Chapter 17

Alyssa

A familiar voice fill my ears as I open my eyes to see unfamiliar surroundings. I see Tobias talking to someone, and I don't recognize this person. The unfamiliar person walks away as Tobais turns to me. He looks tired, and in need of a shave. I have never seen him with that much stubble before and he's beginning to look older than he actually is because of the facial hair. I watch as his face brightens up when he sees that I'm awake.

"Hey, how are you doing?" He asks as he put his hand on my shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze.

"I'm okay, thanks." I say with a small smile. It was nice to have someone who treated me like a little sister. I look down at my foot and see that it has been bandaged properly, and Tobias also turns his gaze to my foot.

"You nearly lost that." He says with a small chuckle.

"How is that funny?" I ask him, and I know my voice is a lot softer than his. I still do feel a little weak from the blood loss. He shakes his head and just laughs a little, and I join him.

"The person who took care of you said that she was glad you acted quickly with the tourniquet, or else it would have been lost for sure." Tobias adds. I nod in agreement with this statement. If I didn't act any sooner, my foot probably would have been gone. "Just be careful of infections while you're here." He says giving me a gentle smile. I smile back at him, but I know he's holding something back from me.

"What's wrong?" I ask him softly. He removes his hand from my shoulder and leaves it at his side.

"I'm going to Candor, but you need to rest." He says softly, and it looks as if he doesn't want to leave me here.

"It's okay, I'll be fine here. Just go and do what you need to do." I reassure him. I move my hands to be under my shoulders so that I can prop myself up a little bit. "And if you see my family, please tell them that I'm okay, and that I miss them." I say to him, and he nods.

"Be safe." He says pulling me into a hug. I hug him back.

"You too." I whisper back to him and I see that Tris is waiting in the background. "I think you better go tell her we're like siblings. I believe she's jealous." I say to him, and he looks over his shoulder to see the younger girl standing at a distance.

"I've told her so many times that we're platonic, but it doesn't seem like she believes me." Tobias says with a sigh. I just let out a small laugh at his comment.

"I guess you have to reassure her again." I say to him. He just sighs again and gives me one last hug before he goes off to his girlfriend, and the rest of the people to Candor headquarters. Alyssa sees that Zeke is in the crowd and I wave at him and he waves back at me as the group leaves the Factionless. I scan the area that I am in, and it's quite pristine. It's not the best, but clean enough where an infection would be preventable in any hospital that is in the city.

I sit up some more, not wanting to lie down anymore. I don't even know how long I have been out. I look around to see that most of the people in this room were really young or quite advanced in age. I feel a frown pulling my lips down towards my chin. They need a lot of help here. I think looking at everyone occupying the beds across from me and next to me. Nearly all of the beds are filled with people who have let their wounds fester, or have been sick for a while.

"Oh you're up, Four should've told me." The nurse says but mumbles the last part of the sentence. I understand that feeling when someone doesn't tell you a patient has woken up from their injury. He moves the blanket from my foot and he takes a look at the wrap that has been put on my foot. "Is it alright if I take a look?" He asks as he looks up at me with his eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, go for it." He nods and turns his attention back to the foot that has been shot. The bandage has been stained with crimson red, but it seems that the people here were able to stop my bleeding and stabilize me quite well.

"We didn't think you would wake up until another day or so." He says as he puts the blanket over my ankle again.

"How long have I been here?" I ask him, curious about the passage of time. The fact that Tobias, and everyone else left makes me think that we have been here for a few days already.

"Two days," he replies as he checks my vitals. He puts two fingers on my pulse on my wrist, and he looks at his wrist to time the beats per minute. He takes out something that has a bulb at the end of it, as well as a fabric that goes around my arm. There also seems to be a gauge for him to look at. "Don't worry, it won't hurt." He says as if reading my mind. I nod, and wait for him to do whatever it is he's doing. "I'm going to measure your blood pressure." Then it finally clicked with me. It's what people used a long time ago to measure blood pressure, before there were mechanical ones in the hospitals.

"You know how to do this?" I ask him. I don't even know how to use this because we never had to learn.

