Allegiant (Divergent 3)

Tris considers this, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know,” she admits.

My watch reads three o’clock. I’ve been here too long—long enough to make Evelyn suspicious. I told her I came to break things off with Tris, that it wouldn’t take much time. I’m not sure she believed me.

I say, “Listen, I mostly came to warn you—they’re starting the trials for all the prisoners. They’re going to put you all under truth serum, and if it works, you’ll be convicted as traitors. I think we would all like to avoid that.”

“Convicted as traitors?” Tris scowls. “How is revealing the truth to our entire city an act of betrayal?”

“It was an act of defiance against your leaders,” I say. “Evelyn and her followers don’t want to leave the city. They won’t thank you for showing that video.”

“They’re just like Jeanine!” She makes a fitful gesture, like she wants to hit something but there’s nothing available. “Ready to do anything to stifle the truth, and for what? To be kings of their tiny little world? It’s ridiculous.”

I don’t want to say so, but part of me agrees with my mother. I don’t owe the people outside this city anything, whether I am Divergent or not. I’m not sure I want to offer myself to them to solve humanity’s problems, whatever that means.

But I do want to leave, in the desperate way that an animal wants to escape a trap. Wild and rabid. Ready to gnaw through bone.

“Be that as it may,” I say carefully, “if the truth serum works on you, you will be convicted.”

“If it works?” says Cara, narrowing her eyes.

“Divergent,” Tris says to her, pointing at her own head. “Remember?”

“That’s fascinating.” Cara tucks a stray hair back into the knot just above her neck. “But atypical. In my experience, most Divergent can’t resist the truth serum. I wonder why you can.”

“You and every other Erudite who ever stuck a needle in me,” Tris snaps.

“Can we focus, please? I would like to avoid having to break you out of prison,” I say. Suddenly desperate for comfort, I reach for Tris’s hand, and she brings her fingers up to meet mine. We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.

“All right, all right,” she says, gently now. “What did you have in mind?”

“I’ll get Evelyn to let you testify first, of the three of you,” I say. “All you have to do is come up with a lie that will exonerate both Christina and Cara, and then tell it under truth serum.”

“What kind of lie would do that?”

“I thought I would leave that to you,” I say. “Since you’re the better liar.”

I know as I’m saying the words that they hit a sore spot in both of us. She lied to me so many times. She promised me she wouldn’t go to her death in the Erudite compound when Jeanine demanded the sacrifice of a Divergent, and then she did it anyway. She told me she would stay home during the Erudite attack, and then I found her in Erudite headquarters, working with my father. I understand why she did all those things, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still broken.

“Yeah.” She looks at her shoes. “Okay, I’ll think of something.”

I set my hand on her arm. “I’ll talk to Evelyn about your trial. I’ll try to make it soon.”

“Thank you.”

I feel the urge, familiar now, to wrench myself from my body and speak directly into her mind. It is the same urge, I realize, that makes me want to kiss her every time I see her, because even a sliver of distance between us is infuriating. Our fingers, loosely woven a moment ago, now clutch together, her palm tacky with moisture, mine rough in places where I have grabbed too many handles on too many moving trains. Now she looks pale and small, but her eyes make me think of wide-open skies that I have never actually seen, only dreamed of.

“If you’re going to kiss, do me a favor and tell me so I can look away,” says Christina.

“We are,” Tris says. And we do.

I touch her cheek to slow the kiss down, holding her mouth on mine so I can feel every place where our lips touch and every place where they pull away. I savor the air we share in the second afterward and the slip of her nose across mine. I think of something to say, but it is too intimate, so I swallow it. A moment later I decide I don’t care.

“I wish we were alone,” I say as I back out of the cell.

She smiles. “I almost always wish that.”

As I shut the door, I see Christina pretending to vomit, and Cara laughing, and Tris’s hands hanging at her sides.

CHAPTER THREE

TRIS

“I THINK YOU’RE all idiots.” My hands are curled in my lap like a sleeping child’s. My body is heavy with truth serum. Sweat collects on my eyelids. “You should be thanking me, not questioning me.”

“We should thank you for defying the instructions of your faction leaders? Thank you for trying to prevent one of your faction leaders from killing Jeanine Matthews? You behaved like a traitor.” Evelyn Johnson spits the word like a snake. We are in the conference room in Erudite headquarters, where the trials have been taking place. I have now been a prisoner for at least a week.

I see Tobias, half-hidden in the shadows behind his mother. He has kept his eyes averted since I sat in the chair and they cut the strip of plastic binding my wrists together. For just for a moment, his eyes touch mine, and I know it’s time to start lying.

It’s easier now that I know I can do it. As easy as pushing the weight of the truth serum aside in my mind.

“I am not a traitor,” I say. “At the time I believed that Marcus was working under Dauntless-factionless orders. Since I couldn’t join the fight as a soldier, I was happy to help with something else.”

“Why couldn’t you be a soldier?” Fluorescent light glows behind Evelyn’s hair. I can’t see her face, and I can’t focus on anything for more than a second before the truth serum threatens to pull me down again.

“Because.” I bite my lip, as if trying to stop the words from rushing out. I don’t know when I became so good at acting, but I guess it’s not that different from lying, which I have always had a talent for. “Because I couldn’t hold a gun, okay? Not after shooting . . . him. My friend Will. I couldn’t hold a gun without panicking.”