I feel a pinch at the back of my throat. She looks so much like her brother, down to the crease between her eyebrows and the dark streaks in her otherwise blond hair.
“Cara,” says Christina. “Will you help us, or not?”
Cara sighs. “Obviously I will. I’m sure the others will, too. Meet us in the Erudite dormitory at the end of the meeting, and tell us the plan.”
The meeting lasts for another hour. By then the rain has stopped, though water still sprinkles the wall and ceiling panels. Christina and I have been sitting against one of the walls, playing a game in which each of us tries to pin down the other’s thumb. She always wins.
Finally Johanna and the others who emerged as discussion leaders stand in a line on the tree roots. Johanna’s hair now hangs over her lowered face. She is supposed to tell us the outcome of the conversation, but she just stands with her arms folded, her fingers tapping against her elbow.
“What’s going on?” Christina says.
Finally Johanna looks up.
“Obviously it was difficult to find agreement,” she says. “But the majority of you wish to uphold our policy of uninvolvement.”
It does not matter to me whether the Amity decide to go into the city or not. But I had begun to hope they were not all cowards, and to me, this decision sounds very much like cowardice. I sink back against the window.
“It is not my wish to encourage division in this community, which has given so much to me,” says Johanna. “But my conscience forces me to go against this decision. Anyone else whose conscience drives them toward the city is welcome to come with me.”
At first I, like everyone else, am not sure what she’s saying. Johanna tilts her head so that her scar is again visible, and adds, “I understand if this means I can’t be a part of Amity anymore.” She sniffs. “But please know that if I have to leave you, I leave you with love, rather than malice.”
Johanna bows in the general direction of the crowd, tucks her hair behind her ears, and walks toward the exit. A few of the Amity scramble to their feet, then a few more, and soon the entire crowd is on their feet, and some of them—not many, but some—are walking out behind her.
“That,” says Christina, “is not what I was expecting.”
CHAPTER FORTY
THE ERUDITE DORMITORY is one of the larger sleeping rooms in Amity headquarters. There are twelve beds total: a row of eight crammed together along the far wall, and two pressed together on each side, leaving a huge space in the middle of the room. A large table occupies that space, covered with tools and scraps of metal and gears and old computer parts and wires.
Christina and I just finished explaining our plan, which sounded a lot dumber with more than a dozen Erudite staring us down as we talked.
“Your plan is flawed,” Cara says. She is the first to respond.
“That’s why we came to you,” I say. “So you could tell us how to fix it.”
“Well, first of all, this important data you want to rescue,” she says. “Putting it on a disc is a ridiculous idea. Discs just end up breaking or in the wrong person’s hands, like all other physical objects. I suggest you make use of the data network.”
“The . . . what?”
She glances at the other Erudite. One of the others—a brown-skinned young man in glasses—says, “Go on. Tell them. There’s no reason to keep secrets anymore.”
Cara looks back at me. “Many of the computers in the Erudite compound are set up to access data from the computers in other factions. That’s how it was so easy for Jeanine to run the attack simulation from a Dauntless computer instead of an Erudite one.”
“What?” says Christina. “You mean you can just take a stroll through every faction’s data whenever you want?”
“You can’t ‘take a stroll’ through data,” the young man says. “That’s illogical.”
“It’s a metaphor,” says Christina. She frowns. “Right?”
“A metaphor, or simply a figure of speech?” he says, also frowning. “Or is a metaphor a definite category beneath the heading of ‘figure of speech’?”
“Fernando,” says Cara. “Focus.”
He nods.
“The fact is,” Cara continues, “the data network exists, and that is ethically questionable, but I believe it can work to our advantage here. Just as the computers can access data from other factions, they can send data to other factions. If we sent the data you wished to rescue to every other faction, destroying it all would be impossible.”
“When you say ‘we,’” I say, “are you implying that—”
“That we would be going with you?” she says. “Obviously not all of us would go, but some of us must. How do you expect to navigate Erudite headquarters on your own?”
“You do realize that if you come with us, you might get shot,” says Christina. She smiles. “And no hiding behind us because you don’t want to break your glasses, or whatever.”
Cara removes her glasses and snaps them in half at the bridge.
“We risked our lives by defecting from our faction,” says Cara, “and we will risk them again to save our faction from itself.”
“Also,” pipes up a small voice behind Cara. A girl no older than ten or eleven peers around Cara’s elbow. Her black hair is short, like mine, and a halo of frizz surrounds her head. “We have useful gadgets.”
Christina and I exchange a look.
I say, “What kinds of gadgets?”
“They’re just prototypes,” Fernando says, “so there’s no need to scrutinize them.”
“Scrutiny’s not really our thing,” says Christina.
“Then how do you make things better?” the little girl asks.
“We don’t, really,” Christina says, sighing. “They kind of just keep getting worse.”
The little girl nods. “Entropy.”
“What?”
“Entropy,” she chirps. “It’s the theory that all matter in the universe is gradually moving toward the same temperature. Also known as ‘heat death.’”
“Elia,” Cara says, “that is a gross oversimplification.”
Elia sticks out her tongue at Cara. I can’t help but laugh. I have never seen one of the Erudite stick out her tongue before. But then again, I haven’t interacted with many young Erudite. Only Jeanine and the people who work for her. Including my brother.