He runs to the computer screen and taps it a few times with his finger. I can’t look at what he’s doing. All I can see is my brother. He holds the gun I gave him straight out from his body, like he’s ready to use it. I bite my lip. Don’t shoot. Tobias presses the screen a few more times, typing in letters that make no sense to me. Don’t shoot.
I see a flash of light—a spark, from one of the guns—and gasp. My brother and Marcus and Peter crouch on the ground with their arms over their heads. After a moment they all stir, so I know they’re still alive, and the Dauntless soldiers advance. A cluster of black around my brother.
“Tobias,” I say.
He presses the screen again, and everyone on the first floor goes still.
Their arms drop to their sides.
And then the Dauntless move. Their heads turn from side to side, and they drop their guns, and their mouths move like they’re shouting, and they shove each other, and some of them sink to their knees, holding their heads and rocking back and forth, back and forth.
All the tension in my chest unravels, and I sit down, heaving a sigh.
Tobias crouches next to the computer and pulls the side of the case off.
“I have to get the data,” he says, “or they’ll just start the simulation again.”
I watch the frenzy on the screen. It is the same frenzy that must be happening on the streets. I scan the screens, one by one, looking for one that shows the Abnegation sector of the city. There is only one—it’s at the far end of the room, on the bottom. The Dauntless on that screen are firing at one another, shoving one another, screaming—chaos. Black-clothed men and women drop to the ground. People sprint in every direction.
“Got it,” says Tobias, holding up the computer’s hard drive. It is a piece of metal about the size of his palm. He offers it to me, and I shove it in my back pocket.
“We have to leave,” I say, getting to my feet. I point at the screen on the right.
“Yes, we do.” He wraps his arm across my shoulders. “Come on.”
We walk together down the hallway and around the corner. The elevator reminds me of my father. I can’t stop myself from looking for his body.
It is on the floor next to the elevator, surrounded by the bodies of several guards. A strangled scream escapes me. I turn away. Bile leaps into my throat and I throw up against the wall.
For a second I feel like everything inside me is breaking, and I crouch by a body, breathing through my mouth so I don’t smell the blood. I clamp my hand over my mouth to contain a sob. Five more seconds. Five seconds of weakness and then I get up. One, two. Three, four.
Five.
I am not really aware of my surroundings. There is an elevator and a glass room and a rush of cold air. There is a shouting crowd of Dauntless soldiers dressed in black. I search for Caleb’s face, but it is nowhere, nowhere until we leave the glass building and step out into sunlight.
Caleb runs to me when I walk through the doors, and I fall against him. He holds me tightly.
“Dad?” he says.
I just shake my head.
“Well,” he says, almost choking on the word, “he would have wanted it that way.”
Over Caleb’s shoulder, I see Tobias stop in the middle of a footstep. His entire body goes rigid as his eyes focus on Marcus. In the rush to destroy the simulation, I forgot to warn him.
Marcus walks up to Tobias and wraps his arms around his son. Tobias stays frozen, his arms at his sides and his face blank. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down and his eyes lift to the ceiling.
“Son,” sighs Marcus.
Tobias winces.
“Hey,” I say, pulling away from Caleb. I remember the belt stinging on my wrist in Tobias’s fear landscape and slip into the space between them, pushing Marcus back. “Hey. Get away from him.”
I feel Tobias’s breaths against my neck; they come in sharp bursts.
“Stay away,” I hiss.
“Beatrice, what are you doing?” asks Caleb.
“Tris,” Tobias says.
Marcus gives me a scandalized look that seems false to me—his eyes are too wide and his mouth is too open. If I could find a way to smack that look off his face, I would.
“Not all those Erudite articles were full of lies,” I say, narrowing my eyes at Marcus.
“What are you talking about?” Marcus says quietly. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, Beatrice, but—”
“The only reason I haven’t shot you yet is because he’s the one who should get to do it,” I say. “Stay away from him or I’ll decide I no longer care.”
