Abnegation is the same as it always has been when we arrive. Children should all be at school still, but adults are out and about. I hope, for the most part, that no one is able to recognize me considering how different I look than I did a few months ago.
"I think we should stop by Marcus Eaton's house first," I say to Amanda as we walk in stride towards the homes. "Let the faction leader know why we're here and what we're looking for; it would be best to get his cooperation up front."
Amanda nods. "Yes, that seems like an excellent idea. Frederick!" she calls out, "You were an Abnegation transfer. Go with Tris to speak with their leader. Perhaps a friendly face would make them more willing to cooperation."
That works out perfectly. I grin at Frederick as he steps forward.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say all of us originated in Abnegation," I whisper to him as we approach. "Erudite knows there was internal interference. Are you in the clear?"
He nods confidently. "Yes," he assures me. "I do not believe we have anything to worry about on that front." He looks thoughtful. "Are you also from Abnegation?"
"I am," I tell him. "So it's a nice family visit today for us both, right?"
We both let out a laugh as I approach Eaton home. I raise my hand to knock a few times, and then fall back a step to stand back beside Frederick.
"Did you get assigned to this case on purpose?"
He shakes his head. "No, actually. Just fortuitous, I suppose. And you?"
"Same here."
Marcus has not come to the door. I knock once more and listen, but I hear no movement in the house.
"Maybe someone locked in him the closet," I mutter under my breath, ignoring the questioning look Frederick sends me. I motion for him to follow and retreat down the sidewalk. "Come on, we'll check in on a council member and see if they can know where he is."
"Oh, you know a council member?" he asks as I make the journey to my parents' house.
"You don't even know the half of it," I joke. I knock on the door of my childhood home and hear movement inside.
When my mother opens the door, surprise is evident on her face, but she makes no indication of recognizing Frederick. I'm not sure if she doesn't know who he is, or if she's just that good at masking it.
"Mrs. Prior," I greet her with a smile, keeping my voice polite. "We were hoping you or your husband may know the location of Marcus Eaton? We have some things we need to discuss with him."
Her eyes flash, recalling the conversation we'd just had, and she steps out the door and closes it behind her. She thinks I'm here for that.
"Tris, what's going on?"
Frederick glances back and forth between us and I sigh. "Frederick, I'm not sure if you were familiar with the Priors when you were in Abnegation. This is my mother, Natalie Prior. My father is a council member."
He nods in understanding. "Mrs. Prior," he starts, "There was a break in last week at a secured office in Erudite. Accusations have been made that someone from Abnegation may have been involved so we're here to see if there is any merit to those accusations."
That doesn't seem to relax my mother at all. I hear voices inside, approaching the door. The door swings open from the inside, and I can hear them more clearly before I see them.
"Natalie, you cannot just walk out after saying something like that!" a voice booms. A hand grips my mother's arm, and my eyes follow the arm to the owner.
"Strange behavior from someone in Abnegation," I muse lightly, giving him a dangerous look. I look pointedly down at his hand, and then back to his face, causing him to quickly release her arm. "Nonetheless, we were just looking for you Marcus." My father is standing next to him, watching the scene unveil with trepidation.
"Natalie," my father starts hesitantly, "what's going on?"
"More accusations, I'm sure," Marcus hisses. "This is getting ridiculous."
"Can we perhaps take this inside?" I ask, looking back and forth between my parents.
My mother pushes the door open wider to motion us in, but Marcus grabs the door and holds it in place.
"No, you don't have to allow them into your home, Natalie. What is going on?"
"It was her home once, too, Marcus," my father sighs. "Please, Tris, dear, come in."
That seems to snap Marcus out of his tirade and he moves back. After exchanging the rest of our introductions, my parents invite us to take a seat in the kitchen. As the table only has four seats, my mother immediately offers hers, but I decline. I don't want to let my guard down around this man.
"Marcus, Andrew, Tris was just telling me that Erudite has made an accusation that someone from Abnegation may have broken into an office there to steal something," Natalie says slowly.
Andrew seems to calm down, but it enrages Marcus even more. "This is absolute nonsense and you know it!"
"I know nothing of the sort, sir." My voice remains calm and level. "That is precisely why we're here. Erudite would like to proceed here with their investigation. As it is between two factions, my team from Dauntless was called in to mediate."
"This is entrapment!" Marcus yells, jumping up from his seat. I glance at Frederick, and he looks confused. How is this entrapment? "Dauntless should be ashamed of themselves."
