Veronica Roth: Insurgent

I limp toward the door, which is a pane of frosted glass. It slides back to admit me, and I see Jeanine, pressed against a wall, with Tori standing a few feet away, her gun high.

Behind them is a glass table with a silver box on it — a computer — and a keyboard. The entire far wall is covered with a computer screen.

Jeanine stares at me, but Tori doesn’t move an inch; doesn’t seem to hear me. Her face is red and tear-streaked, her hand shaking.

I have no confidence that I can find the video file on my own. If Jeanine is here, I can get her to find it for me, but if she’s dead …

“No!” I scream. “Tori, don’t!”

But her finger is already over the trigger. I launch myself at her as hard as I can, my arms slamming into her side. The gun goes off, and I hear a scream.

My head hits the tile. I ignore the stars in my eyes and throw myself across Tori. I shove the gun forward and it slides away from us.

Why didn’t you grab it, you idiot?!

Tori’s fist connects with the side of my throat. I choke, and she uses the opportunity to throw me off, to crawl toward the gun.

Jeanine is slumped against the wall, blood soaking her leg. Leg! I remember, and punch Tori hard near the bullet wound in her thigh. She yells, and I find my feet.

I step toward the fallen weapon, but Tori is too quick. She wraps her arms around my legs and pulls them out from under me. My knees slam into the ground, but I am still above her; I punch down, at her rib cage.

She groans, but it doesn’t stop her; as I drag myself toward the gun, she sinks her teeth into my hand. It is a different pain than any blow I’ve ever received, different even from a bullet wound. I scream louder than I thought possible, tears blurring my vision.

I have not come this far to let Tori shoot Jeanine before I’ve gotten what I need.

I yank my hand from between her teeth, my vision going black at the edges, and with a lurch, smack my hand around the handle of the gun. I twist, and point it at Tori.

My hand. My hand is covered in blood, and so is Tori’s chin. I hide my hand from view so that it’s easier to ignore the pain and get up, still pointing the gun at her.

“I didn’t take you for a traitor, Tris,” she says, and it sounds like a snarl, not a sound any human can make.

“I’m not,” I say. I blink the tears down my cheeks so that I can see her better. “I can’t explain it right now, but … all I’m asking is for you to trust me, please. There’s something important, something only she knows the location of—”

“That’s right!” says Jeanine. “It is on that computer, Beatrice, and only I can locate it. If you don’t help me survive this, it will die with me.”

“She is a liar,” says Tori. “A liar , and if you believe her, you are both an idiot and a traitor, Tris!”

“I do believe her,” I say. “I believe her because it makes perfect sense! The most sensitive information that exists and it’s hidden on that computer , Tori!” I take a deep breath, and lower my voice. “Please listen to me. I hate her as much as you do. I have no reason to defend her. I’m telling you the truth. This is important.”

Tori is silent. I think, for a moment, that I’ve won, that I’ve persuaded her. But then she says, “Nothing is more important than her death.”

“If that’s what you insist upon believing,” I say, “I can’t help you. But I’m also not going to let you kill her.”

Tori pushes herself to her knees, and wipes my blood from her chin. She looks up into my eyes.

“I am a Dauntless leader,” she says. “You don’t get to decide what I do.”

And before I can think—

Before I can even think about firing the gun I’m holding—

She draws a long knife from the side of her boot, lunges, and stabs Jeanine in the stomach.

I yell. Jeanine releases a horrible sound — a gurgling, screaming, dying sound. I see Tori’s gritted teeth, I hear her murmur her brother’s name—“Jonathan Wu”—and then I watch the knife go in again.

And Jeanine’s eyes turn into glass.

TORI STANDS, A wild look in her eyes, and turns toward me.

I feel numb.

All the risks I took to get here — conspiring with Marcus, asking the Erudite for help, crawling across a ladder three stories up, shooting myself in a simulation — and all the sacrifices I made — my relationship with Tobias, Fernando’s life, my standing among the Dauntless — were for nothing.

Nothing.

A moment later, the glass door opens again. Tobias and Uriah storm in as if to fight a battle — Uriah coughing, probably from the poison — but the battle is done. Jeanine is dead, Tori is triumphant, and I am a Dauntless traitor.

Tobias stops in the middle of a step, almost stumbling over his feet, when he sees me. His eyes open wider.

“She is a traitor,” says Tori. “She just almost shot me to defend Jeanine.”

“What?” says Uriah. “Tris, what’s going on? Is she right? Why are you even here?”

But I look only at Tobias. A sliver of hope pierces me, strangely painful, when combined with the guilt I feel for how I deceived him. Tobias is stubborn and proud, but he is mine — maybe he will listen, maybe there’s a chance that all I did was not in vain—

“You know why I’m here,” I say quietly. “Don’t you?”

I hold out Tori’s gun. He walks forward, a little unsteady on his feet, and takes it.

“We found Marcus in the next room, caught in a simulation,” Tobias says. “You came up here with him.”

“Yes, I did,” I say, blood from Tori’s bite trickling down my arm.

“I trusted you,” he says, his body shaking with rage. “I trusted you and you abandoned me to work with him ?”

“No.” I shake my head. “He told me something, and everything my brother said, everything Jeanine said while I was in Erudite headquarters, fit perfectly with what he told me. And I wanted — I needed to know the truth.”

“The truth.” He snorts. “You think you learned the truth from a liar, a traitor, and a sociopath?”

“The truth?” says Tori. “What are you talking about?”

Tobias and I stare at each other. His blue eyes, usually so thoughtful, are now hard and critical, like they are peeling back layer after layer of me and searching each one.

“I think,” I say. I have to pause and take a breath, because I have not convinced him; I have failed, and this is probably the last thing they will let me say before they arrest me.

“I think that you are the liar!” I say, my voice quaking. “You tell me you love me, you trust me, you think I’m more perceptive than the average person. And the first second that belief in my perceptiveness, that trust, that love is put to the test, it all falls apart.” I am crying now, but I am not ashamed of the tears shining on my cheeks or the thickness of my voice. “So you must have lied when you told me all those things … you must have, because I can’t believe your love is really that feeble.”

I step closer to him, so that there are only inches between us, and none of the others can hear me.

“I am still the person who would have died rather than kill you,” I say, remembering the attack simulation and the feel of his heartbeat under my hand. “I am exactly who you think I am. And right now, I’m telling you that I know … I know this information will change everything. Everything we have done, and everything we are about to do.”

I stare at him like I can communicate the truth with my eyes, but that is impossible. He looks away, and I’m not sure he even heard what I said.