The Divergent Series Complete Collection (59 page)

B
Y THE TIME
we reach the city, all conversation has halted in the truck, replaced by pressed lips and pale faces. Marcus steers around potholes the size of a person and parts from broken-down buses. The ride is smoother when we get out of factionless territory and into the clean parts of the city.

Then I hear gunshots. From this distance they sound like popping.

For a moment I am disoriented, and all I can see are the leaders of Abnegation on their knees on the pavement and the slack-faced Dauntless with guns in hand; all I can see is my mother turning to embrace the bullets, and Will dropping to the ground. I bite my fist to keep from crying out, and the pain brings me back to the present.

My mother told me to be brave. But if she had known that her death would make me so afraid, would she have sacrificed herself so willingly?

Breaking away from the convoy of trucks, Marcus turns on Madison Avenue and, when we are just two blocks away from Michigan Avenue, where the fighting is, he pulls the truck into an alley and turns off the engine.

Fernando hops out of the truck bed and offers me his arm.

“Come on, Insurgent,” he says with a wink.

“What?” I say. I take his arm and slide down the side of the truck.

He opens the bag he was sitting with. It is full of blue clothes. He sorts through them, tossing garments to Christina and me. I get a bright blue T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans.

“Insurgent,” he says. “Noun. A person who acts in opposition to the established authority, who is not necessarily regarded as a belligerent.”

“Do you need to give
everything
a name?” says Cara, running her hands over her dull blond hair to tuck the stray pieces back. “We’re just doing something and it happens to be in a group. No need for a new title.”

“I happen to enjoy categorization,” Fernando replies, arching a dark eyebrow.

I look at Fernando. The last time I broke into a faction’s headquarters, I did it with a gun in my hand, and I left bodies behind me. I want this time to be different. I
need
this time to be different. “I like it,” I say. “Insurgent. It’s perfect.”

“See?” Fernando says to Cara. “I’m not the only one.”

“Congratulations,” she says wryly.

I stare at my Erudite clothes while the others strip off their outer layers of clothing.

“No time for modesty, Stiff!” Christina says, giving me a pointed look.

I know she’s right, so I pull off the red shirt I was wearing and put on the blue one instead. I glance at Fernando and Marcus to make sure they aren’t watching, and change out of my pants too. I have to roll up the jeans four times, and when I belt them, they bunch at the top like the neck of a crushed paper bag.

“Did she just call you ‘Stiff’?” Fernando says.

“Yeah,” I say. “I transferred into Dauntless from Abnegation.”

“Huh.” He frowns. “That’s quite a shift. That kind of leap in personality between generations is almost genetically impossible these days.”

“Sometimes personality has nothing to do with a person’s choice of faction,” I say, thinking of my mother. She left Dauntless not because she was ill-suited for it but because it was safer to be Divergent in Abnegation. And then there’s Tobias, who switched to Dauntless to escape his father. “There are many factors to consider.”

To escape the man I have made my ally. I feel a twinge of guilt.

“Keep talking like that and they’ll never discover you’re not really Erudite,” Fernando says.

I run a comb through my hair to smooth it down and then tuck it behind my ears.

“Here,” says Cara. She lifts a piece of hair from my face and pins it back with a silver hair clip, the way Erudite girls do.

Christina takes out the guns we brought with us and looks at me.

“Do you want one?” she says. “Or would you rather carry the stunner?”

I stare at the gun in her hand. If I don’t take the stunner, I leave myself completely undefended against people who will gladly shoot me. If I do, I admit to weakness in front of Fernando, Cara, and Marcus.

“You know what Will would say?” says Christina.

“What?” I say, my voice breaking.

“He would tell you to get over it,” she says. “To stop being so irrational and take the stupid gun.”

Will had little patience for the irrational. Christina must be right; she knew him better than I did.

And she—who lost someone dear to her that day, just as I did—was able to forgive me, an act that must have been nearly impossible. It would have been impossible for me, if the situation were reversed. So why is it so difficult for me to forgive myself?

I close my hand around the gun Christina offered me. The metal is warm from where she touched it. I feel the memory of shooting him poking at the back of my mind, and try to stifle it. But it won’t be stifled. I let go of the gun.

