And there is something else, something worse that I didn’t realize before. I was willing to die rather than kill Tobias, but the thought never occurred to me when it came to Will. I decided to kill Will in a fraction of a second.
I feel bare. I didn’t realize that I wore my secrets as armor until they were gone, and now everyone sees me as I really am.
“Thank you for your honesty,” they say.
But Christina and Tobias say nothing.
Chapter Thirteen
I RISE FROM the chair. I don’t feel as dizzy as I did a moment ago; the serum is already wearing off. The crowd tilts, and I search for a door. I don’t usually run away from things, but I would run from this.
Everyone starts to file out of the room except for Christina. She stands where I left her, her hands in fists that are in the process of uncurling. Her eyes meet mine and yet they do not. Tears swim in her eyes and yet she is not crying.
“Christina,” I say, but the only words I can think of—I’m sorry—sound more like an insult than an apology. Sorry is what you are when you bump someone with your elbow, what you are when you interrupt someone. I am more than sorry.
“He had a gun,” I say. “He was about to shoot me. He was under the simulation.”
“You killed him,” she says. Her words sound bigger than words usually do, like they expanded in her mouth before she spoke them. She looks at me as if she doesn’t recognize me for a few seconds, then turns away.
A younger girl with the same skin color and the same height takes her hand—Christina’s younger sister. I saw her on Visiting Day, a thousand years ago. The truth serum makes the sight of them swim before me, or that could be the tears gathering in my eyes.
“You okay?” says Uriah, emerging from the crowd to touch my shoulder. I haven’t seen him since before the simulation attack, but I can’t find it in me to greet him.
“Yeah.”
“Hey.” He squeezes my shoulder. “You did what you had to do, right? To save us from being Erudite slaves. She’ll see that eventually. When the grief fades.”
I can’t even find it in me to nod. Uriah smiles at me and walks away. Some Dauntless brush against me and they murmur words that sound like gratitude, or compliments, or reassurance. Others give me a wide berth, look at me with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
The black-clothed bodies smear together in front of me. I am empty. Everything has spilled out of me.
Tobias stands next to me. I brace myself for his reaction.
“I got our weapons back,” he says, offering me my knife.
I shove it in my back pocket without meeting his eyes.
“We can talk about it tomorrow,” he says. Quietly. Quiet is dangerous, with Tobias.
“Okay.”
He slides his arm across my shoulders. My hand finds his hip, and I pull him against me.
I hold on tight as we walk toward the elevators together.
He finds us two cots at the end of a hallway somewhere. We lie with our heads inches apart, not speaking.
When I’m sure he’s asleep, I slip out from beneath the blankets and walk down the hallway, past a dozen sleeping Dauntless. I find the door that leads to the stairs.
As I climb step after step, and my muscles begin to burn, and my lungs fight for air, I feel the first moments of relief I’ve experienced in days.
I may be good at running on flat ground, but walking up stairs is another matter. I massage a spasm from my hamstring as I march past the twelfth floor, and try to recover some of my lost air. I grin at the fierce burn in my legs, in my chest. Using pain to relieve pain. It doesn’t make much sense.
By the time I reach the eighteenth floor, my legs feel like they have turned to liquid. I shuffle toward the room where I was interrogated. It’s empty now, but the amphitheater benches are still there, as is the chair I sat in. The moon glows behind a haze of clouds.
I set my hands on the back of the chair. It’s plain: wooden, a little creaky. How strange that something so simple could have been instrumental in my decision to ruin one of my most important relationships, and damage another.
It’s bad enough that I killed Will, that I didn’t think fast enough to come up with another solution. Now I have to live with everyone else’s judgment as well as my own, and the fact that nothing—not even me—will ever be the same again.
The Candor sing the praises of the truth, but they never tell you how much it costs.
The edge of the chair bites into my palms. I was squeezing it harder than I thought. I stare down at it for a second and then lift it, balancing it legs-up on my good shoulder. I search the edge of the room for a ladder or a staircase that will help me climb. All I see are the amphitheater benches, rising high above the floor.
I walk up to the highest bench, and lift the chair above my head. It just barely touches the ledge beneath one of the window spaces. I jump, shoving the chair forward, and it slides onto the ledge. My shoulder aches—I shouldn’t really be using my arm—but I have other things on my mind.
I jump, grab the ledge, and pull myself up, my arms shaking. I swing my leg up and drag the rest of my body onto the ledge. When I’m up, I lie there for a moment, sucking in air and heaving it back out again.
I stand on the ledge, under the arch of what used to be a window, and stare out at the city. The dead river curls around the building and disappears. The bridge, its red paint peeling, stretches over the muck. Across it are buildings, most of them empty. It is hard to believe there were ever enough people in the city to fill them.
For a second, I allow myself to reenter the memory of the interrogation. Tobias’s lack of expression; his anger afterward, suppressed for the sake of my sanity. Christina’s empty look. The whispers, “Thank you for your honesty.” Easy to say that when what I did doesn’t affect them.
I grab the chair and hurl it over the ledge. A faint cry escapes me. It grows into a yell, which transforms into a scream, and then I’m standing on the ledge of the Merciless Mart, screaming as the chair sails toward the ground, screaming until my throat burns. Then the chair hits the ground, shattering like a brittle skeleton. I sit down on the ledge, leaning into the side of the window frame, and close my eyes.
And then I think of Al.
I wonder how long Al stood at the ledge before he pitched himself over it, into the Dauntless Pit.
He must have stood there for a long time, making a list of all the terrible things he had done—almost killing me was one of those things—and another list of all the good, heroic, brave things he had not done, and then decided that he was tired. Tired, not just of living, but of existing. Tired of being Al.
I open my eyes, and stare at the pieces of chair I can faintly see on the pavement below. For the first time I feel like I understand Al. I am tired of being Tris. I have done bad things. I can’t take them back, and they are part of who I am. Most of the time, they seem like the only thing I am.
I lean forward, into the air, holding on to the side of the window with one hand. Another few inches and my weight would pull me to the ground. I would not be able to stop it.
But I can’t do it. My parents lost their lives out of love for me. Losing mine for no good reason would be a terrible way to repay them for that sacrifice, no matter what I’ve done.
“Let the guilt teach you how to behave next time,” my father would say.