Allegiant (37 page)

“This is definitely it,” he says. “The attack simulation serum, I mean. No question.”

“It’s always good to have another person verify,” Matthew says.

I am standing with my brother in the hours before he dies. And he is analyzing serums. It’s so stupid.

I know why Caleb wanted to come here: to make sure that he was giving his life for a good reason. I don’t blame him. There are no second chances after you’ve died for something, at least as far as I know.

“Tell me the activation code again,” Matthew says. The activation code will enable the memory serum weapon, and another button will deploy it instantly. Matthew has made Caleb repeat them both every few minutes since we got here.

“I have no trouble memorizing sequences of numbers!” Caleb says.

“I don’t doubt that. But we don’t know what state of mind you’ll be in when the death serum begins to take its course, and these codes need to be deeply ingrained.”

Caleb flinches at the words “death serum.” I stare at my shoes.

“080712,” Caleb says. “And then I press the green button.”

Right now Cara is spending some time with the people in the control room so she can spike their beverages with peace serum and shut off the lights in the compound while they’re too drunk to notice, just like Nita and Tobias did a few weeks ago. When she does that, we’ll run for the Weapons Lab, unseen by the cameras in the dark.

Sitting across from me on the lab table are the explosives Reggie gave us. They look so ordinary—inside a black box with metal claws on the edges and a remote detonator. The claws will attach the box to the second set of laboratory doors. The first set still hasn’t been repaired since the attack.

“I think that’s it,” Matthew says. “Now all we have to do is wait for a little while.”

“Matthew,” I say. “Do you think you could leave us alone for a bit?”

“Of course.” Matthew smiles. “I’ll come back when it’s time.”

He closes the door behind him. Caleb runs his hands over the clean suit, the explosives, the backpack they go in. He puts them all in a straight line, fixing this corner and that one.

“I keep thinking about when we were young and we played ‘Candor,’” he says. “How I used to sit you down in a chair in the living room and ask you questions? Remember?”

“Yes,” I say. I lean my hips into the lab table. “You used to find the pulse in my wrist and tell me that if I lied, you would be able to tell, because the Candor can always tell when other people are lying. It wasn’t very nice.”

Caleb laughs. “That one time, you confessed to stealing a book from the school library just as Mom came home—”

“And I had to go to the librarian and apologize!” I laugh too. “That librarian was awful. She always called everyone ‘young lady’ or ‘young man.’”

“Oh, she loved me, though. Did you know that when I was a library volunteer and was supposed to be shelving books during my lunch hour, I was really just standing in the aisles and reading? She caught me a few times and never said anything about it.”

“Really?” I feel a twinge in my chest. “I didn’t know that.”

“There was a lot we didn’t know about each other, I guess.” He taps his fingers on the table. “I wish we had been able to be more honest with each other.”

“Me too.”

“And it’s too late now, isn’t it.” He looks up.

“Not for everything.” I pull out a chair from the lab table and sit in it. “Let’s play Candor. I’ll answer a question and then you have to answer a question. Honestly, obviously.”

He looks a little exasperated, but he plays along. “Okay. What did you really do to break those glasses in the kitchen when you claimed that you were taking them out to clean water spots off them?”

I roll my eyes. “That’s the one question you want an honest answer to? Come on, Caleb.”

“Okay, fine.” He clears his throat, and his green eyes fix on mine, serious. “Have you really forgiven me, or are you just saying that you have because I’m about to die?”

I stare at my hands, which rest in my lap. I have been able to be kind and pleasant to him because every time I think of what happened in Erudite headquarters, I immediately push the thought aside. But that can’t be forgiveness—if I had forgiven him, I would be able to think of what happened without that hatred I can feel in my gut, right?

Or maybe forgiveness is just the continual pushing aside of bitter memories, until time dulls the hurt and the anger, and the wrong is forgotten.

For Caleb’s sake, I choose to believe the latter.

“Yes, I have,” I say. I pause. “Or at least, I desperately want to, and I think that might be the same thing.”

