Veronica Roth - Divergent Trilogy

The pane shatters, and the force of the water against my back throws me forward. There is air again.

I gasp and sit up. I’m in the chair. I gulp and shake out my hands. Four stands to my right, but instead of helping me up, he just looks at me.

“What?” I ask.

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Crack the glass.”

“I don’t know.” Four finally offers me his hand. I swing my legs over the side of the chair, and when I stand, I feel steady. Calm.

He sighs and grabs me by the elbow, half leading and half dragging me out of the room. We walk quickly down the hallway, and then I stop, pulling my arm back. He stares at me in silence. He won’t give me information without prompting.

“What?” I demand.

“You’re Divergent,” he replies.

I stare at him, fear pulsing through me like electricity. He knows. How does he know? I must have slipped up. Said something wrong.

I should act casual. I lean back, pressing my shoulders to the wall, and say, “What’s Divergent?”

“Don’t play stupid,” he says. “I suspected it last time, but this time it’s obvious. You manipulated the simulation; you’re Divergent. I’ll delete the footage, but unless you want to wind up dead at the bottom of the chasm, you’ll figure out how to hide it during the simulations! Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He walks back to the simulation room and slams the door behind him. I feel my heartbeat in my throat. I manipulated the simulation; I broke the glass. I didn’t know that was an act of Divergence.

How did he?

I push myself away from the wall and start down the hallway. I need answers, and I know who has them.

I walk straight to the tattoo place where I last saw Tori.

There aren’t many people out, because it’s midafter-noon and most of them are at work or at school. There are three people in the tattoo place: the other tattoo artist, who is drawing a lion on another man’s arm, and Tori, who is sorting through a stack of paper on the counter. She looks up when I walk in.

“Hello, Tris,” she says. She glances at the other tattoo artist, who is too focused on what he’s doing to notice us. “Let’s go in the back.”

I follow her behind the curtain that separates the two rooms. The next room contains a few chairs, spare tattoo needles, ink, pads of paper, and framed artwork. Tori draws the curtain shut and sits in one of the chairs. I sit next to her, tapping my feet to give myself something to do.

“What’s going on?” she says. “How are the simulations going?”

“Really well.” I nod a few times. “A little too well, I hear.”

“Ah.”

“Please help me understand,” I say quietly. “What does it mean to be…” I hesitate. I should not say the word “Divergent” here. “What the hell am I? What does it have to do with the simulations?”

Tori’s demeanor changes. She leans back and crosses her arms. Her expression becomes guarded.

“Among other things, you…you are someone who is aware, when they are in a simulation, that what they are experiencing is not real,” she says. “Someone who can then manipulate the simulation or even shut it down. And also…” She leans forward and looks into my eyes. “Someone who, because you are also Dauntless…tends to die.”

A weight settles on my chest, like each sentence she speaks is piling there. Tension builds inside me until I can’t stand to hold it in anymore—I have to cry, or scream, or…

I let out a harsh little laugh that dies almost as soon as it’s born and say, “So I’m going to die, then?”

“Not necessarily,” she says. “The Dauntless leaders don’t know about you yet. I deleted your aptitude results from the system immediately and manually logged your result as Abnegation. But make no mistake—if they discover what you are, they will kill you.”

I stare at her in silence. She doesn’t look crazy. She sounds steady, if a little urgent, and I’ve never suspected her of being unbalanced, but she must be. There hasn’t been a murder in our city as long as I’ve been alive. Even if individuals are capable of it, the leaders of a faction can’t possibly be.

“You’re paranoid,” I say. “The leaders of the Dauntless wouldn’t kill me. People don’t do that. Not anymore. That’s the point of all this…all the factions.”

“Oh, you think so?” She plants her hands on her knees and stares right at me, her features taut with sudden ferocity. “They got my brother, why not you, huh? What makes you special?”

“Your brother?” I say, narrowing my eyes.

“Yeah. My brother. He and I both transferred from Erudite, only his aptitude test was inconclusive. On the last day of simulations, they found his body in the chasm. Said it was a suicide. Only my brother was doing well in training, he was dating another initiate, he was happy.” She shakes her head. “You have a brother, right? Don’t you think you would know if he was suicidal?”

I try to imagine Caleb killing himself. Even the thought sounds ridiculous to me. Even if Caleb was miserable, it would not be an option.

Her sleeves are rolled up, so I can see a tattoo of a river on her right arm. Did she get it after her brother died? Was the river another fear she overcame?

She lowers her voice. “In the second stage of training, Georgie got really good, really fast. He said the simulations weren’t even scary to him…they were like a game. So the instructors took a special interest in him. Piled into the room when he went under, instead of just letting the instructor report his results. Whispered about him all the time. The last day of simulations, one of the Dauntless leaders came in to see it himself. And the next day, Georgie was gone.”

I could be good at the simulations, if I mastered whatever force helped me break the glass. I could be so good that all the instructors took notice. I could, but will I?

“Is that all it is?” I say. “Just changing the simulations?”

“I doubt it,” she says, “but that’s all I know.”

“How many people know about this?” I say, thinking of Four. “About manipulating the simulations?”

“Two kinds of people,” she says. “People who want you dead. Or people who have experienced it themselves. Firsthand. Or secondhand, like me.”

Four told me he would delete the recording of me breaking the glass. He doesn’t want me dead. Is he Divergent? Was a family member? A friend? A girlfriend?

I push the thought aside. I can’t let him distract me.

“I don’t understand,” I say slowly, “why the Dauntless leaders care that I can manipulate the simulation.”

“If I had it figured out, I would have told you by now.” She presses her lips together. “The only thing I’ve come up with is that changing the simulation isn’t what they care about; it’s just a symptom of something else. Something they do care about.”

Tori takes my hand and presses it between her palms.

“Think about this,” she says. “These people taught you how to use a gun. They taught you how to fight. You think they’re above hurting you? Above killing you?”

She releases my hand and stands.

“I have to go or Bud will ask questions. Be careful, Tris.”

THE DOOR TO the Pit closes behind me, and I am alone. I have not walked this tunnel since the day of the Choosing Ceremony. I remember how I walked it then, my footsteps unsteady, searching for light. I walk it surefooted now. I don’t need light anymore.

It has been four days since I spoke to Tori. Since then, Erudite has released two articles about Abnegation. The first article accuses Abnegation of withholding luxuries like cars and fresh fruit from the other factions in order to force their belief in self-denial on everyone else. When I read it, I thought of Will’s sister, Cara, accusing my mother of hoarding goods.