He hadn't planned on following them to the room, yet somehow he'd ended up standing in the shadows. Dres waiting under the equipment that would connect her to the box. Was he there because he hoped to save her or because he wanted to make sure she was really dead this time? Eric couldn't say because he didn't know the answer to the question himself. He was still in love with her, he'd admit that. He probably always would be, but that didn't mean he wanted to save her. She'd hurt him badly, broken their relationship and destroyed the trust between them. He'd never be able to look at her again without feeling that betrayal. So maybe he should just let Jeanine kill her and save himself the pain.
"Dresden, I really hope you survive this… please step up on the circle." Jeanine stated gesturing towards the circle on the floor. Looking up, Dres could see the corresponding circle in the ceiling. "To open the box you need to pass a series of sims, one for each faction. We will start with your former faction Dauntless and then the box will decide where you go next. So far each of the subjects has faced different sims so I can't tell you what to expect."
Dres didn't fight, she just stepped up on to the circle. She could see Eric standing in the back of the room with his arms folded across his chest. Her life really was in his hands now. It would be up to him whether he let Jeanine kill her during this testing. Wires snaked down from the ceiling stabbing into the various muscle groups of her body while sensors tacked themselves to the side of her head. A screen in front of the glass cell lit up so they could watch what happened in the sim.
Letting her muscles relax and her eyes drift closed, Dres opened her eyes to find herself standing in the Pit. She was with her friends and they were drinking and laughing when explosions started to go off around them. Quickly the scenario changed from relaxed time with the friends she desperately missed, to an all-out battle with Dres fighting for her life. She had just finished dispatching one of the faceless attackers when a scream came from above her. Looking up, Dres saw Lauren fighting for her life. Scrambling up some nearby rubble, Dres tried desperately to reach the ledge her best friend was on.
Dres had to move swiftly up the rubble and as she felt the pile starting to crumble beneath her, she leaped for the ledge. She was hanging on to the edge with one hand while she aimed her gun, trying to get a clear shot at Lauren's attacker. She hit her target and as Lauren pulled her up, the Dauntless symbol on the box lit up.
Eric stood silently, his gaze locked on the screen as Dres passed the Dauntless sim with ease. So far that had been the killer for the Divergents they'd found in Amity. Max had told him they were cowards, scared of the weapons that could have saved them. But Dres had lived in Dauntless her whole life and with that sim done maybe she could survive this. Even if she failed, it seemed unlikely any of the other sims would kill her. He continued to watch as Lauren and Dres hugged one another on screen. They were talking and not paying attention to the faceless attacker sneaking up on them. She saw him taking aim at Lauren and with no time to draw her weapon, Dres pushed her to the floor taking the bullet straight to her chest in a perfect kill shot. Giving her life for Lauren's, the Abnegation symbol on the box lit up. Eric panicked as he watched the sim and turned his attention to her vitals.
Dres woke suddenly as the bullet hit her. She was conscious and back in the chamber with all the wires still attached. Eric was screaming at Jeanine when he pulled a gun on her and shot her point blank. Dres gasped in shock. Eric had often complained about how much he hated his mother but he'd never once hinted he wanted to kill her. She was still his mother and even Eric had respected that. Bending down Eric snatched Jeanine's tablet from her dead hands and hit a button making the wires retract as the chamber powered down. As Dres tried to get her bearings, Eric swiftly dealt with the other guard and the three Erudite in the room. He walked over to the door and held his hand out for Dres.
"Why did you do that?" Dres asked as she slipped her hand into Eric's and he started leading the way out of Erudite. Glad that his childhood roaming the corridors and his time working here meant he knew all the routes to avoid security. Getting them out of Erudite would not be easy, but with Eric by her side, it was possible.
"I love you." Just like Eric to be blunt and straight to the point and yet so unlike him at the same time. Five years they had been together, married for three of them, but never before had Eric actually said those words out loud. That was the first time Dresden hesitated. The next was as she felt the metal band of his wedding ring biting into her skin.
"Your ring?" Dres stated lifting Eric's hand to see that sure enough it was the ring she'd given him on their wedding day with the rune for infinite carved into the silver band. Dres stopped running completely this time as she pulled him to a stop. She just kept staring at the silver band on his finger.
