XXXIX

The Full Unveiling was held on the top floor of the Merciless Mart’s central tower. Or, more accurately, the top five floors of the central tower. Long ago, the Candor took all of the essential parts of the old Merchandise Mart—such as the foundations and roof—and carved them out, leaving the historic outside shell intact. Art deco was kind of their thing, after all. One of the major changes was the basement distillery, where the Candor manufactured their infamous truth serum. I had already seen that. I hadn’t yet seen what they did to the roof.

Its formal name was the Grand Courtroom. Most Candor called it “the Coliseum”. It was the only courtroom large enough to fit the whole faction. It had, indeed, been modeled after a Roman arena, concentric circles of seats descending into a central courtroom floor, but that wasn’t where the Coliseum got its name. The Choosing Ceremony room was similar. The difference was that the Choosing Ceremony room did not see many death row inmates. The worst types of criminals were tried in the Grand Courtroom—pedophiles, rapists, murderers, and prospective lawyers.

When we filed inside and sat down in the inner circle, the whole faction was there, every seat filled and every voice talking. Only adult members were allowed to witness the Full Unveiling, though I recognized many of them as being not much older than we were. The morning sun poured into the room through the glass ceiling and some window panels were open to let in fresh air. It really was a nice day. The judges’ bench was empty, but a clerk and a reporter were already preparing their typewriters and cameras.

I looked down the row at my peers. Loose hair, clear faces, white robes. Identical, except for the fact that I was the only one wearing handcuffs. Some of us held notebooks or folders in our hands, prepared testimonies, but not many. Oona was to my right, since her last name was Posner—there was some joke to be made about this feeling like the Choosing Ceremony all over again. Her head was bowed, her beautiful hair hiding her face like a curtain. Far down the line, Ravi was shrinking deep into his robe and clutching his folder. He couldn’t be excited about needing to take it off without the comfort of his binder. Sherlock’s hands were quaking so bad that I could see it from my seat.

One minute to eight, Jed Fitzgerald, the other Amity transfer, stood up sharply.

“I can’t do it!” he screamed, and took off running.

A sudden hush rippled through the crowd of Candor. They watched Jed run like his life was on the line, pushing past the bailiffs. Just like that, he was factionless.

Up on the judge’s bench, Judge Morris had been chatting with a few older Candor. He gave the room a cold smirk before leaning into the microphone and saying, “Well, he didn’t pass the exams anyway.”

Too many people laughed. My stomach turned.

The doors opened again, but not to let another terrified initiate leave. Jack Kang appeared, flanked by four other judges in long black robes.

“All rise,” said a bailiff.

As one, all of Candor stood.

Kang took his place in the center of the judges’ bench, the other four judges on the lower platforms behind desks with shiny metal nameplates. Kang was the youngest one on the bench. Judge McDougall and Judge Coulter-Moore both looked old enough to be someone’s great-grandmothers, and Judge Paylor possessed a striking resemblance to a dried banana crisp with a receding hairline. Judge Williams seemed to be the second youngest, with a kindly dark face and a beautiful braided bun. I already liked her.

“Please be seated,” Kang said into the microphone. As one, all of Candor sat.

“The Full Unveiling is now in session,” announced the clerk, a mousy woman with a nasally voice. “Each testimony shall be heard by the Honorable Bryn McDougall, the Honorable Leslie Coulter-Moore, the Honorable Thaddeus Paylor, and the Honorable Dasanya Williams. The Honorable Jack Kang, executive director of Candor, shall preside over the questioning and serve as the deciding vote in the event of a tie.”

I looked out over the crowd. Only now had it occurred to me to search for Irene. She sat in the second row near the stairs and was the only person wearing sunglasses.

The clerk continued. “Initiates. By consenting to this test, you consent for video evidence of your testimony to be recorded and broadcast for the free and live viewing of anyone within the city limits. To respect the modesty laws of other factions, you shall only be filmed from the shoulders up.”

A relief. Thankfully, I had known about that part, or else I might not have consented to doing the Full Unveiling. Irene and I had planned accordingly.

