Allegiant (Divergent 3)

We pile into the truck again. Amar draws the doors shut behind us, and I set my gun on the floor with the safety on, glad to be rid of it. I didn’t think I would be aiming a dangerous weapon at someone today when I woke up. I didn’t think I would witness those kinds of living conditions, either.

“It’s the Abnegation in you,” Amar says. “That makes you hate that place. I can tell.”

“It’s a lot of things in me.”

“It’s just something I noticed in Four, too. Abnegation produces deeply serious people. People who automatically see things like need,” he says. “I’ve noticed that when people switch to Dauntless, it creates some of the same types. Erudite who switch to Dauntless tend to turn cruel and brutal. Candor who switch to Dauntless tend to become boisterous, fight-picking adrenaline junkies. And Abnegation who switch to Dauntless become . . . I don’t know, soldiers, I guess. Revolutionaries.

“That’s what he could be, if he trusted himself more,” he adds. “If Four wasn’t so plagued with self-doubt, he would be one hell of a leader, I think. I’ve always thought that.”

“I think you’re right,” I say. “It’s when he’s a follower that he gets himself into trouble. Like with Nita. Or Evelyn.”

What about you? I ask myself. You wanted to make him a follower too.

No, I didn’t, I tell myself, but I’m not sure if I believe it.

Amar nods.

Images from the fringe keep rising up inside me like hiccups. I imagine the child my mother was, crouched in one of those lean-tos, scrambling for weapons because they meant an ounce of safety, choking on smoke to keep warm in the winter. I don’t know why she was so willing to abandon that place after she was rescued. She became absorbed into the compound, and then worked on its behalf for the rest of her life. Did she forget about where she came from?

She couldn’t have. She spent her entire life trying to help the factionless. Maybe it wasn’t a fulfillment of her duty as an Abnegation—maybe it came from a desire to help people like the ones she had left.

Suddenly I can’t stand to think of her, or that place, or the things I saw there. I grab on to the first thought that comes to my mind, to distract myself.

“So you and Tobias were good friends?”

“Is anyone good friends with him?” Amar shakes his head. “I gave him his nickname, though. I watched him face his fears and I saw how troubled he was, and I figured he could use a new life, so I started calling him ‘Four.’ But no, I wouldn’t say we were good friends. Not as good as I wanted to be.”

Amar leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. A small smile curls his lips.

“Oh,” I say. “Did you . . . like him?”

“Now why would you ask that?”

I shrug. “Just the way you talk about him.”

“I don’t like him anymore, if that’s what you’re really asking. But yes, at one time I did, and it was clear that he did not return that particular sentiment, so I backed off,” Amar says. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t say anything.”

“To Tobias? Of course I won’t.”

“No, I mean, don’t say anything to anyone. And I’m not talking about just the thing with Tobias.”

He looks at the back of George’s head, now visible above the considerably diminished pile of equipment.

I raise an eyebrow at him. I’m not surprised he and George were drawn to each other. They’re both Divergent who had to fake their own deaths to survive. Both outsiders in an unfamiliar world.

“You have to understand,” Amar says. “The Bureau is obsessed with procreation—with passing on genes. And George and I are both GPs, so any entanglement that can’t produce a stronger genetic code . . . It’s not encouraged, that’s all.”

“Ah.” I nod. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m not obsessed with producing strong genes.” I smile wryly.

“Thank you,” he says.

For a few seconds we sit quietly, watching the ruins turn to a blur as the truck picks up speed.

“I think you’re good for Four, you know,” he says.

I stare at my hands, curled in my lap. I don’t feel like explaining to him that we’re on the verge of breaking up—I don’t know him, and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to talk about it. All I can manage to say is, “Oh?”

“Yeah. I can see what you bring out in him. You don’t know this because you’ve never experienced it, but Four without you is a much different person. He’s . . . obsessive, explosive, insecure . . .”

“Obsessive?”

“What else do you call someone who repeatedly goes through his own fear landscape?”

“I don’t know . . . determined.” I pause. “Brave.”

“Yeah, sure. But also a little bit crazy, right? I mean, most Dauntless would rather leap into the chasm than keep going through their fear landscapes. There’s bravery and then there’s masochism, and the line got a little hazy with him.”

“I’m familiar with the line,” I say.

“I know.” Amar grins. “Anyway, all I’m saying is, any time you mash two different people against each other, you’ll get problems, but I can see that what you guys have is worthwhile, that’s all.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Mash people against each other, really?”

Amar presses his palms together and twists them back and forth, to illustrate. I laugh, but I can’t ignore the achy feeling in my chest.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

TOBIAS

I WALK TO the cluster of chairs closest to the windows in the control room and bring up the footage from different cameras throughout the city, one by one, searching for my parents. I find Evelyn first—she is in the lobby of Erudite headquarters, talking in a close huddle with Therese and a factionless man, her second and third in command now that I am gone. I turn up the volume on the microphone, but I still can’t hear anything but muttering.

Through the windows along the back of the control room, I see the same empty night sky as the one above the city, interrupted only by small blue and red lights marking the runways for airplanes. It’s strange to think we have that in common when everything else is so different here.

By now the people in the control room know that I was the one who disabled the security system the night before the attack, though I wasn’t the one who slipped one of their night shift workers peace serum so that I could do it—that was Nita. But for the most part, they ignore me, as long as I stay away from their desks.