What do you do if you’re attacked by two people at once? I follow the man down an empty, glowing corridor and into an office. The walls are made of glass—I guess I know which faction designed my school.
A woman sits behind a metal desk. I stare at her face. The same face dominates the Erudite library; it is plastered across every article Erudite releases. How long have I hated that face? I don’t remember.
“Sit,” Jeanine says. Her voice sounds familiar, especially when she is irritated. Her liquid gray eyes focus on mine.
“I’d rather not.”
“Sit,” she says again. I have definitely heard her voice before.
I heard it in the hallway, talking to Eric, before I got attacked. I heard her mention Divergents. And once before—I heard it…
“It was your voice in the simulation,” I say. “The aptitude test, I mean.”
She is the danger Tori and my mother warned me about, the danger of being Divergent. Sitting right in front of me.
“Correct. The aptitude test is by far my greatest achievement as a scientist,” she replies. “I looked up your test results, Beatrice. Apparently there was a problem with your test. It was never recorded, and your results had to be reported manually. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Did you know that you’re one of two people ever to get an Abnegation result and switch to Dauntless?”
“No,” I say, biting back my shock. Tobias and I are the only ones? But his result was genuine and mine was a lie. So it is really just him.
My stomach twinges at the thought of him. Right now I don’t care how unique he is. He called me pathetic.
“What made you choose Dauntless?” she asks.
“What does this have to do with anything?” I try to soften my voice, but it doesn’t work. “Aren’t you going to reprimand me for abandoning my faction and seeking out my brother? ‘Faction before blood,’ right?” I pause. “Come to think of it, why am I in your office in the first place? Aren’t you supposed to be important or something?”
Maybe that will take her down a few pegs.
Her mouth pinches for a second. “I will leave the reprimands to the Dauntless,” she says, leaning back in her chair.
I set my hands on the back of the chair I refused to sit in and clench my fingers. Behind her is a window that overlooks the city. The train takes a lazy turn in the distance.
“As to the reason for your presence here…a quality of my faction is curiosity,” she says, “and while perusing your records, I saw that there was another error with another one of your simulations. Again, it failed to be recorded. Did you know that?”
“How did you access my records? Only the Dauntless have access to those.”
“Because Erudite developed the simulations, we have an…understanding with the Dauntless, Beatrice.” She tilts her head and smiles at me. “I am merely concerned for the competence of our technology. If it fails while you are around, I have to ensure that it does not continue to do so, you understand?”
I understand only one thing: She is lying to me. She doesn’t care about the technology—she suspects that something is awry with my test results. Just like the Dauntless leaders, she is sniffing around for the Divergent. And if my mother wants Caleb to research the simulation serum, it is probably because Jeanine developed it.
But what is so threatening about my ability to manipulate the simulations? Why would it matter to the representative of the Erudite, of all people?
I can’t answer either question. But the look she gives me reminds me of the look in the attack dog’s eyes in the aptitude test—a vicious, predatory stare. She wants to rip me to pieces. I can’t lie down in submission now. I have become an attack dog too.
I feel my pulse in my throat.
“I don’t know how they work,” I say, “but the liquid I was injected with made me sick to my stomach. Maybe my simulation administrator was distracted because he was worried I would throw up, and he forgot to record it. I got sick after the aptitude test too.”
“Do you habitually have a sensitive stomach, Beatrice?” Her voice is like a razor’s edge. She taps her trimmed fingernails against the glass desk.
“Ever since I was young,” I reply as smoothly as I can. I release the chair back and sidestep it to sit down. I can’t seem tense, even though I feel like my insides are writhing within me.
“You have been extremely successful with the simulations,” she says. “To what do you attribute the ease with which you complete them?”
“I’m brave,” I say, staring into her eyes. The other factions see the Dauntless a certain way. Brash, aggressive, impulsive. Cocky. I should be what she expects. I smirk at her. “I’m the best initiate they’ve got.”
I lean forward, balancing my elbows on my knees. I will have to go further with this to make it convincing.
“You want to know why I chose Dauntless?” I ask. “It’s because I was bored.” Further, further. Lies require commitment. “I was tired of being a wussy little do-gooder and I wanted out.”
“So you don’t miss your parents?” she asks delicately.
“Do I miss getting scolded for looking in the mirror? Do I miss being told to shut up at the dinner table?” I shake my head. “No. I don’t miss them. They’re not my family anymore.”
The lie burns my throat on the way out, or maybe that’s the tears I’m fighting. I picture my mother standing behind me with a comb and a pair of scissors, faintly smiling as she trims my hair, and I want to scream rather than insult her like this.
“Can I take that to mean…” Jeanine purses her lips and pauses for a few seconds before finishing. “…that you agree with the reports that have been released about the political leaders of this city?”
The reports that label my family as corrupt, power-hungry, moralizing dictators? The reports that carry subtle threats and hint at revolution? They make me sick to my stomach. Knowing that she is the one who released them makes me want to strangle her.
I smile.
“Wholeheartedly,” I say.
One of Jeanine’s lackeys, a man in a blue collared shirt and sunglasses, drives me back to the Dauntless compound in a sleek silver car, the likes of which I have never seen before. The engine is almost silent. When I ask the man about it, he tells me it’s solar-powered and launches into a lengthy explanation of how the panels on the roof convert sunlight into energy. I stop listening after sixty seconds and stare out the window.
I don’t know what they’ll do to me when I get back. I suspect it will be bad. I imagine my feet dangling over the chasm and bite my lip.
When the driver pulls up to the glass building above the Dauntless compound, Eric is waiting for me by the door. He takes my arm and leads me into the building without thanking the driver. Eric’s fingers squeeze so hard I know I’ll have bruises.
