CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SHAUNA LIES ON the ground, facedown, blood pooling on her shirt. Lynn crouches at her side. Staring. Doing nothing.
“It’s my fault,” Lynn mumbles. “I shouldn’t have shot him. I shouldn’t have . . .”
I stare at the patch of blood. A bullet hit her in the back. I can’t tell if she’s breathing or not. Tobias places two fingers on the side of her neck, and nods.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he says. “Lynn. Look at me. I’m going to carry her, and it’s going to hurt her a lot, but it’s our only option.”
Lynn nods. Tobias crouches next to Shauna and puts his hands under her arms. He lifts her, and she moans. I rush forward to help him pull her limp body over his shoulder. My throat tightens, and I cough to relieve the pressure.
Tobias stands with a grunt of effort, and together we walk toward the Merciless Mart—Lynn in front, with her gun, and me in the back. I walk backward to watch behind us, but I don’t see anyone. I think the Dauntless traitors retreated. But I have to make sure.
“Hey!” someone shouts. It’s Uriah, jogging toward us. “Zeke had to help them get Jack . . . oh no.” He stops. “Oh no. Shauna?”
“Now’s not the time,” says Tobias sharply. “Run back to the Merciless Mart and get a doctor.”
But Uriah just stares.
“Uriah! Go, now!” The shout rings with nothing on the street to soften the sound of it. Uriah finally turns and sprints in the direction of the Merciless Mart.
It’s only half a mile back, but with Tobias’s grunts and Lynn’s uneven breathing and the knowledge that Shauna is bleeding to death, it feels endless. I watch the muscles in Tobias’s back expanding and contracting with each labored breath, and I don’t hear our footsteps; I hear only my heartbeat. When we finally reach the doors, I feel like I might throw up, or faint, or scream at the top of my lungs.
Uriah, an Erudite man with a comb-over, and Cara meet us just inside the entrance. They set up a sheet for Shauna to lie on. Tobias lowers her onto it, and the doctor gets to work immediately, cutting the shirt away from Shauna’s back. I turn away. I don’t want to see the bullet wound.
Tobias stands in front of me, his face red with exertion. I want him to fold me into his arms again, like he did after the last attack, but he doesn’t, and I know better than to initiate it.
“I’m not going to pretend to know what’s going on with you,” he says. “But if you senselessly risk your life again—”
“I am not senselessly risking my life. I am trying to make sacrifices, like my parents would have, like—”
“You are not your parents. You are a sixteen-year-old girl—”
I grit my teeth. “How dare you—”
“—who doesn’t understand that the value of a sacrifice lies in its necessity, not in throwing your life away! And if you do that again, you and I are done.”
I wasn’t expecting him to say that.
“You’re giving me an ultimatum?” I try to keep my voice down so the others can’t hear.
He shakes his head. “No, I’m telling you a fact.” His lips are just a line. “If you throw yourself into danger for no reason again, you will have become nothing more than a Dauntless adrenaline junkie looking for a hit, and I’m not going to help you do it.” He spits the words out bitterly. “I love Tris the Divergent, who makes decisions apart from faction loyalty, who isn’t some faction archetype. But the Tris who’s trying as hard as she can to destroy herself . . . I can’t love her.”
I want to scream. But not because I’m angry, because I’m afraid he’s right. My hands shake and I grab the hem of my shirt to steady them.
He touches his forehead to mine and closes his eyes. “I believe you’re still in there,” he says against my mouth. “Come back.”
He kisses me lightly, and I am too shocked to stop him.
He walks back to Shauna’s side, and I stand over one of the Candor scales in the lobby, at a loss.
“It’s been a while.”
I sink down on the bed across from Tori. She is sitting up, her leg propped on a stack of pillows.
“Yes, it has,” I say. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I got shot.” A smile plays over her lips. “I hear you’re familiar with the feeling.”
“Yeah. It’s great, right?” All I can think of is the bullet in Shauna’s back. At least Tori and I will recover from our wounds.
