The Traitor

by Veronica Roth

  Contents

  Four: The Traitor: A Divergent Story

  Back Ads

  About the Author

  Books by Veronica Roth

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Four: The Traitor: A Divergent Story

  ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER Visiting Day.

  Two years ago, when I was an initiate, I pretended my own Visiting Day didn't exist, holed up in the training room with a punching bag. I was there for so long that I smelled the dust-sweat for days afterward. Last year, the first year I taught initiates, I did the same thing, though Zeke and Shauna both invited me to spend the day with their families instead.

  This year I have more important things to do than punch a bag and mope about my family dysfunction. I'm going to the control room.

  I walk through the Pit, dodging tearful reunions and shrieks of laughter. Families can always come together on Visiting Day, even if they're from different factions, but over time, they usually stop coming. "Faction before blood," after all. Most of the mixed clothing I see belongs to transfer families: Will's Erudite sister is dressed in light blue, Peter's Candor parents are in black and white. For a moment I watch his parents, and wonder if they made him into the person he is. But most of the time, people aren't that easy to explain, I guess.

  I'm supposed to be on a mission, but I pause next to the chasm, pressing into the railing. Bits of paper float in the water. Now that I know where the steps cut into the stone in the opposite wall are, I can see them right away, and the hidden doorway that leads to them. I smile a little, thinking of the nights I've spent on those rocks with Zeke or Shauna, sometimes talking and sometimes just sitting and listening to the water move.

  I hear footsteps approaching, and look over my shoulder. Tris is walking toward me, tucked under the gray-clad arm of an Abnegation woman. Natalie Prior. I stiffen, suddenly desperate to escape--what if Natalie knows who I am, where I came from? What if she lets it slip, here, surrounded by all these people?

  She can't possibly recognize me. I don't look anything like the boy she knew, lanky and slouched and buried in fabric.

  When she's close enough, she extends her hand. "Hello, my name is Natalie. I'm Beatrice's mother."

  Beatrice. That name is so wrong for her.

  I clasp Natalie's hand and shake it. I've never been fond of Dauntless hand-shaking. It's too unpredictable--you never know how tightly to squeeze, how many times to shake.

  "Four," I say. "It's nice to meet you."

  "Four," Natalie says, and she smiles. "Is that a nickname?"

  "Yes," I say. I change the subject. "Your daughter is doing well here. I've been overseeing her training."

  "That's good to hear," she says. "I know a few things about Dauntless initiation, and I was worried about her."

  I glance at Tris. There's color in her cheeks--she looks happy, like seeing her mother is doing her some good. For the first time I fully appreciate how much she's changed since I first saw her, tumbling onto the wooden platform, fragile-looking, like the impact with the net should have shattered her. She doesn't look fragile anymore, with the shadows of bruises on her face and a new stability in the way she stands, like she's ready for anything.

  "You shouldn't worry," I say to Natalie.

  Tris looks away. I think she's still angry with me for the way I nicked her ear with that knife. I guess I don't really blame her.

  "You look familiar for some reason, Four," Natalie says. I would think her comment was lighthearted if not for the way she's looking at me, like she's pinning me down.

  "I can't imagine why," I say, as coldly as I can manage. "I don't make a habit of associating with the Abnegation."

  She doesn't react the way I expect her to, with surprise or fear or anger. She just laughs. "Few people do, these days. I don't take it personally."

  If she does recognize me, she doesn't seem eager to say so. I try to relax.

  "Well, I'll leave you to your reunion," I say.

  On my screen, the security footage switches from the lobby of the Pire to the hole hemmed in by four buildings, the initiate entrance to Dauntless. A crowd is gathered around the hole, climbing in and out of it, I assume to test the net.

  "Not into Visiting Day?" My supervisor, Gus, stands at my shoulder, sipping from a mug of coffee. He's not that old, but there's a bald spot at the crown of his head. He keeps the rest of his hair short, even shorter than mine. His earlobes are stretched around wide discs. "I didn't think I'd see you again until initiation was over."

