It is like fire blossoming from a bud. Shards of glass and metal spray from the center of the bloom, and Uriah’s body is among them, a limp projectile. A deep rumble moves through me like a shudder. My mouth is open; I am screaming his name, but I can’t hear myself over the ringing in my ears.
Around me, everyone is crouched, their arms curled around their heads. But I am on my feet, watching the hole in the compound wall. No one comes through it.
Seconds later, everyone around me starts running away from the blast, and I hurl myself against them, shoulder first, toward Uriah. An elbow hits me in the side and I fall down, my face scraping something hard and metal—the side of a table. I struggle to my feet, wiping blood from my eyebrow with a sleeve. Fabric slides over my arms, and limbs, hair, and wide eyes are all I can see, except the sign over their heads that says COMPOUND EXIT.
“Signal the alarms!” one of the guards at the security checkpoint screams. I duck under an arm and trip to the side.
“I did!” another guard shouts. “They aren’t working!”
Matthew grabs my shoulder and yells into my ear. “What are you doing? Don’t go toward—”
I move faster, finding an empty channel where there are no people to obstruct my path. Matthew runs after me.
“We shouldn’t be going to the explosion site—whoever set it off is already in the building,” he says. “Weapons Lab, now! Come on!”
The Weapons Lab. Holy words.
I think of Uriah lying on the tile surrounded by glass and metal. My body is straining toward him, every muscle, but I know there’s nothing I can do for him right now. The more important thing for me to do is to use my knowledge of chaos, of attacks, to keep Nita and her friends from stealing the death serum.
Matthew was right. Nothing good can come of this.
Matthew takes the lead, plunging into the crowd like it is a pool of water. I try to look only at the back of his head, to keep track of him, but the oncoming faces distract me, the mouths and eyes rigid with terror. I lose him for a few seconds and then find him again, several yards ahead, turning right at the next hallway.
“Matthew!” I shout, and I push my way through another group of people. Finally I catch up, grabbing the back of his shirt. He turns and grabs my hand.
“Are you okay?” he says, staring just above my eyebrow. In the rush I almost forgot about my cut. I press my sleeve to it, and it comes away red, but I nod.
“I’m fine! Let’s go!”
We sprint side by side down the hallway—this one is not as crowded as the others, but I can see that whoever infiltrated the building has been here already. There are guards lying on the floor, some alive and some not. I see a gun on the tile near a drinking fountain and lurch toward it, breaking my grip on Matthew’s hand.
I grab the gun and offer it to Matthew. He shakes his head. “I’ve never fired one.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” My finger curls around the trigger. It’s different from the guns we had in the city—it doesn’t have a barrel that shifts to the side, or the same tension in the trigger, or even the same distribution of weight. It’s easier to hold, as a result, because it doesn’t spark the same memories.
Matthew is gasping for air. So am I, only I don’t notice it the same way, because I’ve done this sprint through chaos so many times. The next hallway he guides us to is empty except for one fallen soldier. She’s not moving.
“It’s not far,” he says, and I touch my finger to my lips to tell him to be quiet.
We slow to a walk, and I squeeze the gun, my sweat making it slip. I don’t know how many bullets are in it, or how to check. When we pass the soldier, I pause to search her for a weapon. I find a gun tucked under her hip, where she fell on her own wrist. Matthew stares at her, unblinking, as I take her weapon.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “Just keep moving. Move now, process later.”
I elbow him and lead the way down the hallway. Here the hallways are dim, the ceilings crossed with bars and pipes. I can hear people ahead and don’t need Matthew’s whispered directions to find them.
When we reach the place where we’re supposed to turn, I press against the wall and look around the corner, careful to keep myself as hidden as possible.
There’s a set of double-walled glass doors that look as heavy as metal doors would be, but they’re open. Beyond them is a cramped hallway, empty except for three people in black. They wear heavy clothing and carry guns so big I’m not sure I would be able to lift one. Their faces are covered with dark fabric, disguising all but their eyes.
On his knees before the double doors is David, a gun barrel pressed to his temple, blood trailing down his chin. And standing among the invaders, wearing the same mask as the others, is a girl with a dark ponytail.
Nita.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
TRIS
“GET US IN, David,” Nita says, her voice garbled by the mask.
David’s eyes slide lazily to the side, to the man pointing the gun at him.
“I don’t believe you’ll shoot me,” he says. “Because I’m the only one in this building who knows this information, and you want that serum.”
“Won’t shoot you in the head, maybe,” the man says, “but there are other places.”
The man and Nita exchange a look. Then the man shifts the gun down, to David’s feet, and fires. I squeeze my eyes shut as David’s screams fill the hallway. He might be one of the people who offered Jeanine Matthews the attack simulation, but I still don’t relish his screams of pain.
I stare at the guns I carry, one in each hand, my fingers pale against the black triggers. I imagine myself trimming back all the stray branches of my thoughts, focusing on just this place, just this time.
I put my mouth right next to Matthew’s ear and mutter, “Go for help. Now.”
Matthew nods and starts down the hallway. To his credit, he moves quietly, his footsteps silent on the tile. At the end of the hallway he looks back at me, and then disappears around the bend.
