Zeke was cleared by the Candor an hour ago, in a short interrogation on the eighteenth floor. It was not as somber an occasion as Tobias’s and my interrogation, partly because there was no suspicious video footage implicating Zeke, and partly because Zeke is funny even when under truth serum. Maybe especially so. In any case, we came to the Gathering Place “for a ‘Hey, you’re not a dirty traitor!’ celebration,” as Uriah put it.
“Yeah, but we’ve been insulting you since the simulation attack,” Lynn says. “And now I feel like a jerk about it.”
Zeke puts his arm around Shauna. “You are a jerk, Lynn. It’s part of your charm.”
Lynn launches a plastic cup at him, which he deflects. Water sprays over the table, hitting him in the eye.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” says Zeke, rubbing his eye, “I was mostly working on getting Erudite defectors out safely. That’s why there’s a big group of them here, and a small group at Amity headquarters. But Tori . . . I have no idea what she was doing. She kept sneaking away for hours at a time, and whenever she was around, it was like she was about to explode. It’s no wonder she gave us away.”
“How’d you get the job?” says Lynn. “You’re not that special.”
“It was more because of where I was after the simulation attack. Smack-dab in a pack of Dauntless traitors. I decided to go with it,” he says. “Not sure about Tori, though.”
“She transferred from Erudite,” I say.
What I don’t say, because I’m sure she wouldn’t want everyone to know, is that Tori probably seemed explosive in Erudite headquarters because they murdered her brother for being Divergent.
She told me once that she was waiting for an opportunity to get revenge.
“Oh,” says Zeke. “How do you know that?”
“Well, all the faction transfers have a secret club,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “We meet every third Thursday.”
Zeke snorts.
“Where’s Four?” says Uriah, checking his watch. “Should we start without him?”
“We can’t,” says Zeke. “He’s getting The Info.”
Uriah nods like that means something. Then he pauses and says, “What info, again?”
“The info about Kang’s little peacemaking meeting with Jeanine,” says Zeke. “Obviously.”
Across the room, I see Christina sitting at a table with her sister. They are both reading something.
My entire body tenses. Cara, Will’s older sister, is walking across the room toward Christina’s table. I duck my head.
“What?” Uriah says, looking over his shoulder. I want to punch him.
“Stop it!” I say. “Could you be any more obvious?” I lean forward, folding my arms on the table. “Will’s sister is over there.”
“Yeah, I talked to her about getting out of Erudite once, while I was there,” says Zeke. “Said she saw an Abnegation woman get killed while she was on a mission for Jeanine and couldn’t stomach it anymore.”
“Are we sure she’s not just an Erudite spy?” Lynn says.
“Lynn, she saved half our faction from this stuff,” says Marlene, tapping the bandage on her arm from where the Dauntless traitors shot her. “Well, half of half of our faction.”
“In some circles they call that a quarter, Mar,” Lynn says.
“Anyway, who cares if she is a traitor?” Zeke says. “We’re not planning anything that she can inform them about. And we certainly wouldn’t include her if we were.”
“There is plenty of information for her to gather here,” Lynn says. “How many of us there are, for example, or how many of us aren’t wired for simulations.”
“You didn’t see her when she was telling me why she left,” says Zeke. “I believe her.”
Cara and Christina have gotten up, and are walking out of the room.
“I’ll be right back,” I say. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
I wait until Cara and Christina have gone through the doors, then half walk, half jog in that direction. I open one of the doors slowly, so it doesn’t make any noise, and then close it slowly behind me. I am in a dim hallway that smells like garbage—this must be where the Candor trash chute is.
I hear two female voices around the corner and creep toward the end of the hallway to hear better.
“. . . just can’t handle her being here,” one of them sobs. Christina. “I can’t stop picturing it . . . what she did. . . . I don’t understand how she could have done that!”
Christina’s sobs make me feel like I am about to crack open.
Cara takes her time responding.
“Well, I do,” she says.
“What?” Christina says with a hiccup.
“You have to understand; we’re trained to see things as logically as possible,” says Cara. “So don’t think that I’m callous. But that girl was probably scared out of her mind, certainly not capable of assessing situations cleverly at the time, if she was ever able to do so.”
My eyes fly open. What a—I run through a short list of insults in my mind before listening to her continue.
“And the simulation made her incapable of reasoning with him, so when he threatened her life, she reacted as she had been trained by the Dauntless to react: Shoot to kill.”
“So what are you saying?” says Christina bitterly. “We should just forget about it, because it makes perfect sense?”
“Of course not,” says Cara. Her voice wobbles, just a little, and she repeats herself, quietly this time. “Of course not.”
She clears her throat. “It’s just that you have to be around her, and I want to make it easier for you. You don’t have to forgive her. Actually, I’m not sure why you were friends with her in the first place; she always seemed a bit erratic to me.”
I tense up as I wait for Christina to agree with her, but to my surprise—and relief—she doesn’t.
Cara continues. “Anyway. You don’t have to forgive her, but you should try to understand that what she did was not out of malice; it was out of panic. That way, you can look at her without wanting to punch her in her exceptionally long nose.”
My hand moves automatically to my nose. Christina laughs a little, which feels like a hard poke to the stomach. I back up through the door to the Gathering Place.
Even though Cara was rude—and the nose comment was a low blow—I am grateful for what she said.
Tobias emerges from a door hidden behind a length of white cloth. He flicks the cloth out of the way irritably before coming toward us and sitting beside me at the table in the Gathering Place.
“Kang is going to meet with a representative of Jeanine Matthews at seven in the morning,” he says.
“A representative?” Zeke says. “She’s not going herself?”
“Yeah, and stand out in the open where a bunch of angry people with guns can take aim?” Uriah smirks a little. “I’d like to see her try. No, really, I would.”
“Is Kang the Brilliant taking a Dauntless escort, at least?” Lynn says.
“Yes,” Tobias says. “Some of the older members volunteered. Bud said he would keep his ears open and report back.”