Page 104 of The Sixth Fraction

Four frowns. But if he can think of a reason for Eric and Jeanine to meet, he doesn’t share it with me. Instead he says, “So you followed him here, and then just . . . decided to stop by the tattoo parlor?”

I shrug. “Maybe I just wanted to thank you. For helping me after the fire.”

He sighs like I’ve disappointed him. “No, you didn’t. You didn’t come all this way just to thank me.”

It takes me a few seconds to figure out what he’s implying. But Four is only ever suspicious of one thing when it comes to me: that everything I do is an attempt to get him to defect.

“You think Evelyn sent me,” I say.

“You’re saying she didn’t?”

“She told me if I saw an opportunity to see you again, I should take it,” I admit. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

He still looks guarded, and I guess I can’t blame him. I’ve never been lied to the way he was lied to—and not just by his mother but by his father, and countless members of his community who knew there was no body to burn, no dead mother to mourn. I don’t understand the source of his suspicion toward Evelyn, but I understand why it’s so hard for him to trust anyone.

It occurs to me, standing before him, that we’ve been on unequal footing ever since I figured out his real name. From that moment on, I knew the worst thing that ever happened to him. All he knows about me is what I’ve told him.

Just like that, I come to a decision.

I’m going to show him something. Something real.

“You said you administer the fear simulations,” I say. “Does that mean you see them? People’s fears?”

“Um . . . yeah. Why?”

I think of what he said to me on the Ferris wheel, right before the fire. At the time, it felt like an offering.

So I offer it back.

“Because I’m going to trust you,” I say, “and see where it leads.”

Chapter 37

Tris

The walk through Dauntless headquarters makes my chest ache. I don’t know how I would have done in Dauntless, but I can tell just by looking around that I would have liked it more than Abnegation. In every direction there are people at ease. With themselves, with each other. Reckless with their laughter, their words, the way they move.

We climb the path in silence, and then Four leads us down a quiet hallway and around a bend, into an even quieter hallway. He opens the door to the simulation room.

My first thought is that the place feels sacred, somehow. It’s dark except for the firelight in the center of the room, flickering. The shadows we cast on the walls are warped and strange.

Four approaches the flames, firelight playing across his stern brow and his aquiline nose. He puts his hand in the fire, and I swallow a gasp as I realize, a beat later, that the flames aren’t real. He looks up at me.

“Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” he asks, nodding to the convincing imitation of fire that’s wrapped around his hand.

I hold my hands out like I’m warming them at a hearth, and the flames twitch beneath me. The illusion is so perfect, even this close, that I keep expecting to feel heat.

“That should do it,” he says, and he gestures for me to follow him through a door and into a completely bare room.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks me. “Once I initiate the simulation, you won’t be able to escape it until you face your fear. And it’s . . . distressing. Even for me, sometimes, and I’m just observing.”

I look around at the stone walls, stone floor, stone ceiling. It’s like this place is hewn from the ground.

“What was it you said during the fire?” I say. “Oh yeah—I’m stronger than I look.”

I’m still looking into his eyes when the room disappears around me. He fades last, his face lit by the single bulb over our heads.

Then a table appears in front of me, and on it is a single gun, pointed away from me. My father stands across from me. He looks pale and sick, clammy with sweat and terrified. His hands are bound in front of him with rope.