now."

Four looks shocked. "And Marcus?"

"Evelyn took him back to their headquarters." Max' eyes narrow now, searching Four's face. "She sacrificed you – and this guy."

Four seems unaffected by the news that his own mother sent him to his death. I can't bear to look at Will, but I can hear him taking deep breaths, trying not to cry in front of Max.

"She'll kill Marcus," Four says.

"Probably. But we have bigger problems, now, Four. She has more soldiers than us, and after the other factions find out what happened, they'll turn against us. Evelyn played us. I wanted to kill you, and I still might, but Harrison and Andrasta think you might be useful. So now you're going to tell me everything you know about her, her people, and her compound."

Four takes a deep breath. "They're Divergent. Erudite and Dauntless – calculating and ruthless. I think they've been purposely bred."

"Bred how?"

"I don't know."

"So Jeanine was right? The Divergent were a threat."

"Only some of them. Jeanine never really understood what was happening. She was looking for Divergents among the factions. She never realized the real danger was from the outside."

"But still, she might have found them eventually."

"Listen, the Erudite had blood on their hands, too. Have you forgotten what they did to us?

Max ignores this last statement of Four's. "At Erudite, Evelyn had us outnumbered by at least 50%. Do you know how many soldiers she has?"

"No, she kept me closely guarded while I was there. Most of the time I was still in the hospital. I didn't see that much of the compound. You should know that they have cameras throughout the city."

"Inside the factions?"

"Yes. And so did Erudite."

I can't stop myself from interjecting. "Jeanine told you that?"

Max glares at me now. "Shut. Up." Its clear Max thinks this has no significance, but that's because he's thinking like a Dauntless. Something tells me the girl who was with Four is the key to everything.

Max continues now with his interrogation. "You said Eric captured you in Abnegation and took you to Erudite."

"Yes." Lying again.

"And he and Jeanine tortured you."

"Yes." This part is true. But then why would he lie about how he got there? If Eric didn't take him, who did?

"Zeke, Uriah, Hana, and Shauna have been missing since the attack on Abnegation. Do you know anything about that?"

"I'm not sure." He really doesn't know.

Max is unsatisfied, though. "Either you know something, or you don't."

"I keep having these dreams that it was them who rescued me, not my mother's people. But it doesn't make any sense. I don't know anything else."

It's clear Max thinks Four is holding back, but he doesn't press him further. "You haven't asked me what happened to Eric."

"He's alive?"

"I found him myself. We brought him back here. We're going to execute him. I wanted to do it myself, but the council has decided that privilege should go to you. So let's go."

"Now?"

"Now."

A/N I am so sorry it has taken so long for me to update.Things are still very busy for me, but I hate to leave this unfinished, and the process of writing it has been good for me.I hope you are still enjoying it as well. I'm very interested in your reviews, good and bad.In the next chapter you will see the attack on Erudite, through Andrasta's eyes.I've changed the rating to M, so no more edited-out swear words. The plot for these books is a bit complicated, and I actually had to go back through and read everything myself to remember all the details. I wrote brief descriptions of what has happened in each chapter up until now. If you want to see the synopsis (it'll help you pick back up with the book), PM me and I'll send it to you.