At that point, the clerk opened her mouth to continue reading from her tablet, but hesitated. She turned around to look at Jack Kang, who nodded. “To conclude this ceremony,” said the clerk, looking a little pale, “the court shall hear the verified testimony of the Abnegation transfer Beatrice Phoebe Prior, charged with multiple counts of felony trespassing, identity theft, and fraud. Honorable Justices, under the protection of Dauntless, Prior has requested special accomodations for her verification hearing of these charges. She wishes to undergo the Full Unveiling with her peers and requests, along with judgment upon her testimony, the judgment of her membership in Candor. Justices, shall you move to grant Miss Prior these privileges?”

“Aye,” said Judge McDougall.

“Abstain,” said Judge Coulter-Moore.

“Nay,” said Judge Paylor.

“Aye,” said Judge Williams.

Jack Kang rubbed his chin. After a moment, he said, “Abstain.”

“Motion passed with a plurality of two,” said the clerk. “Miss Prior’s testimony has been added to the docket, to be heard at the convenience of the court.”

There were so many eyes on me that my skin was crawling. Now, I forced myself to stop looking in awe and abject terror around the room and to stare straight in front of me. I focused on the uncomfortable-looking metal chair in the center of the room.

“I would like to say a few words before we begin,” said Kang. “Although you will be hearing many, many words today, so I’ll try to make it brief.”

Some of the Candor chuckled. I wasn’t sure what the joke was yet. Kang smirked and folded his hands on the desk before him.

“Let’s be honest with each other—nobody chooses Candor because they think it will be fun. Our life doesn’t offer much. Our members aren’t extraordinary by nature. Our children transfer out at record rates. This year, of the forty-three sixteen-year-olds to grow up in Candor, only eight stayed, and only twelve transferred in to take their place. Granted, these numbers are a little unusual, but the point is clear.

“For a sixteen-year-old, there are futures that are so much brighter than what we offer in Candor. Amity offers a future of ease and indulgence. Dauntless offers a future of thrill and rebellion. Erudite offers a future of wealth and ambition. Abnegation offers a future of community and security. Each offers something better than what you came from—contentment, sex appeal, validation, or fulfillment.”

He paused to smile at an unsaid thought.

“Yet, for your own reasons, you chose a future of stress and misery. To commit yourselves to truth. There are no benefits, no returns, and no dividends to that kind of choice. Every day, you will struggle with that very human bit of self-preservation inside of you that tells you to lie, and you will not always win. Both truth and lies will cause conflict in your lives. You can take as much truth serum as you like. You can hold all your hope in the changing power of the Full Unveiling. But if anyone has told you that honesty becomes easier with time, they are lying.

“The pursuit of truth is a choice that you make whenever you take a breath. The breaths will become harder. Sometimes you will try, choke, and feel as if you have failed. And it is this, I think, that makes a true Candor. Not the lack of dishonesty, or the lack of the struggle—but the choice to admit your failings, to choose justice over nature, and to move forward.”

Kang let his eyes roam the room. For a second, they landed on mine, and I could swear he held them. But I wasn’t sure if that was just wishful thinking. He had to know what I planned to do, or he wouldn’t have given that sympathetic little smile afterwards.

“That being said…let’s begin.”

+ + +

It was going to be a long, nervous, uncomfortable day.

Aletheia was first. When they called her name, she stood up, walked to the bailiff at the edge of the center circle, and undressed. Then, clothed in only the white skirt, Aletheia held her chin high and approached the bench. Her face was clean of makeup—besides a few red acne spots around her nose, it was still flawless. I wondered what she had been trying to fix. Her face was just as perfect as her body.

“Miss Albright,” said Jack Kang. “Do you consent to receive your exam scores, take an injection of 46% concentrated veritarbital, and answer the questions of the court?”

“Yes,” said Aletheia.

“Thank you. You received an average of 90 on your final exams. Please be seated.”

That brought a smile to Aletheia’s face as she sat in the chair. I hadn’t doubted that she would pass, but clearly, she had.

Ben approached Aletheia with a clear syringe, its needle almost as long as the Dauntless serum. He pulled her long blond hair out of the way, positioned the point over a vein in her neck, and injected the full syringe. When he stepped back, five panels rose from the floor, surrounding Aletheia. One-way mirrors—we could see her, but all she could see was herself.

Jack Kang cleared his throat into the microphone.

