Dedicated to every single one of you out there who are still here for me, after a incredibly long hiatus. Thank you.
For those who would like to know why I disappeared without a warning:
I hit a really, really rough spot soon after writing chapter 9. I disappeared offline for a bit, fully with the intention of finishing chapter 10, which I had already started.
This did not happen, as you can tell.
In late July of 2023, I was given a piece of devastating news that I took very hard. I spent the next six months offline for myself, and in the end, I do think this was very beneficial.
Recently, I started picking up chapter 10 again; writing little bits, and then losing interest and saving it deep in my files.
This marks my return to fanfiction. While I can no longer promise consistent chapter, I fully intend on keeping the promise I made in the very beginning, that I would see this project to the end. Even if it takes me 5 years, 10, even if I find it cringe, I'll see this project to the end for my own self. Thank you again to everyone who remained here for me, and cared about my well being.
This chapter is a bit shorter than the others but I hope this will be good for the time being!
Much love and thankfulness,
Ain
Chapter 10 - Warthog
Tobias POV
Novali, Novali, Novali, Novali, Novali. The name is like a repeat whirlwind through my head for the entire rest of the day, as I half dazed, go through the actions of everyday life. It's only been four hours since Johanna revealed her illegitimate daughter, but it still hasn't really registered in me.
I realize I'm supposed to register Novali's name through databases to see if she has any connection in any sort of way to Erudite. This is unlike me. I should be able to be decisive and think quickly, not be like this, hours passing by and struggling to register.
It's dinnertime. The stars outside are coming out, and there's a faint twinkle in the sky, while the rest of the world is silent. Everyone else is at dinner. I have no idea what other factions have sought refuge here. I've barely interacted with the rest of my team since the revelation. I should not be like this. Be strong, hide your thoughts...how ironic it's exactly what Marcus had punished into my thought line.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath before opening up my computer. Tori and Harrison don't need to know that I stole a computer from the Control Room; though technically, it's not really stealing, because I'm a leader now. But it still sometimes feels like I'm tiptoeing around Dauntless like I was two years ago, during my crazed initiation days.
I quickly type in the code to hack into the files digitally - why the holy fuck did we not do that earlier - and pull up Novali's files. It says Johanna as the mother, and unknown as the father. But now we knew her father was a dead leader of Dauntless. I scanned the rest of it. It was incredibly generic and had the barest information: birth date, biological parents, faction born and what faction chosen - which was listed as faction dependent - and a whole lot of other bullshit things. I was wasting my time here. I should be spending my time searching for information on how her dad might be connected to Dauntless.
I pull up another tab and start typing in search of something. Dauntless files of all past leaders...
I finally find the file I'm searching for, and as I give myself two seconds to celebrate, the page flickers to ACCESS RESTRICTED.
"Come on." I mutter under my breath. I try switching to a different setting and trying again but it's no use. Access Restricted. I try changing the code in the website to pretend to be a administrator. I try changing it to Dauntless setting. Nothing works.
"Did you need something?" A voice says behind me and I conceal my surprise, not looking up, even though I jump out of my skin.
"Not unless you know how to get through a access restricted page, Lauren." I say, spinning around in my chair.
She leans against the doorway, rolling her eyes. "Of course I know how. You think that many years in tech wouldn't serve me anything?"
I raise a eyebrow. And after half a second, gesture to the computer. "By all means, feel free to try. I've tried every single method I know."
She smirks and struts over, crouching at my desk and double clicking the screen. "Let me show you how it's done."
She gets to work on hacking the computer. I sit back and watch her, as her fingers tap and fly across the keys, a permanent fixed stare at the screen as she enters code after code into the program. Her focus reminds me of Tris.
I let my mind wander.
Tris.
It's only been about a day since we left early this morning to right now, late at night since I've seen her, yet I still feel a deep aching inside of me. I wish she could've come with us. I feel empty without her. Incomplete.
Lauren taps me on the shoulder and I startle.
"You good, Four?" she asks.
"Yeah. I'm fine." I shiver off the ache and unsettling feeling crawling up my spine. "What did you find?"
