“Yeah, I saw you and your little band of peacekeepers, getting in everyone’s way,” says Tori.
“Yes, that was intentional,” Johanna replies. “Since getting in the way meant standing between guns and innocents, and saved a great number of lives.”
Color fills her cheeks, and I think it again: that Johanna Reyes might still be beautiful. Except now I think that she isn’t just beautiful in spite of the scar, she’s somehow beautiful with it, like Lynn with her buzzed hair, like Tobias with the memories of his father’s cruelty that he wears like armor, like my mother in her plain gray clothing.
“Since you are still so very generous,” says Tori, “I wonder if you might carry a message back to the Amity.”
“I don’t feel comfortable leaving you and your army to dole out justice as you see fit,” says Johanna, “but I will certainly send someone else to Amity with a message.”
“Fine,” says Tori. “Tell them that a new political system will soon be formed that will exclude them from representation. This, we believe, is their just punishment for failing to choose a side in this conflict. They will, of course, be obligated to continue to produce and deliver food to the city, but they will be under supervision by one of the leading factions.”
For a second, I think that Johanna might launch herself at Tori and strangle her. But she draws herself up taller and says, “Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” she says. “I’m going to go do something useful. I don’t suppose you would allow some of us to come in here and tend to these wounded?”
Tori gives her a look.
“I didn’t think so,” says Johanna. “Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like.”
She turns and walks out of the lobby.
Something about her words hits me. I am sure she meant them as a threat, and a feeble one, but it rings in my head like it was something more—like she could easily have been talking not about the Amity, but about another oppressed group. The factionless.
And as I look around the room, at every Dauntless soldier and every factionless soldier, I begin to see a pattern.
“Christina,” I say. “The factionless have all the guns.”
She looks around, and then back at me, frowning.
In my mind I see Therese, taking Uriah’s gun when she already had one herself. I see Tobias’s mouth pressed into a line when I asked him about the uneasy Dauntless-factionless alliance, holding something back.
Then Evelyn emerges into the lobby, her posture regal, like a queen returning to her kingdom. Tobias does not follow her. Where is he?
Evelyn stands behind the table where Jeanine Matthews’s body lies. Edward limps into the lobby behind her. Evelyn takes out a gun, points it at the fallen portrait of Jeanine, and fires.
A hush falls over the room. Evelyn drops the gun on the table, next to Jeanine’s head.
“Thank you,” she says. “I know that you are all wondering what will happen next, so I am here to tell you.”
Tori sits up straighter in her chair and leans toward Evelyn, like she wants to say something. But Evelyn pays no attention.
“The faction system that has long supported itself on the backs of discarded human beings will be disbanded at once,” says Evelyn. “We know this transition will be difficult for you, but—”
“We?” Tori breaks in, looking scandalized. “What are you talking about, disbanded?”
“What I am talking about,” says Evelyn, looking at Tori for the first time, “is that your faction, which up until a few weeks ago was clamoring along with the Erudite for the restriction of food and goods to the factionless, a clamor that resulted in the destruction of the Abnegation, will no longer exist.”
Evelyn smiles a little.
“And if you decide to take up arms against us,” she says, “you will be hard pressed to find any arms to take up.”
I watch, then, as each factionless soldier holds up a gun. Factionless are evenly spaced around the edge of the room, and they disappear into one of the stairwells. They have us all surrounded.
It is so elegant, so clever, that I almost laugh.
“I instructed my half of the army to relieve your half of the army of their weapons as soon as their missions were completed,” says Evelyn. “I see now that they were successful. I regret the duplicity, but we knew that you have been conditioned to cling to the faction system like it is your own mother, and that we would have to help ease you into this new era.”
“Ease us?” Tori demands. She pushes herself to her feet and limps toward Evelyn, who calmly takes her gun in hand and points it at Tori.
“I have not been starving for more than a decade just to give in to a Dauntless woman with a leg injury,” Evelyn says. “So unless you want me to shoot you, take a seat with your fellow ex-faction members.”
I see all the muscles in Evelyn’s arm standing at attention, her eyes not cold, not quite like Jeanine’s, but calculating, assessing, planning. I don’t know how this woman could have ever bent to Marcus’s will. She must not have been this woman then, all steel, tested in fire.
Tori stands before Evelyn for a few seconds. She then limps backward, away from the gun and toward the edge of the room.
“Those of you who assisted us in the effort to take down Erudite will be rewarded,” says Evelyn. “Those of you who resisted us will be tried and punished according to your crimes.” She raises her voice for the last sentence, and I am surprised by how well it carries over the space.
Behind her, the door to the stairwell opens, and Tobias steps out with Marcus and Caleb behind him, almost unnoticed. Almost, except I notice him, because I have trained myself to notice him. I watch his shoes as he comes closer. They are black sneakers with chrome eyelets for the laces. They stop right next to me, and he crouches by my shoulder.
I look at him, expecting to find his eyes cold and unyielding.
But I don’t.
Evelyn is still talking, but her voice fades for me.
“You were right,” Tobias says quietly, balancing on the balls of his feet. He smiles a little. “I do know who you are. I just needed to be reminded.”
I open my mouth, but I don’t have anything to say.
Then all the screens in the Erudite lobby—at least those that weren’t destroyed in the attack—flicker on, including a projector positioned over the wall where Jeanine’s portrait used to be.