Bare Hands (Sequel To No Sympathy)

Havoc

I get up as quick as possible and when I do, I notice that all of the lights are on and that there are doors on either side of the room.

I have passed the simulation.

On shaky legs I walk to the door I came in.  The gun is gone but I still have the one tucked into my waistband.  I take it out and open the door. 

I then search the other rooms for Uriah.

But instead of finding him, I find Marcus.   

He's obviously caught in a fear landscape but it's hard to tell what it is, not that I'd want to know anyway.  The very sight of him makes me pulse with rage, and I leave the room before I shoot him.

Going back to the room I was in, I run to the opposite door and yank it open.  Just then, Uriah comes out of one next to mine looking as worn as I've ever seen him and coughing.  He must have gone through the same thing.

I decide not to press the issue.

But when I look back ahead so that I can start walking again, what I see brings on a wave of different feelings.

Tris stands a few feet away from me next to Tori and on the floor is an obviously dead Jeanine.

My eyes widen.

"She is a traitor." Tori says to us.  "She just almost shot me to defend Jeanine."

"What?" Uriah asks, not believing her words. "Tris, what's going on?  Is she right?  Why are you even here?"

All the while Tris is staring at me intently.  I want to look away but instead try to harden my expression despite what I just went through.  I want her to see the hurt on my face.

"You know why I'm here." Tris says quietly.  "Don't you?"

Then she holds out Tori's gun and I step forward and take it, my legs still not steady.  

"We found Marcus in the next room."  I say.  "You came up here with him."

"Yes I did," she says. 

"I trusted you."  I say, shaking with anger.  "I trusted you and you abandoned me to work with him?"

"No." She shakes her head.  "He told me something, and everything my brother said, everything Jeanine said while I was in Erudite Headquarters, fit perfectly with what he told me.  And I wanted - I needed to know the truth."

"The truth?" I snort. "You think you learned the truth from a liar, a traitor, and a sociopath?"

"The truth?" Tori asks, bewildered. "What are you talking about?"

I stare at Tris with a hard look in my eyes.  I can't believe she'd do this to me.

"I think," Tris says after a while, pausing to take a breath.  "I think that you are the liar!  You tell me you love me, you trust me, you think I'm more perceptive than the average person.  And the first second that belief in my perceptiveness, that trust, that love is put to the test, it all falls apart.

"So you must have lied when you told me all of those things...you must have, because I can't believe your love is really that feeble."  She's crying now, but I resist the urge to wipe her tears away.  

She steps closer to me, so that there are only a few inches in between us.

And then she whispers, "I am still the person who would have died rather than kill you," she says, and I am reminded of the attack simulation. "I am exactly who you think I am.  And right now, I'm telling you that I know....I know this information will change everything.  Everything we have done and everything we are about to do."