It sounds like he’s had that memorized for a long time. Maybe he has—he did spend a lot of time running simulations.
“Very good,” she says. “When I was developing the Dauntless simulations, years ago, we discovered that certain levels of potency overwhelmed the brain and made it too insensible with terror to invent new surroundings, which was when we diluted the solution so that the simulations would be more instructive. But I still remember how to make it.”
She taps the syringe with her fingernail.
“Fear,” she says, “is more powerful than pain. So is there anything you’d like to say, before I inject Ms. Prior?”
Tobias presses his lips together.
And Jeanine inserts the needle.
It begins quietly, with the pounding of a heart. I am not sure, at first, whose heartbeat I’m hearing, because it’s far too loud to be my own. But then I realize that it is my own, and it’s getting faster and faster.
Sweat collects in my palms and behind my knees.
And then I have to gasp in order to breathe.
That’s when the screaming starts
And I
Can’t
Think.
Tobias is fighting the Dauntless traitors by the door.
I hear what sounds like a child’s scream beside me, and wrench my head around to see where it’s coming from, but there is only a heart monitor. Above me the lines between the ceiling tiles warp and twist into monstrous creatures. The scent of rotting flesh fills the air and I gag. The monstrous creatures take on a more definite shape—they are birds, crows, with beaks as long as my forearm and wings so dark they seem to swallow all the light.
“Tris,” says Tobias. I look away from the crows.
He stands by the door, where he was before I was injected, but now he has a knife. He holds it out from his body and turns it so the blade points in, at his stomach. Then he brings it toward himself, touching the tip of the blade to his stomach.
“What are you doing? Stop!”
He smiles a little and says, “I’m doing this for you.”
He pushes the knife in farther, slow, and blood stains the hem of his shirt. I gag, and throw myself against the bonds holding me to the table. “No, stop!” I thrash and in a simulation I would have pulled free by now so this must mean that this is real, it’s real. I scream and he sticks the knife in to the handle. He collapses to the floor and his blood spills fast and surrounds him. The shadow-birds turn their beady eyes on him and swarm in a tornado of wings and talons, pecking at his skin. I see his eyes through the whirling feathers and he is still awake.
A bird lands on the fingers that hold the knife. He draws it out again and it clatters to the ground and I should hope that he is dead but I’m selfish so I can’t. My back lifts from the table and all my muscles clench and my throat aches from this scream that no longer shapes itself into words and will not stop.
“Sedative,” a stern voice commands.
Another needle in my neck, and my heart begins to slow down. I sob with relief. For seconds all I can do is sob with relief.
That was not fear. That was something else; an emotion that should not exist.
“Let me go,” Tobias says, and he sounds scratchier than before. I blink fast so I can see him through my tears. There are red marks on his arms from where the Dauntless traitors held him back, but he is not dying; he is all right. “That’s the only way I’ll tell you, is if you let me go.”
Jeanine nods, and he runs to me. He wraps one hand around mine and touches my hair with the other. His fingertips come away wet with tears. He doesn’t wipe them off. He leans over and presses his forehead to mine.
“The factionless safe houses,” he says dully, right against my cheek. “Get me a map and I’ll mark them for you.”
His forehead feels cool and dry against mine. My muscles ache, probably from being clenched for however long Jeanine left me with that serum pulsing through me.
He pulls back, his fingers wrapped around my fingers for as long as they can be until the Dauntless traitors pull him from my grasp to escort him elsewhere. My hand falls heavy on the table. I don’t want to struggle against the restraints anymore. All I want to do is sleep.
“While you’re here . . .” Jeanine says once Tobias and his escorts are gone. She looks up and focuses her watery eyes on one of the Erudite. “Get him and bring him in here. It’s time.”
She looks back down at me.
“While you sleep, we will be performing a short procedure to observe a few things about your brain. It will not be invasive. But before that . . . I promised you full transparency with these procedures. So I feel it’s only fair that you know exactly who has been assisting me in my endeavors.” She smiles a little. “Who told me what three factions you had an aptitude for, and what our best chance was to get you to come here, and to put your mother in the last simulation to make it more effective.”
She looks toward the doorway as the sedative sets in, making everything blur at the edges. I look over my shoulder, and through the haze of drugs I see him.
Caleb.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I WAKE TO a headache. I try to go back to sleep—at least when I’m asleep, I’m calm—but the image of Caleb standing in the doorway runs through my mind over and over again, accompanied by the sound of squawking crows.
Why did I never wonder how Eric and Jeanine knew that I had aptitude for three factions?
Why did it never occur to me that only three people in the world knew that particular fact: Tori, Caleb, and Tobias?
My head pounds. I can’t make sense of it. I don’t know why Caleb would betray me. I wonder when it happened—after the attack simulation? After the escape from Amity? Or was it earlier than that—was it back when my father was still alive? Caleb told us he left Erudite when he found out what they were planning—was he lying?
He must have been. I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. My brother chose faction over blood. There has to be a reason. She must have threatened him. Or coerced him in some way.
The door opens. I don’t lift my head or open my eyes.
“Stiff.” It’s Peter. Of course.
“Yes.” When I let my hand fall from my face, a lock of hair falls with it. I look at it from the corner of my eye. My hair has never been this greasy before.
Peter sets a bottle of water next to the bed, and a sandwich. The thought of eating it nauseates me.
“You brain-dead?” he asks.
“Don’t think so.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Ha-ha,” I say. “How long have I been asleep?”
“About a day. I’m supposed to escort you to the showers.”
“If you say something about how badly I need one,” I say tiredly, “I will poke you in the eye.”
The room spins when I lift my head, but I manage to put my legs over the edge of the bed and stand. Peter and I start down the hallway. When we turn the corner to get to the bathroom, though, there are people at the end of the hallway.
One of them is Tobias. I can see where our paths will intersect, between where I stand now and my cell door. I stare, not at him but at where he will be when he reaches for my hand, as he did the last time we passed each other. My skin tingles with anticipation. For just a moment, I will touch him again.