I'm confused as well, but since his issue seems to be with me and not with Frederick… "Frederick, would you mind waiting outside for a moment? I'm just going to clear up some legal definitions for Marcus."
Frederick gives me a look of concern, but shrugs after a moment. He knows I can take care of myself. I watch him walk through the house until he exists. Once the door clicks shut behind him, I spin back to the occupants of the table.
"Marcus, can you explain to me why you think this investigation is entrapment?" It's so difficult to stay calm with this man, particularly when he refuses to act like a rational adult. "I'm just here doing my job. As the mediator between two factions that don't get along, I'm not sure what I have to be ashamed of."
His face turns red; for a moment, I think he may explode. "You-You send my son here with some kind of bogus warning! And then you come up here to accuse us of what, some kind of retaliation!?"
That shocks me. What is he talking about?
"His son was here?" I direct the question to my mother, rather than Marcus. I refuse to discuss him with his father.
"Marcus says he visited a few weeks ago," she says calmly. "And warned him that Max and Jeanine were planning some kind of attack against Abnegation."
"Did he?" I say quietly. My mother is almost glaring at me. "I'll have to look into that when I return. But I can promise you, Marcus. I report directly to Dauntless leadership and there's no one there with the last name Eaton. I'm actually not really familiar with someone who goes by that name. If you don't believe me, feel free to ask my team."
What is Tobias doing? What does he know?
I feel a hand wrap tightly around my arm as the light around me falls into a shadow. Marcus towers over me, threateningly.
"Don't you lie to me," he hisses. "I know he sent you here. This is his doing. You're working with my son. He keeps spreading lies about me to take down our faction."
My father looks like he wants to interfere, but my mother stops him.
"Whoever your son is, he has no authority over me," I tell him honestly. It doesn't calm him. My heart weeps at the idea of Tobias growing up with this treatment.
"You're lying." His grip gets progressively tighter and I fight the urge to wince. I'm not showing him weakness.
"If you do not remove your hand, I will remove it for you," I warn him. Threatening him doesn't seem to make a difference to his anger, however. Rather, both of his hands grab my shoulders tightly, as if to shake me.
"How dare you?"
One arm moves back and I recognize the motion. Before his fist can land, I twist my other arm out of his reach and take a step back. As much as I want to, I am not attacking this man. But I can't help the words that slip out.
"Rumor has it smaller targets are your favorite, but I think you'll find I fight back quite a bit more than you're probably used to."
"Tris," my mother says in a warning voice.
"You're going to have a go at me?" I snap at her, tired of this charade. "You should be glad Frederick and I are the ones that came. There's a whole team outside that probably won't be so forgiving."
"Marcus, sit back down," my father finally says. "Tris, what do you need?"
"We'll be performing an investigation. I think my team is just here to oversee and make sure things stay legal. I don't anticipate the investigation actually turning anything up, but I wanted to do the right thing and bring the information to this joke of a faction leader so that he could inform his people."
Marcus dives towards me, "Why you little-!"
My father pulls him back into his seat, but I take a step forward, looking hard at Marcus. "I'm begging you, Marcus. Give me a reason." I turn to my father. "Perhaps until Marcus can calm down, you and mother would like to assist with informing everyone. I believe the Erudite has a list of people they'd like to speak with. We simply want to keep things as civil as possible and ensure everyone's cooperation."
A short knock sounded on the front door before it opened. Uriah and Lynn stepped carefully into the house. They gave me a cautious look when they met my eyes.
"See, the rudeness-!"
"Lynn, Uriah, come on in," I invited them. "Is everything alright?"
Uriah shoots a sideways glance at Marcus. "After a few minutes, Frederick thought it may be best for us to check on you."
"They just invite themselves in!"
"It's more my house than it is yours, Marcus," I snapped at him quickly before turning back to my team. "I apologize for the delay. Marcus is feeling… unwell today. Uriah, Lynn, these are my parents Andrew and Natalie. My father is a council member, so I thought we would give Marcus the opportunity to rest, and my parents might help us instead."
I move past everyone to the front door, holding it open for everyone to exit. Uriah pauses at the door, looking between me and the raging man in the kitchen. I nod to him in assurance and he left. I kept a hand on the door while turning towards Marcus.
