Chapter Twenty-Four
KATE'S POV
I wake up right before sun rising – which is quite late since we're in the winter now. My head is still fizzy and my back hurts. I look around and find Zander lying next to me on a deep sleep, occupying nearly the whole bed – no wonder on where the pain on my back comes from.
Still fizzy I get up to search for a pencil and a sheet of paper. Once I have them I write a fast note.
Left early. See you tonight. I need to know every detail. DON'T LEAVE HOME. And don't freak out! X's. Blondie.
I leave the note on the bad table and stare at him for a few seconds. His expression his softer but you can still find traces of fear and panic in it. His ginger hair curled up with sweat and his hands closed in fists.
I take a deep breath and leave, knowing I'm only getting ready to another fight. Unfortunately there appears to be a problem with the train ferries and I have to wait for the bus that'll get me near the Amity fields and then take another two hours walk before I actually get home.
As I'm sitting on the bus, I'm thinking how the hell am I supposed to contact Is now. I obviously can't just walk inside the Abnegation faction and ask for her. And sending her mail would be too risky, not to mention that I don't even know her address. So I guess I'll just have to wait for her to contact me; or hope that we'll bump into each other on the factionless territory.
The bus lefts me right outside the Amity faction, continuing its way inside the faction I'm not allowed to go inside. That's one thing I've always found weird about the Amity people. They're so isolated. If you belong to any other faction, unless you get an authorization they won't let you in. I figure it must be because it's where they produce our food and therefore it's one of the most sacred places inside the whole Chicago, if not the most sacred of them all.
After staring at the Amity Gates, if you can call them that – it's just really a wooden fence that obviously anyone could jump over but no one does – I turn around and start my long walk.
About one hour and fifty minutes later I see my train car in the distance. No sign of Owen so far. I hope he didn't decide to go look for me or that would put me into even more trouble.
When I finally have a full vision of our train car I smile. Owen's sleeping on the entrance stairs with his gun carelessly lying on his lap. I run to him as silently as possible and take the gun from him, shoving it in my jeans back pocket. Then I low myself in order to kiss him in the forehead and he wakes up with my touch.
I step backwards to let him stand, although he keeps the sitting position. His bright golden eyes stare back at me full of emotion, but he's not mad. Something good about Owen: if he loves you, he'll never get mad. Something bad about me: he might not be mad, but I always manage to make him sad. Curse you Kate.
"I'm sorry." I say, voice trembling.
However he just stares back at me, as if expecting me to keep talking. But I won't. I can't.
"You've been up to something dangerous haven't you?" Another thing about Owen I haven't quite figured if it's good or bad: he's smarter than he looks. Hopefully on extreme situations this quality will do him good.
I look down, giving him a confirmation.
He sighs and unexpectedly pulls me to a tight hug.
"Just try to warn me next time, okay?" He almost begs. I carefully take his face on my hands, and kiss him, saying I will.
And that's exactly what I have to tell him tonight; and probably many other nights from now on, but not without the guilt consuming me as though it was a flame.
I head back to my old apartment, where I'm hoping Zander stayed at. But when I get there I find that my hopes served me nothing. He isn't there, and neither is my note. Deciding that he'll have to come back in a way or another, I lie on the couch and wait for him.
Not five minutes later, my eyelashes become too heavy and I'm asleep.
FOUR'S POV
Even though it's late in the night, I'm still wide awake. My heartbeat is still fast from my fear landscape and my hand is bleeding from my wall punching. Four fears last year, four fears now. Guess I'll never get rid of this stupid nickname.
Sometimes I wish people could call me by my own name, but then the memories of my past – my dad sending me to the closet or hitting me with his belt – flash in my head and I regret wishing.
Every since Is and Emmett left I've been thinking about leaving. Well I thought about it before that, Dauntless hasn't turned out to be exactly what I expected, but I had nowhere to go. Now, even though I think I do have a place with my mom if I ask for it, I've already applied to train the next class of initiates so I'll have to hold on until then. Even so, I'm a little reluctant on asking her for shelter. I mean, she's the one who's been playing dead all this years, why should I want to turn things around now and allow myself to have a mother?
I reach the nursery and I find Lauren and Zeke there with his little brother. The kid's always up to something so he's probably beaten the record of who spends more nights in one of these beds. I wonder where his girl friends are. Lynn, Uriah and Marlene are known for trying to break every rule ever made in this compound. At first, I thought it was too childish of them, now that I know Eric's in charge of keeping the order inside this place; I even give them tips about how to escape him.
"What happened to you?" Lauren asks, making Zeke's eyes leaving his brother from one second to look at me.