Tobias’s hands slip around my arms and squeeze. Marcus’s eyes stay on mine for a few seconds, and I can’t help but see them as black pits, like they were in Tobias’s fear landscape. Then he looks away.
“We have to go,” Tobias says unsteadily. “The train should be here any second.”
We walk over unyielding ground toward the train tracks. Tobias’s jaw is clenched and he stares straight ahead. I feel a twinge of regret. Maybe I should have let him deal with his father on his own.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he replies, taking my hand. His fingers are still shaking.
“If we take the train in the opposite direction, out of the city instead of in, we can get to Amity headquarters,” I say. “That’s where the others went.”
“What about Candor?” my brother asks. “What do you think they’ll do?”
I don’t know how Candor will respond to the attack. They wouldn’t side with the Erudite—they would never do something that underhanded. But they may not fight the Erudite either.
We stand next to the tracks for a few minutes before the train comes. Eventually Tobias picks me up, because I am dead on my feet, and I lean my head into his shoulder, taking deep breaths of his skin. Since he saved me from the attack, I have associated his smell with safety, so as long as I focus on it, I feel safe now.
The truth is, I will not feel safe as long as Peter and Marcus are with us. I try not to look at them, but I feel their presence like I would feel a blanket over my face. The cruelty of fate is that I must travel with the people I hate when the people I love are dead behind me.
Dead, or waking as murderers. Where are Christina and Tori now? Wandering the streets, plagued with guilt for what they’ve done? Or turning guns on the people who forced them to do it? Or are they already dead too? I wish I knew.
At the same time, I hope I never find out. If she is still alive, Christina will find Will’s body. And if she sees me again, her Candor-trained eyes will see that I am the one who killed him, I know it. I know it and the guilt strangles me and crushes me, so I have to forget it. I make myself forget it.
The train comes, and Tobias sets me down so I can jump on. I jog a few steps next to the car and then throw my body to the side, landing on my left arm. I wiggle my body inside and sit against the wall. Caleb sits across from me, and Tobias sits next to me, forming a barrier between my body and Marcus and Peter. My enemies. His enemies.
The train turns, and I see the city behind us. It will get smaller and smaller until we see where the tracks end, the forests and fields I last saw when I was too young to appreciate them. The kindness of Amity will comfort us for a while, though we can’t stay there forever. Soon the Erudite and the corrupt Dauntless leaders will look for us, and we will have to move on.
Tobias pulls me against him. We bend our knees and our heads so that we are enclosed together in a room of our own making, unable to see those who trouble us, our breath mixing on the way in and on the way out.
“My parents,” I say. “They died today.”
Even though I said it, and even though I know it’s true, it doesn’t feel real.
“They died for me,” I say. That feels important.
“They loved you,” he replies. “To them there was no better way to show you.”
I nod, and my eyes follow the line of his jaw.
“I couldn’t do that,” I say. “It would have been like shooting myself.”
He looks pained and leans closer to me, so his lips brush mine when he speaks.
“I have something to tell you,” he says.
I run my fingers along the tendons in his hand and look back at him.
“I might be in love with you.” He smiles a little. “I’m waiting until I’m sure to tell you, though.”
“That’s sensible of you,” I say, smiling too. “We should find some paper so you can make a list or a chart or something.”
I feel his laughter against my side, his nose sliding along my jaw, his lips pressing behind my ear.
“Maybe I’m already sure,” he says, “and I just don’t want to frighten you.”
I laugh a little. “Then you should know better.”
“Fine,” he says. “Then I love you.”
I kiss him as the train slides into unlit, uncertain land. I kiss him for as long as I want, for longer than I should, given that my brother sits three feet away from me.
I reach into my pocket and take out the hard drive that contains the simulation data. I turn it in my hands, letting it catch the fading light and reflect it. Marcus’s eyes cling greedily to the movement. Not safe, I think. Not quite.
I clutch the hard drive to my chest, lean my head on Tobias’s shoulder, and try to sleep.
