Insurgent

Caleb’s expression becomes distant, like he is looking into faraway places. Nothing like what I just described ever happened to him in the aptitude test simulation, I know. So maybe he is wondering what it felt like, or how it’s possible. My cheeks grow warmer—he is analyzing my brain like he would analyze a computer or a machine.

“Hey,” I say. “Come back.”

“Sorry,” he says, focusing on me again. “It’s just …”

“Fascinating. Yeah, I know. You always look like someone’s sucked the life right out of you when something fascinates you.”

He laughs.

“Can we talk about something else, though?” I say. “There may not be any Erudite or Dauntless traitors around, but it still feels weird, talking about it in public like this.”

“All right.”

Before he can go on, the cafeteria doors open, and a group of Abnegation come in. They wear Amity clothes, like me, but also like me, it’s obvious what faction they are really in. They are silent, but not somber—they smile at the Amity they pass, inclining their heads, a few of them stopping to exchange pleasantries.

Susan sits down next to Caleb with a small smile. Her hair is pulled back in its usual knot, but her blond hair shines like gold. She and Caleb sit just slightly closer than friends would, though they do not touch. She bobs her head to greet me.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Did I interrupt?”

“No,” says Caleb. “How are you?”

“I’m well. How are you?”

I am just about to flee the dining hall rather than participate in careful, polite Abnegation conversation when Tobias comes in, looking harassed. He must have been working in the kitchen this morning, as part of our agreement with the Amity. I have to work in the laundry rooms tomorrow.

“What happened?” I say as he sits down next to me.

“In their enthusiasm for conflict resolution, the Amity have apparently forgotten that meddling creates more conflict,” says Tobias. “If we stay here much longer, I am going to punch someone, and it’s not going to be pretty.”

Caleb and Susan both raise their eyebrows at him. A few of the Amity at the table next to ours stop talking to stare.

“You heard me,” Tobias says to them. They all look away.

“As I said,” I say, covering my mouth to hide my smile, “what happened?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

It must have to do with Marcus. Tobias doesn’t like the dubious looks the Abnegation give him when he refers to Marcus’s cruelty, and Susan is sitting right across from him. I clasp my hands in my lap.

The Abnegation sit at our table, but not right next to us—a respectful distance of two seats away, though most of them still nod at us. They were my family’s friends and neighbors and coworkers, and before, their presence would have encouraged me to be quiet and self-effacing. Now it makes me want to talk louder, to be as far from that old identity and the pain that accompanies it as possible.

Tobias goes completely still when a hand falls on my right shoulder, sending prickles of pain down my right arm. I clench my teeth to keep from groaning.

“She got shot in that shoulder,” Tobias says without looking at the man behind me.

“My apologies.” Marcus lifts his hand and sits down on my left. “Hello.”

“What do you want?” I say.

“Beatrice,” Susan says quietly. “There’s no need to—”

“Susan, please,” says Caleb quietly. She presses her lips into a line and looks away.

I frown at Marcus. “I asked you a question.”

“I would like to discuss something with you,” says Marcus. His expression is calm, but he’s angry—the terseness in his voice betrays him. “The other Abnegation and myself have discussed it and decided that we should not stay here. We believe that, given the inevitability of further conflict in our city, it would be selfish of us to stay here while what remains of our faction is inside that fence. We would like to request that you escort us.”

I did not expect that. Why does Marcus want to return to the city? Is it really just an Abnegation decision, or does he intend to do something there—something that has to do with whatever information the Abnegation have?

I stare at him for a few seconds and then look at Tobias. He has relaxed a little, but he keeps his eyes focused on the table. I don’t know why he acts this way around his father. No one, not even Jeanine, makes Tobias cower.

“What do you think?” I say.

“I think we should leave the day after tomorrow,” Tobias says.

“Okay. Thank you,” says Marcus. He gets up and sits at the other end of the table with the rest of the Abnegation.

I inch closer to Tobias, not sure how to comfort him without making things worse. I pick up my apple with my left hand, and grab his hand under the table with my right.

