Sorry it took so long! I'm kinda getting busy now, so I'm sorry if uploads will take longer, but expect at least one new chapter every month. After such a long wait, without further ado, here is Chapter 5.
"Will you be coming to the examination room?" It's his mother.
"I'll follow."
He waits a few seconds, and when she finally leaves, he let's out a sigh. Why did he even hold his breath? He didn't know. But he didn't feel like facing anyone right now; not Jeanine, not Tris' body, not his mother.
And for multiple reasons, he didn't want to see his mother. At least for the next few minutes.
He ruffles his hand through his hair and gets up from his bed. He needs a drink, and maybe a bath, so he looks for the glass of water (because surely, they'd have that; this is Erudite) and contemplates a shower before yet another set of knocks resound from his door.
Did his mother never leave? Not that she's never left before, but it sounded more like she did just a few seconds ago.
So who could this be, if not his mother?
Max. Chris. Maybe even Peter. A Dauntless soldier. An Erudite worker. But of all people, he never expected to hear her voice.
Her.
"Tobias?" It couldn't be. "Tobias, may I speak with you for a moment?" Why would she even be here?
He waits for a moment, listens. But she's not making a move to leave, unmoving against the other side of his door. He hears her breathing, normally, deeply, but he feels her urgency in coming here. Not an urgent obligation, but somewhat a need.
So he keeps waiting. And listening. But she never leaves.
He unlocks his door and pulls it open. On the other side really stood the woman who had changed since Tris' death, the woman who they used to know as cold and heartless in the most machine kind of way.
"Come in. I have some questions to ask you too."
On the other side really stood Jeanine Matthews, in all her glory, or what used to be her glory, and as she steps in his room, he sees her look smaller than she used to, and he knows something's changed and her eyes are more sullen now, and she looks nothing like the woman they used to know.
But she's still Jeanine. That much, he can see.
Maybe this is just the person beneath the mask.
She comes in but stays by the wall, just standing there with her head bowed down, eyes cast to the floor. It's like she's a ghost of what she used to be, a shadow of the person she was before.
So he just sits at the edge of his bed right in front of her, and the silence is deafening but it's calm and soothing all at the same time.
"Do you think Beatrice could still be alive?" It echoes like a voice in a great, big cave; maybe the Pit.
"Maybe. Maybe not. Over exertion could lead to a lot of things."
"But do you think she could still be alive?"
She had no right to be asking that question.
She's the reason why Tris is dead, she's the reason why Tris ever chose to do this suicide mission in the first place. She's the reason the whole world is turning upside down, so what right does she have to be asking such a question?
But another part of him denies it; denies that she doesn't have the right to feel this way. Another part of him denies that she doesn't deserve to feel anything at all, that she doesn't deserve to change.
It's a part of him he'll never understand, but it's there, and it feels like it's half of him already.
"I hope so." He pushes himself off the edge of his bed and takes the place beside her against the wall. All he can hear is their breathing, and from here he realizes how much taller he is compared to her, or how much smaller she's become ever since it happened. From here, he can feel her shrinking, melting, as if she's giving up on something, breaking down walls that she once built around herself. "Do you think she could still be alive?" Is this what he wanted to happen to this conversation?
"I hope she is." It's the desperate hope of a mother, of a lover, of a person that wants something to be so true so bad no matter how much of lie it is. But it's not a mother, or a lover, because it's Jeanine, or at least the woman beneath the machine.
The silence engulfs everything, and he doesn't notice how she pushes herself off the wall (she was leaning this whole time?) and leaves his room in complete silence. The next thing he remembers is a knock on his door once again, and his mother enters and words he dreads come out of her mouth.
"Tobias, let's go."
It's like everyone's looking at her.
But she doesn't meet their eyes. She doesn't look any of them in the eye, or even show recognition at the simple fact of their presence around her. She just stares ahead of her, into the void, to the end of the hall, to who knows where and if she'll be honest, she doesn't even know where she's looking at.
Ignorance. And she calls herself an Erudite?
The sound of each second passing resounds in her ear, but she's almost so sure that's it's just a figment of her imagination and not real at all, but she hears it so clearly. With every passing beat, she remembers the girl that shouldn't be lying lifeless on an examination table right now, and with every passing tick she wishes she had not been ignorant so as to actually believe all those lies she had fed herself.