"What about it?" Eric looked at her like she was asking the most stupid question possible. It was a look she'd seen so many times before. Her Eric, so impatient, always in a rush. He hated being questioned too. Always had to be in control of every situation. Tris had referred to him as an Erudite in Dauntless clothing, maybe she wasn't wrong. He'd always been smart and inquisitive. But she also couldn't see that rash fearless Dauntless in him, the man that let his heart lead instead of logic and wasn't afraid to jump first and ask questions later.
"I'm still in the sim. You didn't save me." Dres collapsed back from him her heart pounding against her chest as she kept looking at the ring on his hand. She wanted to break down and cry, she'd been so hopeful that Eric had saved her. She'd wanted nothing more than for her husband to be her knight in shining armour. The one he'd joked he'd be on their wedding day.
"I, Eric James Coulter, do promise to have and hold, to love and to cherish, to be a knight in sadly not shinning but black armour for Dresden Noa York until death do us part." Eric smiled and Dresden couldn't help but laugh at him. This was her Eric. The Eric so few people ever got to know. The man who never missed an opportunity to add a little more sarcasm to the world. Several years ago, she'd been running between buildings and missed her footing and fallen. It had been pure chance Eric had been on the roof at that moment and able to dive forward to catch her arm and pull her up. She'd called him her knight in shining armour and the joke had stuck. The fall wouldn't have killed her, maybe sprained an ankle, but it was pain that Eric had saved her from.
God he looked so handsome standing in front of her in his shiny leader's uniform and his new leader tattoos running down his neck. When he'd walked in with them the previous evening, Dresden had had a fit. She'd been furious, hating their positioning, but now seeing how they fitted against his uniform she found them incredibly sexy and couldn't wait to trace them with her tongue. Their boldness fitted him so well, the sharp clean edges mirrored his sculpted features. Eric was never scruffy, they could have been training for hours and she'd be red faced with crazy hair and Eric would look like he'd just stepped fresh out of their apartment in the morning.
Everyone had been waiting for her to say her vows. Once again Eric had caused her to get lost in her own head and she'd been oblivious to everything but him. Shaking it off, she recited her vows from memory "I, Dresden Noa York, do promise to be truthful and faithful, loving, and strong to Eric James Coulter until death do us part. I promise to fight both for and alongside him and stand with him against any and all challenges together."
"Then as a Dauntless leader, it gives me great pleasure to announce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride… Max had officiated their ceremony and the few they'd invited had all been on their feet applauding them. At least that's what the pictures had shown, Dresden had been too lost in her first kiss with her husband to notice. "Presenting Mr and Mrs Eric Coulter." Mrs Dresden Coulter had a nice ring to it.
"Dres, I doubt my mother would put me in the sim with you." Eric scoffed, shaking his head as he dismissed her words. But it was too late, the illusion was already pixelating and falling away, leaving them in a white space. Eric didn't seem to notice.
"You're not in the sim with me. You are the sim." Dres whispered running her fingers over his wedding ring again before dropping his hand and turning to walk away.
"What? No, I'm real and I am here with you. I love you." Eric was grabbing at her now forcing her to turn to him as he reached for her face. How perfect a representation of her husband her mind had dreamt up Dres thought with a bitter laugh. He looked so real and even had his mannerisms. No hearts and bows, just blunt words and brute force.
"God, you have no idea how much I want to hear you say that. But your ring Eric… you dropped your ring outside my cell. It was still there when they took me out. I saw you standing in the back of the room and you weren't wearing your ring when they hooked me up to this either." Dresden ran her fingers over Eric's face tracing them across his chapped lips as he too began to pixelate. Breaking up and dissolving into millions of tiny pieces. His ring had been her mind telling her he wasn't real; this wasn't real because she was still trapped in the sim. Her life still in Jeanine's hands.