“May the truth set you free,” he said.

And so it began.

As Irene had told us earlier, the traditional line of questioning followed Candor’s eight vices, lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, envy, wrath, pride, and deceit. I had wondered how they planned to ask every single question relating to each vice, but it turned out they didn’t need to. Apparently, 46% truth serum had a mind of its own. As soon as the word ‘lust’ left Kang’s mouth, Aletheia blurted, “I’m still in love with Al. I snuck out last week and went to his funeral in Dauntless. I got so drunk, I don’t even remember what happened after they set him on fire. I just love him so much. I miss him. Every day I dream about what our family would’ve been like.”

I sighed. Yes, it was going to be a very long day.

To my surprise, Aletheia wasn’t quite as scandalous of a person as I thought, though some of the things she did to her siblings were cruel, bordering on sadistic. The makeup thing was a big deal in the pride and deceit category, but I’d already known about that.

Aletheia rambled on for about twenty minutes at the gentle prompting of the judges, crying the whole time, before the serum began to wear off. She went small and silent in her chair, gripping her seat with white knuckles. Slowly, Jack Kang asked, “Miss Albright, is there anything more you wish to say?”

She shook her head.

“Thank you for your candor.”

In unison, the crowd echoed, “Thank you for your candor.”

“Please approach the bench,” said Kang.

The mirrors slid down and she looked up. Her knees trembling like a newborn foal’s, she stepped towards the panel of judges.

“Justices, do you grant Aletheia Albright membership into Candor?” asked the clerk.

Four “ayes” from the four judges. Jack Kang smiled down at Aletheia.

“Congratulations,” he said.

The whole room applauded. Aletheia burst into tears again—tears of joy. The bailiff approached with a new robe, black with a white sash and silver cord, and draped it over her shoulders. As she returned to her seat, I saw her face again. It was brighter and lovelier than ever before.

“Ravi Balakrishnan,” said the clerk.

He bounded up with his folder, his prepared testimony. My shoulders relaxed. Gone was the terror from Ravi’s face; he actually seemed excited now. Still nervous, but ready. He faced the room with his stance set, untied his robe, and stepped towards the bench.

But he didn’t see what I saw. Jack Kang’s face was suddenly cold again. Troubled. Something was wrong.

“Mr. Balakrishnan,” he said slowly, “do you consent to receive your exam scores, take an injection of 46% concentrated veritarbital, and answer the questions of the court?”

“I’m ready,” said Ravi, grinning.

Kang hesitated. Then he sighed. “I’m sorry. You received an average of 84 on your final exams. You are ineligible to take the Full Unveiling.”

My heart almost stopped.

The room was reeling. Not him. Not Ravi. He worked so hard. He had a dream. He wanted to be a detective. An 84, one point short of passing; that was the score Oona had gotten on her midterms and she received nothing but praise for it. Ravi got a door slammed in his face.

“No,” he murmured. “That can’t be it—”

“Ravi Balakrishnan, from this day forth, you are factionless,” said Kang.

“But that’s not fair!” Ravi burst. He rushed towards the judges and gripped the podium like a life raft. “Look—please—I didn’t get accommodations until last week; I was told that they’d judge my grade differently—”

“The Justices have already reviewed your case,” the clerk put in. “A 3-2 majority decided that you failed. Bailiffs, get him away from the bench.”

Two bailiffs approached Ravi. “No!” He shook his head. “This isn’t fair. This isn’t justice. You lied to me!”

They grabbed him by the arms and threw his white robe over him again. But Ravi began to fight. He kicked his legs, jerked his head, and balled his hands into fists. His name escaped my mouth, and as they dragged him past me to the door, we locked eyes.

“Help me,” he gasped.

The bailiffs took him away and closed the doors, cutting off the last screams.

The Full Unveilings continued. But I barely heard. It was just Ravi’s scream over and over in my head. My first instinct was to be optimistic. Maybe he and Jed would cross paths on the way out and they could set off together. Surely, if a thirteen-year-old Abigail Eaton could survive sudden factionlessness, then Ravi, the toughest bastard I knew, would be fine. But there was so much happening now, like whispers of revolution and half-Dauntless patrols with too many guns. Ravi was from Erudite. Could the factionless tell? It made my mouth go dry as sandpaper to think of what might happen to him. And that very soon, it might be happening to me.