  "Figured I might as well do something productive."

  On my screen, everyone crawls out of the hole and stands aside, their backs against one of the buildings. A dark figure inches toward the edge of the roof high above the hole, runs a few steps, and jumps off. My stomach drops like I'm the one falling, and the figure disappears beneath the pavement. I'll never get used to seeing that.

  "They seem to be having a good time," Gus says, sipping his coffee again. "Well, you're always welcome to work when you're not scheduled to, but it's not a crime to go have some mindless fun, Four."

  He walks away, and I mumble, "So I'm told."

  I look over the control room. It's almost empty--on Visiting Day, only a few people are required to work, and it's usually the oldest ones. Gus is hunched over his screen. Two others flank him, scanning through footage with their headphones half on, half off. And then there's me.

  I type in a command, calling up the footage I saved last week. It shows Max in his office, sitting at his computer. He pokes at the keys with an index finger, hunting for the right ones for several seconds between jabs. Not many of the Dauntless know how to type properly, especially Max, who I'm told spent most of his Dauntless time patrolling the factionless sector with a gun at his side--he must not have anticipated that he would ever need to use a computer. I lean close to the screen to make sure that the numbers I took down earlier are accurate. If they are, I have Max's account password written on a piece of paper in my pocket.

  Ever since I realized that Max was working closely with Jeanine Matthews, and began to suspect that they had something to do with Amar's death, I've been looking for a way to investigate further. When I saw him type in his password the other day, I found one.

  084628. Yes, the numbers look right. I call up the live security footage again, and cycle through the camera feeds until I find the ones that show Max's office and the hallway beyond it. Then I type the command to take the footage of Max's office out of the rotation, so Gus and the others won't see it; it will only play on my screen. The footage from the whole city is always divided by however many people are in the control room, so we aren't all looking at the same feeds. We're only supposed to pull footage from the general rotation like that for a few seconds at a time, if we need a closer look at something, but hopefully this won't take me long. I slip out of the room and walk toward the elevators.

  This level of the Pire is almost empty--everyone is gone. That will make it easier for me to do what I have to do. I ride the elevator up to the tenth floor, and walk purposefully toward Max's office. I've found that when you're sneaking around, it's best not to look like you're sneaking around. I tap the flash drive in my pocket as I walk, and turn the corner toward Max's office.

  I nudge the door open with my shoe--earlier today, after I was sure he had gone to the Pit to start Visiting Day preparations, I'd crept up here and taped the lock. I close the door quietly behind me, not turning on the lights, and crouch next to his desk. I don't want to move the chair to sit in it; I don't want him to see that anything about this room has changed when he gets back.

  The screen prompts me for a password. My mouth feels dry. I take the paper from my pocket and press it flat to the desk top
while I type it in. 084628.

  The screen shifts. I can't believe it worked.

  Hurry. If Gus discovers that I'm gone, that I'm in here, I don't know what I'll say, what excuse I could possibly give that would sound reasonable. I insert the flash drive and transfer the program I put there earlier. I asked Lauren, one of the Dauntless technical staff and my fellow initiation instructor, for a program that would make one computer mirror another, under the pretense that I wanted to prank Zeke when we're at work. She was happy to help--another thing I've discovered is that the Dauntless are always up for a prank, and rarely looking for a lie.

  With a few simple keystrokes, the program is installed and buried somewhere in Max's computer that I'm sure he would never bother to access. I put the flash drive back in my pocket, along with the piece of paper with his password on it, and leave the office without getting my fingerprints on the glass part of the door.

  That was easy, I think, as I walk toward the elevators again. According to my watch, it only took me five minutes. I can claim that I was on a bathroom break if anyone asks.

  But when I get back to the control room, Gus is standing at my computer, staring at my screen.

  I freeze. How long has he been there? Did he see me break into Max's office?

  "Four," Gus says, sounding grave. "Why did you isolate this footage? You're not supposed to take feeds out of rotation, you know that."

