Insurgent

by Veronica Roth

Page 3

 

  “The last time I trusted a faction representative with this information, all my friends were murdered,” he replies. “I don’t trust anyone anymore. ”

  I can’t help it—I lean forward so that I can see around the trunk of the tree. Both Marcus and Johanna are too preoccupied to notice the movement. They are close together, but not touching, and I’ve never seen Marcus look so tired or Johanna so angry. But her face softens, and she touches Marcus’s arm again, this time with a light caress.

  “In order to have peace, we must first have trust,” says Johanna. “So I hope you change your mind. Remember that I have always been your friend, Marcus, even when you did not have many to speak of. ”

  She leans in and kisses his cheek, then walks to the end of the orchard. Marcus stands for a few seconds, apparently stunned, and starts toward the compound.

  The revelations of the past half hour buzz in my mind. I thought Jeanine attacked the Abnegation to seize power, but she attacked them to steal information—information only they knew.

  Then the buzzing stops as I remember something else Marcus said: Most of the leaders of this city risked their lives for it. Was one of those leaders my father?

  I have to know. I have to find out what could possibly be important enough for the Abnegation to die for—and the Erudite to kill for.

  I pause before knocking on Tobias’s door, and listen to what’s going on inside.

  “No, not like that,” Tobias says through laughter.

  “What do you mean, ‘not like that’? I imitated you perfectly. ” The second voice belongs to Caleb.

  “You did not. ”

  “Well, do it again, then. ”

  I push open the door just as Tobias, who is sitting on the floor with one leg stretched out, hurls a butter knife at the opposite wall. It sticks, handle out, from a large hunk of cheese they positioned on top of the dresser. Caleb, standing beside him, stares in disbelief, first at the cheese and then at me.

  “Tell me he’s some kind of Dauntless prodigy,” says Caleb. “Can you do this too?”

  He looks better than he did earlier—his eyes aren’t red anymore and some of the old spark of curiosity is in them, like he is interested in the world again. His brown hair is tousled, his shirt buttons in the wrong buttonholes. He is handsome in a careless way, my brother, like he has no idea what he looks like most of the time.

  “With my right hand, maybe,” I say. “But yes, Four is some kind of Dauntless prodigy. Can I ask why you’re throwing knives at cheese?”

  Tobias’s eyes catch mine on the word “Four. ” Caleb doesn’t know that Tobias wears his excellence all the time in his own nickname.

  “Caleb came by to discuss something,” Tobias says, leaning his head against the wall as he looks at me. “And knife-throwing just came up somehow. ”

  “As it so often does,” I say, a small smile inching its way across my face.

  He looks so relaxed, his head back, his arm slung over his knee. We stare at each other for a few more seconds than is socially acceptable. Caleb clears his throat.

  “Anyway, I should be getting back to my room,” Caleb says, looking from Tobias to me and back again. “I’m reading this book about the water-filtration systems. The kid who gave it to me looked at me like I was crazy for wanting to read it. I think it’s supposed to be a repair manual, but it’s fascinating. ” He pauses. “Sorry. You probably think I’m crazy too. ”

  “Not at all,” Tobias says with mock sincerity. “Maybe you should read that repair manual too, Tris. It sounds like something you might like. ”

  “I can loan it to you,” Caleb says.

  “Maybe later,” I say. When Caleb closes the door behind him, I give Tobias a dirty look.

  “Thanks for that,” I say. “Now he’s going to talk my ear off about water filtration and how it works. Though I guess I might prefer that to what he wants to talk to me about. ”

  “Oh? And what’s that?” Tobias quirks his eyebrows. “Aquaponics?”

  “Aqua-what?”

  “It’s one of the ways they grow food here. You don’t want to know. ”

  “You’re right, I don’t,” I say. “What did he come to talk to you about?”

  “You,” he says. “I think it was the big-brother talk. ‘Don’t mess around with my sister’ and all that. ”

  He gets up.

  “What did you tell him?”

  He comes toward me.

