Chapter 2

— Third Person

"You all truly are cowards to turn this against her." Amar's voice booms across the pit. Several factions fill the space below him up on the ledge of rocks.

Story time has become an icon to Visiting Week in Dauntless. Factions come to hear first person perspectives of the war, initiation, and everything in between every night of said week.
The purpose of the week is to show off the Faction to possible transfers, and to have meetings and board panels to have questions answered about Dauntless lifestyle.

"To call a woman who was chained to a bed with an IV forced into her arm a drug addict. Show some fucking respect, will you?" He shakes his head, flipping through more pages that Tris has written to find his desired story.

He shakes his head, coming across a page with an eighteen and a question mark at the top.
She was eighteen when this happened, and she isn't even sure if that's correct.
She can't even remember for sure, and they feel the need to hold this against her.

"This is not my story to tell. These are not my memories. I did not live through this. No one, and I truly mean no one could come back from this the way Tris Eaton has. You all are serious imbeciles to even begin verbally attacking her, requesting her position be revoked, and she be arrested for this," he waves the papers. "This of which she could not control."

His eyes scan the paper, remembering this memory of hers that was on top of the eighteen pile.

18?

I look around, seeing at least another dozen of cots posing as hospital beds around me. I dig deep into my mind to remember how I got here, in a cot identical to the others, with each of my limbs bound to the bed so I can barely move.

I know I have resisted; have tried to attack them when they come to replace the bag with a tube going into my foot, and I know that's why I am bound.

It's getting worse.
They come more and more frequently. I don't have a sense of time, but they will stand and wait for the last drop of the orange liquid to drip before immediately changing it with a new full one.

The empty bag use to sit for a while. How long, I am unsure, but they didn't change it immediately.

A person who has been changing the bags, a doctor maybe, but probably not, comes in with a group of large men today. This is in comparison to the usual group of three that silently change the colored bags then leave. He comes over to the woman next to me who passed out, or maybe is just sleeping since her last treatment.

"Oxycodone one and two are being tried today. Wrap her foot as well, David wants to see them, stat."

"David?" The one questions, looking to the other who works on the barely conscious girl next to me.

"The guy from the Bureau. His people just discovered that he was not their desired leader yesterday, and he is coming to work on our project full time now."

"What has he been doing all this time?"

"Focusing on rebuilding Chicago."

"Did it work?"

"They found their own form of government. He's decided to try and take a new approach with Derrick at New York. Now get to work, we don't have all fucking day."

The man who was asking the all questions abruptly grabs my foot and I gasp.

I haven't been able to feel touches in so long. Whatever they've been pumping into my body has made me completely numb. I can no longer feel my own pulse, or the rise and fall of my breathing chest.

In my mind, I am kicking my foot against the restraint; trying my hardest not to have this man touch me.

But when I look down, I see nothing move. My foot lays limp as the man removes the tube, wrapping gauze and tape around it excessively.

I feel my senses slowly become alert from the distant feeling I've been having.

Since the bag has been empty for an amount of time, and they just removed it's track to my body, I slowly feel its effects wearing off.

However, I'm still not close to the reality of myself.
But now I am able to notice that I am no longer in the room of over a dozen beds, but in a room of seven. The rest are empty cots.

"Wake up, come on." I jump when I hear skin lightly slapping skin to my right, and I see the man trying to wake the still woman. She stirs, her eyes fully dilated as she takes in her surroundings.
She looks just like I have been feeling.
Then I realize that that is what I must have looked like.

But why do I not feel that way right now?

"Alright, get up." That man with the other woman pulls her to sit upright, and she seems to go into shock.

"Let's keep going," he urges, swinging her feet off the bed. I look away, her scream drawing my gaze back to her in mere seconds.

"Get her up too." The guy talks to the man near me who has been removing my bounds to the table.

In my mind I see myself strangling him: my left hand closing around his throat before my right hand joins it, leaving him unconscious and collapsed on the floor.
However, my hands do not move when I ask them to. In fact, they do not move at all and feel as jelly-like as my legs do.

The woman next to me screams one last time before I hear a thump.
All I can see is blood on the floor near the foot of my cot.

"Alright, come on," the man draws my attention away from the woman, swinging my numb legs off of the cot. He lifts me from under my armpits, but his touch I have yet to feel other than on my foot.

