LITMIR.BIZ

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gestures toward the door. Susan and Caleb start toward it, followed by me, and Tobias and his mother are last. We work our way through the maze of machinery again.

      “I’m not stupid,” she says in a low voice. “I know you want nothing to do with me—though I still don’t quite understand why—”

      Tobias snorts.

      “But,” she says, “I will extend my invitation again. We could use your help here, and I know you are like-minded about the faction system—”

      “Evelyn,” Tobias says. “I chose Dauntless.”

      “Choices can be made again.”

      “What makes you think I’m interested in spending time anywhere near you?” he demands. I hear his footsteps stop, and slow down so I can hear how she responds.

      “Because I’m your mother,” she says, and her voice almost breaks over the words, uncharacteristically vulnerable. “Because you’re my son.”

      “You really don’t get it,” he says. “You don’t have the vaguest conception of what you’ve done to me.” He sounds breathless. “I don’t want to join up with your little band of factionless. I want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

      “My little band of factionless is twice the size of Dauntless,” says Evelyn. “You would do well to take it seriously. Its actions may determine the future of this city.”

      With that, she walks ahead of him, and ahead of me. Her words echo in my mind: Twice the size of Dauntless. When did they become so large?

      Tobias looks at me, eyebrows lowered.

      “How long have you known?” I say.

      “About a year.” He slumps against the wall and closes his eyes. “She sent a coded message to me in Dauntless, telling me to meet her at the train yard. I did, because I was curious, and there she was. Alive. It wasn’t a happy reunion, as you can probably guess.”

      “Why did she leave Abnegation?”

      “She had an affair.” He shakes his head. “And no wonder, since my father …” He shakes his head again. “Well, let’s just say Marcus wasn’t any nicer to her than he was to me.”

      “Is … that why you’re angry with her? Because she was unfaithful to him?”

      “No,” he says too sternly, his eyes opening. “No, that’s not why I’m angry.”

      I walk toward him as if approaching a wild animal, each footstep careful on the cement floor. “Then why?”

      “She had to leave my father, I get that,” he says. “But did she think of taking me with her?”

      I purse my lips. “Oh. She left you with him.”

      She left him alone with his worst nightmare. No wonder he hates her.

      “Yeah.” He kicks at the floor. “She did.”

      My fingers find his, fumbling, and he guides them into the spaces between his own. I know that’s enough questions, for now, so I let the silence linger between us until he decides to break it.

      “It seems to me,” he says, “that the factionless are better friends than enemies.”

      “Maybe. But what would the cost of that friendship be?” I say.

      He shakes his head. “I don’t know. But we may not have any other option.”

      

      ONE OF THE factionless started a fire so we could heat up our food. Those who want to eat sit in a circle around the large metal bowl that contains the fire, first heating the cans, then passing out spoons and forks, then passing cans around so everyone can have a bite of everything. I try not to think about how many diseases could spread this way as I dip my spoon into a can of soup.

      Edward drops to the ground next to me and takes the can of soup from my hands.

      “So you were all Abnegation, huh?” He shovels several noodles and a piece of carrot into his mouth, and passes the can to the woman on his left.

      “We were,” I say. “But obviously Tobias and I transferred, and …” Suddenly it occurs to me that I shouldn’t tell anyone Caleb joined Erudite. “Caleb and Susan are still Abnegation.”

      “And he’s your brother. Caleb,” he says. “You ditched your family to become Dauntless?”

      “You sound like the Candor,” I say irritably. “Mind keeping your judgments to yourself?”

      Therese leans over. “He was Erudite first, actually. Not Candor.”

      “Yeah, I know,” I say, “I—”

      She interrupts me. “So was I. Had to leave, though.”

      “What happened?”

      “I wasn’t smart enough.” She shrugs and takes a can of beans from Edward, plunging her spoon into it. “I didn’t get a high enough score on my initiation intelligence test. So they said, ‘Spend your entire life cleaning up the research labs, or leave.’ And I left.”

      She looks down and licks her spoon clean. I take the beans from her and pass them along to Tobias, who is staring at the fire.

      “Are many of you from Erudite?” I say.

      Therese shakes her head. “Most are from Dauntless, actually.” She jerks her head toward Edward, who scowls. “Then Erudite, then Candor, then a handful of Amity. No one fails Abnegation initiation, though, so we have very few of those, except for a bunch who survived the simulation attack and came to us for refuge.”

      “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised about Dauntless,” I say.

      “Well, yeah. You’ve got one of the worst initiations, and there’s that whole old-age thing.”

      “Old-age thing?” I say. I glance at Tobias. He is listening now, and he looks almost normal again, his eyes thoughtful and dark in the firelight.

      “Once the Dauntless reach a certain level of physical deterioration,” he says, “they are asked to leave. In one way or another.”

      “What’s the other way?” My heart pounds, like it already knows an answer I can’t face without prompting.

      “Let’s just say,” says Tobias, “that for some, death is preferable to factionlessness.”

      “Those people are idiots,” says Edward. “I’d rather be factionless than Dauntless.”

      “How fortunate that you ended up where you did, then,” says Tobias coldly.

      “Fortunate?” Edward snorts. “Yeah. I’m so fortunate, with my one eye and all.”

      “I seem to recall hearing rumors that you provoked that attack,” says Tobias.

      “What are you talking about?” I say. “He was winning, that’s all, and Peter was jealous, so he just …”

      I see the smirk on Edward’s face and stop talking. Maybe I don’t know everything about what happened during initiation.

      “There was an inciting incident,” says Edward. “In which Peter did not come out the victor. But it certainly didn’t warrant a butter knife to the eye.”

      “No arguments here,” says Tobias. “If it makes you feel any better, he got shot in the arm from a foot away during the simulation attack.”

      And it does seem to make Edward feel better, because his smirk carves a deeper line into his face.

      “Who did that?” he says. “You?”

      Tobias

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