Cara nods without looking up from her computer. A sick feeling in my stomach, I follow Marcus and Christina out of the control room and toward the stairs.
The hallway outside is now empty. There are scraps of paper and footprints on the tile. Marcus, Christina, and I jog in a line to the stairwell. I stare at the back of his head, where the shape of his skull shows through his buzzed hair.
All I can see when I look at him is a belt swinging toward Tobias, and the butt of a gun slamming into Caleb’s jaw. I don’t care that he hurt Caleb—I would have done it, too—but that he is simultaneously a man who knows how to hurt people and a man who parades around as the self-effacing leader of Abnegation, suddenly makes me so angry I can’t see straight.
Especially because I chose him. I chose him over Tobias.
“Your brother is a traitor,” says Marcus as we turn a corner. “He deserved worse. There’s no need to look at me that way.”
“Shut up!” I shout, shoving him hard into the wall. He is too surprised to push back. “I hate you, you know that! I hate you for what you did to him, and I am not talking about Caleb.” I lean close to his face and whisper, “And while I may not shoot you myself, I will definitely not help you if someone tries to kill you, so you’d better hope to God we don’t get into that situation.”
He stares at me, apparently indifferent. I release him and start toward the stairs again, Christina on my heels, Marcus a few steps behind.
“Where are we going?” she says.
“Caleb said what we’re looking for won’t be on a public computer, so it has to be on a private one. As far as I know, Jeanine only has two private computers, one in her office, and one in her laboratory,” I say.
“So which one do we go to?”
“Tori told me there were insane security measures protecting Jeanine’s laboratory,” I say. “And I’ve been to her office; it’s just another room.”
“So . . . laboratory, then.”
“Top floor.”
We reach the door to the stairwell, and when I throw it open, a group of Erudite, including children, are sprinting down the stairs. I cling to the railing and force my way through them with my elbow, not looking at their faces, like they are not human, just a wall of mass to push aside.
I expect the stream to stop, but more come from the next landing, a steady flow of blue-clad people in dim blue light, the whites of their eyes bright as lamps by contrast to everything else. Their terrified sobs echo in the cement chamber a hundred times, the shrieks of the demons with glowing eyes.
When we reach the seventh-floor landing, the crowd thins, and then disappears. I run my hands along my arms to get rid of the ghosts of hair, sleeves, and skin that brushed against me on the way up. I can see the top of the stairs from where we stand.
I also see the body of a guard, his arm dangling over the edge of a stair, and standing over him, a factionless man with an eye patch.
Edward.
“Look who it is,” Edward says. He stands at the top of a short flight, only seven steps long, and I stand at the bottom. The Dauntless traitor guard lies between us, his eyes glazed, a dark patch on his chest from where someone—Edward, probably—shot him.
“That’s a strange outfit for someone who is supposed to despise Erudite,” he says. “I thought you were supposed to be at home, waiting for your boyfriend to come back a hero?”
“As you may have gathered,” I say, walking up a step, “that was never going to happen.”
The blue light casts shadows into the faint hollows beneath Edward’s cheekbones. He reaches behind him.
If he is here, that means Tori is already up here. Which means that Jeanine might already be dead.
I feel Christina close behind me; I hear her breaths.
“We are going to get past you,” I say, walking up another step.
“I doubt that,” he replies. He grabs his gun. I launch myself forward, over the fallen guard. He fires, but my hands are wrapped around his wrist, so he doesn’t fire straight.
My ears ring, and my feet scramble for stability on the dead guard’s back.
Christina punches over my head. Her knuckles connect with Edward’s nose. I can’t balance on top of the body; I fall to my knees, digging my fingernails into his wrist. He wrenches me to the side and fires again, hitting Christina in the leg.
Gasping, Christina draws her gun and shoots. The bullet hits him in the side. Edward screams and drops the gun, pitching forward. He falls on top of me, and I smack my head against one of the cement steps. The dead guard’s arm is jammed into my spine.
Marcus picks up Edward’s gun and trains it on both of us.
“Get up, Tris,” he says. And to Edward: “You. Don’t move.”
My hand searches for the corner of a step, and I squeeze from between Edward and the dead guard. Edward pushes himself to a sitting position on top of the guard—like he’s some kind of cushion—clutching his side with both hands.
“You okay?” I ask Christina.
Her face contorts. “Ahh. Yeah. It hit the side, not the bone.”
I reach for her, to help her up.
“Beatrice,” Marcus says. “We have to leave her.”
“What do you mean leave?” I demand. “We can’t leave! Something terrible could happen!”
Marcus presses his index finger to my sternum, in the gap between my collarbones, and leans over me.
“Listen to me,” he says. “Jeanine Matthews will have retreated to her laboratory at the first sign of attack, because it is the safest room in this building. And at any moment, she will decide that Erudite is lost and it is better to delete the data than risk anyone else finding it, and this mission of ours will be useless.”
And I will have lost everyone: my parents, Caleb, and finally, Tobias, who will never forgive me for working with his father, especially if I have no way to prove that it was worthwhile.
“We are going to leave your friend here.” His breath smells stale. “And move on, unless you would rather me go on alone.”
“He’s right,” says Christina. “There’s no time. I’ll stay here and keep Ed from coming after you.”
I nod. Marcus removes his finger, leaving an aching circle behind. I rub the pain away and open the door at the top of the landing. I look back before I walk through it, and Christina gives me a pained smile, her hand pressed to her thigh.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
THE NEXT ROOM is more like a hallway: it is wide, but not deep, with blue tile, blue walls, and a blue ceiling, all the same shade. Everything glows, but I can’t tell where the light is coming from.