3 hours, 5 documents, 2 links, and a exhausting amount of yelling at the computer later, I stride out of the room with a triumphant look on my face. It was probably near 10pm, but I felt as alive as I would be at 7am with a gun and a target.
The hallways are near empty. There are several clusters of Amity that I pass, with giggling smiles and chittering, wide awake despite the time. Majority though, it seemed like the compound was asleep. It was quiet, and there was almost like a peaceful aura that had settled over the spacious safe house.
"Four!"
I know before turning around that the hand that thumps on my shoulder belongs to Zeke. And besides, he's the only one who has enough wits to mess with me.
"Hey Zekey." I say, not turning around as he falls into step next to me. "What do you need?"
"Missed you at dinner. Christina and Bud had a competition of who can eat the most bread. The bread of the day was like so good and so light and fluffy and kinda soft-"
I stop in my tracks. "Bread?"
Zeke mimics my sudden stop. "Yeah. I think they're called baguettes or something, you want one-"
I spin to face him, almost snapping as I say, "Tell the rest of the group to not touch the bread, at all, during their stay here in Amity, if they want to avoid getting drugged."
"Drugged? What the-" his eyes widen. "Oh. No wonder they acted like they were drunk as hell."
I sigh, tearing my hand through my hair as I keep on walking, and Zeke hurries to catch up to me.
"What did you find me for, again?"
Zeke's eyes widen. "Oh yeah. Lauren sent me to look for you because she said when she left you three hours ago you looked ready to shoot someone, and we figured it wouldn't be that good if you decided to kill someone in the middle of a Amity compound. They were picking apples and plotting a prank on some of the other Dauntless here."
I keep on striding forward.
I don't say anything as we open the doors to the rooms Johanna had arranged for us to stay in, and inside were Christina, Bud, Lauren, and Cara, laughing at something when they looked up.
The entire room goes silent.
I slam the door with my foot, and cross my arms. "We need to talk. All of you."
They stay silent. Even Zeke, who's known me the longest, looks mildly uncomfortable at my sternness and anger. I ignore him.
"When we came here, we didn't come here to fool around. We came here to prepare and figure out a plan of attack." I lock eyes with all of them, holding Christina's stare the longest. She looks back defiantly.
"If you weren't here on my last encounter with Amity, let me inform you now. The bread is drugged. Don't eat any bread. Second, stop fooling the fuck around. Do you have any idea, if anything goes wrong, that we will wind up dead? Is that what you want? To end up dead like Al? Or end up dead like Will? Or Natalie? Or Andrew? Or all of your friends that are dead because of Erudite?" Christina doesn't back down, Cara glares, Lauren leans back casually, and Bud shifts. Zeke has a grin on his face.
"I'll give you one last warning." I say calmly. "I'm done fucking around. I chose this group for a reason, and I chose you all for because you all are capable of not losing your shit under pressure. I don't care if you're suicidal, or want to fuck around, or don't want to listen to me because you hold a grudge against my girlfriend." I eye Christina and Cara. "If you can't stay focused, it is my pleasure to have you go back to Dauntless and join the others. If you can't stay focused on this task, as one of you said, feel free to go to Erudite on a suicidal mission. Now, does anyone volunteer to go back?"
No one raises their hands.
"Great."
I throw one last look at them as I walk out the door. I'm pissed, angry, exhausted, and want to go back to Tris. i'm at my breaking point and I took it out on my team. I don't usually blow off at others, but I'm so thrown off today. Something tells me to investigate into Novali, tells me something is crucial to the story.
We need to get the whole story of Erudite, Dauntless, and the war, in order to figure out Erudite's motives to shut them down.
And I'm so sick of this, so sick of guns, and blood, and everything in between.
Sick of everything except for Tris.
I wake up the next morning with a cramp of regret in my stomach, leftover from the night before. I felt my instructor face turn back on, and I usually don't do that around my friends. But I wasn't going to apologize for telling them to get themselves together either.
I take a ice cold shower in one of the Amity's bathrooms, and when I exit there is a stack of clean black sweatpants and a white shirt waiting for me. I take a half a second to appreciate Amity's thoughtfulness before yanking them on and leaving to find my team. The sooner we got the hell out of here with the information we needed, the better.
