XXXV

The journey was easier than it could have been. The rain could have made Aletheia slip, the train could have been going at its normal speeds, the jump from the train to the Dauntless roof could have gone sour.

But Aletheia was quiet, determined, and much more athletic than me. I was going to take her into Dauntless via the fire escape, but the rain came in another torrent that would have made it impossible, so we jumped into the net. After I went down, she only hesitated for a moment before following. Then we were inside, two Candor girls inside Dauntless, both of us very wet, one of us very sad, and the other of us very scared.

I knew I would take the fall for this. Aletheia wasn’t Divergent, as far as I could tell; she would tell the full truth in the Full Unveiling and I would be outed as the one who took her to Dauntless. I didn’t know what I could do about it. I didn’t have Irene. I was in Morris’ bad books. I had a huge rose tattoo on my chest, which was now fully exposed by my black tank top. But the future—even the future as close as next week—seemed so uncertain that it was almost unreal. I didn’t know what to feel except vague, paralyzing dread.

Something had bound me to Aletheia and her to me, at some point between the tea and now. We ducked inside a bathroom to dry off. I did her hair in a simple braid, like I had seen on some Dauntless women. She pulled out a little pencil and lined her eyes with dark, flared wings, then did the same for me. My suspicions had been confirmed. Despite her Candor upbringing, Aletheia was no stranger to makeup. She applied it in the morning before anyone woke up and took it off at night after everyone went to bed, and she bought her supplies in secret from an Erudite store. She did the same face every day, a “natural” look. It was a guilty pleasure, a crutch. She said she was going to give up the habit after the Full Unveiling. She was lying.

Neither of us knew where the funeral was supposed to be, but I suspected the Pit. I knew I was right as soon as we entered. The floors and walkways were packed with Dauntless, more than I had ever seen before; the noise was deafening. The air was rich with the stench of alcohol, and not the refined stuff that the Candor drank; it was beer and whiskey and all those sorts of cruder drinks that Ace mentioned or passed to me to smell. Somewhere below, a group erupted into song, the words distorted by the echoes and laughs and slurs of a hundred voices.

Aletheia clung to my arm as I led her down the path, but nobody noticed us. Everyone was drunk. I didn’t know why that surprised me.

In Abnegation, a funeral was a somber occasion. Everyone gathered to support the deceased’s family, and no one had idle hands. The body was cremated immediately and placed in an unglazed urn, and on the outside of the urn, the loved ones could write messages. Compliments, prayers, farewells. There was no laughter or shouting or singing. There was no alcohol. We faced our loss with nothing to dull the pain.

In front of the chasm was a raised pyre, upon which lay a shape under black cloth.

“Albert,” whispered Aletheia.

She tugged my arm, and suddenly I was following her, wading through the throngs. A woman in front of us lurched to the right, losing her balance, then erupted into giggles as she fell into a man’s arms. I could feel Aletheia’s trembling. She had probably never been among so many Dauntless, especially not like this. I had walked among them for a week and I was still frightened here.

She sped up. We pushed through the thickest part of the crowd, towards the front where a group of other teenagers were gathered. Aletheia didn’t seem to see any of them. As if hypnotized, she stared at the unlit pyre.

“Allie?” said a voice.

I turned. A girl stood among the other teens, staring at us. She was tall and pretty, with dark brown skin and short hair that might normally be neat, but which was now tangled and unkempt. Even though she was dressed in Dauntless black, there was a way she held herself, a set to her shoulders and tension in her face, that betrayed where she came from.

“Christina,” Aletheia choked.

She rushed forward and the two Candor-born met in a tight hug. No questions. No hesitation.

“I’m sorry,” Christina murmured. “I’m so, so sorry.”

I stepped back, hoping to disappear. I knew it couldn’t be a good thing that Aletheia was recognized, but there was nothing I could do about it now. There were about fifty other initiates. I couldn’t pass myself off as one of them in a class so small, so I stood alone and still. I watched as Aletheia sat down with Christina. After a while, they were joined by a stocky girl with crooked teeth and a muscular boy with shiny hair. Four Candor. They passed around a silver flask.

When one of the Dauntless initiates stood up and walked towards me, I couldn’t help but flinch.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soft. Somehow familiar.

“Hey,” I echoed warily.

“Tris, right?” he asked.

I startled again. My Dauntless alias. That was when I knew why this boy was familiar—dark skin, eyes like warm coffee, a faint scattering of freckles.

“Yes,” I said. “And you’re…” I couldn’t remember the name.

“Uriah,” he finished. “Uriah McCandless-Pedrad.”

“Ace told you about me,” I said.

Uriah nodded.

“I guess we’re cousins,” he said. “My mom’s, uh, your mom’s younger sister. Hana.”