But I can’t keep my eyes away from Marcus. I want to know more about what he said to Johanna. And sometimes, if you want the truth, you have to demand it.

AFTER BREAKFAST, I tell Tobias I’m going for a walk, but instead I follow Marcus. I expect him to walk to the guests’ dormitory, but he crosses the field behind the dining hall and walks into the water-filtration building. I hesitate on the bottom step. Do I really want to do this?

I walk up the steps and through the door that Marcus just closed behind him.

The filtration building is small, just one room with a few huge machines in it. As far as I can tell, some of the machines take in dirty water from the rest of the compound, a few of them purify it, others test it, and the last set pumps clean water back out to the compound. The piping systems are all buried except one, which runs along the ground to send water to the power plant, near the fence. The plant provides power to the entire city, using a combination of wind, water, and solar energy.

Marcus stands near the machines that filter the water. There the pipes are transparent. I can see brown-tinged water rushing through one pipe, disappearing into the machine, and emerging clear. Both of us watch the purification happen, and I wonder if he is thinking what I am: that it would be nice if life worked this way, stripping the dirt from our lives and sending us out into the world clean. But some dirt is destined to linger.

I stare at the back of Marcus’s head. I have to do this now.

Now.

“I heard you, the other day,” I blurt out.

Marcus whips his head around. “What are you doing, Beatrice?”

“I followed you here.” I fold my arms over my chest. “I heard you talking to Johanna about what motivated Jeanine’s attack on Abnegation.”

“Did the Dauntless teach you that it’s all right to invade another person’s privacy, or did you teach yourself?”

“I’m a naturally curious person. Don’t change the subject.”

Marcus’s forehead is creased, especially between the eyebrows, and there are deep lines next to his mouth. He looks like a man who has spent most of his life frowning. He might have been handsome when he was younger—perhaps he still is, to women his age, like Johanna—but all I see when I look at him are the black-pit eyes from Tobias’s fear landscape.

“If you heard me talking to Johanna, then you know that I didn’t even tell her about this. So what makes you think that I would share the information with you?”

I don’t have an answer at first. But then it comes to me.

“My father,” I say. “My father is dead.” It’s the first time I’ve said it since I told Tobias, on the train ride over, that my parents died for me. “Died” was just a fact to me then, detached from emotion. But “dead,” mingling with the churning and bubbling noises in this room, strikes a blow like a hammer to my chest, and the monster of grief awakens, clawing at my eyes and throat.

I force myself to continue.

“He may not have actually died for whatever information you were referring to,” I say. “But I want to know if it was something he risked his life for.”

Marcus’s mouth twitches.

“Yes,” he says. “It was.”

My eyes fill with tears. I blink them away.

“Well,” I say, almost choking, “then what on earth was it? Was it something you were trying to protect? Or steal? Or what?”

“It was …” Marcus shakes his head. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

I step toward him. “But you want it back. And Jeanine has it.”

Marcus is a good liar—or at least, someone who is skilled at hiding secrets. He does not react. I wish I could see like Johanna sees, like the Candor see—I wish I could read his expression. He could be close to telling me the truth. If I press just hard enough, maybe he’ll crack.

“I could help you,” I say.

Marcus’s upper lip curls. “You have no idea how ridiculous that sounds.” He spits the words at me. “You may have succeeded in shutting down the attack simulation, girl, but it was by luck alone, not skill. I would die of shock if you managed to do anything useful again for a long time.”

This is the Marcus that Tobias knows. The one who knows right where to hit to cause the most damage.

My body shudders with anger. “Tobias is right about you,” I say. “You’re nothing but an arrogant, lying piece of garbage.”

“He said that, did he?” Marcus raises his eyebrows.

“No,” I say. “He doesn’t mention you enough to say anything like that. I figured it out all on my own.” I clench my teeth. “You’re almost nothing to him, you know. And as time goes on, you become less and less.”

Marcus doesn’t answer me. He turns back to the water purifier. I stand for a moment in my triumph, the sound of rushing water combining with the heartbeat in my ears. Then I leave the building, and it isn’t until I’m halfway across the field that I realize I didn’t win. Marcus did.

