Chasm

Prologue

TRIS POV

It is hard to let go of that day.

Rain splatters against the window, pulling my attention away from the hot, crumby classroom and the ignorant children that scribble answers down on their papers. I sit among them and watch the droplets trace the glass. They slide down, begging to be let in, before they connect with other drops of water and die at the bottom of the window.

It was raining that day too.

I sigh as quietly as possible as to not disturb the class and focus my mind elsewhere. But try as I might, the only object in the room that can claim my attention at the moment is the repetitive clock that makes me cringe with each tick.

So I slip into the dirty past, where I can at least find some action.

Ironically, the day that the war ended is the day that I lost everything. It is the reason why I am depressed. It is the reason that I lost the only family I had left, or so I believed at the time. It is the reason I am here in this Upper Levels classroom today, my brain rotting with each second I remain idle and get fed useless information.

After I managed to get all the way up to Jeanine's private office and literally fought myself off so that the poison didn't take me, my life fell apart. Jeanine was there, with Tori about to shoot her. I stepped in because Jeanine was the only one who could access her computer, which had vital information about Divergents and the city on it. Tori and I wrestled for the gun—she even bit me—until Tobias barged in with Uriah and a few armed factionless soldiers and broke up the fight.

Taking a deep breath, I glance up at the lights above my head and try to shove him into the deepest part of my mind, but his voice struggles to be heard.

Tobias, my only family, the only person I could trust with anything I asked of him, betrayed me that day as I had betrayed him. He was crushed when he found out that I went behind his back to work with his father. I remember the heinous words that he threw at me for lying and risking my life once again, followed by the two word sentence that caused my heart to drop in my stomach: We're done. The dead look in his unforgiving, dark eyes almost made me content with our split.

But he is the only man I've ever loved, so I was not okay with it in the slightest.

Uriah then escorted me downstairs and handed off his weapon to a factionless soldier. It was their plan all along, to collect the guns so that they could have total control over everybody in Erudite, although I know they wanted to go further and take over the city.

When we reached the main level, I found that Christina was fine, aside from the bullet in her leg. I also recognized a few more faces in the crowd. One of them was Lynn, who died that day with Uriah and I by her side.

An Erudite girl next to me bounces her foot against the ground in a nervous manner. I have to grit my teeth to restrain myself from telling her to stop.

Images burn in my mind, first of the fatal wound in Lynn's stomach, and then the coup that occurred just minutes after her death. Jeanine was nearly shot by Evelyn, and she would have been had it not been for the Candor backup she had.

The mind controlled Candor that confronted our group while we were infiltrating Erudite were used by the Erudite to overthrow the shortlived factionless government. They hadn't even gotten to the execution before the Candor stormed the building and commanded everyone to drop their weapons in monotone voices. The factionless had no choice but to surrender.

Chaos ensued. Riots broke out, and Chicago was reduced to an anarchy. With nowhere to go, especially nowhere safe, I stayed with Christina in the Erudite hospital, where she got her leg fixed. It was a miserable time, but at least I had my best friend.