Abnegation and Dauntless are both broken, their members scattered. We are like the factionless now. I do not know what life will be like, separated from a faction—it feels disengaged, like a leaf divided from the tree that gives it sustenance. We are creatures of loss; we have left everything behind. I have no home, no path, and no certainty. I am no longer Tris, the selfless, or Tris, the brave.
I suppose that now, I must become more than either.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, God, for your Son and for blessing me beyond comprehension.
Thanks also to: Joanna Stampfel-Volpe, my badass agent, who works harder than anyone I know—your kindness and generosity continue to amaze me. Molly O’Neill, also known as the Editor of Wonder—I don’t know how you manage to have a sharp editorial eye and a huge heart at the same time, but you do. I am so fortunate to have two people like you and Joanna on my side.
Katherine Tegen, who runs an amazing imprint. Barb Fitzsimmons, Amy Ryan, and Joel Tippie, who designed a beautiful and powerful cover. Brenna Franzitta, Amy Vinchesi, and Jennifer Strada, my production editor, copy editor, and proofreader (respectively), also known as grammar/punctuation/formatting ninjas—your work is so important. Fantastic marketing and publicity directors Suzanne Daghlian, Patty Rosati, Colleen O’Connell, and Sandee Roston; Allison Verost, my publicist; and everyone else in the marketing and publicity departments.
Jean McGinley, Alpha Wong, and the rest of the subrights team, who have made it possible for my book to be read in more languages than I will ever be able to read, and thanks to all the amazing foreign publishers who have given my book a home. The production team and the HarperMedia audio and e-book team, for all their hard work. The brilliant people over in sales, who have done so much for my book, and who, I’ve heard, have almost as much love for Four as I do. And everyone else at HarperCollins who has supported my book—it takes a village, and I’m so happy to live in yours.
Nancy Coffey, literary agent legend, for believing in my book and for giving me such a warm welcome. Pouya Shahbazian, for being a film-rights whiz and for supporting my Top Chef addiction. Shauna Seliy, Brian Bouldrey, and Averill Curdy, my professors, for helping me to drastically improve my writing. Jennifer Wood, my writing buddy, for her expert brainstorming skills. Sumayyah Daud, Veronique Pettingill, Kathy Bradey, Debra Driza, Lara Erlich, and Abigail Schmidt, my beta readers, for all their notes and enthusiasm. Nelson Fitch, for taking my pictures and being so supportive.
My friends, who stick with me even when I’m moody and reclusive. Mike, for teaching me a lot about life. Ingrid and Karl, my sister and brother, for their unfailing love and enthusiasm, and Frank, for talking me through the hard stuff—your support means more to me than you know. And Barbara, my mother, who always encouraged me to write, even before any of us knew that it would come to anything.
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DIVERGENT
BONUS MATERIALS
FROM TOBIAS TO TRIS
DAUNTLESS COMPOUND MAP
THE EVOLUTION OF CALEB
RENDERINGS OF CHOOSING CEREMONY BOWLS
FEAR AND YOUR BRAIN: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE OF EXPOSURE THERAPY BEHIND DIVERGENT
EXCERPT FROM THE OFFICIAL DIVERGENT MOVIE SCRIPT
FAVORITE QUOTES FROM DIVERGENT, ILLUSTRATED BY INITIATES
DIVERGENT DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
FROM TOBIAS TO TRIS
VERONICA ROTH
DIVERGENT ALWAYS BEGAN with a haircut. A few years before I wrote the rough draft that featured Beatrice Prior and her difficult decision, I wrote a different draft, featuring a young Abnegation named Tobias, which I now call the “protodraft.” This was the first sentence: “Every third Saturday of the month, Tobias and his brother took turns sitting on a stool in their father’s bathroom.”
And these were the first sentences of the rough draft with Tris: “Looking at my reflection is an act of rebellion. There is one mirror in my house. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every second month, the day my mother cuts my hair.”