“Aunt Hana,” I said, feeling the words. “I never thought I’d have aunts.”

“You have Aunt Irene, don’t you?”

I pressed my lips together. “Oh, she doesn’t like the A-word.”

“Gotcha. Well, my mom’s okay with it, maybe I can take you to meet her.”

“That would be nice.”

“What a time for a family reunion, huh?”

“Yeah. What a time.”

He offered me a drink from his flask. I declined at first. A minute later, I took a large gulp, squeezing my eyes against the burning as it went down my throat.

Around the Pit, a chorus of voices went up. A man was climbing on a box near the funeral pyre, standing tall above the crowds. Eric. His eyes flicked around the crowd, and I prayed that he wouldn’t see Aletheia, but then they rested on me. An arm settled over my shoulders, Uriah’s. Then Eric’s gaze moved on.

“Ladies, enbies, and gentlemen,” he bellowed. The voices subsided into mutters, and every eye in the Pit turned to Eric. He had a dark bottle in his hand and took a long swig.

“My Dauntless. We are gathered here today to send off one of our own. Last night, in the silence of darkness, our initiate Al Madsen threw himself into the chasm.”

The mutters stopped too. Only the rush of the water in the chasm, like unending distant applause.

“We do not know why,” said Eric, “and it would be easy to mourn the loss of him tonight. But we did not choose a life of ease when we became Dauntless. And the truth of it is…” He smiled grimly. If I wasn’t already so suspicious of him, I would have thought it was a genuine smile. “The truth is, Al is now exploring an unknown, uncertain place. He leaped into vicious waters to get there. Who among us is brave enough to venture into that abyss, without knowing what lies beyond it? When he died, Al was not yet a true Dauntless, but we shall honor him as one, for he died as one of our bravest!”

A cry rose from the center of the crowd. The Dauntless cheered at varying pitches, high and low, bright and deep, tumbling and crashing. Hands thrust bottles into the air, clouds of stinging spray that fell as rain and coated our faces. A dark echo of the waters below.

“We will celebrate him now, and remember him always!” yelled Eric. Someone handed him a torch, and he lowered the flame to the black cloth. As the flame spread, Eric stepped back, raising the burning torch above his head. “To Al, the Lionheart!”

“To the Lionheart!” shouted the crowd.

Arms lifted all around me, and the Dauntless chanted the name. Lionheart—bestowed upon only the bravest of Dauntless. Again and again, until the word became unreal. It was the primal scream of an ancient race. Hoarse and choking as smoke filled the room. There were vents that would help clear the air, though they weren’t working fast enough. The Dauntless were getting too drunk to care.

But I cared. I left Aletheia with the Candor transfers. I could not breathe, and it wasn’t because of the smoke.

I didn’t know where I was going. Probably nowhere at all, just away. I found the stairwell to the initiate’s wing and unlocked it with two pins. Just like when I visited with Ace, it was dark, only the corners and intersections bathed in blue light. The training room with the punching bags was also dark, but unlocked, and I stepped in.

As the fluorescent lights slowly clicked on, I found myself standing in front of the chalkboard with names. I knew some of them now. Uriah was first. Christina was fifth. I found Al’s name at the bottom, with some other names under a dotted line. He had been failing. His fate, after the Dauntless final exam, would have made him street patrol or factionless.

My stomach clenched. What kind of place was this, to call suicide brave? I didn’t want to assume anything—I never knew Al. Aletheia had told me some things about him. He was kind, so kind, too kind for Candor. Perhaps too kind for Dauntless. It was twisted, hearing the Dauntless celebrate his death as if their lifestyle had made him braver, glorifying whatever struggle he must have been having, as if by driving someone to suicide they had done something right.

I ran to the punching bags. I took all my anger, all my confusion out on the leather. I didn’t bother taping up my hands, so my knuckles turned red and raw, but I didn’t care.

Ace was nicer to me than I deserved. She had never once commented on how I could easily wind myself after ten minutes, which I did. I hadn’t even finished being mad before I was breathless, bracing myself against the wall with a nasty stitch in my side.

Cursing, I left the gym and limped to the water fountain. Far down the right corridor, a thousand distant voices roared. The festivities were still going strong. Down the left corridor, two voices conversed in hushed tones. Something brushed up against the back of my mind, familiarity. I ignored it. But as soon as the water touched my lips, I snapped straight up again.

I knew both of the voices. The first was Eric, low and sharp. The second— it couldn’t be.

Looking around, I saw that I was alone, so I left the comfort of the blue light and ducked into the shelter of the shadows. I pressed close to the wall, keeping my steps soft. The voices were just around the corner, out of sight. But I didn’t need to see.

“It’s here in the order form,” said Caleb. “You wrote, look, two hundred single doses.”