Watching himself fade into tiny pixels on the screen, Eric saw the Erudite symbol light up on the box. Jeanine smirked, clearly getting more excited about the prospect of Dres actually completing the task. Walking over to check her vitals, Eric saw they were still strong. Good, he thought, she could do this. With Amity and Candor left, he wondered what she would have to do. He doubted either of those sims could kill her but he also doubted she could pass Amity. Dresden wasn't Amity. There wasn't a forgiving bone in her body, and she wasn't really all that kind either. Or Candor for that matter, hell she'd told the biggest lie of them all when she'd faked her own death.
Dresden was back in Dauntless when she opened her eyes now, standing in the training room. Eric was there too standing in front of a child with a gun pointed at the small girls' head. "Eric?!" Dres asked trying to understand what was going on here, but neither Eric nor the child acknowledged her as they stood in a trance like state. Eric stared at the child and pointed his gun at her while the child stared at Dres, letting out tiny whimpers as tears ran down her face and she hugged a blanket. The blanket was familiar to Dres, "Where did you get that blanket?" She demanded of the child, but still the only sounds were the little girls' soft whimpers.
"I guess I should be thanking you or maybe congratulating you." The voice came from behind her. Turning her head to look over her shoulder, Dresden could see Jeanine walking towards them her heels clicking on the concrete floors.
Looking back towards Eric and the little girl Dresden saw that still neither of them reacted. Eric just stayed silent, motionless, holding the gun in the face of the whimpering little girl.
"You broke him in way I never managed. Gave me the perfect solider, broken for me to rebuild as I saw fit… but you made him really, you made him a killer. He killed his first innocent for you." Jeanine was standing right next to her now, a screen behind Eric showing the moment he had snapped the neck of the Dauntless guard that had tried to stop him from following her into the burning building. She could see from the way he'd done it that it had been an accident. All he'd meant to do was push him off but the Dauntless solider had fallen hard and awkwardly, his neck snapping on impact.
"Do you even remember Cal?" Jeanine pressed as the screen filled with just Calvin's face, his expressionless dead eyes. "You should. You grew up with him, went through initiation with him. He was just trying to protect Eric. But you'd made him so desperate, so dependent on you, that Eric killed him. Sure he didn't mean to, he just wanted to get to you but he broke Cal's neck. For you. That's how perfect you made him. A heartless, ruthless, solider ready to follow orders" Jeanine was laughing as she spoke circling in front of her and blocking the view of the screen and Eric and the girl.
Jeanine looked her straight in the eyes as she spoke clearly and coldly "This, it's your fault Dresden… Eric's been a ruthless, vicious, killing machine…everyone he's killed on my orders… it is your fault." Dres wanted to reach out and strangle her. To scream that it wasn't her fault. It was Jeanine's fault and she would never forgive her for it. For what she had done to Eric, for putting her in such a desperate situation. But she couldn't because Dresden knew that on some level Jeanine was right. It was her fault. She'd left Eric. She hadn't believed in him and it was what had pushed him over the edge.
Jeanine stepped aside to once again reveal Eric and the little girl still standing as they had been. But this time the girl moved, hugging the blanket closer as she looked up at her. "Mommy." The little girl whispered and Dresden fell to her knees. For the first time she was really looking at the little girl with blue eyes and long brown hair, she looked so much like Eric.
"Kadence." Dres whispered tears running down her face. It was her baby girl, her beautiful baby girl. Alive in front of her. Reaching for her Dres hesitated, terrified if she touched her she would pixelate as Eric had done before. So she let her hands drop to her lap and settled for just looking at her. Kadence had only been a baby when she'd died but Dresden had spent countless hours dreaming of what she might have looked like had she grown-up.
"Why didn't you save me mommy? Why didn't you protect me?" The little girl asked, innocent tears welling in her eyes that looked too big for her head.
"I tried to baby girl! I wanted to protect you, to make you safe. I wanted it more than my next breath." She started to move towards the little girl wanting to feel her in her arms and comfort her daughter, when the harsh sound of a gunshot rang out. Dres screamed as their daughters' body crumpled to the floor in a pool of blood. Eric stood above her with the gun he had used to shoot their daughter.
"It's your fault Dresden… you killed her… you broke me… everyone I've killed is on you. It's your fault. I needed you and you left. You left me, let me believe you were dead. You made me a killer." He didn't even look at her as he spoke he just stood above their daughter's body with no reaction, no emotion. The daughter he had just so heartlessly put a bullet in without even flinching.
