Flower Child

Chapter Thrity Eight

Tobias and I support Tris between us, basically having to drag her along because she can hardly stand due to the pain and blood loss. We are escorted by the brainless Dauntless soldiers, guns pressed against our spines and painful grips on our arms.
They lead us into a two story gray building and towards a door with two Dauntless guards outside of it. The gun digs into my back as it shoves me forward. To get through the door, Tobias has to let go of Tris and leave her to me completely. Tris and I walk through the door into a plain office, now I'm the one between Tobias and Tris. The office holds a desk, a computer, and two empty chairs. Behind the desk sits Jeanine Mathews, the leader of Erudite.
   When my eyes fall on her I almost let go of Tris. This wasn't the first time I'd seen the faction's leader, no, the first time I'd met her I had punched her in the face and ran away. She was the one who had told my family that my father was going to die. She had knelt down in front of me and laid down the truth on me better than any Candor.
   "Morgana," she said, "your father is very sick and there is nothing I can do to help him, he's going to die, Morgana, I'm sorry."
   My little seven year old mind couldn't handle it, not in the slightest. The grief I felt in that moment was to much for a kid to handle, so it turned to anger, and my anger found a target, the one who couldn't save my father, her. With all the strength I had, which was a decent amount due to the hard work that all Amity memebers went through, I punched her in the mouth and ran out of the room. I ran through the Erudite hospital for a good 15 minutes before I was caught, kicking and screaming at anyone and everyone until I was injected with peace serum, sat in a chair, and forced to apologize to Jeanine.
"Well, send some of them back on the train, then," Jeanine says into a phone, "It needs to be well guarded, it's the most important part—I'm not talk—I have to go."
She hangs up when she sees us, her gray eyes, that look like melted metal, settling on Tris, sliding past Tobias and I.
"Divergent rebels," a Dauntless says, most likely a leader, or a recruit chosen to stay awake and play a bigger pawn role.
"Yes, I can see that," she says, taking her glasses of and setting them down on the desk, I remember my father always saying that she probably only wore glasses to make her look smarter.
   "Little miss Morgana Snow," she says as her eyes fall on me, "I suspected your Divergence when we got your test results back as Amity, you should've told her to put it in as Dauntless, considering that has been your strongest aptitude since you were a child."
"And you." She points at Tris, disregarding me in an instant. "I expected. All the trouble from your aptitude test made me suspicious from the beginning. But you..."
Her eyes travel to Tobias as she shakes her head.
"You, Tobias-or should I call you Four?-managed to elude me," she says quietly, "Everything about you checked out. Test results, initiation simulations, everything. But here you are, nonetheless. Perhaps you could explain to me how that is?"
"You're the genius," he says coolly, "you tell me."
Her lips curl up into a cat-like grin, "My theory is that you really do belong in Abnegation. That your Divergence is weaker."
   The way she smiles, as if she's made a joke, makes me want to lunge across the table and ring her neck. If Tris wasn't wholly depending on me to keep her upright I probably would have.
   "You're powers of deductive reasoning are stunning," Tobias spits, "Consider me awed."
   The venom in his tone surprises me because I haven't heard it in awhile. This person is a mask he used to shield himself from the world, I've gotten past it, seen him, so much so that I forgot the mask even existed.
   "Now that your intelligence has been verified, you might want to get on with killing us," he snaps, "you have a lot of Abnegation leaders to murder, after all."
   Jeanine doesn't appear to be affected by the comment at all. She stands smoothly, fixing the skirt of her blue dress as she does. Tris suddenly leans even more on me and I wrap my arm around her middle to keep her up right.
   "Don't be silly. There is no rush," she says lightly, almost humorously, "You three are here for extremely important purposes. You see, it perplexed me that the Divergent were immune to the serum I developed, so I have been working to remedy that. I thought I might have, with the last batch, but, as you know, I was wrong. Luckily, I have another batch to test."
   "Why bother," Tris mumbles next to me.
   Jeanine turns to smile viciously at her.
   "I have had a question since I began the Dauntless project, and it is this." She sidesteps her desk, skimming the surface with her finger. "Why are most of the Divergent weak-willed, God-fearing nobodies from Abnegation, of all factions?"
   Most of the Divergents are Abnegation? It is strange, but it doesn't necessarily have to mean anything, it could easily be answered by the fact that Abnegation would help protect Divergents more than the other factions, besides Amity.
   "Weak-willed," Tobias scoffs, "It requires a strong will to manipulate a simulation, last time I checked. Weak-willed is mind-controlling an army because it's too hard for you to train one yourself."
   "I am not a fool," says Jeanine. "A faction of intellectuals is no army. We are tired of being dominated by a bunch of self-righteous idiots who reject wealth and advancement, but we couldn't do this on our own. And your Dauntless leaders were all too happy to oblige me if I guaranteed them a place in our new, improved government."
   Tobias snorts, "Improved?"
   "Yes, improved," she snaps, "Improved and working toward a world in which people will live in wealth, comfort, and prosperity."
   "At what cost?" I ask.
   "All that wealth... doesn't come from nowhere," Tris continues, her voice thick and sluggish.
   "Currently, the factionless are a drain on our resources," Jeanine replies. "As is Abnegation. I am sure that once the remains of your old faction are absorbed into the Dauntless army, Candor will cooperate and we will finally be able to get on with things."
  "These are people you are talking about," I snap, "not some statistics in a lab experiment."
   "Aren't they though?" She asks.
   My body shakes in anger and my mouth is open ready to spit the nastiest remarks that I can but Tobias beats me to the punch.