Whatever the truth is, I’ll have to get it from somewhere else, because I won’t be asking him again.

That night I dream that I am in a field, and I encounter a flock of crows clustered on the ground. When I swat a few of them away, I realize that they are perched on top of a man, pecking at his clothes, which are Abnegation gray. Without warning, they take flight, and I realize that the man is Will.

Then I wake up.

I turn my face into the pillow and release, instead of his name, a sob that throws my body against the mattress. I feel the monster of grief again, writhing in the empty space where my heart and stomach used to be.

I gasp, pressing both palms to my chest. Now the monstrous thing has its claws around my throat, squeezing my airway. I twist and put my head between my knees, breathing until the strangled feeling leaves me.

Even though the air is warm, I shiver. I get out of bed and creep down the hallway toward Tobias’s room. My bare legs almost glow in the dark. His door creaks when I pull it open, loud enough to wake him. He stares at me for a second.

“C’mere,” he says, sluggish from sleep. He shifts back on the bed to leave space for me.

I should have thought this through. I sleep in a long T-shirt one of the Amity lent me. It comes down just past my butt, and I didn’t think to put on a pair of shorts before I came here. Tobias’s eyes skim my bare legs, making my face warm. I lie down, facing him.

“Bad dream?” he says.

I nod.

“What happened?”

I shake my head. I can’t tell him that I’m having nightmares about Will, or I would have to explain why. What would he think of me, if he knew what I had done? How would he look at me?

He keeps his hand on my cheek, moving his thumb over my cheekbone idly.

“We’re all right, you know,” he says. “You and me. Okay?”

My chest aches, and I nod.

“Nothing else is all right.” His whisper tickles my cheek. “But we are.”

“Tobias,” I say. But whatever I was about to say gets lost in my head, and I press my mouth to his, because I know that kissing him will distract me from everything.

He kisses me back. His hand starts on my cheek, and then brushes over my side, fitting to the bend in my waist, curving over my hip, sliding to my bare leg, making me shiver. I press closer to him and wrap my leg around him. My head buzzes with nervousness, but the rest of me seems to know exactly what it’s doing, because it all pulses to the same rhythm, all wants the same thing: to escape itself and become a part of him instead.

His mouth moves against mine, and his hand slips under the hem of the T-shirt, and I don’t stop him, though I know I should. Instead a faint sigh escapes me, and heat rushes into my cheeks, embarrassment. Either he didn’t hear me or he didn’t care, because he presses his palm to my lower back, presses me closer. His fingers move slowly up my back, tracing my spine. My shirt creeps up my body, and I don’t pull it down, even when I feel cool air on my stomach.

He kisses my neck, and I grab his shoulder to steady myself, gathering his shirt into my fist. His hand reaches the top of my back and curls around my neck. My shirt is twisted around his arm, and our kisses become desperate. I know my hands are shaking from all the nervous energy inside me, so I tighten my grip on his shoulder so he won’t notice.

Then his fingers brush the bandage on my shoulder, and a dart of pain goes through me. It didn’t hurt much, but it brings me back to reality. I can’t be with him in that way if one of my reasons for wanting it is to distract myself from grief.

I lean back and carefully pull the hem of my shirt down so it covers me again. For a second we just lie there, our heavy breaths mixing. I don’t mean to cry—now is not a good time to cry; no, it has to stop—but I can’t get the tears out of my eyes, no matter how many times I blink.

“Sorry,” I say.

He says almost sternly, “Don’t apologize.” He brushes the tears from my cheeks.

I know that I am birdlike, made narrow and small as if for taking flight, built straight-waisted and fragile. But when he touches me like he can’t bear to take his hand away, I don’t wish I was any different.

“I don’t mean to be such a mess,” I say, my voice cracking. “I just feel so …” I shake my head.

“It’s wrong,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if your parents are in a better place—they aren’t here with you, and that’s wrong, Tris. It shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened to you. And anyone who tells you it’s okay is a liar.”

