“I want your help, and soon. I need someone to persuade Marcus to cooperate, and I think you can do it.”
She tilts her head and stares at me for a few seconds.
“Tris. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I force a smile. “Why do people keep saying that to me?”
She grabs my arm. “I’m not kidding around.”
“I told you, I’m going to visit Caleb. I’ll be back in a few days, and we can make a strategy then. I just thought it would be better if someone else knew about all this before I left. Just in case. Okay?”
She holds my arm for a few seconds, and then releases me. “Okay,” she says.
I walk toward the exit. I hold myself together until I’m through the door, and then I feel the tears come.
The last conversation I’ll ever have with her, and it was full of lies.
Once I’m outside, I put up the hood of Tobias’s sweatshirt. When I reach the end of the street, I glance up and down, searching for signs of life. There is nothing.
The cool air prickles in my lungs on the way in, and on the way out unfurls in a cloud of vapor. Winter will be here soon. I wonder if Erudite and Dauntless will still be at a standstill then, waiting for one group to obliterate the other. I’m glad I won’t have to see it.
Before I chose Dauntless, thoughts like that never occurred to me. I felt assured of my long lifespan, if nothing else. Now there are no reassurances, except that where I go, I go because I choose to.
I walk in the shadows of buildings, hoping my footsteps won’t attract any attention. None of the city lights are on in this area, but the moon is bright enough that I can walk by it without too much trouble.
I walk beneath the elevated tracks. They shudder with the movement of an oncoming train. I have to walk fast if I want to get there before anyone notices that I’m gone. I sidestep a large crack in the street, and jump over a fallen streetlight.
I didn’t think about how far I would have to walk when I set out. It isn’t long before my body warms with the exertion of walking and checking over my shoulder and dodging hazards in the road. I pick up the pace, half walking and half jogging.
Soon I reach a part of the city that I recognize. The streets are better kept here, swept clean, with few holes. Far away I see the glow of Erudite headquarters, their lights violating our energy conservation laws. I don’t know what I will do when I get there. Demand to see Jeanine? Or just stand there until someone notices me?
My fingertips skim a window in the building beside me. Not long now. Tremors go through my body now that I am close, making it difficult to walk. Breathing is tricky too; I stop trying to be quiet, and let air wheeze in and out of my lungs. What will they do with me when I get there? What plans do they have for me before I outlive my usefulness, and they kill me? I don’t doubt that they will kill me eventually. I concentrate on forward motion, on moving my legs even though they seem to be unwilling to support my weight.
And then I’m standing in front of Erudite headquarters.
Inside, crowds of blue-shirted people sit around tables, typing on computers or bent over books or passing sheets of paper back and forth. Some of them are decent people who do not understand what their faction has done, but if their entire building collapsed in on them before my eyes, I might not find it in myself to care.
This is the last moment I will be able to turn back. The cold air stings my cheeks and my hands as I hesitate. I can walk away now. Take refuge in the Dauntless compound. Hope and pray and wish that no one else dies because of my selfishness.
But I can’t walk away, or the guilt, the weight of Will’s life, and my parents’ lives, and now Marlene’s life, will break my bones, will make it impossible to breathe.
I slowly walk toward the building and push open the doors.
This is the only way to keep from suffocating.
For a second after my feet touch the wood floors, and I stand before the giant portrait of Jeanine Matthews hung on the opposite wall, no one notices me, not even the two Dauntless traitor guards milling around near the entryway. I walk up to the front desk, where a middle-aged man with a bald patch on the crown of his head sits, sorting through a stack of paper. I set my hands on the desk.
“Excuse me,” I say.
“Give me a moment,” he says without looking up.
“No.”
At that he looks up, his glasses askew, scowling like he’s about to chastise me. Whatever words he was about to use seem to stick in his throat. He stares at me with an open mouth, his eyes skipping from my face to the black sweatshirt I wear.
In my terror, his expression seems amusing. I smile a little and conceal my hands, which are trembling.
