I FORGOT MY watch.
Minutes or hours later, when the panic subsides, that is what I most regret. Not coming here in the first place — that seemed like an obvious choice — but my bare wrist, which makes it impossible for me to know how long I have been sitting in this room. My back aches, which is some indication, but it is not definite enough.
After a while I get up and pace, stretching my arms above my head. I hesitate to do anything while the cameras are there, but they can’t learn anything by watching me touch my toes.
The thought makes my hands tremble, but I don’t try to push it from my mind. Instead I tell myself that I am Dauntless and I am no stranger to fear. I will die in this place. Perhaps soon. Those are the facts.
But there are other ways to think of it. Soon I will honor my parents by dying as they died. And if all they believed about death was true, soon I will join them in whatever comes next.
I shake my hands as I pace. They’re still trembling. I want to know what time it is. I arrived a little after midnight. It must be early in the morning by now, maybe 4:00, or 5:00. Or maybe it hasn’t been that long, and only seems that way because I haven’t been doing anything.
The door opens, and at last I stand face-to-face with my enemy and her Dauntless guards.
“Hello, Beatrice,” Jeanine says. She wears Erudite blue and Erudite spectacles and an Erudite look of superiority that I was taught by my father to hate. “I thought you might be the one who came.”
But I don’t feel hate when I look at her. I don’t feel anything at all, even though I know she’s responsible for countless deaths, including Marlene’s. The deaths exist in my mind as a string of meaningless equations, and I stand frozen, unable to solve them.
“Hello, Jeanine,” I say, because it is the only thing that comes to mind.
I look from Jeanine’s watery gray eyes to the Dauntless who flank her. Peter stands at her right shoulder, and a woman with lines on either side of her mouth stands at her left. Behind her is a bald man with sharp planes in his skull. I frown.
How does Peter find himself in such a prestigious position, as Jeanine Matthews’s bodyguard? Where is the logic in that?
“I’d like to know what time it is,” I say.
“Would you,” she says. “That’s interesting.”
I should have known she wouldn’t tell me. Every piece of information she receives factors into her strategy, and she won’t tell me what time it is unless she decides that providing the information is more useful than withholding it.
“I’m sure my Dauntless companions are disappointed,” she says, “that you have not tried to claw my eyes out yet.”
“That would be stupid.”
“True. But in keeping with your ‘act first, think second’ behavioral trend.”
“I’m sixteen.” I purse my lips. “I change.”
“How refreshing.” She has a way of flattening even those phrases that should have inflection built into them. “Let’s go on a little tour, shall we?”
She steps back and gestures toward the doorway. The last thing I want to do is walk out of this room and toward an uncertain destination, but I don’t hesitate. I walk out, the severe-looking Dauntless woman in front of me. Peter follows me soon afterward.
The hallway is long and pale. We turn a corner and walk down a second one exactly like the first.
Two more hallways follow. I am so disoriented I could never find my way back. But then my surroundings change — the white tunnel opens to a large room where Erudite men and women in long blue jackets stand behind tables, some holding tools, some mixing multicolored liquids, some staring at computer screens. If I had to guess, I would say they are mixing simulation serum, but I hesitate to confine Erudite’s work to simulations alone.
Most of them stop to watch us as we walk down the center aisle. Or rather, they watch
I follow the Dauntless traitor woman through a doorway, and stop so abruptly Peter runs into me.
This room is just as large as the last one, but there is only one thing in it: a large metal table with a machine next to it. A machine I vaguely recognize as a heart monitor. And dangling above it, a camera. I shudder without meaning to. Because I know what this is.
“I am very pleased that
“I am pleased, of course, because of your aptitude test results.” Her blond hair, pulled tight to her skull, reflects the light, catches my attention.
“Even among the Divergent, you are somewhat of an oddity, because you have aptitude for three factions. Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite.”
“How …” My voice croaks. I push the question out. “How do you know that?”
“All in good time,” she says. “From your results I have determined that you are one of the strongest Divergent, which I say not to compliment you but to explain my purpose. If I am to develop a simulation that cannot be thwarted by the Divergent mind, I must study the strongest Divergent mind in order to shore up all weaknesses in the technology. Understand?”
I don’t respond. I am still staring at the heart monitor next to the table.
“Therefore, for as long as possible, my fellow scientists and I will be studying you.” She smiles a little. “And then, at the conclusion of my study, you will be executed.”
I knew that. I knew it, so why do my knees feel weak, why is my stomach writhing, why?
“That execution will take place here.” She runs her fingertips over the table beneath her. “On this table. I thought it would be interesting to show it to you.”
She wants to study my response. I barely breathe. I used to think that cruelty required malice, but that is not true. Jeanine has no reason to act out of malice. But she is cruel because she doesn’t care what she does, as long as it fascinates her. I may as well be a puzzle or a broken machine she wants to fix. She will break open my skull just to see the inner workings of my brain; I will die here, and that will be the merciful thing.
“I knew what would happen when I came here,” I say. “It’s just a table. And I’d like to go back to my room now.”
I don’t really comprehend time’s passing, at least not in the way that I used to, when time was available to me. So when the door opens again and Peter walks into my cell, I don’t know how much time has gone by, only that I am exhausted.
“Let’s go, Stiff,” he says.
“I’m not Abnegation.” I stretch my arms above my head so they brush against the wall. “And now that you’re an Erudite lackey, you can’t call me ‘Stiff.’ It’s inaccurate.”
“I said, let’s go.”
“What, no snide comments?” I look up at him with mock surprise. “No ‘You’re an idiot for coming here; your brain must be deficient as well as Divergent’?”
“That really goes without saying, doesn’t it?” he says. “You can either get up or I can drag you down the hallway. Your choice.”
I feel calmer. Peter is always mean to me; this is familiar.
I stand and walk out of the room. I notice as I walk that Peter’s arm, the one I shot, is no longer in a sling.
“Did they fix up your bullet wound?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Now you’ll need to find a different weakness to exploit. Too bad I’m fresh out of them.” He grabs my good arm and walks faster, pulling me along beside him. “We’re late.”
Despite the length and emptiness of the hallway, our footsteps don’t echo much. I feel like someone put their hands over my ears and I only just noticed it. I try to keep track of the hallways we walk down, but I lose count after a while. We reach the end of one and turn left, into a dim room that reminds me of an aquarium. One of the walls is made of one-way glass — reflective on my side, but I’m sure it’s transparent on the other side.
A large machine stands on the other side, with a man-sized tray coming out of it. I recognize it from my Faction History textbook, the unit on Erudite and medicine. An MRI machine. It will take pictures of my brain.