A sob racks my body again, and he wraps his arms around me so tightly I find it difficult to breathe, but it doesn’t matter. My dignified weeping gives way to full-on ugliness, my mouth open and my face contorted and sounds like a dying animal coming from my throat. If this continues I will break apart, and maybe that would be better, maybe it would be better to shatter and bear nothing.

He doesn’t speak for a long time, until I am quiet again.

“Sleep,” he says. “I’ll fight the bad dreams off if they come to get you.”

“With what?”

“My bare hands, obviously.”

I wrap my arm around his waist and take a deep breath of his shoulder. He smells like sweat and fresh air and mint, from the salve he sometimes uses to relax his sore muscles. He smells safe, too, like sunlit walks in the orchard and silent breakfasts in the dining hall. And in the moments before I drift off to sleep, I almost forget about our war-torn city and all the conflict that will come to find us soon, if we don’t find it first.

In the moments before I drift off to sleep, I hear him whisper, “I love you, Tris.”

And maybe I would say it back, but I am too far gone.

THAT MORNING I wake up to the buzz of an electric razor. Tobias stands in front of the mirror, his head tilted so he can see the corner of his jaw.

I hug my knees, covered by the sheet, and watch him.

“Good morning,” he says. “How did you sleep?”

“Okay.” I get up, and as he tilts his head back to address his chin with the razor, I wrap my arms around him, pressing my forehead to his back where the Dauntless tattoo peeks out from beneath his shirt.

He sets the razor down and folds his hands over mine. Neither of us breaks the silence. I listen to him breathe, and he strokes my fingers idly, the task at hand forgotten.

“I should go get ready,” I say after a while. I am reluctant to leave, but I am supposed to work in the laundry rooms, and I don’t want the Amity to say I’m not fulfilling my part of the deal they offered us.

“I’ll get you something to wear,” he says.

I walk barefoot down the hallway a few minutes later, wearing the shirt I slept in and a pair of shorts Tobias borrowed from the Amity. When I get back to my bedroom, Peter is standing next to my bed.

Instinct makes me straighten up and search the room for a blunt object.

“Get out,” I say as steadily as I can. But it’s hard to keep my voice from shaking. I can’t help but remember the look in his eyes as he held me over the chasm by my throat or slammed me against the wall in the Dauntless compound.

He turns to look at me. Lately when he looks at me it’s without his usual malice—instead he just seems exhausted, his posture slouched, his wounded arm in a sling. But I am not fooled.

“What are you doing in my room?”

He walks closer to me. “What are you doing stalking Marcus? I saw you after breakfast yesterday.”

I match his stare with my own. “That’s none of your business. Get out.”

“I’m here because I don’t know why you get to keep track of that hard drive,” he says. “It’s not like you’re particularly stable these days.”

“I’m unstable?” I laugh. “I find that a little funny, coming from you.”

Peter pinches his lips together and says nothing.

I narrow my eyes. “Why are you so interested in the hard drive anyway?”

“I’m not stupid,” he says. “I know it contains more than the simulation data.”

“No, you aren’t stupid, are you?” I say. “You think if you deliver it to the Erudite, they’ll forgive your indiscretion and let you back in their good graces.”

“I don’t want to be back in their good graces,” he says, stepping forward again. “If I had, I wouldn’t have helped you in the Dauntless compound.”

I jab his sternum with my index finger, digging in my fingernail. “You helped me because you didn’t want me to shoot you again.”

“I may not be an Abnegation-loving faction traitor.” He seizes my finger. “But no one gets to control me, especially not the Erudite.”

I yank my hand back, twisting so that he won’t be able to hold on. My hands are sweaty.

“I don’t expect you to understand.” I wipe my hands on the hem of my shirt as I inch toward the dresser. “I’m sure if it had been Candor and not Abnegation that got attacked, you would have just let your family get shot between the eyes without protest. But I’m not like that.”

“Careful what you say about my family, Stiff.” He moves with me, toward the dresser, but I carefully shift so that I stand between him and the drawers. I’m not going to reveal the hard drive’s location by getting it out while he’s in here, but I don’t want to leave the path to it clear, either.

