I hear a crack against the floor next to my face, and a metal cylinder about the size of my hand rolls to a stop against my head. Before I can move it, white smoke sprays out of both ends. I cough, and throw it away from me, deeper into the lobby. It isn’t the only cylinder, though—they are everywhere, filling the room with smoke that does not burn or sting. In fact, it only obscures my view for a few seconds before evaporating completely.
What was the point of that?
Lying on the floor all around me are Dauntless soldiers with their eyes closed. I frown as I look Uriah up and down—he doesn’t seem to be bleeding. I see no wound near his vital organs, which means he isn’t dead. So what knocked him unconscious? I look over my left shoulder, where Lynn fell in a strange, half-curled position. She’s also unconscious.
The Dauntless traitors walk into the lobby, their guns held up. I decide to do what I always do when I’m not sure what’s going on: I act like everyone else. I let my head drop and close my eyes. My heart pounds as the Dauntless’s footsteps come closer, and closer, squeaking on the marble floors. I bite my tongue to suppress a cry of pain as one of them steps on my hand.
“Not sure why we can’t just shoot them all in the head,” one of them says. “If there’s no army, we win.”
“Now, Bob, we can’t just kill everyone,” a cold voice says.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I would know that voice anywhere. It belongs to Eric, leader of the Dauntless.
“No people means no one left to create prosperous conditions,” Eric continues. “Anyway, it’s not your job to ask questions.” He raises his voice. “Half in the elevators, half in the stairwells, left and right! Go!”
There’s a gun a few feet to my left. If I opened my eyes, I could grab it and fire at him before he knew what hit him. But there’s no guarantee I would be able to touch it without panicking again.
I wait until I hear the last footstep disappear behind an elevator door or into a stairwell before opening my eyes. Everyone in the lobby appears to be unconscious. Whatever they gassed us with, it had to be simulation-inducing or I wouldn’t be the only one awake. It doesn’t make any sense—it doesn’t follow the simulation rules I’m familiar with—but I don’t have time to think it through.
I grab my knife and get up, trying to ignore the ache in my shoulder. I run over to one of the dead Dauntless traitors near the doorway. She was middle-aged; there are hints of gray in her dark hair. I try not to look at the bullet wound in her head, but the dim light glows on what looks like bone, and I gag.
Think. I don’t care who she was, or what her name was, or how old she was. I care only about the blue armband she wears. I have to focus on that. I try to hook my finger around the fabric, but it doesn’t come loose. It appears to be attached to her black jacket. I will have to take that, too.
I unzip my jacket and toss it over her face so I don’t have to look at her. Then I unzip her jacket and pull it, first from her left arm, and then from her right arm, gritting my teeth as I slide it from beneath her heavy body.
“Tris!” someone says. I turn around, jacket in one hand, knife in the other. I put the knife away—the invading Dauntless weren’t carrying them, and I don’t want to be conspicuous.
Uriah stands behind me.
“Divergent?” I ask him. There is no time to be shocked.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Get a jacket,” I say.
He crouches next to one of the other Dauntless traitors, this one young, not even old enough to be a Dauntless member. I flinch at the sight of his death-pale face. Someone so young shouldn’t be dead; shouldn’t even have been here in the first place.
My face hot with anger, I shrug the woman’s jacket on. Uriah pulls his own jacket on, his mouth pinched.
“They’re the only ones who are dead,” he says quietly. “Something about that seem wrong to you?”
“They must have known we would shoot at them, but they came anyway,” I say. “Questions later. We have to get up there.”
“Up there? Why?” he says. “We should get out of here.”
“You want to run away before you know what’s going on?” I scowl at him. “Before the Dauntless upstairs know what hit them?”
“What if someone recognizes us?”
I shrug. “We just have to hope they won’t.”
I sprint toward the stairwell, and he follows me. As soon as my foot touches the first stair, I wonder what on earth I intend to do. There are bound to be more of the Divergent in this building, but will they know what they are? Will they know to hide? And what do I expect to gain from submerging myself in an army of Dauntless traitors?
Deep inside me I know the answer: I am being reckless. I will probably gain nothing. I will probably die.
And more disturbing still: I don’t really care.
“They’ll work their way upward,” I say between breaths. “So you should . . . go to the third floor. Tell them to . . . evacuate. Quietly.”
“Where are you going, then?”
“Floor two,” I say. I shove my shoulder into the second-floor door. I know what to do on the second floor: look for the Divergent.
As I walk down the hallway, stepping over unconscious people dressed in black and white, I think of a verse of the song Candor children used to sing when they thought no one could hear them:
Dauntless is the cruelest of the five
They tear each other to pieces. . . .
It has never seemed truer to me than now, watching Dauntless traitors induce a sleeping simulation that is not so different from the one that forced them to kill members of Abnegation not a month ago.
We are the only faction that could divide like this. Amity would not allow a schism; no one in Abnegation would be so selfish; Candor would argue until they found a common solution; and even Erudite would never do something so illogical. We really are the cruelest faction.
I step over a draped arm and a woman with her mouth hanging open, and hum the beginning of the next verse of the song under my breath.
Erudite is the coldest of the five
Knowledge is a costly thing. . . .
I wonder when Jeanine realized that Erudite and Dauntless would make a deadly combination. Ruthlessness and cold logic, it seems, can accomplish almost anything, including putting one and a half factions to sleep.
I scan faces and bodies as I walk, searching for irregular breaths, flickering eyelids, anything to suggest that the people lying on the ground are just pretending to be unconscious. So far, all the breathing is even and all the eyelids are still. Maybe none of the Candor are Divergent.
“Eric!” I hear someone shout from down the hall. I hold my breath as he walks right toward me. I try not to move. If I move, he’ll look at me, and he’ll recognize me, I know it. I look down, and tense so hard I tremble. Don’t look at me don’t look at me don’t look at me . . .
Eric strides past me and down the hallway to my left. I should continue my search as quickly as possible, but curiosity urges me forward, toward whoever called for Eric. The shout sounded urgent.
When I lift my eyes, I see a Dauntless soldier standing over a kneeling woman. She wears a white blouse and a black skirt, and has her hands behind her head. Eric’s smile looks greedy even in profile.