Page 109 of The Sixth Fraction

Tris’s fear simulation confused me. It wasn’t like Al’s, his connection to reality obviously intact—You’d never actually say this. Everything Tris did could have just been in her nature—it wouldn’t surprise me if she really would stare down the barrel of a gun and tell the person to go ahead and shoot her. But there was something about the way she looked at that Dauntless sentry, like she was calculating something instead of looking at a real person.

And doesn’t it make sense, that someone like Tris is Divergent?

“I just took her through a fear sim,” I say, affecting the same casual tone that Tori is using. “Also unremarkable.”

Tori’s eyes light up with understanding.

I don’t know much about Tori, but last year she pulled me aside at the start of initiation and asked me to look out for one of the transfers, an Erudite girl with glasses so thick they made her eyes look twice as big as they were. She didn’t tell me why, but her warning was so urgent I agreed. Only . . . there was nothing strange about the girl’s fear simulations. No reason to worry about her.

Later I realized that maybe the girl was just really good at heeding Tori’s warnings. Really good at pretending to be normal.

“If I were you, I’d clean up the log anyway,” Tori says. “Can’t have a random factionless cluttering up the data.”

“That’s what I was thinking. I’ll go do that.”

She opens her book again, but her hands are tense where they grip the pages, the tips of her fingers turning white. I walk out of the dining hall and hurry across the Pit. I spot Uriah, Marlene, and Lynn by the railing with some of the other Dauntless-borns, trying and failing to be discreet with a flask. I rush up the Pit path, sidestepping the woman who always tries to sell me on a nose piercing—You should accentuate your defining features!—and up the steps to the Pire lobby.

On my way to the simulation room, I smack right into someone: Edward. There’s a shiny patch on his right forearm—the protective spray for a fresh tattoo. I try to see the image beneath it, but it’s too distorted.

“Sorry,” he says, breathless.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was going to see if I could get a simulation practice session in.” He runs a hand through his hair, and I see that the tattoo on his arm is an elaborate geometric spiral. “But someone was already in there. I thought it was you. I didn’t want to interrupt, so . . .”

I frown. No one is supposed to run a fear simulation without an observer. The only people who would be able to are Dauntless leaders—Harrison, Max, or Eric.

“I’ll go check it out,” I say. “Come back in the morning, and I’ll take you through.”

“Thanks.”

I brush past him, into the antechamber where the flames are still dancing. The door to the simulation room is open, now.

Frowning, I walk across the space to the emergency exit across from it. The door is built into the wall, its seams just barely visible. It’s closed, but not flush with the stone on either side of it—someone passed through it recently and didn’t pull it shut hard enough. That’s how they got out of here without passing me, whoever they were.

I put my hand into the flames, and I feel the prickling at the back of my neck that means I’m connected to the computer. As usual, I don’t need to speak to tell it what to do—but it helps.

“Show me what the last person in here was looking at,” I say.

I walk into the simulation room, bringing the door closed behind me. The simulation starts playing as soon as I do. I’m standing in a kitchen, beneath a single lightbulb. A woman steps forward out of the shadows, dressed in Candor black and white.

This is Al’s simulation. The one that bored me earlier today.

“Stop,” I say. “Who accessed this log? Can you show me?”

There are a lot of things the fear simulator can do that people aren’t aware of. It can take me through old simulation logs. It can bring two people—or more—into the same simulation. And it can project images of the people who access it.

The kitchen scene fades, and in its place is a woman. She’s tall and blond, her clothes neat and tailored. If she wasn’t standing perfectly still, I’d think she was really here in the room with me.

She’s Jeanine Matthews. Leader of Erudite.

Chapter 39

Tris

When I board the train that will take me back to the Museum, I do it barefoot. I’m never wearing Erudite shoes again.

I’m not alone in the car. My stomach lurches when I see the dark shapes—the light on the front of the train car, which is supposed to alert me to any existing Dauntless passengers, was dark. So they must be factionless.