His eyes shift to the dresser behind me, to the left side, where the hard drive is hidden. I frown at him, and then notice something I didn’t before: a rectangular bulge in one of his pockets.

“Give it to me,” I say. “Now.”

“No.”

“Give it to me, or so help me, I will kill you in your sleep.”

He smirks. “If only you could see how ridiculous you look when you threaten people. Like a little girl telling me she’s going to strangle me with her jump rope.”

I start toward him, and he shifts back, into the hallway.

“Don’t call me ‘little girl.’”

“I’ll call you whatever I want.”

I jerk into action, aiming my left fist where I know it will hurt the worst: at the bullet wound in his arm. He dodges the punch, but instead of trying again, I seize his arm as hard as I can and wrench it to the side. Peter screams at the top of his lungs, and while he’s distracted by the pain, I kick him hard in the knee, and he falls to the ground.

People rush into the hallway, wearing gray and black and yellow and red. Peter surges toward me in a half crouch, and punches me in the stomach. I hunch over, but the pain doesn’t stop me—I let out something between a groan and a scream, and launch myself at him, my left elbow pulled back near my mouth so that I can slam it into his face.

One of the Amity grabs me by the arms and half lifts, half pulls me away from Peter. The wound in my shoulder throbs, but I hardly feel it through the pulse of adrenaline. I strain toward him and try to ignore the stunned faces of the Amity and the Abnegation—and Tobias—around me, and the woman kneels next to Peter, whispering words in a soothing tone of voice. I try to ignore his groans of pain and the guilt stabbing at my stomach. I hate him. I don’t care. I hate him.

“Tris, calm down!” Tobias says.

“He has the hard drive!” I yell. “He stole it from me! He has it!”

Tobias walks over to Peter, ignoring the woman crouched beside him, and presses his foot into Peter’s rib cage to keep him in place. He then reaches into Peter’s pocket and takes out the hard drive.

Tobias says to him—very quietly—“We won’t be in a safe house forever, and this wasn’t very smart of you.” Then he turns toward me and adds, “Not very smart of you, either. Do you want to get us kicked out?”

I scowl. The Amity man with his hand on my arm starts to pull me down the hallway. I try to wrench my body out of his grasp.

“What do you think you’re doing? Let go of me!”

“You violated the terms of our peace agreement,” he says gently. “We must follow protocol.”

“Just go,” says Tobias. “You need to cool down.”

I search the faces of the crowd that has gathered. No one argues with Tobias. Their eyes skirt mine. So I allow two Amity men to escort me down the hallway.

“Watch your step,” one of them says. “The floorboards are uneven here.”

My head pounds, a sign that I am calming down. The graying Amity man opens a door on the left. A label on the door says CONFLICT ROOM.

“Are you putting me in time-out or something?” I scowl. That is something the Amity would do: put me in time-out, and then teach me to do cleansing breaths or think positive thoughts.

The room is so bright I have to squint to see. The opposite wall has large windows that look out over the orchard. Despite this, the room feels small, probably because the ceiling, like the walls and floor, is also covered with wooden boards.

“Please sit,” the older man says, gesturing toward the stool in the middle of the room. It, like all other furniture in the Amity compound, is made of unpolished wood, and looks sturdy, like it is still attached to the earth. I do not sit.

“The fight is over,” I say. “I won’t do it again. Not here.”

“We have to follow protocol,” the younger man says. “Please sit, and we’ll discuss what happened, and then we’ll let you go.”

All their voices are so soft. Not hushed, like the Abnegation speak, always treading holy ground and trying not to disturb. Soft, soothing, low—I wonder, then, if that is something they teach their initiates here. How best to speak, move, smile, to encourage peace.

I don’t want to sit down, but I do, perched on the edge of the chair so I can get up fast, if necessary. The younger man stands in front of me. Hinges creak behind me. I look over my shoulder—the older man is fumbling with something on a counter behind me.

“What are you doing?”

“I am making tea,” he says.

“I don’t think tea is really the solution to this.”

“Then tell us,” the younger man says, drawing my attention back to the windows. He smiles at me. “What do you believe is the solution?”

“Throwing Peter out of this compound.”