“The stunner is a perfectly good option,” Cara says as she plucks a hair from her shirtsleeve. “If you ask me, the Dauntless are too gun-happy anyway.”

Fernando offers me the stunner. I wish I could communicate my gratitude to Cara, but she isn’t looking at me.

“How am I going to conceal this thing?” I say.

“Don’t bother,” Fernando says.

“Right.”

“We’d better go,” says Marcus, glancing at his watch.

My heart beats so hard it marks each second for me, but the rest of me is numb. I can barely feel the ground. I have never been this afraid before, and considering all that I have seen in simulations, and all that I did during the attack simulation, that doesn’t make any sense.

Or maybe it does. Whatever the Abnegation were about to show everyone before the attack, it was enough to make Jeanine take drastic and terrible measures to stop them. And now I am about to finish their work, the work my old faction died for. So much more than my life is at stake now.

Christina and I lead the way. We run down the clean, even sidewalks on Madison Avenue, passing State Street, toward Michigan Avenue.

Half a block from Erudite headquarters, I come to a sudden stop.

Standing in four rows in front of us are a group of people, mostly dressed in black and white, spaced two feet apart, guns held up and ready. I blink and they become simulation-controlled Dauntless in the Abnegation sector, during the simulation attack.
Get a grip! Get a grip get a grip get a grip. . . .
I blink again and they are the Candor again—though some of them, dressed all in black, do look like Dauntless. If I’m not careful I’ll lose touch with where, and when, I am.

“Oh my God,” Christina says. “My sister, my
parents
 . . . what if they . . .”

She looks at me, and I think I know her thoughts, because I have experienced them before.
Where are my parents? I have to find them.
But if her parents are like these Candor, simulation controlled and armed, there is nothing she can do for them.

I wonder if Lynn stands in one of these rows, somewhere else.

“What do we do?” Fernando asks.

I step toward the Candor. Maybe they aren’t programmed to shoot. I stare into the glazed eyes of a woman in a white blouse and black slacks. She looks like she just came from work. I take another step.

Bang
. By instinct I drop to the ground, covering my head with my arms, and scramble backward, toward Fernando’s shoes. He helps me to my feet.

“How about let’s not do
that
?” he says.

I lean forward—not too far—and peer into the alley between the building next to us and Erudite headquarters. The Candor are in the alley too. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a dense layer of Candor surrounding the entire complex of Erudite buildings.

“Is there any other way to Erudite headquarters?” I say.

“Not that I know of,” says Cara. “Unless you want to jump from one roof to another.”

She laughs a little as she says it, like it’s a joke. I raise my eyebrows at her.

“Wait,” she says. “You aren’t considering—”

“The roof?” I say. “No. Windows.”

I walk to the left, careful not to advance even an inch toward the Candor. The building on my left overlaps with Erudite headquarters on its far left side. There have to be a few windows that face each other.

Cara mutters something about crazy Dauntless stunts, but runs after me, and Fernando, Marcus, and Christina follow. I try to open the back door of the building, but it’s locked.

Christina steps forward and says, “Stand back.” She points her gun at the lock. I shield my face with an arm as she fires. We hear a loud bang, and then a high ringing, the aftereffects of firing a gun in such a close space. The lock is broken.

I pull the door open and walk inside. A long hallway with a tile floor greets me, doors on either side, some open, some closed. When I look into the open rooms, I see rows of old desks, and chalkboards on the walls like the ones in Dauntless headquarters. The air smells musty, like the pages of a library book mixed with cleaning solution.

“This used to be a commercial building,” says Fernando, “but Erudite converted it into a school, for post-Choosing education. After the major renovations in Erudite headquarters about a decade ago—you know, when all the buildings across from Millennium were connected?—they stopped teaching there. Too old, hard to update.”

“Thanks for the history lesson,” says Christina.

When I reach the end of the hallway, I walk into one of the classrooms to see where I am. I see the back of Erudite headquarters, but there are no windows across the alley at street level.

Right outside the window, so close I could touch her if I stretched my hand through the window, is a Candor child, a girl, holding a gun that is as long as her forearm. She stands so still I wonder if she is even breathing.