  "I . . ." Lie! Lie now! "I thought I saw something," I finish lamely. "We're allowed to isolate footage if we see something out of the ordinary."

  Gus moves toward me.

  "So," he says, "then why did I just see you on this screen coming out of that same hallway?"

  He points to the hallway on my screen. My throat tightens.

  "I thought I saw something, and I went upstairs to investigate it," I say. "I'm sorry, I just wanted to move around."

  He stares at me, chewing the inside of his cheek. I don't move. I don't look away.

  "If you ever see something out of the ordinary again, you follow the protocol. You report it to your supervisor, who is . . . who, again?"

  "You," I say, sighing a little. I don't like to be patronized.

  "Correct. I see you can keep up," he says. "Honestly, Four, after over a year of working here there shouldn't be so many irregularities in your job performance. We have very clear rules, and all you have to do is follow them. This is your last warning. Okay?"

  "Okay," I say. I've been chastised a few times for pulling feeds out of rotation to watch meetings with Jeanine Matthews and Max, or with Max and Eric. It never gave me any useful information, and I almost always got caught.

  "Good." His voice lightens up a little. "Good luck with the initiates. You got transfers again this year?"

  "Yeah," I say. "Lauren gets the Dauntless-borns."

  "Ah, too bad. I was hoping you would get to know my little sister," Gus says. "If I were you, I'd go do something to wind down. We're fine in here. Just let that footage loose before you go."

  He walks back to his computer, and I unclench my jaw. I wasn't even aware that I was doing it. My face throbbing, I shut down my computer and leave the control room. I can't believe I got away with it.

  Now, with this program installed on Max's computer, I can go through every single one of his files from the relative privacy of the control room. I can find out exactly what he and Jeanine Matthews are up to.

  That night I dream that I'm walking through the hallways of the Pire, and I'm alone, but the corridors don't end, and the view from the windows doesn't change, lofted train tracks curving into tall buildings, the sun buried in clouds. I feel like I'm walking for hours, and when I wake with a start, it's like I never slept at all.

  Then I hear a knock, and a voice shouting, "Open up!"

  This feels more like a nightmare than the tedium I just escaped--I'm sure it's Dauntless soldiers coming to my door because they found out I'm Divergent, or that I'm spying on Max, or that I've been in touch with my factionless mother in the past year. All things that say "faction traitor."

  Dauntless soldiers coming to kill me--but as I walk to the door, I realize that if they were going to do that, they wouldn't make so much noise in the hallway. And besides, that's Zeke's voice.

  "Zeke," I say when I open the door. "What's your problem? It's the middle of the night."

  There's a line of sweat on his forehead, and he's out of breath. He must have run here.

  "I was working the night shift in the control room," Zeke says. "Something happened in the transfer dorm."

  For some reason, my first thought is her, her wide eyes staring at me from the recesses of my memory.

  "What?" I say. "To who?"

  "Walk and talk," Zeke says.

  I put on my shoes and pull on my jacket and follow him down the hall.

  "The Erudite guy. Blond," Zeke says.

  I have to suppress a sigh of relief. It's not her. Nothing happened to her. "Will?"

  "No, the other one."

  "Edward."

  "Yeah, Edward. He was attacked. Stabbed."

  "Dead?"

  "Alive. Got hit in the eye."

  I stop. "In the eye?"

  Zeke nods.

  "Who did you tell?"

  "Night supervisor. He went to tell Eric, Eric said he would handle it."

  "Sure he will." I veer to the right, away from the transfer dormitory.

  "Where are you going?" Zeke says.

  "Edward's already in the infirmary?" I walk backward as I talk.

  Zeke nods.

  I say, "Then I'm going to see Max."

  The Dauntless compound isn't so large that I don't know where people live. Max's apartment is buried deep in the underground corridors of the compound, near a back door that opens up right next to the train tracks outside. I march toward it, following the blue emergency lamps run by our solar generator.

