Agents of the Forgotten Faction

|Chapter 14|

It's been weird. Hill's orders seem to be MIA recently. I haven't heard anything since the rankings went up and that was just normal conversation. Maybe she is talking with Caleb or one of the other operatives. It's still worrying since I don't really have a way of communication. Yeah I occasionally call her name but I'm rewarded with silence. I brush it off and try not to take it to heart but it does concern me.

It's around noon and I find myself sitting in a new hallway. I needed to get away from the dorms. Maybe if I bring my bedding here, I will never have to go to the dormitory again. It may be my imagination, but it still smells like blood in there, even though I scrubbed the floor until my hands were sore, and someone poured bleach on it this morning. I pinch the bridge of my nose. Scrubbing the floor when no one else wanted to was something that my mother would have done. If I can't be with her, the least I can do is act like her sometimes. I hear people approaching, their footsteps echoing on the stone floor, and I look down at my shoes.

"Tris?" I look up. Uriah stops in front of me. He waves along the Dauntless-born initiates he walks with. They exchange looks but keep moving.

"You okay?" he says.

"I had a difficult night."

"Yeah, I heard about that guy Edward."

Uriah looks down the hallway. The Dauntless Born initiates disappear around a corner. Then he grins a little.

"Want to get out of here?"

"What?" I ask. "Where are you going?"

"To a little initiation ritual, he says. "Come on. We have to hurry."

I briefly consider my options. I can sit here. Or I can leave the Dauntless compound. I push myself to my feet and jog next to Uriah to catch up to the Dauntless-born initiates.

"The only initiates they usually let come are ones with older siblings in Dauntless but that's pretty much you anyway," he says whispering the last part. "But they might not even notice. Just act like you belong."

"What exactly are we doing?"

"Something dangerous," he says.

A look I can only describe as Dauntless mania enters his eyes, one of which I am very accustomed to over the years of knowing him. Excitement replaces the leaden feeling inside me. We slow when we re ach the Dauntless-born initiates.

"What's the Stiff doing here?" asks a boy with a met all ring between his nostrils.

"She just saw that guy get stabbed in the eye, Gabe," says Uriah. "Give her a break, okay?" Gabe shrugs and turns away.

Classic Uriah always sticking up for me. It's times like this when I feel like he is my older brother.

No one else says anything, though a few of them give me sidelong glances like they're sizing me up. The Dauntless-born initiates are like a pack of dogs. If I act the wrong way, they won't let me run with them.

But for now, I am safe. We turn another corner, and a group of members stands at the end of the next hallway. There are too many of them to all be related to a Dauntless-born initiate, but I see some similarities among the faces.

"Let's go," one of the members says.

He turns and plunges through a dark doorway. The other members follow him, and we follow them. I stay close behind Uriah as I pass into darkness and my toe hits a step. I catch myself before falling forward and start to climb.

"Back staircase," Uriah says, almost mumbling.

"Usually locked."

I nod, though he can't see me, and climb until all the steps are gone. By then, a door at the top of the staircase is open, letting in daylight. We emerge from the ground a few hundred yards from the glass building above the Pit, close to the train tracks.