She looks down, her crooked mouth betraying just how right I am.
“I also wanted to ask you if we can talk to the Erudite you’re keeping safe here,” I say. “I know they’re hidden, but I need access to them.”
“And what do you intend to do?” she says.
“Shoot them,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“That isn’t funny.”
I sigh. “Sorry. I need information. That’s all.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” Johanna says. “You can sleep here.”
I sleep as soon as my head touches the pillow, but wake earlier than I planned. I can tell by the glow near the horizon that the sun is about to rise.
Across the narrow aisle between two beds is Christina, her face pressed to the mattress with her pillow over her head. A dresser with a lamp on top of it stands between us. The wooden floorboards creak no matter where you step on them. And on the left wall is a mirror, casually placed. Everyone but the Abnegation takes mirrors for granted. I still feel a prickle of shock whenever I see one in the open.
I get dressed, not bothering to be quiet—five hundred stomping Dauntless can’t wake Christina when she’s deeply asleep, though an Erudite whisper might be able to. She is odd that way.
I walk outside as the sun peeks through the tree branches, and see a small group of Amity gathered near the orchard. I move closer to see what they are doing.
They stand in a circle, hands clasped. Half of them are in their early teens, and the other half are adults. The oldest one, a woman with braided gray hair, speaks.
“We believe in a God who gives peace and cherishes it,” she says. “So we give peace to each other, and cherish it.”
I would not hear that as a cue, but the Amity seem to. They all begin to move at once, finding someone across the circle and clasping hands with them. When everyone is paired off, they stand for several seconds, looking at each other. Some of them mutter a phrase, some smile, some remain silent and still. Then they break apart and move to someone else, performing the same series of actions again.
I have never seen an Amity religious ceremony before. I am only familiar with the religion of my parents’ faction, which part of me still holds to and the other rejects as foolishness—the prayers before dinner, the weekly meetings, the acts of service, the poems about a selfless God. This is something different, something mysterious.
“Come and join us,” the gray-haired woman says. It takes me a few seconds to realize she’s talking to me. She beckons to me, smiling.
“Oh no,” I say. “I’m just—”
“Come,” she says again, and I feel like I have no choice but to walk forward and stand among them.
She approaches me first, clasping my hand. Her fingers are dry and rough and her eyes seek mine, persistent, though I feel strange meeting her gaze.
Once I do, the effect is immediate and peculiar. I stand still, and every part of me is still, like it weighs more than it used to, only the weight is not unpleasant. Her eyes are brown, the same shade throughout, and unmoving.
“May the peace of God be with you,” she says, her voice low, “even in the midst of trouble.”
“Why would it?” I say softly, so no one else can hear. “After all I’ve done . . .”
“It isn’t about you,” she says. “It is a gift. You cannot earn it, or it ceases to be a gift.”
She releases me and moves to someone else, but I stand with my hand outstretched, alone. Someone moves to take my hand, but I withdraw from the group, first at a walk, and then at a run.
I sprint into the trees as fast as I can, and only when my lungs feel like they are on fire do I stop.
I press my forehead to the nearest tree trunk, though it scrapes my skin, and fight off tears.
Later that morning I walk through light rain to the main greenhouse. Johanna has called an emergency meeting.
I stay as hidden as possible at the edge of the room, between two large plants that are suspended in mineral solution. It takes me a few minutes to find Christina, dressed in Amity yellow on the right side of the room, but it is easy to spot Marcus, who stands on the roots of the giant tree with Johanna.
Johanna has her hands clasped in front of her and her hair pulled back. The injury that gave her the scar also damaged her eye—her pupil is so dilated it overwhelms her iris, and her left eye doesn’t move with the right one as she scans the Amity in front of her.
But there are not just Amity. There are people with close-cropped hair and tightly twisted buns who must belong to Abnegation, and a few rows of people in glasses who must be Erudite. Cara is among them.
“I have received a message from the city,” says Johanna when everyone quiets down. “And I would like to communicate it to you.”
She tugs at the hem of her shirt, then clasps her hands in front of her. She seems nervous.
“The Dauntless have allied with the factionless,” she says. “They intend to attack Erudite in two days’ time. Their battle will be waged not against the Erudite-Dauntless army but against Erudite innocents and the knowledge they have worked so hard to acquire.”
She looks down, breathes deeply, and continues: “I know that we recognize no leader, so I have no right to address you as if that is what I am,” she says. “But I am hoping that you will forgive me, just this once, for asking if we can reconsider our previous decision to remain uninvolved.”
There are murmurs. They are nothing like Dauntless murmurs—they are gentler, like birds launching from branches.
“Our relationship with Erudite notwithstanding, we know better than any faction how essential their role in this society is,” she says. “They must be protected from needless slaughter, if not because they are human beings, then because we cannot survive without them. I propose that we enter the city as nonviolent, impartial peacekeepers in order to curb in whatever way possible the extreme violence that will undoubtedly occur. Please discuss this.”
Rain dusts the glass panels above our heads. Johanna sits on a tree root to wait, but the Amity do not burst into conversation as they did the last time I was here. Whispers, almost indistinguishable from the rain, turn to normal speech, and I hear some voices lift above others, almost yelling, but not quite.
Every lifted voice sends a jolt through me. I’ve sat through plenty of arguments in my life, mostly in the last two months, but none of them ever scared me like this. The Amity aren’t supposed to argue.
I decide not to wait any longer. I walk along the edge of the meeting area, squeezing past the Amity who are on their feet and hopping over hands and outstretched legs. Some of them stare at me—I may be wearing a red shirt, but the tattoos along my collarbone are clear as ever, even from a distance.
I pause near the row of Erudite. Cara stands when I get close, her arms folded.
“What are you doing here?” she says.
“I came to tell Johanna what was going on,” I say. “And to ask you for help.”
“Me?” she says. “Why—”
“Not you,” I say. I try to forget what she said about my nose, but it’s hard. “All of you. I have a plan to save some of your faction’s data, but I need your help.”
“Actually,” Christina says, appearing at my left shoulder, “we have a plan.”