Flower Child

Chapter Thirty Nine

I wake up laying down on cold metal pressed into the corner of wherever it is they put me. It's dark, to dark to make any sort of guess as to where I am. I hear movement next to me and presume it's Tris by the way she lets out a low groan of pain. I push myself to my feet slowly, my head pounding, spreading from the spot I had been hit.
   A light flickers on above us, dim and blue. It lights the tank walls surrounding me and shows me my shadowed reflection in the glass. Past the glass is a cold gray room, the walls are concrete and window less. On one of the walls is a small camera that watches us carefully.
   Near my feet is an opening that connects our tank with tubes to a large metal tank in the corner of the room.
   The image is all to familiar, the way my palms begin to sweat in response is as well. I'm not alone this time though, my well-being isn't something I care about, but I care about her's.
   "Tris, get up," I tell her. At any moment, this thing will start to fill up and I won't be able to stop it.
   Tris is shaking from head to toe and I don't think she realizes it. She pushes away from the wall and I see why it could be. There is a large pool of blood where she was laying, from her wound on her shoulder and, based on the matted parts of her hair, one on her head.
   I help her to her feet and she leans against the wall. Her face is full of so many emotions that I can't decipher them. She turns her face into the glass and lets out a few low, hysterical laughs that turn into sobs.
   "I should've known they'd watch my sims," she says, sniffling.
   I give her a weird look, "This is your fear?"
   She nods, "Yeah, the third one in my landscape, why?"
   "Because it's like my second one."
   Tris and I both assess each other for a moment and I feel her hysteria fall onto me. This is insane, I don't want to die here, drowning in a room with my friend while my other friends are out there being forced to become murderers, while Tobias is with Jeanine going through whatever it is she has planned for him.
   I want to scream, cry, and give up all at once. Tris can read the notion on my face and she nods, like to tell me that it's ok, to let it out. So I do. I send my foot into the glass with a scream that rattles our glass prison more than the kick. Behind me, Tris does the same. We've both been through this, we know it won't help, but we do it anyway because it helps relieve the pain, the anger, more than thinking logically. I kick again.
Water begins to trickle into the tank and I stop my rage fueled pounding on the glass.
I turn to find Tris staring past me at the camera, her eyes narrowed and focused on it and only it. Erudite is studying us, with some sick satisfaction, to test if we will react the same way reacted in the sims. I watch her as she watches it. I don't know what this was like for Tris. The water rises past my ankles. What the true reason her mind made this box for her but... The water rises past my knees. I do know mine. She was always the first one, the one that I couldn't save even if I had figured out how to get out of the tank sooner.
The water is high enough now that it makes our bodies float upward. Tris doesn't try to kick, to stay above, but lets her body be completely submerged, sinking to the bottom.
   My fear, not being able to save the ones I love, is happening right now. If I can't save her from this fate, I'll die with her. I stop kicking my legs and push all of the air from my lungs, letting myself sink to the bottom of the tank with her. Her hands float around her and I taken one in my own. She looks at me and nods, we will die in here, but we will die together.
   I close my eyes and focus on anything but the burn in my lungs. My father's paint covered hands, my mother's smile, my brother's voice, my best friends laugh, my life as it was and as it is. I picture Amity and then Dauntless. I imagine all the things that could have been, my life in Dauntless, my life with Tobias. His vast blue eyes are burned into my mind and they stare at me through a void of my own imagination. I'll never see him again, our last moments spent together he had seen me as his enemy, he had tried to kill me, if he ever gets free he'll be crushed beneath the guilt.
   Tris's hand tightens on mine, and I wish I could sob for us both, that I still had air in my lungs to do so.
   A loud noise forces my eyes to shoot open. A large crack forms in the glass and it shatters beneath the weight of the water and Tris and I are dragged by the force of it. I lose her hand as I slam, face down, on the ground, gasping for air as the water rushes away from my body, I cough as I take in air and water at the same time.
   "Beatrice," a female voice says, "Beatrice, we have to run."
   I push myself to my knees and look over at the woman. A woman in all gray stands above Tris, helping her to her feet with one hand, the other holding a gun. This is Tris's mother, I'd only glanced at her during the visits, but I remember her.
Her eyes move to me and she assesses me, "I'm Natalie Prior, Beatrice's mother. Who are you."
I cough, "Mor, Morgana snow."
"Can you walk on your own?" she asks.
I nod twice.
"Good," she nods, "We need to go, now."
I stand and follow her as she helps Tris walk. We pass through an open doorway and two Dauntless guards lie there, dead.
