Insurgent (31 page)

I am still blinking the haze of sleep from my eyes when I follow Peter down the corridor, seconds or minutes later, I can’t tell.

“Peter.” My throat aches; I must have screamed while I slept. “What time is it?”

He wears a watch, but the face is covered, so I can’t see it. He doesn’t even bother to look at it.

“Why are you constantly escorting me places?” I say. “Isn’t there a depraved activity you’re supposed to be taking part in? Kicking puppies or spying on girls while they change, or something?”

“I know what you did to Will, you know. Don’t pretend that you’re better than I am, because you and I, we’re exactly the same.”

The only thing that distinguishes one hallway from another, here, is their length. I decide to label them according to how many steps I take before I turn. Ten. Forty-seven. Twenty-nine.

“You’re wrong,” I say. “We may both be bad, but there’s a huge difference between us—I’m not content with being this way.”

Peter snorts a little, and we walk between the Erudite lab tables. That’s when I realize where I am, and where we’re going: back to the room Jeanine showed me. The room where I will be executed. I shudder so hard my teeth chatter, and it’s difficult to keep walking, hard to keep my thoughts straight.
It’s just a room,
I tell myself.
Just a room like any other room.

I am such a liar.

This time the execution chamber is not empty. Four Dauntless traitors mill around in one corner, and two of the Erudite, one a dark-skinned woman, one an older man, both wearing lab coats, stand with Jeanine near the metal table in the center. Several machines are set up around it, and there are wires everywhere.

I don’t know what most of those machines do, but among them is a heart monitor. What does Jeanine plan to do that requires a heart monitor?

“Get her on the table,” says Jeanine, sounding bored. I stare for a second at the sheet of steel that awaits me. What if she changed her mind about waiting to execute me? What if this is when I die? Peter’s hands clamp around my arms and I writhe, throwing all my strength into the struggle.

But he just lifts me up, dodging my kicking feet, and slams me down on the metal slab, knocking the wind out of me. I gasp, and fling a fist out at whatever I can hit, which just happens to be Peter’s wrist. He winces, but by now the other Dauntless traitors have come forward to help.

One of them holds down my ankles, and the other holds down my shoulders as Peter pulls black straps across my body to keep me pinned. I flinch at the pain in my wounded shoulder and stop struggling.

“What the hell is going on?” I demand, craning my neck to look at Jeanine. “We agreed—cooperation in exchange for results! We
agreed—
”

“This is entirely separate from our agreement,” says Jeanine, glancing at her watch. “This is not about you, Beatrice.”

The door opens again.

Tobias walks in—
limps
in—flanked by Dauntless traitors. His face is bruised and there’s a cut above his eyebrow. He does not move with his usual care; he’s holding himself perfectly straight. He must be injured. I try not to think about how he got that way.

“What is this?” he says, his voice rough and creaky.

From screaming, probably.

My throat feels swollen.

“Tris,” he says, and he lurches toward me, but the Dauntless traitors are too quick. They grab him before he can move more than a few steps. “Tris, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Are you?”

He nods. I don’t believe him.

“Rather than waste any more time, Mr. Eaton, I thought I would take the most logical approach. Truth serum would be preferable, of course, but it would take days to coerce Jack Kang into handing some over, as it is jealously guarded by the Candor, and I’d rather not waste a few days.” She steps forward, a syringe in hand. This serum is tinted gray. It could be a new version of the simulation serum, but I doubt it.

I wonder what it does. It can’t be good, if she looks this pleased with herself.

“In a few seconds, I will inject Tris with this liquid. At that point, I trust, your selfless instincts will take over and you will tell me exactly what I need to know.”

“What does she need to know?” I say, interrupting her.

“Information about the factionless safe houses,” he replies without looking at me.

My eyes widen. The factionless are the last hope any of us has, now that half the loyal Dauntless and all the Candor are simulation-ready, and half the Abnegation are dead.

“Don’t give it to her. I’m going to die anyway. Don’t give her anything.”

“Remind me, Mr. Eaton,” says Jeanine. “What do Dauntless simulations do?”

“This isn’t a classroom,” he replies through gritted teeth. “Tell me what you’re going to do.”

“I will if you answer my very simple question.”

“Fine.” Tobias’s eyes shift to me. “The simulations stimulate the amygdala, which is responsible for processing fear, induce a hallucination based on that fear, and then transmit the data to a computer to be processed and observed.”

It sounds like he’s had that memorized for a long time. Maybe he has—he did spend a lot of time running simulations.

“Very good,” she says. “When I was developing the Dauntless simulations, years ago, we discovered that certain levels of potency overwhelmed the brain and made it too insensible with terror to invent new surroundings, which was when we diluted the solution so that the simulations would be more instructive. But I still remember how to make it.”

She taps the syringe with her fingernail.

“Fear,” she says, “is more powerful than pain. So is there anything you’d like to say, before I inject Ms. Prior?”

Tobias presses his lips together.

And Jeanine inserts the needle.

It begins quietly, with the pounding of a heart. I am not sure, at first, whose heartbeat I’m hearing, because it’s far too loud to be my own. But then I realize that it is my own, and it’s getting faster and faster.

Sweat collects in my palms and behind my knees.

And then I have to gasp in order to breathe.

That’s when the screaming starts

And I

Can’t

Think.

Tobias is fighting the Dauntless traitors by the door.

I hear what sounds like a child’s scream beside me, and wrench my head around to see where it’s coming from, but there is only a heart monitor. Above me the lines between the ceiling tiles warp and twist into monstrous creatures. The scent of rotting flesh fills the air and I gag. The monstrous creatures take on a more definite shape—they are birds, crows, with beaks as long as my forearm and wings so dark they seem to swallow all the light.