In a blurry haze, she makes her way around the compound. Everything looks white and blue and dashes of black here and there, which she guesses to be people's glasses.
She doesn't even notice when opaque walls turn into transparent glass, and when young, blue-clad workers, turn into white labcoat-wearing scientists.
And the numbers on the doors pass by in a haze. She doesn't even care until she sees the one she's looking for.
Lab 66.
The lab where Beatrice's body awaits.
She hesitates at the door; stops and stares into the room beyond the glass doors. There are people and a table for examination, and Evelyn is not here but Jeanine can't see Beatrice's face from here, but she can't move, so she pushes herself to walk forward, to walk into the range of the sensors, but she can't move, she can't move, she can't-
"Will you be staying out here, Jeanine?"
But she has to. She has to. Beatrice would not want to see her face, and it will just hurt her in the end, but she has to. She has to go in there and be in there when Beatrice wakes up.
So Jeanine steps forward, and the sensors activate and the glass doors slide open. She steps in the room and keeps to the side, the way to the observation room, and she can hear footsteps behind her but it's so irrelevant that she doesn't hear it at all.
A few more moments. A few minutes more. Then Beatrice might wake up, and she'll be dead no more.
"Do you think she could still be revived?" It's possible, yes, but the possibility of it being a successful trial is a hundred to ten. Significantly high, but still low.
"Yes." Still, Beatrice can be revived. She can, and will be revived. She can't be dead.
But when she wakes up, what will she say? Will she hate Jeanine Matthews, the one responsible for what could be called her death?
Of course she will. But she could also not. She could, for all the possibilities, see a change in Jeanine, and possibly not hate her at all.
Possibly. But she can still be revived.
Jeanine thinks about what it would mean if Beatrice doesn't even care about her. If Beatrice wouldn't even want to see her face, not after all she's done. Beatrice would be happy with Tobias and they might just escape the hands of the city, and Evelyn might not even know of their absence till the morning but by then it would be too late, and they would have already gone too far for any of them in the city to reach.
Beatrice would never want to go to her. Who would want to love their killer?
No one.
And if the same thing happened to Jeanine, she's sure she'd feel the same.
"But what if she isn't?"
"Isn't?"
"Revived."
Pause.
"We'll have a burial."
The silence is tense. The laboratory-assigned scientists are on the move. Beatrice's body lies lifeless on the examination beyond the glass pane. They stand still in the observation room as they wait, and beside her, Tobias stands firm and strong, but she can feel the anxiety and worry and fear radiating from him; the exact same thing radiating from her.
What if Beatrice is never revived? Then Evelyn could hold a knife to her throat and she wouldn't even care.
"… Five, four, three, two, one. Commence."
She'll be honest and straightforward. It hurts. It hurts like hell.
It's like being shot with a lightning strike, just about a hundred times. While being smothered by a gigantic fire. And with salt being applied endlessly to multiple cuts all over her body. It just really hurts, and while she wants to move around to make the pain go away, it's not like she was able to move a second ago, now was she?
So the shock courses through her veins and mixes with her blood, even to the point where she's nearly sure her blood's turned into electricity. Her heartbeat is past the point of human, and she can feel herself melting, bit by bit, vein by vein. Her head pounds, thumps, beats, as if her heart is in her skull.
Is there screaming around her? Is anyone talking? What's exactly happening? She had no way to tell, and even when she tries to listen, all she hears is a high-pitched screeching sound, like nails dragging slow and hard on an old blackboard.
She hears nothing else.
But then she feels her fingers flexing, and she sees a blinding whiteness that she's sure isn't just white. Her vision adjusts, but it's still blurry right now.
Beneath her, she feels smooth steel, and she spreads her hand to revel in the feeling.
She smells the sick scent of a laboratory. Smoke, which is probably her. And she tastes metal at the tip of her tongue.
She can see. She can feel. She can move. She can smell. She can taste.
Again.
Then a person appears at the corner of her vision. No, above her. The face is strong and familiar, and his lips move but she doesn't understand him. In her ears, the only sound she hears is a high-pitched screech, and while the return of life in her body is overwhelming, the screeching makes her rethink everything.
Tobias is speaking, in front of her.
But she can't hear a thing.
Was it too short? Do you have something to tell me? Feel free to leave reviews or message me. Goodbyes are sad, but you know what, there's still next time so:
See you next time!