I crane my neck to see the windows above street level. Over my head in the school building there are plenty of windows. At the back of Erudite headquarters, there is only one that lines up. And it’s on the third story.

“Good news,” I say. “I found a way across.”

E
VERYONE SPREADS THROUGHOUT
the building in search of janitor’s closets, per my instruction to find a ladder. I hear sneakers squeaking on the tile and shouts of “I found one—no, wait, it’s just got buckets in it, never mind” and “How long does the ladder have to be? A stepladder won’t work, right?”

While they search, I find the third-floor classroom that looks into the Erudite window. It takes me three tries to open the right window.

I lean out, over the alley, and shout, “Hey!” Then I duck as fast as I can. But I don’t hear gunshots—
Good
, I think.
They don’t respond to noise.

Christina marches into the classroom with a ladder under her arm, the others behind her. “Got one! I think it’ll be long enough once we stretch it out.”

She tries to turn too soon, and the ladder smacks into Fernando’s shoulder.

“Oh! Sorry, Nando.”

The jolt knocked his glasses askew. He smiles at Christina and takes the glasses off, shoving them into his pocket.

“Nando?” I say to him. “I thought the Erudite didn’t like nicknames?”

“When a pretty girl calls you by a nickname,” he says, “it is only logical to respond to it.”

Christina looks away, and at first I think she is bashful, but then I see her face contort like he slapped her instead of complimented her. It is too soon after Will’s death for her to be flirted with.

I help her guide the end of the ladder through the classroom window and across the gap between buildings. Marcus helps us steady it. Fernando whoops when the ladder hits the Erudite window across the alley.

“Time to break the glass,” I say.

Fernando takes the glass-breaking device from his pocket and offers it to me. “You probably have the best aim.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” I say. “My right arm is out of commission. I’d have to throw with my left.”

“I’ll do it,” says Christina.

She presses the button on the side of the device and tosses it across the alley, underhand. I clench my hands as I wait for it to land. It bounces onto the windowsill and rolls into the glass. An orange light flashes, and all at once the window—and the windows above, below, and next to it—shatters into hundreds of tiny pebbles that shower over the Candor below.

At the same time, the Candor twist and fire up into the sky. Everyone else drops to the ground, but I stay on my feet, part of me marveling at the perfect synchronicity of it, and the other part disgusted at how Jeanine Matthews has turned yet another faction from human beings into parts of a machine. None of the bullets even hit the classroom windows, let alone penetrate the room.

When the Candor do not fire another round, I peer down at them. They have returned to their original position, half facing Madison Avenue and half facing Washington Street.

“They respond to movement only, so . . . don’t fall off the ladder,” I say. “Whoever goes first will secure the ladder on the other side.”

I notice that Marcus, who is supposed to selflessly offer himself up for every task, does not volunteer.

“Not feeling very Stiff today, Marcus?” says Christina.

“If I were you, I would be careful who you insult,” he says. “I am still the only person here who can find what we’re looking for.”

“Is that a
threat
?”

“I’ll go,” I say, before Marcus can answer. “I’m part Stiff too, right?”

I shove the stunner under the waistband of my jeans and climb onto a desk to get a better angle on the window. Christina holds the ladder from the side as I clamber on top of it and start forward.

Once I’m through the window, I position my feet on the narrow edges of the ladder and my hands on the rungs. The ladder feels about as solid and stable as an aluminum can. It creaks and sags beneath my weight. I try not to look down at the Candor; try not to think about their guns lifting and firing at me.

Taking quick breaths, I stare at my destination, the Erudite window. Just a few rungs left.

A breeze blows through the alley, pushing me to one side, and I think of scaling the Ferris wheel with Tobias. He kept me steady then. There is no one left to keep me steady now.

I catch a glimpse of the ground, three stories down, the bricks smaller than they should be, the lines of Candor Jeanine enslaved. My arms—especially my right arm—ache as I inch my way across the gap.

The ladder shifts, moving closer to the edge of the window frame on the other side. Christina is holding one side steady, but she can’t keep the ladder from slipping off the other windowsill. I grit my teeth and try not to move it too much, but I can’t move both legs at the same time. I have to let the ladder sway a little. Just four more rungs to go.

