Authors: Veronica Roth
Insurgent
To Nelson,
who was worth every risk
Contents
Like a wild animal, the truth is too powerful to remain caged.
—From the Candor faction manifesto
I
WAKE WITH
his name in my mouth.
Will
.
Before I open my eyes, I watch him crumple to the pavement again. Dead.
My doing.
Tobias crouches in front of me, his hand on my left shoulder. The train car bumps over the rails, and Marcus, Peter, and Caleb stand by the doorway. I take a deep breath and hold it in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure that is building in my chest.
An hour ago, nothing that happened felt real to me. Now it does.
I breathe out, and the pressure is still there.
“Tris, come on,” Tobias says, his eyes searching mine. “We have to jump.”
It is too dark to see where we are, but if we are getting off, we are probably close to the fence. Tobias helps me to my feet and guides me toward the doorway.
The others jump off one by one: Peter first, then Marcus, then Caleb. I take Tobias’s hand. The wind picks up as we stand at the edge of the car opening, like a hand pushing me back, toward safety.
But we launch ourselves into darkness and land hard on the ground. The impact hurts the bullet wound in my shoulder. I bite my lip to keep from crying out, and search for my brother.
“Okay?” I say when I see him sitting in the grass a few feet away, rubbing his knee.
He nods. I hear him sniff like he’s fending off tears, and I have to turn away.
We landed in the grass near the fence, several yards away from the worn path that the Amity trucks travel to deliver food to the city, and the gate that lets them out—the gate that is currently shut, locking us in. The fence towers over us, too high and flexible to climb over, too sturdy to knock down.
“There are supposed to be Dauntless guards here,” says Marcus. “Where are they?”
“They were probably under the simulation,” Tobias says, “and are now …” He pauses. “Who knows where, doing who knows what.”
We stopped the simulation—the weight of the hard drive in my back pocket reminds me—but we didn’t pause to see the aftermath. What happened to our friends, our peers, our leaders, our factions? There is no way to know.
Tobias approaches a small metal box on the right side of the gate and opens it, revealing a keypad.
“Let’s hope the Erudite didn’t think to change this combination,” he says as he types in a series of numbers. He stops at the eighth one, and the gate clicks open.
“How did you know that?” says Caleb. His voice sounds thick with emotion, so thick I am surprised it does not choke him on the way out.
“I worked in the Dauntless control room, monitoring the security system. We only change the codes twice a year,” Tobias says.
“How lucky,” says Caleb. He gives Tobias a wary look.
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Tobias says. “I only worked there because I wanted to make sure I could get out.”
I shiver. The way he talks about getting out—it’s like he thinks we’re trapped. I never thought about it that way before, and now that seems foolish.
We walk in a small pack, Peter cradling his bloody arm to his chest—the arm that I shot—and Marcus with his hand on Peter’s shoulder, keeping him stable. Caleb wipes his cheeks every few seconds, and I know he’s crying but I don’t know how to comfort him, or why I am not crying myself.
Instead I take the lead, Tobias silent at my side, and though he does not touch me, he steadies me.
Pinpricks of light are the first sign that we are nearing Amity headquarters. Then squares of light that turn into glowing windows. A cluster of wooden and glass buildings.
Before we can reach them, we have to walk through an orchard. My feet sink into the ground, and above me, the branches grow into one another, forming a kind of tunnel. Dark fruit hangs among the leaves, ready to drop. The sharp, sweet smell of rotting apples mixes with the scent of wet earth in my nose.
When we get close, Marcus leaves Peter’s side and walks in front. “I know where to go,” he says.
He leads us past the first building to the second one on the left. All the buildings except the greenhouses are made of the same dark wood, unpainted, rough. I hear laughter through an open window. The contrast between the laughter and the stone stillness within me is jarring.
Marcus opens one of the doors. I would be shocked by the lack of security if we were not at Amity headquarters. They often straddle the line between trust and stupidity.
In this building the only sound is of our squeaking shoes. I don’t hear Caleb crying anymore, but then, he was quiet about it before.
Marcus stops before an open room, where Johanna Reyes, representative of Amity, sits, staring out the window. I recognize her because it is hard to forget Johanna’s face, whether you’ve seen her once or a thousand times. A scar stretches in a thick line from just above her right eyebrow to her lip, rendering her blind in one eye and giving her a lisp when she talks. I have only heard her speak once, but I remember. She would have been a beautiful woman if not for that scar.
“Oh, thank God,” she says when she sees Marcus. She walks toward him with her arms open. Instead of embracing him, she just touches his shoulders, like she remembers the Abnegation’s distaste for casual physical contact.