“I’m sick of this shit,” the red-haired woman says. “Just blow up the doors.”
“An explosion would activate one of the backup security measures,” says Nita. “We need the pass code.”
I look around the corner again, and this time, David’s eyes shift to mine. His face is pale and shiny with sweat, and there is a wide pool of blood around his ankles. The others are looking at Nita, who takes a black box from her pocket and opens it to reveal a syringe and needle.
“Thought you said that stuff doesn’t work on him,” the man with the gun says.
“I said he could resist it, not that it didn’t work at all,” she says. “David, this is a very potent blend of truth serum and fear serum. I’m going to stick you with it if you don’t tell us the pass code.”
“I know this is just the fault of your genes, Nita,” David says weakly. “If you stop now, I can help you, I can—”
Nita smiles a twisted smile. With relish, she sticks the needle in his neck and presses the plunger. David slumps over, and then his body shudders, and shudders again.
He opens his eyes wide and screams, staring at the empty air, and I know what he’s seeing, because I’ve seen it myself, in Erudite headquarters, under the influence of the terror serum. I watched my worst fears come to life.
Nita kneels in front of him and grabs his face.
“David!” she says urgently. “I can make it stop if you tell us how to get into this room. Hear me?”
He pants, and his eyes aren’t focused on her, but rather on something over her shoulder. “Don’t do it!” he shouts, and he lunges forward, toward whatever phantom the serum is showing him. Nita puts an arm across his chest to keep him steady, and he screams, “Don’t—!”
Nita shakes him. “I’ll stop them from doing it if you tell me how to get in!”
“Her!” David says, and tears gleam in his eyes. “The—the name—”
“Whose name?”
“We’re runnin
g out of time!” the man with the gun trained on David says. “Either we get the serum or we kill him—”
“Her,” David says, pointing at the space in front of him.
Pointing at me.
I stretch my arms around the corner of the wall and fire twice. The first bullet hits the wall. The second hits the man in the arm, so the huge weapon topples to the floor. The red-haired woman points her weapon at me—or the part of me that she can see, half hidden by the wall—and Nita screams, “Hold your fire!”
“Tris,” Nita says, “you don’t know what you’re doing—”
“You’re probably right,” I say, and I fire again. This time my hand is steadier, my aim is better; I hit Nita’s side, right above her hip. She screams into her mask and clutches the hole in her skin, sinking to her knees, her hands covered in blood.
David surges toward me with a grimace of pain as he puts weight on his injured leg. I wrap my arm around his waist and swing his body around so he’s between me and the remaining soldiers. Then I press one of my guns to the back of his head.
They all freeze. I can feel my heartbeat in my throat, in my hands, behind my eyes.
“Fire, and I’ll shoot him in the head,” I say.
“You wouldn’t kill your own leader,” the red-haired woman says.
“He’s not my leader. I don’t care if he lives or dies,” I say. “But if you think I’m going to let you gain control of that death serum, you’re insane.”
I start to shuffle backward, with David whimpering in front of me, still under the influence of the serum cocktail. I duck my head and turn my body sideways so it’s safely behind his. I keep one of the guns against his head.
We reach the end of the hallway, and the woman calls my bluff. She fires, and hits David just above the knee, in his other leg. He collapses with a scream, and I am exposed. I dive to the ground, slamming my elbows into the floor, as a bullet goes past me, the sound vibrating inside my head.
Then I feel something hot spreading through my left arm, and I see blood and my feet scramble on the floor, searching for traction. I find it and fire blindly down the hallway. I grab David by the collar and drag him around the corner, pain searing through my left arm.
I hear running footsteps and groan. But they aren’t coming from behind me; they’re coming from in front. People surround me, Matthew among them, and some of them pick David up and run with him down the hallway. Matthew offers me his hand.
My ears are ringing. I can’t believe I did it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
TRIS
THE HOSPITAL IS packed with people, all of them yelling or racing back and forth or yanking curtains shut. Before I sat down I checked all the beds for Tobias. He wasn’t in any of them. I am still shaking with relief.
Uriah is not here either. He is in one of the other rooms, and the door is closed—not a good sign.
The nurse who dabs my arm with antiseptic is breathless and looks around at all the activity instead of at my wound. I’m told it’s a minor graze, nothing to worry about.
“I can wait, if you need to do something else,” I say. “I have to find someone anyway.”
She purses her lips, then says, “You need stitches.”
“It’s just a graze!”
“Not your arm, your head,” she says, pointing to a spot above my eye. I had almost forgotten about the cut in all the chaos, but it still hasn’t stopped bleeding.
“Fine.”
“I’m going to have to give you a shot of this numbing agent,” she says, holding up a syringe.
I am so used to needles that I don’t even react. She dabs my forehead with antiseptic—they are so careful about germs here—and I feel the sting and prickle of the needle, diminishing by the second as the numbing agent does its work.
I watch the people rush past as she stitches my skin—a doctor pulls off a pair of bloodstained rubber gloves; a nurse carries a tray of gauze, his shoes nearly slipping on the tile; a family member of someone injured wrings her hands. The air smells like chemicals and old paper and warm bodies.