The ladder jerks to the left, and then, as I move my right foot forward, I miss the edge of the rung.

I yell as my body shifts to the side, my arms wrapping around the ladder and my leg dangling in space.

“Are you okay?” Christina calls from behind me.

I don’t answer. I bring my leg up and wedge it beneath my body. My fall made the ladder slip even farther off the windowsill. It is now supported by just a millimeter of concrete.

I decide to move fast. I lurch toward the opposite windowsill just as the ladder slips off. My hands catch the sill and concrete scrapes my fingertips as they bear my body weight. Several voices behind me scream.

I grit my teeth as I pull myself up, my right shoulder shrieking with pain. I kick at the brick building, hoping it will give me traction, but it doesn’t help. I scream into my teeth as I pull myself up and over the windowsill, half my body in the building and the other half still dangling. Thankfully Christina didn’t let the ladder drop too far. None of the Candor shoot me.

I pull myself into the Erudite room across the alley. It is a bathroom. I collapse to the floor on my left shoulder, and try to breathe through the pain. Sweat trickles down my forehead.

An Erudite woman comes out of a stall, and I scramble to my feet, draw the stunner, and point it at her, all without thinking.

She freezes, her arms up, toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

“Don’t shoot!” Her eyes bulge from her head.

I remember, then, that I am dressed like the Erudite. I set the stunner on the edge of a sink.

“My apologies,” I say. I try to adopt the formal speech common to the Erudite. “I am slightly edgy, with everything that’s occurring. We are reentering in order to retrieve some of our test results from . . . Laboratory 4-A.”

“Oh,” the woman says. “That seems rather unwise.”

“The data is of the utmost importance,” I say, trying to sound as arrogant as some of the Erudite I’ve met. “I would rather not leave it to get riddled with bullets.”

“It’s hardly my place to prevent you from trying to recover it,” she says. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to wash my hands and take cover.”

“Sounds good,” I say. I decide not to tell her she has toilet paper on her shoe.

I turn back to the window. Across the alley, Christina and Fernando are trying to lift the ladder back onto the windowsill. Though my arms and hands ache, I lean out the window and grab the other end of the ladder, lifting it back onto the windowsill. Then I hold it in place as Christina crawls across.

This time the ladder is more stable, and Christina makes it across the gap without trouble. She takes my place holding it as I shove the trash can in front of the door so no one else can come in. I then run my fingers under cool water to soothe them.

“This is pretty smart, Tris,” she says.

“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

“It’s just . . .” She pauses. “You had aptitude for Erudite, didn’t you?”

“Does it matter?” I say too sharply. “The factions are destroyed, and it was all stupid to begin with.”

I have never said anything like that before. I have never even thought it. But I’m surprised to find that I believe it—surprised to find that I agree with Tobias.

“I wasn’t trying to insult you,” says Christina. “Having aptitude for Erudite isn’t a bad thing. Especially right now.”

“Sorry. I’m just . . . tense. That’s all.”

Marcus comes through the window and drops to the tile floor. Cara is surprisingly nimble—she moves over the rungs like she’s plucking banjo strings, touching each one only briefly before she moves to the next one.

Fernando will be last, and he will be in the same position I was in, with the ladder secured from only one side. I move closer to the window so I can tell him to stop if I see the ladder slip.

Fernando, who I didn’t think would have trouble, moves more awkwardly than anyone else. He has probably spent his entire life behind a computer or a book. He shuffles forward, his face bright red, and holds the rungs so tightly that his hands turn blotchy and purple.

Halfway across the alley, I see something slip out of his pocket. It is his spectacles.

I scream, “Fernan—”

But I am too late.

The spectacles fall, hit the edge of the ladder, and topple to the pavement.

In a wave, the Candor below twist and fire upward. Fernando yells, and collapses against the ladder. One bullet hit his leg. I didn’t see where the others went, but I know when I see blood drip between the rungs of the ladder that it was not a good place.

Fernando stares at Christina, his face ashen. Christina surges forward, through the window, about to reach for him.

“Don’t be an idiot!” he says, his voice weak. “Leave me.”

It is the last thing he says.