Free Four: Insurgent [Book 2] (ON HOLD)

7.

I open the door, it's been five hours. If Tris isn't back to normal by now, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Go crazy. That is what I'm going to do.

I look in first, to see her sitting on the bed, glaring at the wall.

"Thank God," I say, breathing out in relief. I press my forehead to the cool door. "I was beginning to think it would never wear off and I would have to leave you here to… smell flowers, or whatever you wanted to do while you were on that stuff."

"I'll kill them," she says. "I will kill them."

"Don't bother. We're leaving soon anyway," I say, stepping fully into the room, and closing the door behind me. I take the hard drive from my back pocket. When I deposited her in her room earlier, I decided to take it from her room again, worried about what she might do with it while jacked up on drugs. "I thought we could hide this behind your dresser."

"That's where it was before."

"Yeah, and that's why Peter won't look for it here again," I say, mentally adding he knows its death to come again. I move the dresser with some effort and stick the hard drive in between the wall and the wood.

"Why couldn't I fight the peace serum?" she asks, her voice a little quieter than normal. "If my brain is weird enough to resist the simulation serum why not this one?"

"I don't know, really," I say. I had thought of this before, but couldn't really find a concrete answer. I sit next to her on the bed, her body bobbing with the offset of my weight. "Maybe in order to fight off a serum, you have to want to."

"Well, obviously I wanted to," she says, but there's no fire behind her words.

"Sometimes," I say, putting my arm around her and tucking her into my side, "people just want to be happy, even if it's not real."

She seems to take this into consideration. "You might be right," she says, her voice quiet and sounding defeated.

"Are you conceding?" I tease her, trying to cheer her up. I try to act shocked, and I am a little bit. "Seems like that serum did you some good after all…."

She shoves me in the side. "Take that back. Take it back now." And she's back.

"Okay, okay!" I say, my hands up in surrender. "It's just… I'm not very nice either, you know. That's why I like you so-" I try not to laugh as her eyes widen, in what I assume is recognition of my quoting her.

"Out!" she shouts, pointing at the door.

I laugh under my breath, kiss her cheek, and head out.

I don't see her at dinner, and I am forced to sit with Caleb and Susan- flirting in that Abnegation way of no touching and tentative smiles- and Peter, who scowls down at his food, making a show of eating with his non-dominant hand.

I hear grunts of disapproval and look over to where Tris is shoving her way through a crowd, her eyes frantic and wild. She sprints over and I put my hand on her shoulder to steady her. She's panting and sweaty and smells like outdoors.

"Erudite," she says between panting breaths.

"Coming here?" I say, my voice tight and tense.

She nods.

"Do we have time to run?"

She hesitates and I know what that means- no.

I look around, we're starting to make a scene. Dauntless are known to be rowdy but not panicky.

"Why do we need to run?" Susan asks. "The Amity established this place as a safe house. No conflict allowed."

"The Amity will have trouble enforcing that policy," my father says, now joining in on the conversation. "How do you stop conflict without conflict?" I would never admit it aloud, but he said exactly what I was just thinking.