He looks relieved. I step aside so he can take my place in the chair. I know what I want to ask him, and have since he volunteered to make this sacrifice.

“What is the biggest reason that you’re doing this?” I say. “The most important one?”

“Don’t ask me that, Beatrice.”

“It’s not a trap,” I say. “It won’t make me un-forgive you. I just need to know.”

Between us are the clean suit, the explosives, and the backpack, arranged in a line on the brushed steel. They are the instruments of his going and not coming back.

“I guess I feel like it’s the only way I can escape the guilt for all the things I’ve done,” he says. “I’ve never wanted anything more than I want to be rid of it.”

His words ache inside me. I was afraid he would say that. I knew he would say that all along. I wish he hadn’t said it.

A voice speaks through the intercom in the corner. “Attention all compound residents. Commence emergency lockdown procedure, effective until five o’clock a.m. I repeat, commence emergency lockdown procedure, effective until five o’clock a.m.”

Caleb and I exchange an alarmed look. Matthew shoves the door open.

“Shit,” he says. And then, louder: “Shit!”

“Emergency lockdown?” I say. “Is that the same as an attack drill?”

“Basically. It means we have to go
now
, while there’s still chaos in the hallways and before they increase security,” Matthew says.

“Why would they do this?” Caleb says.

“Could be they just want to increase security before releasing the viruses,” Matthew says. “Or it could be that they figured out we’re going to try something—only, if they knew that, they probably would have come to arrest us.”

I look at Caleb. The minutes I had left with him fall away like dead leaves pulled from branches.

I cross the room and retrieve our guns from the counter, but itching at the back of my mind is what Tobias said yesterday—that the Abnegation say you should only let someone sacrifice himself for you if it’s the ultimate way for them to show they love you.

And for Caleb, that’s not what this is.

T
OBIAS

M
Y FEET SLIP
on the snowy pavement.

“You didn’t inoculate yourself yesterday,” I say to Peter.

“No, I didn’t,” Peter says.

“Why not?”

“Why should I tell you?”

I run my thumb over the vial and say, “You came with me because you know I have the memory serum, right? If you want me to give it to you, it couldn’t hurt to give me a reason.”

He looks at my pocket again, like he did earlier. He must have seen Christina give it to me. He says, “I’d rather just
take
it from you.”

“Please.” I lift my eyes up, to watch the snow spilling over the edges of the buildings. It’s dark, but the moon provides just enough light to see by. “You might think you’re pretty good at fighting, but you aren’t good enough to beat me, I promise you.”

Without warning he shoves me, hard, and I slip on the snowy ground and fall. My gun clatters to the ground, half buried in the snow.
That’ll teach me to get cocky
, I think, and I scramble to my feet. He grabs my collar and yanks me forward so I slide again, only this time I keep my balance and elbow him in the stomach. He kicks me hard in the leg, making it go numb, and grabs the front of my jacket to pull me toward him.

His hand fumbles for my pocket, where the serum is. I try to push him away, but his footing is too sure and my leg is still too numb. With a groan of frustration, I bring my free arm back by my face and slam my elbow into his mouth. Pain spreads through my arm—it hurts to hit someone in the teeth—but it was worth it. He yells, sliding back onto the street, his face clutched in both hands.

“You know why you won fights as an initiate?” I say as I get to my feet. “Because you’re cruel. Because you like to hurt people. And you think you’re special, you think everyone around you is a bunch of sissies who can’t make the tough choices like you can.”

He starts to get up, and I kick him in the side so he goes sprawling again. Then I press my foot to his chest, right under his throat, and our eyes meet, his wide and innocent and nothing like what’s inside him.

“You are not special,” I say. “I like to hurt people too. I can make the cruelest choice. The difference is, sometimes I don’t, and you always do, and that makes you evil.”

I step over him and start down Michigan Avenue again. But before I take more than a few steps, I hear his voice.

“That’s why I want it,” he says, his voice shaking.

I stop. I don’t turn around. I don’t want to see his face right now.