“I believe Jeanine Matthews wanted to see me,” I say. “So I would appreciate it if you would contact her.”
He signals to the Dauntless traitors by the door, but there is no need. The guards have finally caught on. Dauntless soldiers from the other parts of the room have also started forward, and they all surround me, but don’t touch me, and don’t speak to me. I scan their faces, trying to look as placid as possible.
“Divergent?” one of them finally asks as the man behind the desk picks up the receiver of the building’s communication system.
If I close my hands into fists, I can stop them from shaking. I nod.
My eyes shift to the Dauntless coming out of the elevator on the left side of the room, and the muscles in my face go slack. Peter is coming toward us.
A thousand potential reactions, ranging from launching myself at Peter’s throat to crying to making some kind of joke, rush through my mind at once. I can’t decide on one. So I stand still and watch him. Jeanine must have known that I would come, she must have chosen Peter on purpose to collect me, she must have.
“We’ve been instructed to take you upstairs,” says Peter.
I mean to say something sharp, or nonchalant, but the only sound that escapes me is an assenting noise, squeezed tight by my swollen throat. Peter starts toward the elevators, and I follow him.
We walk down a series of sleek corridors. Despite the fact that we climb a few flights of stairs, I still feel like I am plunging into the earth.
I expect them to take me to Jeanine, but they don’t. They stop walking in a short hallway with a series of metal doors on each side. Peter types in a code to open one of the doors, and the traitor Dauntless surround me, shoulder to shoulder, forming a narrow tunnel for me to pass through on my way into the room.
The room is small, maybe six feet long by six feet wide. The floor, the walls, and the ceiling are all made of the same light panels, dim now, that glowed in the aptitude test room. In each corner is a tiny black camera.
I finally let myself panic.
I look from corner to corner, at the cameras, and fight the scream building in my stomach, chest, and throat, the scream that fills every part of me. Again I feel guilt and grief clawing inside me, warring with each other for dominance, but terror is stronger than both. I breathe in, and don’t breathe out. My father once told me it was a cure for hiccups. I asked him if I could die from holding my breath.
“No,” he said. “Your body’s instincts will take over, and force you to breathe.”
A shame, really. I could use a way out. The thought makes me want to laugh. And then scream.
I curl up so I can press my face to my knees. I have to make a plan. If I can make a plan, I won’t be so afraid.
But there is no plan. No escape from deep in Erudite headquarters, no escape from Jeanine, and no other escape from what I’ve done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I FORGOT MY watch.
Minutes or hours later, when the panic subsides, that is what I most regret. Not coming here in the first place—that seemed like an obvious choice—but my bare wrist, which makes it impossible for me to know how long I have been sitting in this room. My back aches, which is some indication, but it is not definite enough.
After a while I get up and pace, stretching my arms above my head. I hesitate to do anything while the cameras are there, but they can’t learn anything by watching me touch my toes.
The thought makes my hands tremble, but I don’t try to push it from my mind. Instead I tell myself that I am Dauntless and I am no stranger to fear. I will die in this place. Perhaps soon. Those are the facts.
But there are other ways to think of it. Soon I will honor my parents by dying as they died. And if all they believed about death was true, soon I will join them in whatever comes next.
I shake my hands as I pace. They’re still trembling. I want to know what time it is. I arrived a little after midnight. It must be early in the morning by now, maybe 4:00, or 5:00. Or maybe it hasn’t been that long, and only seems that way because I haven’t been doing anything.
The door opens, and at last I stand face-to-face with my enemy and her Dauntless guards.
“Hello, Beatrice,” Jeanine says. She wears Erudite blue and Erudite spectacles and an Erudite look of superiority that I was taught by my father to hate. “I thought you might be the one who came.”
But I don’t feel hate when I look at her. I don’t feel anything at all, even though I know she’s responsible for countless deaths, including Marlene’s. The deaths exist in my mind as a string of meaningless equations, and I stand frozen, unable to solve them.