“Any updates on David?” I say.
“He’ll live, but it will take him a long time to walk again,” she says. Her lips stop puckering, just for a few seconds. “Could have been a lot worse, if you hadn’t been there. You’re all set.”
I nod. I wish I could tell her that I’m not a hero, that I was using him as a shield, like a wall of meat. I wish I could confess to being a person full of hate for the Bureau and for David, a person who would let someone else get riddled with bullets to save herself. My parents would be ashamed.
She places a bandage over the stitches to protect the wound, and gathers all the wrappers and soaked cotton balls into her fists to throw them away.
Before I can thank her, she is gone, off to the next bed, the next patient, the next injury.
Injured people line the hallway outside the emergency ward. I have gathered from the evidence that there was another explosion set off at the same time as the one near the entrance. Both were diversions. Our attackers got in through the underground tunnel, as Nita said they would. She never mentioned blowing holes in walls.
The doors at the end of the hallway open, and a few people rush in, carrying a young woman—Nita—between them. They put her on a cot near one of the walls. She groans, clutching at a roll of gauze that is pressed to the wound in her side. I feel strangely separate from her pain. I shot her. I had to. That’s the end of it.
As I walk down the aisle between the wounded, I notice the uniforms. Everyone sitting here wears green. With few exceptions, they are all support staff. They are clutching bleeding arms or legs or heads, their injuries no better than my own, some much worse.
I catch my reflection in the windows just beyond the main corridor—my hair is stringy and limp, and the bandage dominates my forehead. David’s blood and my blood smear my clothes in places. I need to shower and change, but first I have to find Tobias and Christina. I haven’t seen either of them since before the invasion.
It doesn’t take me long to find Christina—she is sitting in the waiting room when I walk out of the emergency ward, her knee jiggling so much that the person next to her is giving her dirty looks. She lifts a hand to greet me, but her eyes shift away from mine and toward the doors right afterward.
“You all right?” she asks me.
“Yeah,” I say. “There’s still no update on Uriah. I couldn’t get into the room.”
“These people make me crazy, you know that?” she says. “They won’t tell anyone anything. They won’t let us see him. It’s like they think they own him and everything that happens to him!”
“They work differently here. I’m sure they’ll tell you when they know something concrete.”
“Well, they would tell you,” she says, scowling. “But I’m not convinced they would give me a second look.”
A few days ago I might have disagreed with her, unsure how influential their belief in genetic damage was on their behavior. I’m not sure what to do—not sure how to talk to her now that I have these advantages and she does not and there’s nothing either of us can do about it. All I can think to do is be near her.
“I have to find Tobias, but I’ll come back after I do and sit with you, okay?”
She finally looks at me, and her knee goes still. “They didn’t tell you?”
My stomach clenches with fear. “Tell me what.”
“Tobias was arrested,” she says quietly. “I saw him sitting with the invaders right before I came in here. Some people saw him at the control room before the attack—they say he was disabling the alarm system.”
There is a sad look in her eyes, like she pities me. But I already knew what Tobias did.
“Where are they?” I say.
I need to talk to him. And I know what I need to say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
TOBIAS
MY WRISTS STING from the plastic tie the guard squeezed around them. I probe my jaw wit
h just my fingertips, testing the skin for blood.
“All right?” Reggie says.
I nod. I have dealt with worse injuries than this—I have been hit harder than I was by the soldier who slammed the butt of his gun into my jaw while he was arresting me. His eyes were wild with anger when he did it.
Mary and Rafi sit a few feet away, Rafi clutching a handful of gauze to his bleeding arm. A guard stands between us and them, keeping us separate. As I look at them, Rafi meets my eyes and nods. As if to say, Well done.
If I did well, why do I feel sick to my stomach?
“Listen,” Reggie says, shifting so he’s closer to me. “Nita and the fringe people are taking the fall. It’ll be all right.”
I nod again, without conviction. We had a backup plan for our probable arrest, and I’m not worried about its success. What I am worried about is how long it’s taking them to deal with us, and how casual it has been—we have been sitting against a wall in an empty corridor since they caught the invaders more than an hour ago, and no one has come to tell us what will happen to us, or to ask us any questions. I haven’t even seen Nita yet.
It puts a sour taste in my mouth. Whatever we did, it seems to have shaken them up, and I know of nothing that shakes people up as much as lost lives.
How many of those am I responsible for, because I participated in this?
“Nita told me they were going to steal memory serum,” I say to Reggie, and I’m afraid to look at him. “Was that true?”
Reggie eyes the guard who stands a few feet away. We have already been yelled at once for talking.
But I know the answer.
“It wasn’t, was it,” I say. Tris was right. Nita was lying.
“Hey!” The guard marches toward us and sticks the barrel of her gun between us. “Move aside. No conversation allowed.”
Reggie shifts to the right, and I make eye contact with the guard.
“What’s going on?” I say. “What happened?”
“Oh, like you don’t know,” she answers. “Now keep your mouth shut.”
I watch her walk away, and then I see a small blond girl appear at the end of the hallway. Tris. A bandage stretches across her forehead, and blood smears her clothes in the shape of fingers. She clutches a piece of paper in her fist.
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