“Did you discover anything interesting at Jack’s meeting?” she says.
“A few things. Do you know how we might go about calling a Dauntless meeting?”
“I can make it happen. One thing about being a tattoo artist in Dauntless is . . . you know pretty much everyone.”
“Right,” I say. “You also have the prestige of being a former spy.”
Tori’s mouth twists. “I had almost forgotten.”
“Did you discover anything interesting? As a spy, I mean.”
“My mission was primarily focused on Jeanine Matthews.” She glares at her hands. “How she spends her days. And, more importantly, where she spends them.”
“Not in her office, then?”
Tori doesn’t answer at first.
“I guess I can trust you, Divergent.” She looks at me from the corner of her eye. “She has a private laboratory on the top level. Insane security measures protecting it. I was trying to get up there when they figured out what I was.”
“You were trying to get up there,” I say. Her eyes flit away from mine. “Not to spy, I take it.”
“I thought it would be more . . . expedient if Jeanine Matthews didn’t survive much longer.”
I see a kind of thirst in her expression, the same one I saw when she told me about her brother in the back room of the tattoo parlor. Before the attack simulation I might have called it a thirst for justice, or even revenge, but now I am able to identify it as a thirst for blood. And even as it frightens me, I understand it.
Which should probably frighten me even more.
Tori says, “I’ll work on calling that meeting.”
The Dauntless are gathered in the space between the rows of bunk beds and the doors, which are held shut by a tightly wrapped bedsheet, the best lock the Dauntless could muster. I have no doubt that Jack Kang will agree to Jeanine’s demands. We aren’t safe here anymore.
“What were the terms?” Tori says. She sits in a chair between a few of the bunks, her wounded leg stuck out in front of her. She asks Tobias, but he doesn’t seem to be paying attention. He is leaning against one of the bunks, his arms crossed, staring at the floor.
I clear my throat. “There were three. Return Eric to the Erudite. Report the names of all people who did not get shot with needles last time. And deliver the Divergent to Erudite headquarters.”
I look at Marlene. She smiles back at me a little sadly. She is probably worried about Shauna, who is still with the Erudite doctor. Lynn, Hector, their parents, and Zeke are with her.
“If Jack Kang is making deals with the Erudite, we can’t stay here,” says Tori. “So where can we go?”
I think of the blood on Shauna’s shirt, and long for the Amity orchards, the sound of the wind in the leaves, the feeling of bark beneath my hands. I never thought I would crave that place. I didn’t think it was in me.
I close my eyes briefly, and when I open them I am in reality, and Amity is a dream.
“Home,” Tobias says, lifting his head at last. Everyone is listening. “We should take back what’s ours. We can break the security cameras in Dauntless headquarters so the Erudite can’t see us. We should go home.”
Someone assents with a shout, and someone else joins in. That is how things in Dauntless are decided: with nods and yells. In these moments we don’t seem like individuals anymore. We are all a part of the same mind.
“But before we do that,” says Bud, who once worked with Tori in the tattoo parlor and who now stands with his hand on the back of Tori’s chair, “we need to decide what to
do about Eric. To let him stay here with the Erudite, or to execute him.”
“Eric is Dauntless,” Lauren says, turning the ring in her lip with her fingertips. “That means we decide what happens to him. Not Candor.”
This time a yell tears from my body of its own volition, joining with the others in agreement.
“According to Dauntless law, only Dauntless leaders can perform an execution. All five of our former leaders are Dauntless traitors,” says Tori. “So I think it’s time we pick new ones. The law says we need more than one, and we need an odd number. If you’ve got suggestions, you should shout them out now, and we’ll vote if we need to.”
“You!” someone calls out.
“Okay,” says Tori. “Anyone else?”
Marlene cups her hands around her mouth and calls out, “Tris!”
My heart pounds. But to my surprise, no one mutters in dissent and no one laughs. Instead, a few people nod, just like they did when Tori’s name was mentioned. I scan the crowd and find Christina. She stands with her arms crossed, and does not seem to react at all to my nomination.