“Hello, Jeanine,” I say, because it is the only thing that comes to mind.
I look from Jeanine’s watery gray eyes to the Dauntless who flank her. Peter stands at her right shoulder, and a woman with lines on either side of her mouth stands at her left. Behind her is a bald man with sharp planes in his skull. I frown.
How does Peter find himself in such a prestigious position, as Jeanine Matthews’s bodyguard? Where is the logic in that?
“I’d like to know what time it is,” I say.
“Would you,” she says. “That’s interesting.”
I should have known she wouldn’t tell me. Every piece of information she receives factors into her strategy, and she won’t tell me what time it is unless she decides that providing the information is more useful than withholding it.
“I’m sure my Dauntless companions are disappointed,” she says, “that you have not tried to claw my eyes out yet.”
“That would be stupid.”
“True. But in keeping with your ‘act first, think second’ behavioral trend.”
“I’m sixteen.” I purse my lips. “I change.”
“How refreshing.” She has a way of flattening even those phrases that should have inflection built into them. “Let’s go on a little tour, shall we?”
She steps back and gestures toward the doorway. The last thing I want to do is walk out of this room and toward an uncertain destination, but I don’t hesitate. I walk out, the severe-looking Dauntless woman in front of me. Peter follows me soon afterward.
The hallway is long and pale. We turn a corner and walk down a second one exactly like the first.
Two more hallways follow. I am so disoriented I could never find my way back. But then my surroundings change—the white tunnel opens to a large room where Erudite men and women in long blue jackets stand behind tables, some holding tools, some mixing multicolored liquids, some staring at computer screens. If I had to guess, I would say they are mixing simulation serum, but I hesitate to confine Erudite’s work to simulations alone.
Most of them stop to watch us as we walk down the center aisle. Or rather, they watch me. Some of them whisper, but most remain silent. It is so quiet here.
I follow the Dauntless traitor woman through a doorway, and stop so abruptly Peter runs into me.
This room is just as large as the last one, but there is only one thing in it: a large metal table with a machine next to it. A machine I vaguely recognize as a heart monitor. And dangling above it, a camera. I shudder without meaning to. Because I know what this is.
“I am very pleased that you, in particular, are here,” says Jeanine. She walks past me and perches on the table, her fingers curled around the edge.
“I am pleased, of course, because of your aptitude test results.” Her blond hair, pulled tight to her skull, reflects the light, catches my attention.
“Even among the Divergent, you are somewhat of an oddity, because you have aptitude for three factions. Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite.”
“How . . .” My voice croaks. I push the question out. “How do you know that?”
“All in good time,” she says. “From your results I have determined that you are one of the strongest Divergent, which I say not to compliment you but to explain my purpose. If I am to develop a simulation that cannot be thwarted by the Divergent mind, I must study the strongest Divergent mind in order to shore up all weaknesses in the technology. Understand?”
I don’t respond. I am still staring at the heart monitor next to the table.
“Therefore, for as long as possible, my fellow scientists and I will be studying you.” She smiles a little. “And then, at the conclusion of my study, you will be executed.”
I knew that. I knew it, so why do my knees feel weak, why is my stomach writhing, why?
“That execution will take place here.” She runs her fingertips over the table beneath her. “On this table. I thought it would be interesting to show it to you.”
She wants to study my response. I barely breathe. I used to think that cruelty required malice, but that is not true. Jeanine has no reason to act out of malice. But she is cruel because she doesn’t care what she does, as long as it fascinates her. I may as well be a puzzle or a broken machine she wants to fix. She will break open my skull just to see the inner workings of my brain; I will die here, and that will be the merciful thing.
“I knew what would happen when I came here,” I say. “It’s just a table. And I’d like to go back to my room now.”
I don’t really comprehend time’s passing, at least not in the way that I used to, when time was available to me. So when the door opens again and Peter walks into my cell, I don’t know how much time has gone by, only that I am exhausted.