  “I told him how we got together—that’s how knife-throwing came up,” he says, “and I told him I wasn’t messing around. ”

  I feel warm everywhere. He wraps his hands around my hips and presses me gently against the door. His lips find mine.

  I don’t remember why I came here in the first place.

  And I don’t care.

  I wrap my uninjured arm around him, pulling him against me. My fingers find the hem of his T-shirt, and slide beneath it, spreading wide over the small of his back. He feels so strong.

  He kisses me again, more insistent this time, his hands squeezing my waist. His breaths, my breaths, his body, my body, we are so close there is no difference.

  He pulls back, just a few centimeters. I almost don’t let him get that far.

  “This isn’t what you came here for,” he says.

  “No. ”

  “What did you come for, then?”

  “Who cares?”

  I push my fingers through his hair, and draw his mouth to mine again. He doesn’t resist, but after a few seconds, he mumbles, “Tris,” against my cheek.

  “Okay, okay. ” I close my eyes. I did come here for something important: to tell him the conversation I overheard.

  We sit side by side on Tobias’s bed, and I start from the beginning. I tell him how I followed Marcus and Johanna into the orchard. I tell him Johanna’s question about the timing of the simulation attack, and Marcus’s response, and the argument that followed. As I do, I watch his expression. He does not look shocked or curious. Instead, his mouth works its way into the bitter pucker that accompanies any mention of Marcus.

  “Well, what do you think?” I say once I finish.

  “I think,” he says carefully, “that it’s Marcus trying to feel more important than he is. ”

  That was not the response I was expecting.

  “So . . . what? You think he’s just talking nonsense?”

  “I think there probably is some information the Abnegation knew that Jeanine wanted to know, but I think he’s exaggerating its importance. Trying to build up his own ego by making Johanna think he’s got something she wants and he won’t give it to her. ”

  “I don’t . . . ” I frown. “I don’t think you’re right. He didn’t sound like he was lying. ”

  “You don’t know him like I do. He is an excellent liar. ”

  He is right—I don’t know Marcus, and certainly not as well as he does. But my instinct was to believe Marcus, and I usually trust my instincts.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I say, “but shouldn’t we find out what’s going on? Just to be sure?”

  “I think it’s more important that we deal with the situation at hand,” says Tobias. “Go back to the city. Find out what’s going on there. Find a way to take Erudite down. Then maybe we can find out what Marcus was talking about, after this is all resolved. Okay?”

  I nod. It sounds like a good plan—a smart plan. But I don’t believe him—I don’t believe it’s more important to move forward than to find out the truth. When I found out that I was Divergent . . . when I found out that Erudite would attack Abnegation . . . those revelations changed everything. The truth has a way of changing a person’s plans.

  But it is difficult to persuade Tobias to do something he doesn’t want to do, and even more difficult to justify my feelings with no evidence except my intuition.

  So I agree. But I do not change my mind.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “BIOTECHNOLOGY HAS
BEEN around for a long time, but it wasn’t always very effective,” Caleb says. He starts on the crust of his toast—he ate the middle first, just like he used to when we were little.

  He sits across from me in the cafeteria, at the table closest to the windows. Carved into the wood along the table’s edge are the letters “D” and “T” linked together by a heart, so small I almost didn’t see them. I run my fingers over the carving as Caleb speaks.

  “But Erudite scientists developed this highly effective mineral solution a while back. It was better for the plants than dirt,” he says. “It’s an earlier version of that salve they put on your shoulder—it accelerates the growth of new cells. ”

  His eyes are wild with new information. Not all the Erudite are power hungry and devoid of conscience, like their leader, Jeanine Matthews. Some of them are like Caleb: fascinated by everything, dissatisfied until they find out how it works.

  I rest my chin on my hand and smile a little at him. He seems upbeat this morning. I am glad he has found something to distract him from his grief.

  “So Erudite and Amity work together, then?” I say.

