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 you, in particular, are here,” says Jeanine. She walks past me and perches on the table, her fingers curled around the edge.
“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.
Something sparks inside me. It’s been so long since I felt it that I barely recognize it at first. Curiosity.
A voice—Jeanine’s voice—speaks over an intercom.
“Lie down, Beatrice.”
I look at the man-sized tray that will slide me into the machine.
“No.”
She sighs. “If you don’t do it yourself, we have ways of making you.”
Peter is standing behind me. Even with an injured arm, he was stronger than me. I imagine his hands on me, wrestling me toward the tray, shoving me against the metal, pulling the straps that dangle from the tray across my body, too tightly.
“Let’s make a deal,” I say. “If I cooperate, I get to see the scan.”
“You will cooperate whether you want to or not.”
I hold up a finger. “That’s not true.”
I look at the mirror. It’s not so difficult to pretend that I’m speaking to Jeanine when I speak to my own reflection. My hair is blond like hers; we are both pale and stern-looking. The thought is so disturbing to me that I lose my train of thought for a few seconds, and instead stand with my finger in the air in silence.
I am pale-skinned, pale-haired, and cold. I am curious about the pictures of my brain. I am like Jeanine. And I can either despise it, attack it, eradicate it . . . or I can use it.
“That’s not true,” I repeat. “No matter how many restraints you use, you can’t keep me as still as I need to be for the pictures to be clear.” I clear my throat. “I want to see the scans. You’re going to kill me anyway, so does it really matter how much I know about my own brain before you do?”
Silence.
“Why do you want to see them so badly?” she says.
“Surely you, of all people, understand. I have equal aptitude for Erudite as I do for Dauntless and Abnegation, after all.”
“All right. You can see them. Lie down.”
I walk over to the tray and lie down. The metal feels like ice. The tray slides back, and I am inside the machine. I stare up at whiteness. When I was young, I thought that was what heaven would be like, all white light and nothing else. Now I know that can’t be true, because white light is menacing.
I hear thumping, and I close my eyes as I remember one of the obstacles in my fear landscape, the fists pounding against my windows and the sightless men trying to kidnap me. I pretend the pounding is a heartbeat, a drumbeat. The river crashing against the walls of the chasm in the Dauntless compound. Feet stamping at the end-of-initiation ceremony. Feet pounding on the staircase after the Choosing Ceremony.