“You are not special,” I say. “I like to hurt people too. I can make the cruelest choice. The difference is, sometimes I don’t, and you always do, and that makes you evil.”
I step over him and start down Michigan Avenue again. But before I take more than a few steps, I hear his voice.
“That’s why I want it,” he says, his voice shaking.
I stop. I don’t turn around. I don’t want to see his face right now.
“I want the serum because I’m sick of being this way,” he says. “I’m sick of doing bad things and liking it and then wondering what’s wrong with me. I want it to be over. I want to start again.”
“And you don’t think that’s the coward’s way out?” I say over my shoulder.
“I think I don’t care if it is or not,” Peter says.
I feel the anger that was swelling within me deflate as I turn the vial over in my fingers, inside my pocket. I hear him get to his feet and brush the snow from his clothes.
“Don’t try to mess with me again,” I say, “and I promise I’ll let you reset yourself, when all this is said and done. I have no reason not to.”
He nods, and we continue through the unmarked snow to the building where I last saw my mother.
CHAPTER
FORTY-SEVEN
TRIS
THERE IS A nervous kind of quiet in the hallway, though there are people everywhere. One woman bumps me with her shoulder and then mutters an apology, and I move closer to Caleb so I don’t lose sight of him. Sometimes all I want is to be a few inches taller so the world does not look like a dense collection of torsos.
We move quickly, but not too quickly. The more security guards I see, the more pressure I feel building inside me. Caleb’s backpack, with the clean suit and explosives inside it, bounces against his lower back as we walk. People are moving in all different directions, but soon, we will reach a hallway that no one has any reason to walk down.
“I think something must have happened to Cara,” Matthew says. “The lights were supposed to be off by now.”
I nod. I feel the gun digging into my back, disguised by my baggy shirt. I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to use it, but it seems that I will, and even then it might not be enough to get us to the Weapons Lab.
I touch Caleb’s arm, and Matthew’s, stopping all three of us in the middle of the hallway.
“I have an idea,” I say. “We split up. Caleb and I will run to the lab, and Matthew, cause some kind of diversion.”
“A diversion?”
“You have a gun, don’t you?” I say. “Fire into the air.”
He hesitates.
“Do it,” I say through gritted teeth.
Matthew takes his gun out. I grab Caleb’s elbow and steer him down the hallway. Over my shoulder I watch Matthew lift the gun over his head and fire straight up, at one of the glass panels above him. At the sharp bang, I burst into a run, dragging Caleb with me. Screams and shattering glass fill the air, and security guards run past us without noticing that we are running away from the dormitories, running toward a place we should not be.
It’s a strange thing to feel my instincts and Dauntless training kick in. My breathing becomes deeper, more even, as we follow the route we determined this morning. My mind feels sharper, clearer. I look at Caleb, expecting to see the same thing happening to him, but all the blood seems to have drained from his face, and he is gasping. I keep my hand firm on his elbow to steady him.
We round a corner, shoes squeaking on the tile, and an empty hallway with a mirrored ceiling stretches out in front of us. I feel a surge of triumph. I know this place. We aren’t far now. We’re going to make it.
“Stop!” a voice shouts from behind me.
The security guards. They found us.
“Stop or we’ll shoot!”
Caleb shudders and lifts his hands. I lift mine, too, and look at him.
I feel everything slowing down inside me, my racing thoughts and the pounding of my heart.
When I look at him, I don’t see the cowardly young man who sold me out to Jeanine Matthews, and I don’t hear the excuses he gave afterward.
When I look at him, I see the boy who held my hand in the hospital when our mother broke her wrist and told me it would be all right. I see the brother who told me to make my own choices, the night before the Choosing Ceremony. I think of all the remarkable things he is—smart and enthusiastic and observant, quiet and earnest and kind.
He is a part of me, always will be, and I am a part of him, too. I don’t belong to Abnegation, or Dauntless, or even the Divergent. I don’t belong to the Bureau or the experiment or the fringe. I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me—they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.
I love my brother. I love him, and he is quaking with terror at the thought of death. I love him and all I can think, all I can hear in my mind, are the words I said to him a few days ago: I would never deliver you to your own execution.
“Caleb,” I say. “Give me the backpack.”
“What?” he says.
I slip my hand under the back of my shirt and grab my gun. I point it at him. “Give me the backpack.”
“Tris, no.” He shakes his head. “No, I won’t let you do that.”
“Put down your weapon!” the guard screams at the end of the hallway. “Put down your weapon or we will fire!”
“I might survive the death serum,” I say. “I’m good at fighting off serums. There’s a chance I’ll survive. There’s no chance you would survive. Give me the backpack or I’ll shoot you in the leg and take it from you.”
Then I raise my voice so the guards can hear me. “He’s my hostage! Come any closer and I’ll kill him!”
In that moment he reminds me of our father. His eyes are tired and sad. There’s a shadow of a beard on his chin. His hands shake as he pulls the backpack to the front of his body and offers it to me.