There are many differences between the protodraft (which is very short) and the rough draft, in world-building and story and characters, but none is more crucial than the main character. Tobias, while one of my favorite characters in the series (along with Tris, Caleb, and Evelyn), didn’t work as the main character. With him at the helm, I set the manuscript aside and forgot about it for almost four years. It was only when I decided to revive the world and the basic story line that I dug deep into my writing archive for the protodraft (then simply titled “Self-Sacrifice”), and the first thing I changed was the person telling the story.
It might be strange for people who don’t write books to think about a single character sinking a story all on his own. But before a book can reach the shelves, before it can be sold to a publisher, before it can even be revised in the privacy of a writer’s bedroom, you first have to be able to finish a draft. That sounds obvious, but for me, finishing a draft has always been the hardest part of writing. I like to start things, write a few scenes, get into the story, and then somewhere in the middle I lose all my momentum and give up if something isn’t right. Usually the “something” that isn’t right is the world or the story, but this time it was the character—and not because I didn’t have affection for him. It was because his story didn’t feel urgent to me, like something that had to be told. Tris was someone who kept tugging on my sleeve, asking me to talk about her, reminding me that her decision was difficult, the stakes were high, everything was on the line; in the protodraft, Tobias’s decision to stay in Abnegation or join Dauntless felt somehow weightless, like he would definitely survive (emotionally and physically) either way.
The simple explanation for this, given that Tris and Tobias have similar backgrounds (Abnegation-born) and even personalities, is that Tris is a young woman and Tobias is a young man. I don’t usually like to embrace gender binaries, but the fact remains that because of the way our culture teaches us to view women and men differently, Tris’s story is the more interesting one to tell. I grew up expecting young men to leave repressive environments and seek adventure and excitement—that was what boys did. I did not expect a small, frail, mild-mannered girl from Abnegation to choose Dauntless, to become more ruthless and more powerful than she could have imagined at the start.
Tris challenged my ingrained, subconscious beliefs about gender, and I loved every minute of it. I wanted her to challenge other people, too. One of my favorite lines in the book, at the time
of writing, was when she said, “People tend to overestimate my character. They think that because I’m small, or a girl, or a Stiff, I can’t possibly be cruel. But they’re wrong.” I don’t love Tris’s “cruelty,” as she describes it, but I love that she’s flawed, and she knows it, and she knows that other people don’t see her the way she really is because they make too many assumptions about her just by looking at her. It was one of the most compelling things about her, to me, in the first book, one of the things that propelled me through the rough draft so quickly I almost got whiplash.
Tobias, however, didn’t disappear. There was a tiny element of tension in the first scene of the protodraft, during the haircut, between him and his father. When I revived the draft to change the main character, I focused in on that tension, on the way that Marcus makes changes to Tobias’s body that he doesn’t agree to by cutting his hair—Tobias is so adamant that he doesn’t want those changes to be made, but Marcus overrules him without discussion, and I wondered if there was something more there. And when a writer sees tension on the page, I feel like they have to grab it and never let it go.
So Tobias entered the manuscript instead, as Tris’s instructor, someone who had the same capacity as her (Divergence), came from the same place she did (Abnegation), and made the same decision (Dauntless), though for much different reasons. She was a strong, stern person, and I found in Tobias someone who matched her strength and her sternness.
The interesting thing about the new version of his character was that the new relationship between Tobias and Marcus immediately made his story feel more urgent. Tobias choosing Dauntless, not because of aptitude but because he needed to escape a bad situation at home, raised the stakes of his story immediately. It felt almost inevitable to return to his story when Tris’s narrative was finished, after Allegiant, and write about his decision, too.
I often tell young writers never to throw anything away, because you never know what will be useful to you later, no matter how stupid the thing you’ve just written seems at the time. Because I kept the protodraft of Divergent, I was able to salvage the world of dystopian Chicago, the principles of the faction system, and even some of the characters I had created. And a few years later, I was even able to salvage the story I hadn’t been able to complete: Tobias’s story. Nothing is ever lost, and no time is ever wasted, in writing.
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