After Dark • Peter Hayes

Erudite

Pipers POV;

We stumbled through the dauntless compound coming across more dead body's. Another abnegation man, surely that couldn't be Tris's father too.

"She's been here" Peter nodded towards the body's of the divergent on the ground, making a humming sound he added, "I knew that guy" before moving forward into these weird underground tunnels that seemed crazy unsafe.

"Where are we headed?" I whispered to the man in front of me.

"You'll see" he sounded apprehensive, understandably. I knew this was not like Peter. He put himself before anyone else, other than me.

Everything started going from dark to white and blue, shit. This was erudite. White pillars filled the space, big enough to cover us. Peaking round I could see people in blue and black outfits, erudite and dauntless, although they did look like erudite for the most part.

Grunting could be heard from around the corner. As well as clanging. I looked up at Peter once with a weak smile before we both walked further round to see exactly what was going on.

Tris. She was backed up to some storage unit with Four stood in front of her.

"Four it's me, you're in a sim" she called out to him. I watched as he stood still with no response to her pleas. He would kill her if they didn't stop him.

"He can't hear you" I'd recognise that voice anywhere, Jeanine.

I went to walk out, help Tris but one of Peters arms wrapped around my waist holding me tightly, the other shushing me before I could argue back. I knew he was thinking logically but that was my friend over there.

"Amazing isn't it? Everything we think of makes up a person" Jeanine circled around him, "thoughts, emotions, history, all wiped away by chemistry" surely they couldn't have wiped everything not that quickly.

"Four" Tris tried again.

"He's gone" Jeanine looked to Four, "and we're all safer for it"

"Safer? How are we safer?" Tris spat back standing her ground, not like she had a choice with the team that followed Jeanine around cornering her in.

"The brilliance of the faction system is the conformity to the faction removes the threat of anyone exercising their independent will, divergents threaten that system" Jeanine's words cut through me like a knife. She thinks I'm a threat? Am I a threat? She walked away from Tris. "Don't get me wrong there's a certain beauty in your resistance" she stood beside Four once again. "Your defiance of categorisation but it's a beauty we can't afford" Peters grip on me tightening ever so slightly after her words.

My eyes followed Jeanine as she walked away from Four, another guy taking her place by the tablet beside where I'm assuming Four had been sat.

I watched Tris go to Four, she whispered to him, something I couldn't hear. Her hand on his neck.

Shortly replaced with his hand on her neck while he rammed her back into a pillar. She fought back, hard but he had threw her into a trolley causing her to fumble. Peters grip loosened on me just enough for me to break out, running towards Tris.

"Tris" I yelled as a man grabbed me tightly. She tried to look over but it only allowed Four to hit her in the jaw. My eyes closed at the sight of the impact.

I tried to wiggle from this mans grip. He dug into my wrists harder until he stopped.

He stood still.

I heard a gun cock followed by, "get your hands off her" Peter.

Tris was on the floor holding a gun to Four. Begging him to stop while Peter was being man handled from behind me to drop his gun.