marble tiles in the center of the room form the symbol of Candor: a set of unbalanced scales, meant to symbolize the weighing of truth against lies. The room is crawling with armed Dauntless.
A Dauntless soldier with an arm in a sling approaches us, gun held ready, barrel fixed on Tobias.
“Identify yourselves,” she says. She is young, but not young enough to know Tobias.
The others gather behind her. Some of them eye us with suspicion, the rest with curiosity, but far stranger than both is the light I see in some of their eyes. Recognition. They might know Tobias, but how could they possibly recognize me?
“Four,” he says. He nods toward me. “And this is Tris. Both Dauntless.”
The Dauntless soldier’s eyes widen, but she does not lower her gun.
“Some help here?” she asks. Some of the Dauntless step forward, but they do it cautiously, like we’re dangerous.
“Is there a problem?” Tobias says.
“Are you armed?”
“Of course I’m armed. I’m Dauntless, aren’t I?”
“Stand with your hands behind your head.” She says it wildly, like she expects us to refuse. I glance at Tobias. Why is everyone acting like we’re about to attack them?
“We walked through the front door,” I say slowly. “You think we would have done that if we were here to hurt you?”
Tobias doesn’t look back at me. He just touches his fingertips to the back of his head. After a moment, I do the same. Dauntless soldiers crowd around us. One of them pats down Tobias’s legs while the other takes the gun tucked under his waistband. Another one, a round-faced boy with pink cheeks, looks at me apologetically.
“I have a knife in my back pocket.” I say. “Put your hands on me, and I will make you regret it.”
He mumbles some kind of apology. His fingers pinch the knife handle, careful not to touch me.
“What’s going on?” asks Tobias.
The first soldier exchanges looks with some of the others.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “But we were instructed to arrest you upon your arrival.”
Chapter 11
THEY SURROUND US, but don’t handcuff us, and walk us to the elevator bank. No matter how many times I ask why we are under arrest, no one says anything or even looks in my direction. Eventually I give up and stay silent, like Tobias.
We go to the third level, where they take us to a small room with a white marble floor instead of a black one. There’s no furniture except for a bench along the back wall. Every faction is supposed to have holding rooms for those who make trouble, but I’ve never been in one before.
The door closes behind us, and locks, and we’re alone again.
Tobias sits down on the bench, his brow furrowed. I pace back and forth in front of him. If he had any idea why we were in here, he would tell me, so I don’t ask. I walk five steps forward and five steps back, five steps forward and five steps back, at the same rhythm, hoping it will help me figure something out.
If Erudite didn’t take over Candor — and Edward told us they didn’t — why would the Candor arrest us? What could we have done to them?
If Erudite
“Can you please calm down?” Tobias says. “You’re making me nervous.”
“This is me calming down.”
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and stares between his sneakers. “The wound in your lip begs to differ.”
I sit next to him and hug my knees to my chest with one arm, my right arm hanging at my side. For a long time, he says nothing, and my arm wraps tighter and tighter around my legs. I feel like, the smaller I become, the safer I am.
“Sometimes,” he says, “I worry that you don’t trust me.”
“I trust you,” I say. “Of course I trust you. Why would you think otherwise?”
“Just seems like there’s something you’re not telling me. I told
“There’s been a lot going on. You know that,” I say. “And anyway, what about you? I could say the same thing to you.”
He touches my cheek, his fingers pushing into my hair. Ignoring my question just like I ignored his.
“If it’s just about your parents,” he says softly, “tell me and I’ll believe you.”
His eyes should be wild with apprehension, given where we are, but they are still and dark. They transport me to familiar places. Safe places, where confessing that I shot one of my best friends would be easy, where I would not be afraid of the way that Tobias will look at me when he finds out what I did.
I cover his hand with mine. “That’s all it is,” I say weakly.
“Okay,” he says. He touches his mouth to mine. Guilt clutches at my stomach.
The door opens. A few people file in — two Candor with guns; a dark-skinned, older Candor man; a Dauntless woman I don’t recognize. And then: Jack Kang, representative of Candor.
By most faction standards, he is a young leader — only thirty-nine years old. But by Dauntless standards, that’s nothing. Eric became a Dauntless leader at seventeen. But that’s probably one of the reasons the other factions don’t take our opinions or decisions seriously.
Jack is handsome, too, with short black hair and warm, slanted eyes, like Tori’s, and high cheekbones. Despite his good looks, he isn’t known for being charming, probably because he’s Candor, and they see charm as deceptive. I do trust him to tell us what’s going on without wasting time on pleasantries. That is something.
“They told me you seemed confused about why you were arrested,” he says. His voice is deep, but strangely flat, like it could not create an echo even at the bottom of an empty cavern. “To me that means either you’re falsely accused or good at pretending. The only—”
“What are we accused of?” I interrupt him.
“
“Crimes against humanity?” Tobias finally sounds angry. He gives Jack a disgusted look. “What?”
“We saw video footage of the attack. You were
“How could you have seen footage? We took the data,” says Tobias.
“You took one copy of the data. All the footage of the Dauntless compound recorded during the attack was also sent to other computers throughout the city,” says Jack. “All we saw was you running the simulation and
I almost laugh. My great act of heroism, the only important thing I have ever done, and they think I was working for the Erudite when I did it.
“The simulation didn’t end,” I say. “We
Jack holds up his hand. “I am not interested in what you have to say right now. The truth will come out when you are both interrogated under the influence of truth serum.”
Christina told me about truth serum once. She said the most difficult part of Candor initiation was being given truth serum and answering personal questions in front of everyone in the faction. I don’t need to search myself for my deepest, darkest secrets to know that truth serum is the last thing I want in my body.