I smile with all my teeth. “You are a genius.”
“I know.” She tosses her head like she’s throwing her hair over one shoulder, only she doesn’t have enough to throw.
“Except,” says Marcus, “Joshua is not an Abnegation name.”
“Whatever. As if anyone knows the difference.”
I see the glow of Amity headquarters ahead, the familiar cluster of wooden buildings with the greenhouse in their center. We drive through the apple orchard. The air smells like warm earth.
Again I remember my mother stretching to pick an apple in this orchard, years ago when we came to help the Amity with the harvest. A pang hurts my chest, but the memory doesn’t overwhelm me as it did a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s because I am on a mission to honor her. Or maybe I am too apprehensive about what’s coming to grieve properly. But something has changed.
Marcus parks the truck behind one of the sleeping cabins. For the first time I notice that there are no keys in the ignition.
“How did you get it to start?” I ask him.
“My father taught me a lot about mechanics and computers,” he says. “Knowledge that I passed to my own son. You didn’t think he figured it all out on his own, did you?”
“Actually yes, I did.” I push the door open and climb out of the truck. Grass brushes my toes and the back of my calves. Christina stands at my right shoulder and tilts her head back.
“It’s so different out here,” she says. “You could almost forget what’s going on in there.” She points her thumb toward the city.
“And they often do,” I say.
“They know what’s beyond the city, though, right?” she asks.
“They know about as much as the Dauntless patrols,” says Marcus. “Which is that the outside world is unknown and potentially dangerous.”
“How do you know what they know?” I say.
“Because that’s what we told them,” he says, and he walks toward the greenhouse.
I exchange a look with Christina. Then we jog to catch up to him.
“What does that mean?”
“When you are entrusted with all the information, you have to decide how much other people should know,” says Marcus. “The Abnegation leaders told them what we had to tell them. Now, let’s hope Johanna is keeping up her normal habits. She is usually in the greenhouse this early in the evening.”
He opens the greenhouse door. The air is just as dense as the last time I was in here, but now it is misty, too. The moisture cools my cheeks.
“Wow,” Christina says.
The room is lit by moonlight, so it is hard to distinguish plant from tree from man-made structure. Leaves brush my face as I make my way around the outer edge of the room. And then I see Johanna, crouched beside a bush with a bowl in her hands, picking what appear to be raspberries. Her hair is pulled back, so I can see her scar.
“I didn’t think I would see you here again, Ms. Prior,” she says.
“Is that because I’m supposed to be dead?” I say.
“I always expect those who live by the gun to die by it. I am often pleasantly surprised.” She balances the bowl on her knees and looks up at me. “Although I also know better than to think you came back because you like it here.”
“No,” I say. “We came for something else.”
“All right,” she says, standing. “Let’s go talk about it, then.”
She carries the bowl toward the middle of the room, where the Amity meetings are held. We follow her onto the tree roots, where she sits and offers me the bowl of raspberries. I take a small handful of berries and pass the bowl to Christina.
“Johanna, this is Christina,” Marcus says. “Candor-born Dauntless.”
“Welcome to Amity headquarters, Christina.” Johanna smiles knowingly. It seems so strange, that two people born in Candor could end up in such different places: Dauntless, and Amity.
“Tell me, Marcus,” says Johanna. “Why have you come to visit?”
“I think Beatrice should handle that,” he says. “I am merely the transportation.”
She shifts her focus to me without question, but I can tell by the wary look in her eyes that she would rather talk to Marcus. She would deny it if I asked her, but I am almost certain Johanna Reyes hates me.
“Um . . .” I say. Not my most brilliant opening. I wipe my palms on my skirt. “Things have gotten bad.”
The words start to spill out, without finesse or sophistication. I explain that the Dauntless have allied with the factionless, and they plan to destroy all of Erudite, leaving us without one of the two essential factions. I tell her that there is important information in the Erudite compound, in addition to all the knowledge they possess, that especially needs to be recovered. When I finish, I realize I haven’t told her why that has anything to do with her or her faction, but I don’t know how to say it.
“I’m confused, Beatrice,” she says. “What exactly do you want us to do?”
“I didn’t come here to ask you for help,” I say. “I thought you should know that a lot of people are going to die, very soon. And I know you don’t want to stay here doing nothing while that happens, even if some of your faction does.”
She looks down, her crooked mouth betraying just how right I am.
“I also wanted to ask you if we can talk to the Erudite you’re keeping safe here,” I say. “I know they’re hidden, but I need access to them.”
“And what do you intend to do?” she says.
“Shoot them,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“That isn’t funny.”
I sigh. “Sorry. I need information. That’s all.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” Johanna says. “You can sleep here.”
I sleep as soon as my head touches the pillow, but wake earlier than I planned. I can tell by the glow near the horizon that the sun is about to rise.
Across the narrow aisle between two beds is Christina, her face pressed to the mattress with her pillow over her head. A dresser with a lamp on top of it stands between us. The wooden floorboards creak no matter where you step on them. And on the left wall is a mirror, casually placed. Everyone but the Abnegation takes mirrors for granted. I still feel a prickle of shock whenever I see one in the open.
I get dressed, not bothering to be quiet—five hundred stomping Dauntless can’t wake Christina when she’s deeply asleep, though an Erudite whisper might be able to. She is odd that way.