We rush as fast as Tris can manage down the hall. The water makes the floors slick and I have to think of every step I take to keep from falling over.
We turn a corner and Natalie raises her gun and fires at two guards who stand beside a door at the end of the hallway. The bullets find home in the center of their foreheads, dropping the guards. She then props Tris against a wall, taking her gray jacket off to reveal a tank top beneath it.
As she does this, Tris and I catch a glimpse of a small tattoo peaking around the fabric of her armpit and, if I hadn't already guessed before, I know for certain that this woman was from...
"Mom," Tris says with a strained voice, "You were Dauntless."
"Yes," Natalie says, smiling as she turns her jacket into a sling for Tris's arm, "And it served me well today. Your father and Caleb and some others are hiding in a basement at the intersection of North and Fairfield. We have to go get them."
I can tell that this information isn't settling well in Tris's mind. Her mother can too.
"There will be time for questions," she says, taking a gun out of the waist band of her pants and gives it to Tris, "Now we must go."
We continue down the hallway and as we pass the guards Natalie had killed I reach down and pull a gun from one's holster.
I take up the rear of our party and Natalie takes the head, leading us through the gray halls like she'd been memorizing them her whole life. She leads us through a few hallways and up a small staircase and then we're out in daylight again. We continue running and I follow them blindly, keeping my eyes moving around us for any sudden attacks and my hands ready to raise my gun to shoot at any moment.
"How did you find us," Tris asks.
"I've been watching the trains since the attacks started," Natalie answers, glancing over her shoulder at Tris, "I didn't know what I would do when I found you. But it was always my intention to save you."
"But I betrayed you," Tris says, her voice small like she is struggling to breathe, "I left you."
"You're my daughter. I don't care about the factions," Natalie answers, "Look where they got us. Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again."
She stops us in an alleyway just before it connects with the road.
I turn away from the pair, this conversation was not something that I should be apart of, but I can't help but listen. Especially since I'd like to know the answer to Tris's next question.
"Mom, how do you know about Divergence?" Tris asks, "What is it. Why..."
It's quiet for a moment as Natalie fiddles with her gun. I can hear what sounds like bullets rattling in her pocket, she's reloading her gun.
"I know about them because I am one," she finally says, "I was only safe because my mother was a Dauntless leader. On Choosing Day, she told me to leave my faction and find a safer one. I chose Abnegation. But I wanted you to make that choice on your own."
"I don't understand why we're such a threat to the leaders."
I give up and turn towards them.
"Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way." Natalie places her hand on Tris's shoulder with a warm smile. "But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them."
It all makes a little more sense now. I am Amity, and Dauntless, and Candor, and Abnegation, and Erudite, I am Divergent. I am not one or the other, or even just two, I am all and more because I cannot conform to the leader's wills. I can't be controlled. I am a wildfire that will destroy what they've built and they are terrified of that, of me.
"Here they come," Natalie says as she peaks around the corner.
Tris leans over her shoulder to look at what is surely a group of Dauntless soldiers. At that same moment I turn to look behind us, where, down the alleyway, is another group that moves towards us in perfect sync. I take a step to be closer to Tris and Natalie, my gun raised and ready to shoot.
"Go to your father and brother. The alley on the right, down to the basement. Knock twice, then three times, then six times," Natalie instructs Tris, "I'm going to distract them. You have to run as fast as you can."
"No," Tris says, "I'm not going anywhere without you."
"Be brave, Beatrice," Natalie says, "I love you."
I turn as Natalie runs out into the middle of the street, she fires three times into the air and the Dauntless start running towards her.
Tris stares at her mother and I grab her arm and pull her into a run. We run across the street and into the alley. We check behind us for any Dauntless but they are all focused on Natalie as she fires at them.
And then the unthinkable happens. Tris stops in her tracks and I stop as well. Natalie's whole body goes stiff as blood sprays from the wound on her abdomen. She falls to her knees and then to the side, falling like rag doll tossed around by a child. It's a horrifying sight, especially for Tris.
She covers her mouth with her hand and screams into her palm as tears begin to flow down her cheeks. My own eyes tear up, this woman saved my life, and now she was dead before I even got the chance to say thank you.
Tris falls to her knees as she stares at her mother's body.
"Tris," I says quietly, "we need to go."
As if my words were the silent order, the Dauntless turn towards us in a single movement.
"We have to go!" I say louder.
I grab her good arm and hoist her to her feet. We both run, Tris's breaths coming in the form of hiccups. I'll get Tris to safety, no matter what, it's the only thing I can think of to repay Natalie.