"Yeah, it took a while, but I got the hang of it with hours of practice." He says as he starts pumping the bulb. The bag begins to fill up with air as I expect it to be. It sounded like the machine, but not quite. His other hand is on my wrist. He stops pumping the bag up with air when the intense pulse in my arm stops. He slowly begins to release the air with the valve, and my artery is slowly coming back to life. "Blood pressure's still low." He says after he releases all of the air that has been pumped into the little bag that is still around my arm. He removes it and holds onto it. "You can get around but we don't have crutches or wheel chairs for you." He says giving me a sad look.

"It's okay, I'll be fine here, um…what's your name?" I ask the boy, well more like man. He seemed to be in his early twenties, but with the beard it was hard to tell how old he really is. The bear can be "aging" him for all I know.

"Patrick," He says with a smile. I smile back and thank him, using his name. He walks off and checks in on his other patients. There are other nurses roaming about, and of course most of them are women, or teenage girls like me. I lie back down on the bed, already feeling bored. I am about to close my eyes so I can rest some more, but I hear footsteps coming towards me and I open my eyes to find that it is Tobias' supposedly dead mother standing next to me.

"Oh sorry, were you just about to go back to sleep?" She asks as she stops coming closer to my bed.

"No, it's okay." I say and sit up on the bed. I wonder what she has to say to me now. We had an earlier encounter and it wasn't a pleasant one.

"I'm just wondering why you didn't join the Factionless when you had the chance?" Evelyn asks me.

"I still don't." I say without thinking. It just doesn't feel right to be under Evelyn's leadership. She seemed to be plotting something and I don't know what it is, but there's a feeling in my gut telling me not to trust her. If Dauntless has taught me anything, it is to follow your gut. "And you guys came on way too strong." I add crossing my arms. I was terrified of them when they surrounded an unarmed girl in a train car.

What I say doesn't seem to phase her. I look beyond her to see that someone else is lingering in the background. "Edward, right?" I ask and he looks up at me. "I'm sorry, but I didn't help you, it was most likely the other nurse. Four could have lied for me at the spur of the moment." I say shrugging my shoulders.

"I do recognize you though," he says, and I remember seeing him too before Peter stabbed him in the eye.

"Thanks for helping me." I say remembering that it was him that I leaned on before passing out at the entrance of where all the Factionless are staying. Edward smiles and it almost lit up his whole face.

"No problem," he says. I turn my attention back to Evelyn.

"I guess you're right, we did come on a little too strong," she says agreeing with what I said earlier.

"Yeah I was unarmed and nearly all of you were armed with something." I say going back to that night. "It just felt like there were a bunch of Dauntless members under a sim, but you knew what you were doing." I add, thinking back to how my fellow Dauntless members were marching with no mercy. Yes, they were in a sim, but it was still scary to see them just blindly following orders from whatever chip that was put on our necks.

"Don't worry, we are out of range for those chips to ever be used on us." She says with a chuckle.

"I'm not worried about that, I'm worried about the city, and if my family's okay." I say to her not realizing that I am basically revealing that I'm Divergent, or at least in their eyes.

"I guess you're not a faction before blood kind of person." Evelyn says eyeing me.

"Yeah not really. I never liked that idea." I say to her, and she glances at Edward and they seem to share a knowing look.

"Are you interested in getting rid of the factions all together?" Evelyn asks me. I may not like faction before blood but living in factions is all I have known. I am not sure if I am ready for such a tremondous change in the city. I should have seen this coming, they are the Factionless and all of them aren't well off, like the people in the Fringe. I can't see a society without the Factions, and there are leaders of those Factions. Before all of this there were so many people in the government that everyone had different ideas about what was right.

"No, I like our Factions system. I don't see it as a threat to our society." I say in response to her question. She gives me a questioning look, and she seems to be trying to see if I am going to ever join in her fight. I know something that she doesn't; the city is an experiment, if I tell her I know she's going to go further with her plan. But Evelyn already seems determined to destroy the Factions.

"If you can find me a crutch that I can use, I'll be on my way to Candor. I need to see if my family's there." I say to her not wanting to waste anymore valuable time talking to the leader of the Factionless. She nods, acknowledging my request, and walks off to see the many other patients in their beds. It seems that she cares for the people who are with her, but I still don't see that disbanding the Factions would solve anything, like Jeanine's plot to destroy all the Divergents.