"Get on with things," he snaps bitterly, "Make no mistake. You will be dead before the day is out, you-"
"Perhaps if you could control your temper," she cuts him off, "you would not be in this situation to begin with, Tobias."
"I'm in this situation because you put me here," he snaps again, "The second you orchestrated an attack against innocent people."
"Innocent people," she laughs, "I find that a little funny, coming from you. I would expect Marcus's son to understand that not all those people are innocent."
She perches on the edge of her desk, "Can you tell me honestly that you wouldn't be happy to discover that your father was killed in the attack?"
"No," he answers through gritted teeth, "But at least his evil didn't involve the widespread manipulation of an entire faction and the systematic murder of every political leader we have."
The two stare each other down. Jeanine analyzing him and Tobias glaring her down. It goes on for a few intense moments, and then Jeanine clears her throat. It's a small victory for Tobias, but a victory nonetheless.
   "What I was going to say," she says, "is that soon, dozens of the Abnegation and their young children will be my responsibility to keep in order, and it does not bode well for me that a large number of them may be Divergent like yourselves, incapable of being controlled by the simulations."
   She stands and walks to the left, her hands locked in front of her, her nails bitten raw.
   "Therefore, it was necessary that I develop a new form of simulation to which they are not immune. I have been forced to reassess my own assumptions. That is where you come in." She paces a few steps to the right. "You are correct to say that you are strong-willed. I cannot control your will. But there are a few things I can control."
   She stops pacing and turns to towards us. Tris lean her head on my shoulder and I'm scared she's going to pass out due to the blood loss.
   I examine Jeanine, expecting to find malice, insanity, anything in her eyes, but I find none. She's a machine more than a maniac, like a computer solving a problem that it is presented with. Abnegation was in the way of her desire of power, so she found a way to remove them, and put herself in power. She didn't have an army so she made a serum to force Dauntless to be it. Our Divergence is another thing she wants to solve, and she'll be damned if she doesn't. That's the thing about her though, she's smart enough to solve anything, and she won't stop until she does.
   "I can't control what you see and hear," she says, "So I created a new serum that will adjust your surroundings to manipulate your will. Those who refuse to accept our leadership must be closely monitored."
    Monitored means controlled, it means robbing someone of their free will to help her solver her damn problems.
   "You will be our first test subjects, Tobias, Morgana, and Beatrice however," she smiles viscously, "it seems you are to injured to be any use to me, your execution will occur at the end of this meeting."
   The word execution strikes me deeply, I remember my fear landscape, Tris was always the first one to be shot, her eyes were always the first to lose their light, I won't let her die, not now, not at the hands of this woman.
   "No," I growl, "not gonna happen."
   Jeanine smiles, "I don't believe you have any choice in the matter."
   I see red, pure red, and I lose myself. I let go of Tris and lunge across the desk towards Jeanine. People shout, hands grab at me, but I'm unstoppable in my rage. I claw at her face, her eyes. Then I wrap my hands around her pale neck and I squeeze, I'll kill her and I don't care. She claws at my arms, gasping for air that doesn't come.
   I'm suddenly being ripped away by multiple hands, they shove me to the ground and hold me there as I yell and struggle against their grip. The red in my gaze fades away when my eyes meet Tobias's. He is also being held down by multiple Dauntless guards.
   Jeanine's heels click towards us and Tobias grits his teeth and elbows the guard holding his head down in the face. The guard slams the butt of his gun into Tobias's temple and Jeanine leans down and shoved a needle into his neck.
   The noise that leaps past my lips is broken and weak, a groan, a sob, somewhere in between the two.
   "Let them up," Jeanine says, her voice small and scratchy.
   While the guards holding me roughly pull me to my feet, the guard on him stands up, letting Tobias stand on his own. He doesn't look like the sleepwalking Dauntless soldiers, his eyes are alert and confused.
   "Tobias?" I ask, "Tobias?"
   "He doesn't know you," Jeanine says smugly.
   He turns toward me. When his eyes land on me, they narrow and he starts towards me, fast. He wraps his hand around my throat and squeezes. I can't breathe, I can't help myself either due to the guards that hold my arms.
   "The sim manipulates him," Jeanine explains, "by altering what he sees. Making him confuse enemy with friend."
   A guard pulls Tobias off me and I take in a shuttering breath.
   He's gone, Tobias is gone and there is nothing I can do about it. He's under a sim and will be forced to kill the innocent people he wanted to protect minutes ago.  It hurts more than if she had just killed him.
   "The advantage to this version of the simulation," she says, her eyes alight, "is that he can act independently, and is therefore far more effective than a mindless soldier."
   She looks at the guards who hold Tobias back. He struggles against them, his muscles taut, his eyes focused on me, but not seeing me, not seeing me the way they used to. "Send him to the control room. We'll want a sentient being there to monitor things and, as I understand it, he used to work there."
   Jeanine turns back to me, her hand reaches up to her neck, to the bruise in the shape of my hand, and then to her face, where a large cut spans across her cheek from my nails. She trails her fingers over it and brings them back to look at, they are stained with her blood, just like the tips of my nails. She looks back at me, glancing at Tris briefly.
   "Take these two to room B13," she orders, waving that blood stained hand like she just crossed off something on her bucket list.
   Guards grab Tris and drag her from the room and mine begin to drag me away. Jeanine watches in sick satisfaction and I lose myself again.
   "I'll kill you," I say quietly.
   "You seem pretty confident despite the state that you are in," she grins.
   "I'll kill you," I repeat, "I'll avenge them all and I'll stop at nothing to do it."
"That's a nice sentiment, dear," Jeanine smiles.
The guards drag me away with Tris, who is thrashing and screaming. Her yells go silent after a thump noise and then something hits my head and the world goes black.