He stands between me and the door that leads inside. He starts to crack his knuckles. Other than that, he is completely still.
I shudder involuntarily.
The faint pop of his knuckle-cracking is all I hear apart from my own breaths, which grow faster by the second. When he is finished, Eric laces his fingers together in front of him.
“Welcome back, Tris.”
“Eric.”
He walks toward me, carefully placing one foot in front of the other.
“What…” His first word is quiet. “Exactly,” he adds, louder this time, “were you thinking?”
“I…” He is so close I can see the holes his metal piercings fit into. “I don’t know.”
“I am tempted to call you a traitor, Tris,” he says. “Have you never heard the phrase ‘faction before blood’?”
I have seen Eric do terrible things. I have heard him say terrible things. But I have never seen him like this. He is not a maniac anymore; he is perfectly controlled, perfectly poised. Careful and quiet.
For the first time, I recognize Eric for what he is: an Erudite disguised as a Dauntless, a genius as well as a sadist, a hunter of the Divergent.
I want to run.
“Were you unsatisfied with the life you have found here? Do you perhaps regret your choice?” Both of Eric’s metal-ridden eyebrows lift, forcing creases into his forehead. “I would like to hear an explanation for why you betrayed Dauntless, yourself, and me…” He taps his chest. “…by venturing into another faction’s headquarters.”
“I…” I take a deep breath. He would kill me if he knew what I was, I can feel it. His hands curl into fists. I am alone here; if something happens to me, no one will know and no one will see it.
“If you cannot explain,” he says softly, “I may be forced to reconsider your rank. Or, because you seem to be so attached to your previous faction…perhaps I will be forced to reconsider your friends’ ranks. Perhaps the little Abnegation girl inside of you would take that more seriously.”
My first thought is that he couldn’t do that, it wouldn’t be fair. My second thought is that of course he would, he would not hesitate to do it for a second. And he is right—the thought that my reckless behavior could force someone else out of a faction makes my chest ache from fear.
I try again. “I…”
But it is hard to breathe.
And then the door opens. Tobias walks in.
“What are you doing?” he asks Eric.
“Leave the room,” Eric says, his voice louder and not as monotone. He sounds more like the Eric I am familiar with. His expression, too, changes, becomes more mobile and animated. I stare, amazed that he can turn it on and off so easily, and wonder what the strategy behind it is.
“No,” Tobias says. “She’s just a foolish girl. There’s no need to drag her here and interrogate her.”
“Just a foolish girl.” Eric snorts. “If she were just a foolish girl, she wouldn’t be ranked first, now would she?”
Tobias pinches the bridge of his nose and looks at me through the spaces between his fingers. He is trying to tell me something. I think quickly. What advice has Four given me recently?
The only thing I can think of is: pretend some vulnerability.
It’s worked for me before.
“I…I was just embarrassed and didn’t know what to do.” I put my hands in my pockets and look at the ground. Then I pinch my leg so hard that tears well up in my eyes, and I look up at Eric, sniffing. “I tried to…and…” I shake my head.
“You tried to what?” asks Eric.
“Kiss me,” says Tobias. “And I rejected her, and she went running off like a five-year-old. There’s really nothing to blame her for but stupidity.”
We both wait.
Eric looks from me to Tobias and laughs, too loudly and for too long—the sound is menacing and grates against me like sandpaper. “Isn’t he a little too old for you, Tris?” he says, smiling again.
I wipe my cheek like I’m wiping a tear. “Can I go now?”
“Fine,” Eric says, “but you are not allowed to leave the compound without supervision again, you hear me?” He turns toward Tobias. “And you… had better make sure none of the transfers leave this compound again. And that none of the others try to kiss you.”
Tobias rolls his eyes. “Fine.”
I leave the room and walk outside again, shaking my hands to get rid of the jitters. I sit down on the pavement and wrap my arms around my knees.
I don’t know how long I sit there, my head down and my eyes closed, before the door opens again. It might have been twenty minutes and it might have been an hour. Tobias walks toward me.
I stand and cross my arms, waiting for the scolding to start. I slapped him and then got myself into trouble with the Dauntless—there has to be scolding.
“What?” I say.
“Are you all right?” A crease appears between his eyebrows, and he touches my cheek gently. I bat his hand away.
“Well,” I say, “first I got reamed out in front of everyone, and then I had to chat with the woman who’s trying to destroy my old faction, and then Eric almost tossed my friends out of Dauntless, so yeah, it’s shaping up to be a pretty great day, Four.”
He shakes his head and looks at the dilapidated building to his right, which is made of brick and barely resembles the sleek glass spire behind me. It must be ancient. No one builds with brick anymore.
“Why do you care, anyway?” I say. “You can be either cruel instructor or concerned boyfriend.” I tense up at the word “boyfriend.” I didn’t mean to use it so flippantly, but it’s too late now. “You can’t play both parts at the same time.”
“I am not cruel.” He scowls at me. “I was protecting you this morning. How do you think Peter and his idiot friends would have reacted if they discovered that you and I were…” He sighs. “You would never win. They would always call your ranking a result of my favoritism rather than your skill.”
I open my mouth to object, but I can’t. A few smart remarks come to mind, but I dismiss them. He’s right. My cheeks warm, and I cool them with my hands.
“You didn’t have to insult me to prove something to them,” I say finally.
“And you didn’t have to run off to your brother just because I hurt you,” he says. He rubs at the back of his neck. “Besides—it worked, didn’t it?”
“At my expense.”
“I didn’t think it would affect you this way.” Then he looks down and shrugs. “Sometimes I forget that I can hurt you. That you are capable of being hurt.”
I slide my hands into my pockets and rock back on my heels. A strange feeling goes through me—a sweet, aching weakness. He did what he did because he believed in my strength.