  “More closely than Erudite and any other faction,” he says. “Don’t you remember from our Faction History book? It called them the ‘essential factions’—without them, we would be incapable of survival. Some of the Erudite texts called them the ‘enriching factions. ’ And one of Erudite’s missions as a faction was to become both—essential and enriching. ”

  It doesn’t sit well with me, how much our society needs Erudite to function. But they are essential—without them, there would be inefficient farming, insufficient medical treatments, and no technological advance.

  I bite my apple.

  “You aren’t going to eat your toast?” he says.

  “The bread tastes strange,” I say. “You can have it if you want. ”

  “I’m amazed by how they live here,” he says as he takes the toast from my plate. “They’re completely self-sustaining. They have their own source of power, their own water pumps, their own water filtration, their own food sources. . . . They’re independent. ”

  “Independent,” I say, “and uninvolved. Must be nice. ”

  It is nice, from what I can tell. The large windows beside our table let in so much sunlight I feel like I’m sitting outside. Clusters of Amity sit at the other tables, their clothes bright against their tanned skin. On me the yellow looks dull.

  “So I take it Amity wasn’t one of the factions you had an aptitude for,” he says, grinning.

  “No. ” The group of Amity a few seats away from us bursts into laughter. They haven’t even glanced in our direction since we sat down to eat. “Keep it down, all right? It’s not something I want to broadcast. ”

  “Sorry,” he says, leaning over the table so that he can talk quieter. “So what were they?”

  I feel myself tensing, straightening. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Tris,” he says, “I’m your brother. You can tell me anything. ”

  His green eyes never waver. He’s abandoned the useless spectacles he wore as a member of Erudite in favor of an Abnegation gray shirt and their trademark short haircut. He looks just as he did a few months ago, when we were living across the hall from each other, both of us considering switching factions but not brave enough to tell one another. Not trusting him enough to tell him was a mistake I do not want to make again.

  “Abnegation, Dauntless,” I say, “and Erudite. ”

  “Three factions?” His eyebrows lift.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It just seems like a lot,” he says. “We each had to choose a research focus in Erudite initiation, and mine was the aptitude test simulation, so I know a lot about the way it’s designed. It’s really difficult for a person to get two results—the program actually doesn’t allow it. But to get three . . . I’m not even sure how that’s possible. ”

  “Well, the test administrator had to alter the test,” I say. “She forced it to go to that situation on the bus so that she could rule out Erudite—except Erudite wasn’t ruled out. ”

  Caleb props his chin on a fist. “A program override,” he says. “I wonder how your test administrator knew how to do that. It’s not something they’re taught. ”

  I frown. Tori was a tattoo artist and an aptitude test volunteer—how did she know how to alter the aptitude test program? If she was good with computers, it was only as a hobby, and I doubt that a computer hobby would enable someone to fiddle with an Erudite simulation.

  Then something from one of my conversations with her surfaces. My brother and I both transferred from Erudite.

  “She was Erudite,” I say. “A faction transfer. Maybe that’s how. ”

  “Maybe,” he says, tapping his fingers—from left to right—against his cheek. Our breakfasts sit, almost forgotten, between us. “What does this mean about your brain chemistry? Or anatomy?”

  I laugh a little. “I don’t know. All I know is that I’m always aware during simulations, and sometimes I can wake myself up from them. Sometimes they don’t even work. Like the attack simulation. ”

  “How do you wake yourself up from them? What do you do?”

  “I . . . ” I try to remember. I feel like it has been a long time since I was in one, though it was only a few weeks. “It’s hard to say, because the Dauntless simulations were supposed to end when we had calmed down. But in one of mine . . . the one where Tobias figured out what I was . . . I just did something impossible. I broke glass just by putting my hand on it. ”

  Caleb’s expression becomes distant, like he is looking into faraway places. Nothing like what I just described ever happened to him in the aptitude test simulation, I know. So maybe he is wondering what it felt like, or how it’s possible. My cheeks grow warmer—he is analyzing my brain like he would analyze a computer or a machine.