When I enter the cafeteria, every head goes and stares at me. I stare back as I approach the buffet-style breakfast, and after a moment's hesitation, the conversation resumes back to normal. That is, every table's conversation resumes except for my team's.
They are noticeably quiet as I set my tray down, and I note that all of our trays don't have any bread on them. At least they weren't that drugged, not drugged enough to the point of remembering our conversation from last night. Or more like my lecture.
I wait five seconds before I am fed up with their silence. "What has everyone got?"
Lauren breaks the silence first. "I can help address the documents that we found last night. They might be encrypted and I'm willing to check them out, see if I can break through the encryptions."
I nod. "That's good with me. Zeke, can you help Lauren with that?"
Zeke smiles. "You bet I can."
The instructor inside of me wants to keep going, but the human, Tobias side of me understands my team's fatigue, carelessness, and that what I yelled at them last night was uncalled for, and it was no excuse that I lashed out on them.
Lashing out seems to be more of a daily occurrence for me these days.
Bud slowly chews. Out of the entire group, he's by far the most level-headed one, and the calmest, which is great to balance out Christina's rash and boldness. "I can help with talking to some of the Amity folks here." He offers. "Gossip about a illegitimate child, especially a illegitimate one by the rep of Amity, might be even more useful than files."
"But wouldn't they not know, considering the fact that she was illegitimate?" Cara points out, but not in a mean way, in a thoughtful way, trying to help.
Christina frowns. "According to what we know, Novali was raised here. Some Amity, especially the younger girls, might've known her or have been friends with her."
Cara nods thoughtfully, food forgotten. "It's worth a shot. I can help Bud talk to some of the Amity here."
I let out a deep breath. "That's good with me. Christina, do you want to come with me to try to see the correlation between Novali, Dauntless, and George Wu; she was present for his 'suicide'" - I put air quotes around the word "so she might know something that we don't."
My team nods, and a uneasy peace settles around us. Some of them are unnerved by the bread; some of them are unnerved by how high the stakes actually are; and i'm nerved by the fact that this fourteen year old girl has a key to why George's suicide was faked, along with Amar. A cold chill goes down my spine, and I feel wary of my surroundings at this thought. There has to be a correlation, especially with them both disappearing to outside the fence.
There has to be.
Exactly five hours, countless hand cramps, my voice hoarse from talking, my mind constantly drifting to Tris later, we finally have a breakthrough.
I look up from where I'm sitting on my bed. On my other side, Zeke is dangling his legs, perched on the very edge. Lauren has claimed the two chairs next to my desk, Christina is sitting on the ground, and we are all either on computers or a thick stack of files to search through. Bud and Cara are still out, socializing with Amity.
I can't imagine a Erudite defect and a introverted Dauntless socializing with the Amity that well.
Lauren turns around in her chair, her elbows resting on the top of it, a computer in her hands. "I found hospital records of Novali's birth. Only person present besides the doctors, and nurses, is a man named Lorcan Worson. Beyond that, there's no mention of him."
"Lorcan Worson." I repeat. Then I realize something. "That's a Dauntless name."
Lauren nods. "Which is why I searched the Dauntless databases for a Lorcan Worson. Problem is, Worson is a uncommon Dauntless last name and there's only been one recorded in the recent databases."
Zeke beats me to the punch. "And who is this mysterious Warthog guy?"
Lauren raises a eyebrow at the nickname Zeke has given but wisely refrains from commenting. "He was the Dauntless leader. Died a couple years back."
This time, everyone has looked up and raised a eyebrow.
"A Dauntless leader, who's dead." I say slowly.
Lauren nods again.
"How far before Max?" I ask.
Lauren shrugs. "Dauntless records aren't as well kept, but from what I'm seeing, about two leaders before Max. I'm betting about 9 years, since the two after Warthog didn't seem to last very long."
Zeke smirks, pleased with himself that others were using his ridiculous nickname.
I pay him no attention. "Cause of death?"
"Suicide." Lauren says, tapping her fingers.
The room is filled with silence, and just then, Cara and Bud walk in. Cara takes in the look on all our faces and sighs.
"We have news, and you're not going to like it."