“Tris,” says Tobias. I look away from the crows.

He stands by the door, where he was before I was injected, but now he has a knife. He holds it out from his body and turns it so the blade points in, at his stomach. Then he brings it toward himself, touching the tip of the blade to his stomach.

“What are you doing? Stop!”

He smiles a little and says, “I’m doing this for you.”

He pushes the knife in farther, slow, and blood stains the hem of his shirt. I gag, and throw myself against the bonds holding me to the table. “No, stop!” I thrash and in a simulation I would have pulled free by now so this must mean that this is real, it’s real. I scream and he sticks the knife in to the handle. He collapses to the floor and his blood spills fast and surrounds him. The shadow-birds turn their beady eyes on him and swarm in a tornado of wings and talons, pecking at his skin. I see his eyes through the whirling feathers and he is still awake.

A bird lands on the fingers that hold the knife. He draws it out again and it clatters to the ground and I should hope that he is dead but I’m selfish so I can’t. My back lifts from the table and all my muscles clench and my throat aches from this scream that no longer shapes itself into words and will not stop.

“Sedative,” a stern voice commands.

Another needle in my neck, and my heart begins to slow down. I sob with relief. For seconds all I can do is sob with relief.

That was not fear. That was something else; an emotion that should not exist.

“Let me go,” Tobias says, and he sounds scratchier than before. I blink fast so I can see him through my tears. There are red marks on his arms from where the Dauntless traitors held him back, but he is not dying; he is all right. “That’s the only way I’ll tell you, is if you let me go.”

Jeanine nods, and he runs to me. He wraps one hand around mine and touches my hair with the other. His fingertips come away wet with tears. He doesn’t wipe them off. He leans over and presses his forehead to mine.

“The factionless safe houses,” he says dully, right against my cheek. “Get me a map and I’ll mark them for you.”

His forehead feels cool and dry against mine. My muscles ache, probably from being clenched for however long Jeanine left me with that serum pulsing through me.

He pulls back, his fingers wrapped around my fingers for as long as they can be until the Dauntless traitors pull him from my grasp to escort him elsewhere. My hand falls heavy on the table. I don’t want to struggle against the restraints anymore. All I want to do is sleep.

“While you’re here …” Jeanine says once Tobias and his escorts are gone. She looks up and focuses her watery eyes on one of the Erudite. “Get him and bring him in here. It’s time.”

She looks back down at me.

“While you sleep, we will be performing a short procedure to observe a few things about your brain. It will not be invasive. But before that … I promised you full transparency with these procedures. So I feel it’s only fair that you know exactly who has been assisting me in my endeavors.” She smiles a little. “Who told me what three factions you had an aptitude for, and what our best chance was to get you to come here, and to put your mother in the last simulation to make it more effective.”

She looks toward the doorway as the sedative sets in, making everything blur at the edges. I look over my shoulder, and through the haze of drugs I see him.

Caleb.

I
WAKE TO
a headache. I try to go back to sleep—at least when I’m asleep, I’m calm—but the image of Caleb standing in the doorway runs through my mind over and over again, accompanied by the sound of squawking crows.

Why did I never wonder how Eric and Jeanine knew that I had aptitude for three factions?

Why did it never occur to me that only three people in the world knew that particular fact: Tori, Caleb, and Tobias?

My head pounds. I can’t make sense of it. I don’t know why Caleb would betray me. I wonder when it happened—after the attack simulation? After the escape from Amity? Or was it earlier than that—was it back when my father was still alive? Caleb told us he left Erudite when he found out what they were planning—was he lying?

He must have been. I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. My brother chose faction over blood. There has to be a reason. She must have threatened him. Or coerced him in some way.

The door opens. I don’t lift my head or open my eyes.

“Stiff.” It’s Peter. Of course.

“Yes.” When I let my hand fall from my face, a lock of hair falls with it. I look at it from the corner of my eye. My hair has never been this greasy before.

Peter sets a bottle of water next to the bed, and a sandwich. The thought of eating it nauseates me.

“You brain-dead?” he asks.

“Don’t think so.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Ha-ha,” I say. “How long have I been asleep?”

“About a day. I’m supposed to escort you to the showers.”

“If you say something about how badly I need one,” I say tiredly, “I
will
poke you in the eye.”

The room spins when I lift my head, but I manage to put my legs over the edge of the bed and stand. Peter and I start down the hallway. When we turn the corner to get to the bathroom, though, there are people at the end of the hallway.

One of them is Tobias. I can see where our paths will intersect, between where I stand now and my cell door. I stare, not at him but at where he will be when he reaches for my hand, as he did the last time we passed each other. My skin tingles with anticipation. For just a moment, I will touch him again.

Six steps until we pass each other. Five steps.

At four steps, though, Tobias stops. His entire body goes limp, catching his Dauntless traitor escort off guard. The guard loses his grip on him for just a second, and Tobias crumples to the floor.

Then he twists around. Lurches forward. And grabs a gun from the shorter Dauntless traitor’s holster.

The gun goes off. Peter dives to the right, dragging me with him. My head skims the wall. The Dauntless guard’s mouth is open—he must be screaming. I can’t hear him.

Tobias kicks him hard in the stomach. The Dauntless in me admires his form—perfect—and his speed—incredible. Then he turns, training the gun on Peter. But Peter has already released me.

Tobias reaches for my left arm, helps me to my feet, and starts running. I stumble after him. Each time my foot hits the ground, pain slices into my head, but I can’t stop. I blink tears from my eyes.
Run,
I tell myself, as if that will make it easier. Tobias’s hand is rough and strong. I let it guide me around a corner.