I swallowed. Of all the places I had expected to hear my twin brother’s voice, it wasn’t here. It was different—I supposed my own might be different, too, if I was to hear it back at me—more confident. Even irritated. I had never heard Caleb be irritated before.

“ Two thousand, boy,” Eric snapped. “That’s another zero.”

“That’s a pencil smudge,” Caleb replied.

“The hell would I do with two hundred doses? I’m drugging up a whole damn faction. Jesus, even for an initiate, you’re stupid.”

“May I make a suggestion?” asked Caleb, his voice even tighter now. “Perhaps we can leave the crates here, with you, and you can unpack them. That way, I’m not being insulted for doing my job and my team doesn’t have to do the grunt work that your Dauntless should have been ready to do. Perhaps when we return with the last eighteen hundred doses, you’re ready to treat your guests with respect.”

“ Respect ,” Eric hissed. There was silence. The noise of heavy boots pacing on the ground. “Fine. Leave the crates in the loading bay. But just you wait, I’ll be talking to Jeanine about this.”

“Good,” said Caleb. “She wants to know why you only ordered two hundred doses.”

Eric’s heavy bootfalls retreated down the hall. When they disappeared, I heard Caleb mutter, “Brute.”

This was my chance. I stepped out from behind the wall.

“Caleb.”

He was a thin black silhouette looking down at a glowing blue screen. When I spoke, he jumped, almost dropping the thing. “What—who are you?”

Of course he couldn’t see. It was dark as a tomb here. Impatient, I grabbed his wrist and dragged him back down the hall where I came, to the water fountain with the light. He protested, terrified, until the second the light hit my bare, freckled shoulder. Then he froze.

“Beatrice?”

We faced each other, our shoulders squared in the same way, on opposite sides of the ring of light. He stared at me. I stared at him. He was taller. Or at least, it felt like it. His black hair had grown out so it curled around his ears, and he wore a blue jacket and rectangular glasses; he was a person of a kind that I wasn’t supposed to love. But for a second, it didn’t matter. I threw myself at him and hugged him tight.

“You have a tattoo,” he said, his voice muffled.

“You have glasses,” I said. I pulled back and narrowed my eyes. “Your vision is perfect, Caleb, what are you doing?”

“You’re a Candor transfer, what are you doing?” he echoed.

“Crimes.”

“What?”

“That’s my business. Why are you in Dauntless?”

“That’s my business,” Caleb retorted, the edge coming back to his voice. “What do you mean, crimes? How did you even get here?”

“Very long story. I invoke the birthright. Now stop asking questions and start answering them, I’ll start over. What are you doing in Dauntless?”

Caleb opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. The birthright stopped him. As long as we could remember, everyone assumed I was the younger sibling and treated me as such. It made Caleb feel bad and made me feel like the punchline of a cosmic stand-up comedy routine.

This led to us striking a deal—we wouldn’t make a fuss when people assumed the birth order, since making a fuss was selfish. But if we were discussing something between ourselves, I could invoke “the birthright”. The birthright was a completely selfish command. It meant that whatever was happening, I now had the high ground, and any disagreement from Caleb was invalid. I think he only gave me that power because there were few discussions between us that didn’t eventually go back to our parents, who frowned upon the power of the birthright. But our parents weren’t here.

“I don’t have to answer that just because you invoked some childhood deal,” said Caleb.

“Your voice is wobbling. Your lower lip is tight. You’re doubting that,” I told him.

“Look, I don’t know, okay?” Caleb gave in. “I was hired for an internship; it’s supposed to help me pass initiation. I measure doses of Erudite serums and I deliver them around the city.”

“What kind of serums?”

“There’s a lot of kinds. I’m not told what they’re for or what they do, only where they go.”

“Eric said he needs to drug a whole faction. What kind of serum’s for a whole faction?”

It was supposed to be a harder question, but Caleb didn’t even hesitate. “Amity. Their peace serum. Sometimes the Dauntless accompany the delivery trains for safety. It’s probably that.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Peace serum isn’t single-dose. It’s baked into the bread.”

“I don’t know,” Caleb snapped. “I just deliver the shipments.”

For a while, I was quiet. He was telling the truth about all of it. Unless he was such a different person now that his tells had changed, too. He took off his glasses and shoved them in his pocket, then ran a hand through his hair, his eyes skipping over mine nervously. Like he was ashamed. Maybe I should’ve been, too. I was tattooed, scraped, and black-clothed. I didn’t even look like the faction that I had chosen. But I wasn’t ashamed. I let him take it in.

“Can you explain any of it?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Why did you choose Candor?”

I shrugged.

“Is this about—” Caleb hesitated, then pointed to the tattoo and the scar. “That? What the murderer did to you?”

“In a way,” I said softly.