I take it and swing it over my shoulder. I keep my gun pointed at him and shift so he’s blocking my view of the soldiers at the end of the hallway.
“Caleb,” I say, “I love you.”
His eyes gleam with tears as he says, “I love you, too, Beatrice.”
“Get down on the floor!” I yell, for the benefit of the guards.
Caleb sinks to his knees.
“If I don’t survive,” I say, “tell Tobias I didn’t want to leave him.”
I back up, aiming over Caleb’s shoulder at one of the security guards. I inhale and steady my hand. I exhale and fire. I hear a pained yell, and sprint in the other direction with the sound of gunfire in my ears. I run a crooked path so it’s harder to hit me, and then dive around the corner. A bullet hits the wall right behind me, putting a hole in it.
As I run, I swing the backpack around my body and open the zipper. I take out the explosives and the detonator. There are shouts and running footsteps behind me. I don’t have any time. I don’t have any time.
I run harder, faster than I thought I could. The impact of each footstep shudders through me and I turn the next corner, where there are two guards standing by the doors Nita and the invaders broke. Clutching the explosives and detonator to my chest with my free hand, I shoot one guard in the leg and the other in the chest.
The one I shot in the leg reaches for his gun, and I fire again, closing my eyes after I aim. He doesn’t move again.
I run past the broken doors and into the hallway between them. I slam the explosives against the metal bar where the two doors join, and clamp down the claws around the edge of the bar so it will stay. Then I run back to the end of the hallway and around the corner and crouch, my back to the doors, as I press the detonation button and shield my ears with my palms.
The noise vibrates in my bones as the small bomb detonates, and the force of the blast throws me sideways, my gun sliding across the floor. Pieces of glass and metal spray through the air, falling to the floor where I lie, stunned. Even th
ough I sealed off my ears with my hands, I still hear ringing when I take them away, and I feel unsteady on my feet.
At the end of the hallway, the guards have caught up with me. They fire, and a bullet hits me in the fleshy part of my arm. I scream, clapping my hand over the wound, and my vision goes spotty at the edges as I throw myself around the corner again, half walking and half stumbling to the blasted-open doors.
Beyond them is a small vestibule with a set of sealed, lockless doors at the other end. Through the windows in those doors I see the Weapons Lab, the even rows of machinery and dark devices and serum vials, lit from beneath like they’re on display. I hear a spraying sound and know that the death serum is floating through the air, but the guards are behind me, and I don’t have time to put on the suit that will delay its effects.
I also know, I just know, that I can survive this.
I step into the vestibule.
CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT
TOBIAS
FACTIONLESS HEADQUARTERS—BUT this building will always be Erudite headquarters to me, no matter what happens—stands silent in the snow, with nothing but glowing windows to signal that there are people inside. I stop in front of the doors and make a disgruntled sound in my throat.
“What?” Peter says.
“I hate it here,” I say.
He pushes his hair, soaked from the snow, out of his eyes. “So what are we going to do, break a window? Look for a back door?”
“I’m just going to walk in,” I say. “I’m her son.”
“You also betrayed her and left the city when she forbade anyone from doing that,” he says, “and she sent people after you to stop you. People with guns.”
“You can stay here if you want,” I say.
“Where the serum goes, I go,” he says. “But if you get shot at, I’m going to grab it and run.”
“I don’t expect anything more.”
He is a strange sort of person.
I walk into the lobby, where someone reassembled the portrait of Jeanine Matthews, but they drew an X over each of her eyes in red paint and wrote “Faction scum” across the bottom.
Several people wearing factionless armbands advance on us with guns held high. Some of them I recognize from across the factionless warehouse campfires, or from the time I spent at Evelyn’s side as a Dauntless leader. Others are complete strangers, reminding me that the factionless population is larger than any of us suspected.
I put up my hands. “I’m here to see Evelyn.”
“Sure,” one of them says. “Because we just let anyone in who wants to see her.”
“I have a message from the people outside,” I say. “One I’m sure she would like to hear.”
“Tobias?” a factionless woman says. I recognize her, but not from a factionless warehouse—from the Abnegation sector. She was my neighbor. Grace is her name.
“Hello, Grace,” I say. “I just want to talk to my mom.”
She bites the inside of her cheek and considers me. Her grip on her pistol falters. “Well, we’re still not supposed to let anyone in.”
“For God’s sake,” Peter says. “Go tell her we’re here and see what she says, then! We can wait.”
Grace backs up into the crowd that gathered as we were talking, then lowers her gun and jogs down a nearby hallway.
We stand for what feels like a long time, until my shoulders ache from supporting my arms. Then Grace returns and beckons to us. I lower my hands as the others lower their guns, and walk into the foyer, passing through the center of the crowd like a piece of thread through the eye of a needle. She leads us into an elevator.
“What are you doing holding a gun, Grace?” I say. I’ve never known an Abnegation to pick up a weapon.
“No faction customs anymore,” she says. “Now I get to defend myself. I get to have a sense of self-preservation.”
