“This doesn’t feel right,” she says.
“What do you mean?” Lynn says as the voices rise around us. “Don’t you remember what they did to us? Put our minds under a simulation and forced us to shoot people without even knowing it? Murdered every single Abnegation leader?”
“Yeah,” says Christina. “It’s just . . . Invading a faction’s headquarters and killing everyone, isn’t that what the Erudite just did to Abnegation?”
“This is different. This is not an attack out of nowhere, unprovoked,” says Lynn, scowling at her.
“Yeah,” Christina says. “Yeah, I know.”
She looks at me. I don’t say anything. She has a point—it doesn’t feel right.
I walk toward the Eaton house in search of silence.
I open the front door and climb the stairs. When I reach Tobias’s old room, I sit on the bed and look out the window, where factionless and Dauntless are gathered around the fires, laughing and talking. But they aren’t mixed together; there is still an uneasy divide between them, factionless on one side and Dauntless on the other.
I watch Lynn, Uriah, and Christina by one of the fires. Uriah snatches at the flames, too quickly to be burned. His smile looks more like a grimace, twisted as it is by grief.
After a few minutes I hear footsteps on the stairs, and Tobias comes into the room, slipping off his shoes by the doorway.
“What’s wrong?” he says.
“Nothing, really,” I say. “I was just thinking, I’m surprised the factionless agreed to work with Dauntless so easily. It’s not like the Dauntless were ever kind to them.”
He stands beside me at the window and leans into the frame.
“It’s not a natural alliance, is it,” he says. “But we have the same goal.”
“Right now. But what happens when the goals change? The factionless want to get rid of factions, and the Dauntless don’t.”
Tobias presses his mouth into a line. I suddenly remember Marcus and Johanna, walking together through the orchard—Marcus wore the same expression when he was keeping something from her.
Did Tobias get that expression from his father? Or does it mean something different?
“You’re in my group,” he says. “During the attack. I hope you don’t mind. We’re supposed to lead the way to the control rooms.”
The attack. If I participate in the attack, I can’t go after the information Jeanine stole from Abnegation. I have to choose one or the other.
Tobias said that dealing with Erudite was more important than finding out the truth. And if he had not promised the factionless control over all of Erudite’s data, he might have been right. But he left me no choice. I have to help Marcus, if there is even a chance that he is telling the truth. I have to work against the people I love best.
And right now, I have to lie.
I twist my fingers together.
“What is it?” he says.
“I still can’t fire a gun.” I look up at him. “And after what happened in Erudite headquarters . . .” I clear my throat. “Risking my life doesn’t seem so appealing anymore.”
“Tris.” He brushes my cheek with his fingertips. “You don’t have to go.”
“I don’t want to seem like a coward.”
“Hey.” His fingers fit beneath my jaw. They are cool against my skin. He looks sternly at me. “You have done more for this faction than any other person. You . . .”
He sighs, and touches his forehead to mine.
“You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. Stay here. Let yourself mend.”
He kisses me, and I feel like I am crumbling again, beginning with the deepest parts of me. He thinks I will be here, but I will be working against him, working with the father he despises. This lie—this lie is the worst I have ever told. I will never be able to take it back.
When we part, I am afraid he will hear my breaths shake, so I turn toward the window.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“OH YEAH. YOU totally look like a banjo-strumming softie,” says Christina.
“Really?”
“No. Not at all, actually. Just . . . let me fix it, okay?”
She rummages in her bag for a few seconds and pulls out a small box. In it are different-sized tubes and containers that I recognize as makeup, but wouldn’t know what to do with.
We are in my parents’ house. It was the only place I could think of to go to get ready. Christina has no reservations about poking around—she already discovered two textbooks wedged between the dresser and the wall, evidence of Caleb’s Erudite leanings.
“Let me get this straight. So you left the Dauntless compound to get ready for war . . . and took your makeup bag with you?”
“Yep. Figured it would be harder for anyone to shoot me if they saw how devastatingly attractive I was,” she says, arching an eyebrow. “Hold still.”
She takes the cap off a black tube about the size of one of my fingers, revealing a red stick. Lipstick, obviously. She touches it to my mouth and dabs it until my lips are covered in color. I can see it when I purse them.
“Has anyone ever talked to you about the miracle of eyebrow tweezing?” she says, holding up a pair of tweezers.
“Get those away from me.”
“Fine.” She sighs. “I would take out the blush, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the right color for you.”
“Shocking, considering we’re so similar in skin tone.”
“Ha-ha,” she says.
By the time we leave, I have red lips and curled eyelashes, and I’m wearing a bright red dress. And there’s a knife strapped to the inside of my knee. This all makes perfect sense.
“Where’s Marcus, Destroyer of Lives, going to meet us?” Christina says. She wears Amity yellow instead of red, and it glows against her skin.
I laugh. “Behind Abnegation headquarters.”
We walk down the sidewalk in the dark. All the others should be eating dinner now—I made sure of that—but in case we run into someone, we wear black jackets to conceal most of our Amity clothing. I hop over a crack in the cement out of habit.
“Where are you two going?” Peter’s voice says. I look over my shoulder. He’s standing on the sidewalk behind us. I wonder how long he’s been there.
“Why aren’t you with your attack group, eating dinner?” I say.
“I don’t have one.” He taps the arm I shot. “I’m injured.”