"Tripped and figured I'd rather injure my hand than my face." I say, not really trying to sound sarcastic, but it's the only way I can sound lately.
Lauren rolls her eyes to me.
"Just give me your hand, will you?" I thank god Lauren's the one in here and not Shauna. She'd have made a drama out of it. Lauren says she's got a thing for me, but first, I don't have a thing for her, second, I've seen the way Zeke looks at her, so I might as well leave them be.
Zeke's a cool guy, takes care of his family and most times of Marlene and Lynn too. I think partly because Lynn is Shauna's sister, but as long as he does the right thing, no one complains.
"How about the kid?" I ask him. "What trouble did he get into this time?"
Zeke sighs and leaves his brother's side to joins me and Lauren, while the last is putting some ligatures around my knuckles.
"He wouldn't say." He looks concerned. "And guess what? Me, Lauren, Mike and Shauna went to look for his friends – no sign of them. Shau and Mike are still looking."
Mike is Lauren's boyfriend. There's not much left to say about him, as usually his girlfriend does the talking. He's one year older than us so I don't even know his dauntless style very well, only that he's quite muscled and likes zeppelin.
That exact moment we hear noise behind us and Mike, Shauna, Lynn and Marlene enter the nursery. Shauna's pulling Lynn by her ear while Marlene and Mike walk awkwardly behind them.
"Let go of me!" Lynn complains, nearly screaming.
"Even though I love to wake up to the sound of your marvellous voice, would you please shut up, Lynn?!" We all turn to face Uriah, who just woke up. Only now I'm seeing the full damage. Apparently he hit with his head and his arms are full of bruises and cuts. Marlene's arms appear to be on the same condition, but Lynn looks fine – if you forget the red ear Shauna's causing her.
"Uriah!" Marlene runs to him. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine. As I've always said – made of stone." He smiles to her. But Zeke soon cuts them off.
"This is not a joke, Uriah. You could be dead." He says.
"Well, I guess then you'd have one less person to care about wouldn't you?" Uriah hisses him back.
Zeke ignores him, but I can see the pain in his eyes.
"What were you doing in the chasm? I've told you that that's no place to play!"
"We weren't playing!" Uriah says. "We went down, and when we were climbing up-" He suddenly stops himself and we all feel the tension between him and Marlene. She was there when it happened.
"You went down?" Zeke's voice is starting to show hanger. "On your own? Are you insane?"
"I've lived here are my life Zeke, for Dauntless sake. And I wasn't on my own, Marlene was with me."
"You're kids! Both of you!" Marlene and Uriah make an offended expression and I see that this isn't leading Zeke anywhere. I put a hand on his shoulder and he looks at me, as if saying "what?!"
"It's over now Zeke. That's what matters. He'll be okay." I say.
"And just because he's okay now I should pretend like nothing happened and let him keep trying to kill himself at every chance he gets to do it?!" Zeke shouts at me.
"I wasn't trying to kill myself!" Uriah complains.
"Uriah!"
"Zeke." Both I and Marlene speak at the same time.
Zeke shakes his head before turning around and leaving the room.
"I think you guys should go and calm him down." I say to Lauren and Shauna. Shauna seems a little redundant about leaving Lynn here, but Lauren takes her by one hand and Mike by the other and they leave.
Marlene, Uriah and Lynn all sigh with relief at the same time. Lynn moves her hand to her ear as though making sure it's still on its place.
"Thanks Four." Uriah says, resting against his pillow. By the way Lynn glances at them; I'm not the only one noticing the way Marlene unconsciously shoves Uriah's hair away from his eyes.
"Don't thank me before you tell me what really happened." They all start to complain at the same time and for a second I wonder how this three are going to make it alive once they all get married and have their own families and won't be able to do every single thing together.
"I'm still waiting." I say, interrupting they're complaining.
"Promise you won't tell." Uriah demands. Marlene gives him a look. "It's okay Mar, we can trust him." He nods to her and then looks back at me.
"You have my word." I say, wondering what can be such a big deal for three people who don't have a care in the world.
They tell their story, fully detailed, and by the time they end I finally understand why they're so frightened – and if they're right, they should be.
"So you're saying that you think Eric threw a knife at you when you were climbing up?" I ask my mouth slightly open with disbelief.
"No. We're saying we're sure Eric did it." Lynn says. "I saw him leaving the Pit."
"You're aware that doesn't prove anything right?" I say.
"We're not exactly trying to put him in trial either Four." Uriah mumbles. One thing I like about this kid: nothing can stop him. Lauren is lucky she'll get to train him next year – no doubts he'll choose Dauntless.