I hear a door open from across the room, and people talking in deep, masculine voices. I am unable to make out what they say though, for I try to focus on my bare feet gripping the dark, grey cement floor beneath me.

"Only seven have survived?" A male asks.

"Make that six. We just lost Oxycodone one seconds before you arrived, sir."

I try to scream as I feel my balance failing me. The man releases me, and I try to move my arms to find some support, but my limbs do not move. My legs cave in and I collapse to the hard ground.

However, I never feel the impact.
My body is too numb to feel it.

When I open my eyes, I am face to face with the girl who has been in the bed next to me all this time, receiving bags of this drug at the same time I do.
Except, now she is dead. Her blank eyes stare to the left of me, clearly lost in their heavenly state.

I gasp, my field of view changing as I am rolled onto my back, sudden numbness turning to shooting pain as I struggle to breathe.

"Get her oxygen, now!" A man barks and instantly a mask is on my face.

"She's received the same amount as her?"

"Yes, they're up to twelve a day, one every other hour approximately, sir."

"She is ready. She can tolerate the drug if she survives the night." The man says, and silence follows.

"Very well. Very, very well." A man whom I recognize comes into my field of view around the mask which helps me breathe. His hand traces the outline of my face.

"Hi Beatrice," the man smiles a sadistic smile, caressing the side of my face. "Do you remember me?"

Someone removes the mask from my face, and I continue to struggle to breathe.

"Who would've thought our paths would cross like this again?" His touch is intimate, and it makes me want to hurl.

"I have plans that you can not even imagine, and they all involve your city of Chicago. Just because I couldn't create a pool of genetic purity there does not mean I am done, dear."

My chest burns as my body ignited on fire.

"What's the next step from here, sir?" A man asks.

"She has to become clean cold turkey now. If she can survive that, then she will begin the next phase."

"Where would you like her to stay for this time?"

"Well, I believe I have the perfect place." His gaze turns back to mine, and his hand holds the side of my face gently.

"Your mother and father have been dying to see you, Beatrice," his thumb drags across my cheek.

My mind surges.
This man is David.

"Bring her down to the cells. There's plenty of friendly faces for her to reunite with down there."

This is the last memory I recall before waking up and discovering my parents were not dead, but being held captive in this prison, just as I was.

.

Amar sighs, hoping he made the right decision by sharing this heavily personal memory with the crowd.

"They proceeded, after this, to test this drug on Tris where the butterfly effect played a role. I don't understand it completely, but I do understand that it was suppose to destroy all of her senses, and eventually kill her herself. When she returned to Chicago, she was blind, and her nervous system was out of wack, but she was able to be cured."

He sighs, anger building in his heart.

"I shouldn't have to share these stories with you. You shouldn't willingly attack this woman for things she cannot control. This was not the life she chose, and she can't control what happened when she was forced down this path."

"Why," he roars. "Why the hell do I have to convince you that she is a good person? Accept her for who she is, goddamnit! She just wants what the rest of you do: to live freely after trauma! She went through the same war as you, and yet, when you all got a break to recover, this was the shit she got! And only to return and have this be her greeting for the following seven years?!"

He sighs.

"Today is eight years. Eight years her husband and I brought her back to this city. We almost didn't find her in that prison because she was forced into hiding by that sick man."

"Just think about that. From age sixteen being forced into a war. Seventeen, being forced into a deadly program. Eighteen, you just heard all about that. And nineteen, being given a drug that should remove who you are as a person. Then only to return, and by age twenty have the whole city that you grew up in say that you do not belong."

He inhales, running his hand through his hair when he exhales.

"She's a good person; a lovely one at that. Believe me or not, so be it. She means well, when everyone works against her. She is someone this whole compound; this while city can depend on in a crisis."

He sighs again, trying to find the words to leave on. But he cannot find an easy way to close.

He is angry.
He is disappointed in the people of Chicago.

So that's what he says.

"I'm disappointed that this is what our city has come to: the line between good and evil is so blurred that we do not know a good person if it smacks us across the face."

He is still not happy with leaving on that note, but he is too angry at the people to care.

He leaves the ledge on the pit; uncomfortable silence possessing the space below.