“I want the serum because I’m sick of being this way,” he says. “I’m sick of doing bad things and liking it and then wondering what’s wrong with me. I want it to be over. I want to start again.”

“And you don’t think that’s the coward’s way out?” I say over my shoulder.

“I think I don’t care if it is or not,” Peter says.

I feel the anger that was swelling within me deflate as I turn the vial over in my fingers, inside my pocket. I hear him get to his feet and brush the snow from his clothes.

“Don’t try to mess with me again,” I say, “and I promise I’ll let you reset yourself, when all this is said and done. I have no reason not to.”

He nods, and we continue through the unmarked snow to the building where I last saw my mother.

T
RIS

T
HERE IS A
nervous kind of quiet in the hallway, though there are people everywhere. One woman bumps me with her shoulder and then mutters an apology, and I move closer to Caleb so I don’t lose sight of him. Sometimes all I want is to be a few inches taller so the world does not look like a dense collection of torsos.

We move quickly, but not too quickly. The more security guards I see, the more pressure I feel building inside me. Caleb’s backpack, with the clean suit and explosives inside it, bounces against his lower back as we walk. People are moving in all different directions, but soon, we will reach a hallway that no one has any reason to walk down.

“I think something must have happened to Cara,” Matthew says. “The lights were supposed to be off by now.”

I nod. I feel the gun digging into my back, disguised by my baggy shirt. I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to use it, but it seems that I will, and even then it might not be enough to get us to the Weapons Lab.

I touch Caleb’s arm, and Matthew’s, stopping all three of us in the middle of the hallway.

“I have an idea,” I say. “We split up. Caleb and I will run to the lab, and Matthew, cause some kind of diversion.”

“A diversion?”

“You have a gun, don’t you?” I say. “Fire into the air.”

He hesitates.

“Do it,” I say through gritted teeth.

Matthew takes his gun out. I grab Caleb’s elbow and steer him down the hallway. Over my shoulder I watch Matthew lift the gun over his head and fire straight up, at one of the glass panels above him. At the sharp bang, I burst into a run, dragging Caleb with me. Screams and shattering glass fill the air, and security guards run past us without noticing that we are running away from the dormitories, running toward a place we should not be.

It’s a strange thing to feel my instincts and Dauntless training kick in. My breathing becomes deeper, more even, as we follow the route we determined this morning. My mind feels sharper, clearer. I look at Caleb, expecting to see the same thing happening to him, but all the blood seems to have drained from his face, and he is gasping. I keep my hand firm on his elbow to steady him.

We round a corner, shoes squeaking on the tile, and an empty hallway with a mirrored ceiling stretches out in front of us. I feel a surge of triumph. I know this place. We aren’t far now. We’re going to make it.

“Stop!” a voice shouts from behind me.

The security guards. They found us.

“Stop or we’ll shoot!”

Caleb shudders and lifts his hands. I lift mine, too, and look at him.

I feel everything slowing down inside me, my racing thoughts and the pounding of my heart.

When I look at him, I don’t see the cowardly young man who sold me out to Jeanine Matthews, and I don’t hear the excuses he gave afterward.

When I look at him, I see the boy who held my hand in the hospital when our mother broke her wrist and told me it would be all right. I see the brother who told me to make my own choices, the night before the Choosing Ceremony. I think of all the remarkable things he is—smart and enthusiastic and observant, quiet and earnest and kind.

He is a part of me, always will be, and I am a part of him, too. I don’t belong to Abnegation, or Dauntless, or even the Divergent. I don’t belong to the Bureau or the experiment or the fringe. I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me—they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.

I love my brother. I love him, and he is quaking with terror at the thought of death. I love him and all I can think, all I can hear in my mind, are the words I said to him a few days ago:
I would never deliver you to your own execution.

“Caleb,” I say. “Give me the backpack.”

“What?” he says.

I slip my hand under the back of my shirt and grab my gun. I point it at him. “Give me the backpack.”

“Tris, no.” He shakes his head. “No, I won’t let you do that.”

“Put down your weapon!” the guard screams at the end of the hallway. “Put down your weapon or we will fire!”