  I pound on the metal door with my fist, waking Max the same way Zeke woke me. He yanks the door open a few seconds later, his feet bare and his eyes wild.

  "What happened?" he says.

  "One of my initiates was stabbed in the eye," I say.

  "And you came here? Didn't someone inform Eric?"

  "Yeah. That's what I want to talk to you about. Mind if I come in?"

  I don't wait for an answer--I brush past him and walk into his living room. He flips on the lights, displaying the messiest living space I've ever seen, used cups and plates strewn across the coffee table, all the couch cushions in disarray, the floor gray with dust.

  "I want initiation to go back to what it was before Eric made it more competitive," I say, "and I want him out of my training room."

  "You don't really think it's Eric's fault that an initiate got hurt," Max says, crossing his arms. "Or that you're in any position to make demands."

  "Yes, it's his fault, of course it's his fault!" I say, louder than I mean to be. "If they weren't all fighting for one of ten slots, they wouldn't be so desperate they're ready to attack each other! He has them wound up so tight, of course they're bound to explode eventually!"

  Max is quiet. He looks annoyed, but he isn't calling me ridiculous, which is a start.

  "You don't think the initiate who did the attacking should be held responsible?" Max says. "You don't think he or she is the one to blame, instead of Eric?"

  "Of course he--she--whoever--should be held responsible," I say. "But this never would have happened if Eric--"

  "You can't say that with any certainty," Max says.

  "I can say it with the certainty of a reasonable person."

  "I'm not reasonable?" His voice is low, dangerous, and suddenly I remember that Max is not just the Dauntless leader who likes me for some inexplicable reason--he's the Dauntless leader who's working closely with Jeanine Matthews, the one who appointed Eric, the one who probably had something to do with Amar's death.

  "That's not what I meant," I say, trying to stay calm.

  "You should be careful to communicate e
xactly what you mean," Max says, moving closer to me. "Or someone will start to think you're insulting your superiors."

  I don't respond. He moves still closer.

  "Or questioning the values of your faction," he says, and his bloodshot eyes drift to my shoulder, where the Dauntless flames of my tattoo stick out over the collar of my shirt. I have hidden the five faction symbols that cover my spine since I got them, but for some reason, at this moment, I am terrified that Max knows about them. Knows what they mean, which is that I am not a perfect Dauntless member; I am someone who believes that more than one virtue should be prized; I am Divergent.

  "You had your shot to become a Dauntless leader," Max says. "Maybe you could have avoided this incident had you not backed out like a coward. But you did. So now you have to deal with the consequences."

  His face is showing his age. It has lines it didn't have last year, or the year before, and his skin is grayish brown, like it was dusted with ash.

  "Eric is as involved in initiation as he is because you refused to follow orders last year--" Last year, in the training room, I stopped all the fights before the injuries became too severe, against Eric's command that the fighting only stop when one person was unable to continue. I nearly lost my position as initiation instructor as a result; I would have, if Max hadn't gotten involved.

  "--and I wanted to give you another chance to make it right, with closer monitoring," Max says. "You're failing to do so. You've gone too far."

  The sweat I worked up on my way here has turned cold. He steps back and opens his door again.

  "Get out of my apartment and deal with your initiates," Max says. "Don't let me see you step out of line again."

  "Yes, sir," I say quietly, and I leave.

  I go to see Edward in the infirmary early in the morning, when the sun is rising, shining through the glass ceiling of the Pit. His head is wrapped in white bandages, and he's not moving, not speaking. I don't say anything to him, just sit by his head and watch the minutes tick by on the wall clock.

  I've been an idiot. I thought I was invincible, that Max's desire to have me as a fellow leader would never waver, that on some level he trusted me. I should have known better. All Max ever wanted was a pawn--that's what my mother said.

  I can't be a pawn. But I'm not sure what I should be instead.

  The setting Tris Prior invents is eerie and almost beautiful, the sky yellow-green, yellow grass stretching for miles in every direction.