“Good,” I say, and I mean it. Abnegation was just as broken as the other factions, but its evils were less obvious, cloaked as they were in the guise of selflessness. But requiring a person to disappear, to fade into the background wherever they go, is no better than encouraging them to punch one another.
We go up to the floor where Jeanine’s administrative office was—but that’s not where Grace takes us. Instead she leads us to a large meeting room with tables, couches, and chairs arranged in strict squares. Huge windows along the back wall let in the moonlight. Evelyn sits at a table on the right, staring out the window.
“You can go, Grace,” Evelyn says. “You have a message for me, Tobias?”
She doesn’t look at me. Her thick hair is tied back in a knot, and she wears a gray shirt with a factionless armband over it. She looks exhausted.
“Mind waiting in the hallway?” I say to Peter, and to my surprise, he doesn’t argue. He just walks out, closing the door behind him.
My mother and I are alone.
“The people outside have no messages for us,” I say, moving closer to her. “They wanted to take away the memories of everyone in this city. They believe there is no reasoning with us, no appealing to our better natures. They decided it would be easier to erase us than to speak with us.”
“Maybe they’re right,” Evelyn says. Finally she turns to me, resting her cheekbone against her clasped hands. She has an empty circle tattooed on one of her fingers like a wedding band. “What is it you came here to do, then?”
I hesitate, my hand on the vial in my pocket. I look at her, and I can see the way time has worn through her like an old piece of cloth, the fibers exposed and fraying. And I can see the woman I knew as a child, too, the mouth that stretched into a smile, the eyes that sparkled with joy. But the longer I look at her, the more convinced I am that that happy woman never existed. That woman is just a pale version of my real mother, viewed through the self-centered eyes of a child.
I sit down across from her at the table and put the vial of memory serum between us.
“I came to make you drink this,” I say.
She looks at the vial, and I think I see tears in her eyes, but it could just be the light.
“I thought it was the only way to prevent total destruction,” I say. “I know that Marcus and Johanna and their people are going to attack, and I know that you will do whatever it takes to stop them, including using that death serum you possess to its best advantage.” I tilt my head. “Am I wrong?”
“No,” she says. “The factions are evil. They cannot be restored. I would sooner see us all destroyed.”
Her hand squeezes the edge of the table, the knuckles pale.
“The reason the factions were evil is because there was no way out of them,” I say. “They gave us the illusion of choice without actually giving us a choice. That’s the same thing you’re doing here, by abolishing them. You’re saying, go make choices. But make sure they aren’t factions or I’ll grind you to bits!”
“If you thought that, why didn’t you tell me?” she says, her voice louder and her eyes avoiding mine, avoiding me. “Tell me, instead of betraying me?”
“Because I’m afraid of you!” The words burst out, and I regret them but I’m also glad they’re there, glad that before I ask her to give up her identity, I can at least be honest with her. “You . . . you remind me of him!”
“Don’t you dare.” She clenches her hands into fists and almost spits at me, “Don’t you dare.”
“I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it,” I say, coming to my feet. “He was a tyrant in our house and now you’re a tyrant in this city, and you can’t even see that it’s the same!”
“So that’s why you brought this,” she says, and she wraps her hand around the vial, holding it up to look at it. “Because you think this is the only way to mend things.”
“I . . .” I am about to say that it’s the easiest way, the best way, maybe the only way that I can trust her.
If I erase her memories, I can create for myself a new mother, but.
But she is more than my mother. She i
s a person in her own right, and she does not belong to me.
I do not get to choose what she becomes just because I can’t deal with who she is.
“No,” I say. “No, I came to give you a choice.”
I feel suddenly terrified, my hands numb, my heart beating fast—
“I thought about going to see Marcus tonight, but I didn’t.” I swallow hard. “I came to see you instead because . . . because I think there’s a hope of reconciliation between us. Not now, not soon, but someday. And with him there’s no hope, there’s no reconciliation possible.”
She stares at me, her eyes fierce but welling up with tears.
“It’s not fair for me to give you this choice,” I say. “But I have to. You can lead the factionless, you can fight the Allegiant, but you’ll have to do it without me, forever. Or you can let this crusade go, and . . . and you’ll have your son back.”
It’s a feeble offer and I know it, which is why I’m afraid—afraid that she will refuse to choose, that she will choose power over me, that she will call me a ridiculous child, which is what I am. I am a child. I am two feet tall and asking her how much she loves me.
Evelyn’s eyes, dark as wet earth, search mine for a long time.
Then she reaches across the table and pulls me fiercely into her arms, which form a wire cage around me, surprisingly strong.
“Let them have the city and everything in it,” she says into my hair.
I can’t move, can’t speak. She chose me. She chose me.
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
TRIS
THE DEATH SERUM smells like smoke and spice, and my lungs reject it with the first breath I take. I cough and splutter, and I am swallowed by darkness.
I crumple to my knees. My body feels like someone has replaced my blood with molasses, and my bones with lead. An invisible thread tugs me toward sleep, but I want to be awake. It is important that I want to be awake. I imagine that wanting, that desire, burning in my chest like a flame.
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