The Transfer (A Divergent backstory to Eric)

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

  It's nearing winter here in Chicago.  We march as a group to where the factionless are.  We are all shivering, I wrap my arms around Lauren to keep her warm.  The smell of smoke tells us we're close.  We see fire up ahead.  The factionless look up scared like we're going to attack them.  "Do any of you know Loraine Hudson?"  Lauren asks them.  One of them in the back comes foward.  A blonde woman, she wears torn pants and a ragedy old Abnegation sweater.  "WHo wants to know?"  Lauren's eyes well up with tears "mom...?"  The woman comes closer "Lauren! Is that you?"  Lauren nods and the woman runs to her.  Lauren hugs her tightly, then the woman looks around at all of us.  Maria, Sarah and Nicole all hug her too, they must have known her before Max kicked her out since they've been friends forever.  "What are all of you doing here?"  the woman asks.  "We were all kicked out, we went against Max and he kicked us all out" Lauren tells her.  "Well I'm glad you all stood up to him, now all of you get in here and get warm!"  We sit around a fire, they start passing around soup cans.  We all take a bite, I pass it to Maria who is sitting next to me.  "Uh, no thanks, I'm good, thanks" she looks disgusted as she passes it to Chris.  He takes a bite and passes it along.  "Are you not going to eat anything and die of starvation?" he asks her.  "I don't know, maybe, I haven't gotten used to the whole eat off of eachothers spoon thing down yet."  "Well you better" he says as he wraps an arm around her shoulder.  They kissed and made up after he jumped in front of her when Max was about to kill her. 

  I look around the room, there's a quote on the wall 'In a society that destroyed all adventure, the only adventure left is to destroy that society.' I guess that's what we're about to do.  Destroy our society by going to war.  "You all can sleep over here, it should be enough room for all of you" Lauren's mom takes us over to the corner.  There are blankets laid out over the floor.  "Thank you" Nicole says as we all pick a spot.  We sit down shivering, we lay down and try to get comfortable on the concrete floor.  I lay there for a while just starring at the fire, watching the flickering of the flame finally makes me drift off to sleep.  In the morning the fire is out and it's freezing.  Lauren wakes up next to me and lays her head on my chest.  "Who turned off the heat?" she mumbles.  I stroke her hair "I don't know" I say as I yawn.  Maria is snuggled up to Chris, Sarah and Matt are cuddled close together and Nicole and Peter are holding eachother.  Jenna and the other Erudite are all awake, talking with the factionless.  I don't really want to get up and face the day.  I just want to stay in this moment with Lauren for a while longer.

  A woman with dark hair and a crooked nose steps foward.  "For those of you who just joined our lovely establishment-"  Chris puts his hand over Maria's mouth to keep her from saying something smart.  "-My name is Evelyn Johnson, some may say I'm the leader amongst the factionless.  I hear you all came from Dauntless?"  she asks.  "Some of us, yes, others from Erudite" I say.  "Erudite" she spits at the word "They are the ones we are trying to defeat."  Jenna stands up "I am Jeanine's daughter, she kicked us out of Erudite, I want to take her down just as much as you do."  "Well we could use you to get around eridte headquaters, and the manpower oof Dauntless" Evelyn says.  "Anyway, we are planning an attack, those of you who would like to be apart of it meet me at 7PM, I will be at the Northside safe house."  She leaves and we all look at eachother. 

  "So what do you guys do around here?" Lauren asks her mom.  "Well...pretty much just try to stay alive."  I walk over to them, "I'm gonna go look around with the guys, are you gonna be alright?"  She nods.  Ousite the snow is falling.  Abnegation is in the distance.  "Lets check out what's over there!" Matt shouts.  Chris, Peter, and I nod.  We walk over to the rows of houses, they all look the same.  "Hey isn't this where you got shot?" Matt asks as he trips over something.  "Woah!" he face plants into the snow, we all laugh at him.  "What the hell was that!?" he digs over where he tripped at and uncovers a body.  He jumps about three feet back "holly shit dude! Nobody bothered to clean up the bodies"  We stare at the corpse,  "I guess not" Chris says.  "Let's get out of here" Peter says.  "Are you afraid?" Chris asks as he balls up some snow in his hands and throws it at him.  He laughs and throws one back, pretty soon we're having an all out snowball fight.  "We should get the girls in on this!" Matt yells. 

  We go back to the safe house where the girls are.  "Hey! You guys have to come see this!" Chris yells to them.  Maria, Nicole, Lauren and Sarah get up and come outside.  "What?" Maria asks as Chris throws a snowball at her.  We all laughed and have a big snowball fight.  The girls finally surrendered, laid down in the snow making snow angels.  It feels good laughing, we haven't done it for a while.  It was almost 5PM when we headed back inside to eat and then we get on a train to the Northside safe house for the meeting with Evelyn.