I wonder how I seem to them. They must see someone I don’t see. Someone capable and strong. Someone I can’t be; someone I can be.
Tori acknowledges Marlene with a nod and scans the crowd for another recommendation.
“Harrison,” someone says. I don’t know who Harrison is until someone slaps a middle-aged man with a blond ponytail on the shoulder, and he grins. I recognize him—he’s the Dauntless man who called me “girl” when Zeke and Tori came back from Erudite headquarters.
The Dauntless are quiet for a moment.
“I’m going to nominate Four,” says Tori.
Apart from a few angry murmurs in the back of the room, no one disagrees. No one is calling him a coward anymore, not after he beat up Marcus in the cafeteria. I wonder how they would react if they knew how calculated that move was.
Now he could get exactly what he intended to get. Unless I stand in his way.
“We only need three leaders,” Tori says. “We’ll have to vote.”
They would never have considered me if I had not stopped the attack simulation. And maybe they wouldn’t have considered me if I hadn’t stabbed Eric by those elevators, or put myself under that bridge. The more reckless I get, the more popular I am with the Dauntless.
Tobias looks at me. I can’t be popular with the Dauntless, because Tobias is right—I’m not Dauntless; I’m Divergent. I am whatever I choose to be. And I can’t choose to be this. I have to stay separate from them.
“No,” I say. I clear my throat and say it louder. “No, you don’t have to vote. I refuse my nomination.”
Tori raises her eyebrows at me. “Are you sure, Tris?”
“Yes,” I say. “I don’t want it. I’m sure.”
And then, without argument and without ceremony, Tobias is elected to be a leader of Dauntless. And I am not.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
NOT TEN SECONDS after we choose our new leaders, something rings—one long pulse, two short ones. I move toward the sound, my right ear toward the wall, and find a speaker suspended from the ceiling. There is another one across the room.
Then Jack Kang’s voice speaks all around us.
“Attention all occupants of Candor headquarters. A few hours ago I met with a representative of Jeanine Matthews. He reminded me that we Candor are in a weak position, dependent on Erudite for our survival, and told me that if I intend to keep my faction free, I will have to meet a few demands.”
I stare up at the speaker, stunned. I shouldn’t be surprised that the leader of Candor is this forthright, but I wasn’t expecting a public announcement.
“In order to comply with these demands, I ask that everyone make their way to the Gathering Place to report whether you have an implant or not,” he says. “The Erudite have also ordered all Divergent to be turned over to Erudite. I do not know for what purpose.”
He sounds listless. Defeated. Well, he is defeated, I think. Because he was too weak to fight back.
One thing Dauntless knows that Candor does not is how to fight even when fighting seems useless.
Sometimes I feel like I am collecting the lessons each faction has to teach me, and storing them in my mind like a guidebook for moving through the world. There is always something to learn, always something that is important to understand.
Jack Kang’s announcement ends with the same three rings it started with. The Dauntless rush through the room, throwing their things into bags. A few young Dauntless men cut the sheet away from the door, screaming something about Eric. Someone’s elbow presses me to a wall, and I just stand and watch the pandemonium intensify.
On the other hand, one thing Candor knows that Dauntless does not is how not to get carried away.
The Dauntless stand in a semicircle around the interrogation chair, where Eric now sits. He looks more dead than alive. He is slumped in the chair, sweat shining on his pale forehead. He stares at Tobias with his head tilted down, so his eyelashes blend into his eyebrows. I try to keep my eyes on him, but his smile—how the piercings pull wide when his lips spread—is almost too awful to take.
“Would you like me to tell you your crimes?” says Tori. “Or would you like to list them yourself?”
Rain sprays against the side of the building and streams down the walls. We stand in the interrogation room, on the top floor of the Merciless Mart. The afternoon storm is louder here. Every crack of thunder and flash of lightning makes the back of my neck prickle, as if electricity is dancing over my skin.