I look up at the ceiling waiting just lying in bed. I really want to get out of here, too but this ankle of mine won't heal that quickly. I won't be able to hop on the train even if I had a crutch. I already ran with my ankle bleeding and I endured the pain, but I can't do that to my foot again. The injury might become chronic and never heal properly. I looked around hoping to find an available crutch, or something that can help me get on the train. I give up and just roll on my left side and sleep. I don't even know what time it is but there's nothing for me to do here.

I wake up with a start when I feel a hand covering my mouth. I open my eyes and in the darkness I see a familiar face. He puts his finger over his lips indicating for me to be quiet. He pulls the sheets away from me and the cold air suddenly envelopes me. I instinctively pull my knees closer to me and wrap my arms around myself as if that will keep the cold away. The person sees this and puts his coat around me and I smell his scent. I feel my heart beating a little faster, and my cheeks flushing. "Chase," I whisper quietly. It's quite dark so I don't even know if he gives me a smile, all I know is that he was looking at me.

"Hey, I'm here to take you back. It's too dangerous for you to stay in the city." He whispers back to me. My heart sinks because I want to go to Candor to see if my family's there and if they're okay. I did ask Tobias to do this for me, but I don't know if he did see them, and it's not like we have some way of communicating right now. I just nod and allow him to lift me up off the bed and carry me out of the Factionless compound.

He somehow knows this place quite well, but then again he's probably seen the layout of this compound at the Bureau, or someone is speaking to him through an ear piece. Once we are outside the van is waiting with Deliah behind the wheel. Chase puts me into the back seat, and he closes the door. I put on the seat belt, as Chase runs around and opens the door on the left side of the van and climbs in. "Alright Deliah, go." He says a little bit above a whisper. She starts the engine and she starts driving without any headlights. I know she doesn't want to draw attention to all of us. I see Deliah glancing at the rearview mirror and I look at her.

"I thought you two would have a more joyous reunion." She says as her eyes avert back to the blackness ahead of us.

"Well, I do want to go to Candor." Chase turns to look at me and I already know that he's not happy about that idea at all. "I know, it's dangerous for me now that I'm injured, but I do want to know if my family's safe. Please." I say turning to him, and he does seem mad.

"I know your family's important to you, but what about you?" He asks me. I never thought about it, I always wanted to care for people, even though I chose a Faction that is all about being brave and reckless.

"I just don't like the unknown, it's scary. Please, I really want to see them." I say to Chase. I even put my hand on his hoping that this will help. He rotates his hand so that my hand is on the palm of his hand.

He lets out a sigh, "Okay fine, but once you see them we're out of there." He says and I smile, glad that he's finally seeing it from my point of view. I lean over to him and he does the same. Our lips are about to meet, but Deliah drives over a pothole or something and we end up butting heads.

"Oops, sorry. It's so hard to see out here without the lights on." She says from the driver's seat. Chase and I chuckle and shake our heads.

"Just be careful while you're there please." Chase says to me. I nod in response to his request.

"Wait, what should I say when Tobias asks how I got there." I say to him.

"Shoot, I didn't think of that. He will definitely have questions, and Candor might have you do their initiation task." He says leaning back and putting his hand on chin, thinking. "Their initiation task is injecting people with the truth serum and you have to tell the truth. I've seen people struggle with the serum and they're in pain." He adds to the sentence. "Tobias, Tris, and your friends probably went through the same thing once they reached the Candor compound."

"Great, now I can't avoid telling them about you and Deliah. Were you ever a part of this city, Deliah?" I ask her. I hope the question isn't too personal for her.

"Yeah, I was Dauntless born and decided to go to Erudite." I choose to believe this whether or not it's true. I have to believe it if they ask who was the person that drove me here, and how, if I don't the truth serum is going to force the truth out of me.

"Good, that's all I need to know." I say to her. I take a deep breath not really sure if I am ready to hobble into the compound. When we finally reach the compound I hesitate, not sure if I should go in and see if my parents are here.

"I don't know, I don't think I can do this without revealing that there's a Bureau and that this city is an experiment." I say to them. I can't, I know I can't. I know I can lie or "act" as if everything's okay, but with the truth serum, that's a whole other element that I'm not ready for. "If I say that, there will be chaos in the compound. I can't." I still want to see my parents but this fear is taking over and I thought all of my fears were taken care of during Dauntless initiation, but I guess not.

