WE DECIDE TO follow the railroad tracks to the city, because none of us is good at navigation. I walk from tie to tie, Tobias balances on the rail, wobbling only occasionally, and Caleb and Susan shuffle behind us. I twitch at every unidentified noise, tensing until I realize it is just the wind, or the squeak of Tobias’s shoes on the rail. I wish we could keep running, but it’s a feat that my legs are even moving at this point.
Then I hear a low groan from the rails.
I bend down and press my palms to the rail, closing my eyes to focus on the feeling of the metal beneath my hands. The vibration feels like a sigh going through my body. I stare between Susan’s knees down the tracks and see no train light, but that doesn’t mean anything. The train could be running with no horns and no lamps to announce its arrival.
I see the gleam of a small train car, far away now but approaching fast.
“It’s coming,” I say. It is an effort to get to my feet when all I want to do is sit down, but I do, brushing my hands on my jeans. “I think we should get on.”
“Even if it’s run by the Erudite?” says Caleb.
“If the Erudite were running the train, they would have taken it to the Amity compound to look for us,” Tobias says. “I think it’s worth the risk. We’ll be able to hide in the city. Here we’re just waiting for them to find us.”
We all get off the tracks. Caleb gives Susan step-by-step instructions for getting on a moving train, the way only a former Erudite can. I watch the first car approach; listen to the rhythmic bump of the car over the ties, the whisper of metal wheel against metal rail.
As the first car passes me, I start to run. I ignore the burning in my legs. Caleb helps Susan into a middle car first, then jumps in himself. I take a quick breath and throw my body to the right, slamming into the floor of the car with my legs dangling over the edge. Caleb grabs my left arm and pulls me in the rest of the way. Tobias uses the handle to swing himself in after me.
I look up, and stop breathing.
Eyes glitter in the darkness. Dark shapes sit in the car, more numerous than we are.
The factionless.
The wind whistles through the car. Everyone is on their feet and armed — except Susan and me, who have no weapons. A factionless man with an eye patch has a gun pointed at Tobias. I wonder how he got it.
Next to him, an older factionless woman holds a knife — the kind I used to cut bread with. Behind him, someone else holds a large plank of wood with a nail sticking out of it.
“I’ve never seen the Amity armed before,” the factionless woman with the knife says.
The factionless man with the gun looks familiar. He wears tattered clothes in different colors — a black T- shirt with a torn Abnegation jacket over it, blue jeans mended with red thread, brown boots. All faction clothing is represented in the group before me: black Candor pants paired with black Dauntless shirts, yellow dresses with blue sweatshirts over them. Most items are torn or smudged in some way, but some are not. Freshly stolen, I imagine.
“They aren’t Amity,” the man with the gun says. “They’re Dauntless.”
Then I recognize him: he is Edward, a fellow initiate who left Dauntless after Peter attacked him with a butter knife. That is why he wears an eye patch.
I remember steadying his head as he lay screaming on the floor, and cleaning the blood he left behind.
“Hello, Edward,” I say.
He inclines his head to me, but doesn’t lower his gun. “Tris.”
“Whatever you are,” the woman says, “you’ll have to get off this train if you want to stay alive.”
“Please,” says Susan, her lip wobbling. Her eyes fill with tears. “We’ve been running … and the rest of them are dead and I don’t …” She starts to sob again. “I don’t think I can keep going, I …”
I get the strange urge to hit my head against the wall. Other people’s sobs make me uncomfortable. It’s selfish of me, maybe.
“We’re running from the Erudite,” says Caleb. “If we get off, it will be easier for them to find us. So we would appreciate it if you let us ride into the city with you.”
“Yeah?” Edward tilts his head. “What have you ever done for us?”
“I helped you when no one else would,” I say. “Remember?”
“You, maybe. But the others?” says Edward. “Not so much.”
Tobias steps forward, so Edward’s gun is almost against his throat.
“My name is Tobias Eaton,” Tobias says. “I don’t think you want to push me off this train.”
The effect of the name on the people in the car is immediate and bewildering: they lower their weapons. They exchange meaningful looks.
“Eaton? Really?” Edward says, eyebrows raised. “I have to admit, I did not see that coming.” He clears his throat. “Fine, you can come. But when we get to the city, you’ve got to come with us.”
Then he smiles a little. “We know someone who’s been looking for you, Tobias Eaton.”
Tobias and I sit on the edge of the car with our legs dangling over the edge.
“Do you know who it is?”
Tobias nods.
“Who, then?”
“It’s hard to explain,” he says. “I have a lot to tell you.”
I lean against him.
“Yeah,” I say. “So do I.”
I don’t know how much time passes before they tell us to get off. But when they do, we are in the part of the city where the factionless live, about a mile from where I grew up. I recognize each building we pass as one I walked by every time I missed the bus home from school. The one with the broken bricks. The one with a fallen streetlight leaning against it.
We stand in the doorway of the train car, all four of us in a line. Susan whimpers.
“What if we get hurt?” she says.
I grab her hand. “We’ll jump together. You and me. I’ve done this a dozen times and never got hurt.”
She nods and squeezes my fingers so hard they hurt.
“On three. One,” I say, “Two.
I jump, and pull her with me. My feet slam into the ground and continue forward, but Susan just falls to the pavement and rolls onto her side. Aside from a scraped knee, though, she seems to be all right. The others jump off without difficulty — even Caleb, who has only jumped from a train once before, as far as I know.
I’m not sure who could know Tobias among the factionless. It could be Drew or Molly, who failed Dauntless initiation — but they didn’t even know Tobias’s real name, and besides, Edward probably would have killed them by now, judging by how ready he was to shoot us. It must be someone from Abnegation, or from school.
Susan seems to have calmed down. She walks on her own now, next to Caleb, and her cheeks are drying with no new tears to wet them.
Tobias walks beside me, touching my shoulder lightly.
“It’s been a while since I checked that shoulder,” he says. “How is it?”
“Okay. I brought the pain medicine, luckily,” I say. I’m glad to talk about something light — as light as a wound can be, anyway. “I don’t think I’m letting it heal very well. I keep using my arm or landing on it.”
“There will be plenty of time for healing once all this is over.”
“Yeah.”
“Here,” he says, taking a small knife from his back pocket and handing it to me. “Just in case.”
I put it in my own pocket. I feel even more nervous now.
The factionless lead us down the street and left into a grimy alleyway that stinks of garbage. Rats scatter in front of us with squeaks of terror, and I see only their tails, slipping between mounds of waste, empty trash cans, soggy cardboard boxes. I breathe through my mouth so I don’t throw up.
Edward stops next to one of the crumbling brick buildings and forces a steel door open. I wince, half expecting the entire building to fall down if he pulls too hard. The windows are so thick with grime that almost no