"Eric… I was trying to protect you."
"LIAR! You were a coward … look at what your weakness has caused." The room was filling with blood now, "It's all on you Dresden, the blood I've split…" She looked down at the rising blood and then up to find she was trapped in a glass container with Eric, Jeanine and Kadence standing on the other side watching. Kadence, pale and ghostly, was obviously dead as the blood still dripped from her bullet wound.
The blood was warm and thick and she couldn't keep her head above it. She was drowning in the blood of Eric's victims. Sinking down she could feel herself starting to drift off. They said drowning was like falling asleep and as she sank, unable to keep struggling, she began to understand what they meant.
"PULL HER OUT!" Eric screamed at Jeanine who was looking not at the simulation but at Dresden whose body had gone limp with blood leaking from her mouth.
Eric was frantically looking between Dresden and her vital signs which were starting to shut down. Her heartrate was slowing dramatically and she'd stopped breathing. In moments she was going to flat line, she'd be dead for real. Earlier he'd thought to let her die but as the reality was there in front of him he couldn't let it happen. He needed her to live. "She is going to die… she is no use to you dead! PULL HER OUT!" He shouted when Jeanine didn't move, remaining standing there staring at Dresden in some kind of trance as though she still believed it was possible for her to come back from this. Eric walked over to the control panel himself and hit the abort button. Everything powering down finally caught Jeanine's attention and she turned to look at him.
"She has done the best out of any of the subjects. Killing her at this stage makes no sense. Let her rest and heal then pick up when she can stand again." His argument was logical, based on fact so surely she couldn't argue with it. Despite the fact that logically it made sense, logic had played no part in his decision, only his heart.
"Take her back to her cell, give her any medical treatment she needs and clean her up. We'll pick this up tomorrow." Jeanine nodded and three guards went in to detach her from the box before carrying her out. "You never told me she was pregnant." Jeanine stated as she turned to him once everyone else was out of the room. He knew right now the woman in front of him wasn't the Erudite leader but his mother who, despite her neglectful parenting, still seemed to be under the illusion he should tell her everything.
"It slipped my mind." He was telling the truth. Until the little girl had called Dresden mommy, he hadn't thought about the baby since he'd found Dresden. Truth was it had been enough of a shock seeing his wife return from the dead.
"So you knew there was a baby?" Jeanine asked as if it was only now she was realizing just how little he told her about his life in Dauntless. She hadn't even been invited to his wedding, only finding out when he'd had to attend an all-faction leadership dinner. He'd been required to bring a date so of course he brought his new wife. Ty had been only too happy to introduce the room to Dauntless' newest leader, his son in law, and his daughter. He'd never lied to his mother; he'd never lied to anyone he just never went out of his way to share. His mother hadn't ever asked if they were going to have a baby so why did he have to tell her they were having one had been his thought when they'd found out. Maybe he would've written her an email after the baby had been born if everything had been healthy. But they'd never know because that chance had been taken from him.
"We found out a few days before the fire. Then she was gone and it didn't matter anymore." His reply was short, a sore subject and still not anything he wanted to talk about. "I am going to ensure everything is ready for tonight's raid." He stated, briskly exiting the room, not wanting more comments or to have Jeanine attempting any other motherly guilt trips.
Entering his room he let the door close before he fell back against it and slid down to the floor. Everything hurt. Watching himself shoot his little girl was hard. But what was harder was understanding what the sim was showing. They'd had a little girl. At some point in the past year, Dresden had given birth to their daughter. She'd called her Kadence. He liked the name. It was strong and suitable for a Dauntless. He had to take a minute to remind himself it didn't matter what she was called, Kadence was dead. Sometime during or after her birth, something had happened and Kadence had died. His daughter was dead.
What hurt the most was not knowing. Was she is pain when she died? Scared? Or was it peaceful, did she just slip away in the night? Fuck, had she even been born alive or was she stillborn? The possibilities were endless but it did explain the K necklace they'd found on Dresden. K for Kadence. He hadn't even realised he was crying until he was rubbing the wetness from his eyes and wiping the tears from his face.