"Hey, it's okay," Chase says putting his hands on my shoulders.

"I know a way in through the back, but there's no way of knowing if there's people in that specific corridor." Deliah says from the front. That does sound like a good idea, but the risk of running into someone is making me consider another option, but if I go through the front doors, I know I can't avoid the inevitable.

"Alright, lead me to the back." I say to her and she looks back at me and gives me a nod.

"Be careful," Chase says to me as I climb out of the van with Deliah. I turn back to him and give him a reassuring smile, that I'll be okay. I move out with Deliah, and I follow her to the closest door to the van.

"You should move that van once I'm in the compound." I say to her as she acts as my crutch to the door.

"Yeah no problem, I know where to go." She whispers back to me, and I think she has the map of the city in her head, or that she was a Candor before she went to the Bureau. I don't know how people slip past the guards that are by the fence, but she probably traveled outside of the city at night in order to make it to the Bureau. How would she even know it existed if she lived in the city, though? There's so much I don't know about these people yet I'm willing to trust them to not have their own hidden agenda.

We walk for a few more steps and she stops at a black door with a white handle. She helps me to the wall, and I lean against the cold concrete of the compound as support. She pulls out a bobby pin and starts picking at it to unlock the door. After a few minutes she manages to unlock the door. She opens it for me, and I nod as a thanks to her. I hop over and walk over to the door. I look inside to see that it's a hallway that is lit up by circular lights on the ceiling.

I step into the hallway and begin walking to my right, not really sure about where I am going. I continue limping as I make my way to a flight of stairs. I slowly walk up and hear what sounded like screams coming from above. I hurry up on my way to the first floor and I see everyone is lying down either dead or asleep. I don't see blood, so they're definitely just unconscious. I hear voices coming down towards my direction and I rush my way back downstairs, trying not to fall.

"Hey, stop right there, or I will shoot." I lift up my hands and turn around to find some Dauntless traitors standing right behind me with guns pointed at me. One of them has a shocked expression on his face while the other keeps their gun in position. He knows me, how does he know me? I wonder as one of the Dauntless traitors come towards me and grabs hold of my arm. I wince as he pulls me up the stairs and starts directing me to who knows where. I look back at the boy that recognizes me and I flashback to the gate. He was there. I think to myself. That boy knows I'm Divergent, but then again if I'm not unconscious I'm already categorized as Divergent.

"What happened to your ankle?" The Dauntless that is practically dragging me to wherever they're taking me. Does it really require three people to handle a handicapped girl to a room?

"None of your business." I say to him and we continue walking in silence. He opens the door and pushes me into the room that is crowded with other Candors. Some of them are just children, maybe even as young as the little boy that Chase and I met out in the ruins. I go to one of the adults in the room and ask what happened.

"They gassed everyone with some chemical that makes everyone fall asleep. Anyone who isn't is Divergent." She explains to me. I nod as I look around the room again and see a wide variety of ages. Please don't tell me that they're going to kill children. I think to myself as I look at some of the scared young faces in the room. The door opens again, and Tris is in the room. The two of us lock eyes together for a couple of seconds before turning our attention to something else. I look down at the floor, not sure what to do now that we are all trapped in this room. I want to find a way out of here, but I just came into this compound without a map. A couple of minutes pass by and the door opens again. The person's footsteps echo as he/she walks into the room. The people closest to the door watch this person and some have fear in their eyes. Eric. And sure, enough it is him.

He's standing there looking at every Divergent in the room, and when he makes eye contact with mine he stops, not wanting to take his eyes off me. I don't know what I am seeing right now. It seems he's confused, worried, and a little angry that I am even in the same room as him. He begins walking around the room and starts talking about how Jeanine needs people who have a mature prefrontal lobe. I look around the room myself and see that it's nearly half of the room that haven't reached that stage of development yet.

Eric takes out his gun and points it at a little boy. Everyone backs away even I feel my heart stop. I am about to tell him to not shoot him, but he pulls the trigger. That sound echoed throughout my whole body, shocked that he would do something like this. My heart is pounding, and the sound in the room sounds faraway as people scream from what they have witnessed, and the body of the boy. I sit there staring at the little boy that Eric just killed in cold blood.