Divergent FBI

Chapter Seventy

Jeanine has one of her underlings take me to a different room, one with an examination table and nothing else. The man that brought me seems to look at me with pity as he forces me to lay on the table, causing the butterflies in my stomach to increase. His brown eyes seem conflicted and my brain screams for me to ask him for help, but I know the second I ask him for anything, either he or I will be punished. I can't do that to someone just so I can live, it's not worth him getting injured too. After he closes the metal restraints on my wrists, using a keycard to do so, he shoots me one last look of pity before pressing a button and leaving the room. The examination table I lay on rotates itself into an upward position, but even there, my feet don't touch the ground. I look into the mirror across from me, knowing someone is behind it. Before I can attempt to flip off whoever stands behind the glass like a coward, I hear Jeanine's voice over the intercom.

"Turn the mirror off and bring in the test component." Test component? My heart pounds rapidly, and my breath catches in my throat when I see the mirror turn back into regular glass. It reveals an empty white room, with a door on the right side.

I hear yelling before I see them. The voice is muffled, but familiar, and I feel my insides turn to liquid when I realize who it is.

Tobias.

I make the realization just as they push his battered body through the door. He falls to the ground, and though he tries, he isn't standing by the time the door closes. He still attempts to open it with the knob, but it's locked. He's stuck.

He wears one of his tight cotton shirts, but it's ripped in several areas where I can see shallow cuts in his already-scarred skin.

"Fuck!" He screams, right before I let out a sob. His eyes snap to mine and his eyes well with tears. "Tris!" He presses himself to the glass, trying to be closer to me. Hot, angry tears spill over my cheeks as I watch him struggle. He punches the glass but it doesn't do anything, just makes his knuckles bloody.

"Stop Four!" I shriek, he can't get hurt over me, but by the looks of it, he already is. I sob again. His beautiful face is covered in black and blue bruises, as are his arms, and I don't even want to think of how he got them. My heart breaks for him as he cries in the empty room. "Jeanine! Leave him the fuck out of this! You don't need him for what you're going to do to me!" The intercom crackles on in response, and I'm about to yell more profanities at her, but her monotonous, satisfied voice eventually fills the room.

"Quite on the contrary Ms.Prior. I do need him, very much actually." Tobias' eyebrows scrunch, and it's obvious he can hear her too. I sniffle. "See, over the past several months, have you been getting injured a little more frequently?" I nod my head slowly, confused. "Well, all these injuries were staged by me, I've been testing a new drug on you, one that we call The Miracle." Realization flies over Tobias' and I's faces as we realize the reason for my quick healing. She's behind all of it. "So, The Miracle can heal physical injuries, but I want it to be able to heal emotional and mental injuries, scars even. Can you imagine how strong America would be then? We'd have an unbeatable army, with no PTSD issues. No longer would people be discharged from the force because of physical or mental injuries. Our nation would be perfect." I close my eyes, allowing tears to flow down my cheeks freely. "That's where he comes in." She sneers through the speakers, her voice smug and proud. "I know that he's the most important person to you, and I know that he is the one that will cause the most emotional pain just by watching you. It hurts you to know that he's watching you struggle, because you don't want him to suffer." My face screws into itself as I listen to her words and I allow myself to cry for a few moments before composing myself.

"You bitch." I whisper, sorting through my thoughts.

"The first torture will begin in one minute." She states, and the intercom shuts off once again.

"Four," I start, my bloodshot eyes connecting with his own. "Whatever you hear, don't watch." A strangled cry escapes from my throat as Tobias yells out in frustration.

"No Tris!" He shouts as he turns from me, his hands running through his hair. I wince at the sight of a large slit in the back of his shirt. Blood pours from the wound beneath. He looks back at me, his face wet. "No! You don't get to tell me that! Fuck!"

"Four, you can't watch. I-I-I don't want this to change you, to scar you." I take a deep shuddering breath as the door to my room opens. Two people in hazmat suits walk in, dragging a rolling table behind them. The table contains three things. Gas, a lighter, and a red-hot circular branding iron. Tobias wails. I look at his distraught self one last time, staring deep into his eyes as I say my next words. "Don't fucking watch."

One of the hazmat suit guys cuts through my shirt and takes it off me. I can see that Tobias has curled into a ball at the back of the room and I exhale.

Tobias' blue eyes peeking out from under his arm is the only thing I see as the iron is brought to my stomach's sensitive skin.

Even the hazmat suit men jump at the sound of my scream.