"And what is your theory on why he did it?" I knew why he'd done it – there's only one reason Eric kills people in here; he's afraid of their Divergence – but they're just kids, they haven't even been through their faction test yet, how could he be sure about which one of them, if one of them actually was a Divergent?
"Well it's obvious isn't it? We pissed him off enough times." Marlene says. I look at her and in my head I'm asking her, Is it you? You're the one he's looking for? But how could she know?
In any case, they have a reason and if Eric makes any attempt with more witnesses they have motive. Not that I'm sure it still matters now that Marcus is leading us. I wish my old trainer Amar would still be among us – he'd know what to do – but Eric killed him in cold blood, just like I feared he'd do when I found out about Amar's Divergence.
"I'd put my hands on fire to say that that won't stop you from getting in any more trouble." I say. The three of them smile back at me with a new fire in his eyes – they'll do worse from now on. If it were any other three kids, I'd be concerned. But they know what they're getting themselves into, and they have me – for now. "Just stay together all of you, and whatever you do, keep your eyes opened."
"Don't worry." Uriah says, and then he looks at his friends. "If it weren't for these two pansy cakes I'd probably be decomposing in the chasm right now."
The friendly fight starts immediately as Marlene and Shauna start tickling him – don't mistake them, they'd beat him if he wasn't nearly dead – and I stand up to leave.
"Look out for those three." I ask the chief nurse and she nods at me.
Then I enter the dark hallway and ask myself if Eric would have the balls to throw me in the chasm if he knew I'm one of his so hated Divergents too.
KATE'S POV
"I thought you said you lived alone." I hear an unknown voice that sounds quite confused as I rub my eyes.
"I do. I thought she had left by now, but she's stubborn enough." I open my eyes and nearly jump. Zander is standing right in front of me. "I hope you enjoyed your beauty sleep on my couch." He sounds a little annoyed but at least he's not scared or something anymore.
I stand up and find a blonde tall guy with green eyes staring back at me from the entrance – front door still opened. Not really sure what to do and momentarily forgetting why I came here in first place, I turn to Zander.
"Are you going to introduce us or should I do the honours?" I ask.
Zander looks down, as though he's quite embarrassed – something I've never seen before, let's just state.
"Kate this is Matthew. He came to see the apartment." He says on a low voice.
"Oh, so you've finally found a roommate?" I ask, smiling at Matthew. "I was his previous one."
"Sort of." Zander says, and I can still that there's still something I'm missing.
"Oh, come on. I thought we'd agreed we're doing this for real." Matthew looks at me, as if he's ready to drop a bomb or so. "I'm his boyfriend. And you can call me Mat."
"Your-? Oh My God! Is this what you've been hiding?! You're such a silly head Carrot. You could have told me!" I say, having to contain myself not to hug him right there. I feel like a proud mom.
"Wait, did you just call him Carrot?" Mat asks, breaking into laughing.
"Thank you, now you just gave him another reason to laugh at me." Zander says, sitting in the couch. Then he turns to Mat. "And are you going to say there all night or are you going to close the damn door and come in?"
Mat stops laughing but keeps a smile on his face as his closes the door. I'm still standing so when he passes by me before joining his boyfriend on the couch he whispers, "Be careful, someone's quite sensitive tonight. I made him assume he liked me about forty minutes ago." I smile, thinking that I actually like this Mat, but as I remember what I came here for my smile fades.
"Zan..." I start, but I can't really say it in front of Mat, can I?
"I know why you're here." He takes my note out of his jeans pocket. "But if we're doing this, Mat's on. And there are some things you should know about him."
Not really sure about what's happening I nod. "I'm all ears."
"Mat's an Erudite. Well used to be." I'm about to say something like you're dating the enemy?! but he gives me a look and I pinch my lips together, allowing him to continue. "He got out of there when he understood things were getting weird – bad weird. I told him some stuff about Evelyn when he became factionless, just to put him aware, but if let me, he can help us."
"How?" I ask.
"Just tell me I can trust both of you with all the information and I'll tell you how." He says.
Mat looks at both of us expectantly, and I see some Dauntless fire in his eyes. Reminding me of the other blonde guy I left behind.
"Are you sure you willing to put him under that risk?"
"I already am." This time, Mat stands for himself.
"What do you mean?" I shake my head, confused.
"I never officially left the Erudite. For them, I'm still one of his members."
A/N: Thought this would leave a little of suspense to it. Idk. Tell me what you think on some reviews please? :D Remember that I'm only trying to please you, and the better I know what you think about my writing the more I can improve it.
Best Is.