I like the smell of wet pavement. It is faint here, but once this is done, all the Dauntless will storm down the stairs and leave the Merciless Mart behind, and wet pavement will be the only thing I smell.
We have our bags with us. Mine is a sack made of a sheet and some rope. It contains my clothes and a spare pair of shoes. I wear the jacket I stole from the Dauntless traitor—I want Eric to see it if he looks at me.
Eric scans the crowd for a few seconds, and then his eyes settle on me. He laces his fingers and sets them—gingerly—on his stomach. “I’d like her to list them. Since she’s the one who stabbed me, clearly she is familiar with them.”
I don’t know what game he’s playing, or what the point of rattling me is, especially now, before his execution. He seems arrogant, but I notice that his fingers tremble when he moves them. Even Eric must be afraid of death.
“Leave her out of this,” says Tobias.
“Why? Because you’re doing her?” Eric smirks. “Oh wait, I forgot. Stiffs don’t do that sort of thing. They just tie each other’s shoes and cut each other’s hair.”
Tobias’s expression does not change. I think I understand: Eric doesn’t really care about me. But he knows exactly where to hit Tobias, and how hard. And one of the places to hit Tobias the hardest is to hit me.
This is what I wanted most to avoid: for my rises and falls to become Tobias’s rises and falls. That’s why I can’t let him step in to defend me now.
“I want her to list them,” repeats Eric.
I say, as evenly as possible:
“You conspired with Erudite. You are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Abnegation.” As I go on, I can’t keep my voice steady anymore; I start to spit out the words like venom. “You betrayed Dauntless. You shot a child in the head. You are a ridiculous plaything of Jeanine Matthews.”
His smile fades.
“Do I deserve to die?” he says.
Tobias opens his mouth to interrupt. But I respond before he can.
“Yes.”
“Fair enough.” His dark eyes are empty, like pits, like starless nights. “But do you have the right to decide that, Beatrice Prior? Like you decided the fate of that other boy—what was his name? Will?”
I don’t answer. I hear my father asking me, “What makes you think you have the right to shoot someone?” as we fought our way to the control room in Dauntless headquarters. He told me there is a
right way to do something, and I needed to figure it out. I feel something in my throat, like a ball of wax, so thick I can barely swallow, barely breathe.
“You have committed every crime that warrants execution among the Dauntless,” says Tobias. “We have the right to execute you, under the laws of Dauntless.”
He crouches by the three guns on the floor near Eric’s feet. One by one, he empties the chambers of bullets. They almost jingle as they hit the floor, and then roll, coming to rest against the toes of Tobias’s shoes. He picks up the middle gun and puts a bullet into the first slot.
Then he moves the three guns on the floor, around and around, until my eyes can’t follow the middle gun anymore. I lose track of which one holds the bullet. He picks up the guns and offers one to Tori, and another one to Harrison.
I try to think of the attack simulation, and what it did to the Abnegation. All the gray-clothed innocents lying dead on the street. There weren’t even enough Abnegation left to take care of the bodies, so most of them are probably still there. And that would not have been possible without Eric.
I think of the Candor boy, shot without a second’s hesitation, how stiff he was as he hit the ground next to me.
Maybe we are not the ones deciding if Eric lives or dies. Maybe he is the one who decided that, when he did all those terrible things.
But it’s still hard to breathe.
I look at him without malice, without hatred, and without fear. The rings in his face shine, and a lock of dirty hair falls into his eyes.
“Wait,” he says. “I have a request.”
“We don’t take requests from criminals,” says Tori. She’s standing on one leg, and has been for the past few minutes. She sounds tired—she probably wants to get this over with so she can sit down again. To her this execution is just an inconvenience.
“I am a leader of Dauntless,” he says. “And all I want is for Four to be the one who fires that bullet.”
“Why?” Tobias says.
“So you can live with the guilt,” Eric replies. “Of knowing that you usurped me and then shot me in the head.”
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