"Your son has nothing to do with my job," I tell him firmly. "If you are going to maintain the position that the Erudite are publishing lies, you may want to learn to control your temper a little better, particularly when it comes to your son. I know that Abnegation had nothing to do with the robbery, but your actions are making you look guilty. You need to get yourself under control, now."
I don't wait for a response before leaving, slamming the door behind me.
My mother is waiting for me just outside with Uriah. Lynn has escorted my father to speak with Amanda to assist with coordination. Uriah flanks to my left as I pass, and my mother walks along my right.
"He's going to make you all look bad," I tell her quietly. My mother shoots a warning look towards our companion, but I shake my head. "My team is with me," I promise her. "I trust them. "I had no idea about any other visits from Dauntless members. I swear to you, I had nothing to do with that. Nothing." I stop just before we are within earshot of everyone else. "I can almost guarantee you, at the very least, they will want to search Marcus's house, as well as the homes of all the council members." I give her a pointed look. "It will be a conflict of interest for me to perform the search, and I've promised Jeanine Matthews that I can be impartial."
"I'll take that one," says Uriah, not even looking at us. "How much advanced notice do you need? We'll likely be at this for a few days." He's quick.
"Tomorrow would be excellent," my mother responds.
The investigation takes ages. There was nothing for us to find here, so Erudite just kept digging deeper. After a week of not even being able to go back to Dauntless, I convinced Amanda to wind down the investigation a bit. I sent Uriah and Lynn home, despite their protests. Amanda sent most of her team home as well, only she and Frederick stayed behind. I think she wanted to send Frederick home as well, but he argued that he should stay due to his Abnegation background, and she agreed.
I'm more than ready to go home, though. This week has taught me that Abnegation is definitely not my home, and all of us staying in a vacant house all week has been driving me insane.
And I really need to speak with Tobias.
Frederick and I spend the weekend walking around the faction, pretending to be engrossed in our investigation.
"You know the best part of Abnegation?" he asks me. I shake my head. "The simple life means there's practically no electronic surveillance here. Much more freedom to talk."
I grin. "That is very true. It's fitting that the faction Erudite is trying to implicate is the one they have no way to spy on."
He laughs with me, but then his face turns solemn. "Oh, something came up that I haven't had the chance to talk to you about." He takes a beat. "You need to be much more careful accessing restricted records at Dauntless."
My wide eyed look must be answer enough. "It wasn't you, then," he mused. "I assumed it was. Erudite and Dauntless share certain networks. Quite a while back, someone hacked into a file they didn't have access to. They did a decent job of covering their tracks in the sense that I couldn't tell what they accessed. However, I could still trace the IP to know where it was accessed from. I managed to erase it from the log file, and I thought that was enough. But earlier this week, someone was looking at the computers and noticed something missing in the log file. They have no way of tracing the erasure back to me, but whoever is doing this at Dauntless is taking unnecessary risks. And we need to find out who it was and what they found."
"How much can you tell me with the IP address you had?" I ask him. I already have my suspicions, but the more information he can provide, the better.
"I managed to trace it back to the control room. It seems like it's not a single owner computer, like the ones for leadership. It was just a general use computer for the control room."
"I think I know who it was," I say slowly. "I'll take care of it."
"Be careful," he warned.
I shook my head at him. "I don't think it's someone we have to worry about. It's certainly not someone I'm concerned about causing me harm. I just need to know what the hell he thinks he's doing. And why he hasn't told me about it."
"Oh, so it's someone else at Dauntless that's involved? That's good then, right?" he asks.
"No," I say firmly. "To my knowledge, he's not involved. Nor does he have any knowledge of my involvement. It's just someone I know personally."
He seems to understand what I'm not saying and drops it.
"I assume there is someone at Abnegation that would have knowledge of what happened," he says cautiously. "I don't believe you were brought in after defecting to Dauntless – you're too good at this. Someone at Abnegation brought you in." I nod. "Do we need to be concerned about something raising a red flag?"
I shake my head. "No, they have been warned. I have no concerns about their ability to appear ignorant."
After spending the entire weekend with Amanda and Frederick failing to find the tiniest trace of evidence tying Abnegation to the break in, Jeanine was forced to accept that perhaps she was wrong. I took a trip to debrief her, at which time I told her Dauntless would be happy to step in and assist again when she found more information to let us know where to look.
She wasn't happy, but knew there was nothing else she could do.
Now, I'm just stuck on the conversation I'm going to have to have with Tobias.