My fingers tightened around my journal. Several times today my resolve to continue with this plan had faltered. No, this was the reason I had to press on. For Ravi, Jed, and Katie. For me.

The only thing I heard in the next three hours was the first part of Sherlock’s testimony. “I’m sleeping with Oona,” he said, his voice flat from the truth serum.

Instead of making him cry, like it had for Aletheia, all emotion seemed to drain from him. His green eyes were hollow and pale, underlined with deep shadows.

“We’ve been seeing each other since Phoebe rejected me. But I don’t even know if I like Oona. I don’t know if I ever liked Phoebe. I know that I like the sex. But I don’t know what to feel. Maybe I just went to Oona because I was lonely. Phoebe was the only one who would understand what it’s like—almost dying there in the attic, feeling so vulnerable and frightened all the time, being terrified of being alone. But Phoebe...did her own thing. The opposite. She became solitary and secretive. She started going out all the time, we’d see her with that Dauntless woman and sneaking around in places she shouldn’t have been, and it terrified me. Oona didn’t understand it, either. Maybe we only got close because we were both lonely. Phoebe abandoned both of us. So we tried to make ourselves feel better with each other, so we wouldn’t go insane.”

On the bench, Judge Paylor leaned back and folded his arms. The clerk was typing up a storm. Next to me, Oona’s shoulders were stiff and her lower lip tight, as if she was biting it hard.

I had known how my actions affected Oona. But I had never thought about Sherlock. Besides our few direct message chats and our talk at the party, I had assumed that we weren’t very close; after all, he had all his Candor-born friends. What was special about me? And if he felt that way, why hadn’t he said anything?

The Full Unveiling went on for three hours before the judges called for an intermission. The second that the first audience member stood up to run for the bathroom, two bailiffs zoomed to my sides. I gave them pointed looks.

“If I wanted to escape,” I said, miffed, “I would’ve figured it out long ago.”

This didn’t help.

After the intermission, during which the audience and new members had a small lunch, the Unveilings resumed. Everyone who went up had passed the exams—everyone except for Ravi—and everyone faced the truth serum with their chins high. I tried to listen. But it was hard; these secrets were depressing. The most confident confessed that they were depressed and anxious. The most modest confessed to wretched sins in the dead of night. The most responsible confessed to addictions beyond imagination. In the glaring lights, all scars, birthmarks, and deformities were on display on bare skin. I could fill several books with what I heard and what I felt. But I never would, because most of all, I felt like an intruder; I was hearing each and every secret only to walk towards factionlessness. These were the Candors’ secrets to know. Not mine.

“Thank you for your candor,” I echoed with the crowd, hollow, guilty.

“Oona Posner,” said the clerk.

Oona stood up. In the row beyond her, fifteen new Candor watched us. Oona and I were the last two left, the only ones still wearing the white robes instead of the black ones.

When Oona reached the bench, however, something changed. Kang asked her if she would like to hear her scores. She said yes. He paused, then smiled, and said, “Miss Posner. Allow me the honor of announcing something quite special, something that hasn’t happened since...well, since me. Congratulations, Miss Posner, for your score of 100.”

Oona’s jaw dropped. The audience exploded into applause. In the third row, I saw Oona’s father and stepmother jump to their feet, clearly wanting to run down and congratulate her, but they stayed put. A perfect score. In the moment, it didn’t matter what kind of fight we had between us; I was proud of her. She’d worked hard for it.

Still smiling, Oona sat in the chair and held out her arm for the truth serum. Suddenly, my stomach flipped. I was next. I tried to distract myself by listening to Oona’s answers, but despite my hunger, I was so nauseous that I could only focus on not retching.

And then Oona went silent and it was over and I hadn’t heard a single word of it. She stepped up to the podium. The judges all said yes. The black robe fell over her shoulders and the room applauded again.

As Oona returned to her seat, the eyes returned to me for the second time that day. The clerk said my name and something else, a repeat of what she’d said before, about my testimony also containing the truth about my crimes.

I didn’t hear it. I just looked up at the sky, a blue that I could only pray to see again.