“What do you mean?”

I didn’t answer that.

“Aren’t you…are you happy in Candor?”

“Of course. I live there most of the time. I’m here only on occasion.”

I shifted. The conversation was getting uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have been telling Caleb any of this. I shouldn’t have talked to Caleb at all. I pressed the button on the water fountain for a long time, and water spilled over the edge.

“I’m here because things are…changing,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve felt it.”

He nodded solemnly. “Something’s wrong.”

“A lot of things are.”

“I feel like everyone’s rushing, all the time. Every day, Jeanine gives a speech about how the government is driving us to destruction. It scares me, Beatrice, I don’t know what to do.”

“Which part scares you? The government, or Jeanine giving speeches?”

He looked like he had an answer, but didn’t say it.

“Do you believe Jeanine?” I asked.

“No. Maybe. I don’t…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to believe.”

Drip. I had long since let go of the button. But there were still drips. Drip.

“No,” I agreed. “Neither do I. But I guess, in a way, that’s your answer.”

“To what?”

Drip.

“Why I chose Candor,” I said. “Because I get the feeling that the truth isn’t as black and white as they make it out to be. So I’m going to find out what it really looks like.”

“It sounds like you think I’m not doing that,” said Caleb. Defensiveness crept into his voice.

“Don’t assume.” Drip.

“Black and white—you’re one to talk, Beatrice, I thought black and white was Candor’s whole thing. Refusing to take sides. Impartiality. Hating everyone equally.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re changing the subject.”

“Am I?”

“Stop playing word games.”

“I mean that if you’re looking for truth, I don’t think you’re going to find it in Candor,” Caleb snapped. “What do I mean? I mean that I’ve seen things, Beatrice, things you would never be able to explain. Everyone likes to say that Candor and Abnegation are opposite sides, but it’s the same coin. The things that are happening with the factionless, that one judge who went rogue, the justice system being unable to punish the right kind of people, it’s all the same issue.”

Anger bubbled hot in my gut. “Is it?”

“Abnegation is making bad decisions and Candor is enforcing them,” Caleb continued, barely hearing me. “It’s incompetency.”

“And you got all this from Jeanine?”

“I got this from asking questions—something we weren’t ever allowed to do before, you know that—but there, in Erudite, information is free, it’s always available.”

“So you know the whole picture because you read about it in a journal.”

“Multiple journals.”

“Apologies for the misunderstanding.”

“That’s impertinent. You’re impertinent.”

“I got stabbed, Caleb.”

“What does that have to do with anything? Beatrice, I know because I’ve seen it.”

“Sight isn’t truth,” I told him. “Everyone sees what they want to believe. When you said you don’t know what you believe, I think you were lying.”

Silence fell between us. Our eyes locked, and neither of us blinked for a very long time.

“Then maybe I do believe something,” said Caleb. “But it’s better than whatever you’re doing.”

He looked down at my outfit, pieced together from Ace’s closet, my closet, and things from the Dauntless lost-and-found. Dauntless and Candor and factionless, a scavenger. Disloyal. Indecisive. Drip.

The corridor suddenly felt too cold. Caleb wasn’t wrong. I looked at him as if we’d both changed, but had we? The last time we’d spoken in our room, before the Choosing Ceremony, was it really so different? He’d already made his decision. He had chosen his side. But me…I was lost. I was still lost. I had gotten my answer; at heart, I was Candor. I had chosen; my future could be nothing but Candor. I had made my name; the city knew me as Candor.

But my actions betrayed me. I was more similar to Aletheia than I would ever admit aloud—like her guilty pleasure of makeup, I was indulging parts of me that I knew I would soon have to strip away. I might have chosen, but I had not made up my mind.

A distant voice snagged my thoughts. Eric. Multiple sets of boots, he had brought friends. I looked back at Caleb, suddenly panicked.

“I have to go,” I said. “You can’t tell them you saw me.”

I almost turned and left him with that. Surely, he would understand. But then I saw the coldness in his eyes, the twitch of his upper lip.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Caleb—”

“I’m not a law student like you, but I think that if you see someone committing a crime, you’re supposed to report it. Is that right?”

The voices were growing louder. The panic rose in my throat. I grabbed his shoulders.

“We’re family, Caleb. Please.”

With a jerk, he pulled away from me, and his hand fumbled for his glasses.

“We’re not family,” he said, turning away. “I thought you made that choice already.”

For a second I was frozen. I watched him walk back into the dark. I wanted to call his name, but the voices of the Dauntless were very close now, and a pain in my chest told me that Caleb wouldn’t come back. I heard him call Eric’s name. I heard them exchange words, and Eric’s voice grew angry.

I didn’t stick around to find out what Eric would do. I turned on my heel and ran.