I don’t know how much time has passed when the thumping stops and the tray slides back. I sit up and rub my neck with my fingertips.
The door opens, revealing Peter in the hallway. He beckons to me. “Come on. You can go see the scans now.”
I hop down from the tray and walk toward him. When we’re in the hallway, he shakes his head at me.
“What?”
“I don’t know how you manage to always get what you want.”
“Yeah, because I wanted to get myself into a cell in Erudite headquarters. I wanted to be executed.”
I sound cavalier, like executions are something I face on a regular basis. But forming my lips around the word “executed” makes me shudder. I pretend I’m cold, squeezing my arms with my hands.
“Didn’t you, though?” he says. “I mean, you did come here of your own free will. That’s not what I call a good survival instinct.”
He types in a series of numbers on a keypad outside the next door, and it opens. I enter the room on the other side of the mirror. It’s full of screens and light, reflecting off the glass in the Erudites’ spectacles. Across the room, another door clicks shut. There is an empty chair behind one of the screens, still turning. Someone just left.
Peter stands too close behind me—ready to grab me if I decide to attack anyone. But I won’t attack anyone. How far could I get if I did? Down one hallway, or two? And then I would be lost. I couldn’t get out of here even if there weren’t guards stopping me from leaving.
“Put them up there,” says Jeanine, pointing toward the large screen on the left wall. One of the Erudite scientists taps his own computer screen, and an image appears on the left wall. An image of my brain.
I don’t know what I’m looking at, exactly. I know what a brain looks like, and generally what each region of it does, but I don’t know how mine compares to others. Jeanine taps her chin and stares for what feels like a long time.
Finally she says, “Someone instruct Ms. Prior as to what the prefrontal cortex does.”
“It’s the region of the brain behind the forehead, so to speak,” one of the scientists says. She doesn’t look much older than I am, and wears large round glasses that make her eyes look bigger. “It’s responsible for organizing your thoughts and actions to attain your goals.”
“Correct,” Jeanine says. “Now someone tell me what they observe about Ms. Prior’s lateral prefrontal cortex.”
“It’s large,” another scientist—this one a man with thinning hair—says.
“Specificity,” says Jeanine. Like she’s chastising him.
I am in a classroom, I realize, because every room with more than one Erudite in it is a classroom. And among them, Jeanine is their most valued teacher. They all stare at her with wide eyes and eager, open mouths, waiting to impress her.
“It’s much larger than average,” the man with thinning hair corrects himself.
“Better.” Jeanine tilts her head. “In fact, it is one of the largest lateral prefrontal cortexes I’ve ever seen. Yet the orbitofrontal cortex is remarkably small. What do these two facts indicate?”
“The orbitofrontal cortex is the reward center of the brain. Those who exhibit reward-seeking behavior have a large orbitofrontal cortex,” someone says. “That means that Ms. Prior engages in very little reward-seeking behavior.”
“Not just that.” Jeanine smiles a little. Blue light from the screens makes her cheekbones and forehead brighter but casts shadows in her eye sockets. “It does not merely indicate something about her behavior, but about her desires. She is not reward motivated. Yet she is extremely good at directing her thoughts and actions toward her goals. This explains both her tendency toward harmful-but-selfless behavior and, perhaps, her ability to wriggle out of simulations. How does this change our approach to the new simulation serum?”
“It should suppress some, but not all, of the activity in the prefrontal cortex,” the scientist with the round glasses says.
“Precisely,” says Jeanine. She finally looks at me, her eyes gleaming with delight. “Then that is how we will proceed. Did this satisfy my end of our agreement, Ms. Prior?”
My mouth is dry, so it’s difficult to swallow.
And what happens if they suppress the activity in my prefrontal cortex—if they damage my ability to make decisions? What if this serum works, and I become a slave to the simulations like everyone else? What if I forget reality entirely?
I did not know that my entire personality, my entire being, could be discarded as the byproduct of my anatomy. What if I really am just someone with a large prefrontal cortex . . . and nothing more?
“Yes,” I say. “It did.”
In silence Peter and I make our way back to my room. We turn left, and a group of people stands at the other end of the hallway. It is the longest of the corridors we will travel through, but that distance shrinks when I see him.
Held at either arm by a Dauntless traitor, a gun aimed at the back of his skull.
Tobias, blood trailing down the side of his face and marking his white shirt with red; Tobias, fellow Divergent, standing in the mouth of this furnace in which I will burn.
Peter’s hands clamp around my shoulders, holding me in place.
“Tobias,” I say, and it sounds like a gasp.
The Dauntless traitor with the gun presses Tobias toward me. Peter tries to push me forward too, but my feet remain planted. I came here so that no one else would die. I came here to protect as many people as I could. And I care more about Tobias’s safety than anyone else’s. So why am I here, if he’s here? What’s the point?
“What did you do?” I mumble. He is just a few feet away from me now, but not close enough to hear me. As he passes me he stretches out his hand. He wraps it around my palm and squeezes. Squeezes, then lets go. His eyes are bloodshot; he is pale.
“What did you do?” This time the question tears from my throat like a growl.
I throw myself toward him, struggling against Peter’s grip, though his hands chafe.
“What did you do?” I scream.
“You die, I die too.” Tobias looks over his shoulder at me. “I asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions.”
He disappears around the corner. The last I see of him and the Dauntless traitors leading him is the gleam of the gun barrel and blood on the back of his earlobe from an injury I didn’t see before.