Page 144 of The Sixth Fraction

“You gotta learn to trust people, you know?” Zeke says over my shoulder. “Not everyone. Just like—one or two people, at least.”

“I do.” I pause, and amend: “I’m starting to.”

I’m walking away from Dauntless headquarters when I see him: Eric, his hands in his pockets, walking in the opposite direction. He must have just come from the train, because he looks windblown. He stops a few feet away from me, smirking.

“Thanks for the little show earlier, Tobias,” he says. “Now I understand why you like working in the simulation room. It’s really fascinating stuff.”

I feel the potential for violence inside me all the time. Like a beast that lives just under my skin, ready at any moment to attack. I think it’s what Natalie saw when she called me a cat with my hackles up—that anger, simmering, reactive, sudden.

I’m used to suppressing it. I don’t like how it makes me feel, and I don’t like what it makes me do. But I’ve been stuffing it down ever since Jeanine Matthews walked into the simulation room yesterday, and I can’t do it anymore.

I snap. My blood roaring in my ears, I lunge at him. I grab him by the lapels and twist, half throwing and half shoving him into the side of the building so hard it makes my teeth rattle.

His head snaps back against the brick, and for a moment pain flashes across his face.

Then he sneers, the expression tugging at the piercings in his lip in all the wrong ways.

“Aren’t you going to tell me to look you in the eye when I’m talking to you?” he says.

It’s something my father used to say all the time. That I owed him respect, and respect meant looking him in the eye, at the very least. If I didn’t, I suffered the consequences, same as I did when I forgot to call him “sir,” or when I lost my temper and talked back. There were always consequences.

I know what Eric is doing. I know he’s taunting me with that memory on purpose, sure it will hurt me far worse than fighting me ever would.

I know what he’s doing, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. I feel cold all the way through. I let go of him and step back.

“You’re going to regret that,” Eric says to me. “And soon. I’ll make sure of it.”

“I guarantee you I won’t,” I say, and I keep walking down the street toward my apartment.

I expect it to be hard to sleep, with the anticipation of meeting Tris and the factionless so early, and my hatred of Eric, of Marcus, and this whole goddamn nightmare scenario buzzing in my brain. But after I set my alarm for two and pull the quilt up over my shoulder, I’m out right away.

When I wake up, the apartment is still dark, the floor bathed in inky blue, but I feel an urgent tug in my chest that tells me to get up. I sit on the edge of the bed to put on my boots. I feel like there’s something different about my room, but I can’t figure out what it is, and it doesn’t matter, anyway. I have to get moving.

I’m out of the apartment in a few minutes, my boots laced tight and that urgent feeling is so strong I feel like running. Dauntless headquarters is on my right, but I don’t even think about going there. Instead I turn left, and jog toward the train platform.

I climb the steps, and the urgent feeling takes on an actual meaning: I’m going to meet the initiates here. I’m sure some of them are going to be late, and I’ll have to find some creative way to punish them for it. Running sprints, maybe. When I reach the top of the steps, I check my watch.

Why are you meeting the initiates so early? a voice in my head asks. I dismiss it.

I see dark shapes moving down the street toward the platform, and I tap my foot as I wait for them to reach it. The first one up the stairs is Lynn, elbowing Peter out of the way. Marlene comes after, and then Edward and Molly and Drew. The others fill in after them.

Eric is the last one up the steps, a backpack hanging heavily from his shoulders, and I resent that he has to be here, but it makes sense. He’s observing, after all.

I know there are some faces missing, but I don’t dwell on it. If they’re not here by now, they’ll have to meet us at our destination.

What is our destination? That little voice in me asks, but the rest of me dismisses the question again, along with the niggling feeling that I’ve forgotten something important. I’ve gone over the plan so many times I don’t even have to speak to the initiates. The train is approaching the station more slowly than usual; I can hear the screech of the brakes as it pulls to a full stop.

Which is strange. But somehow also what I expect.

We line up on the platform, with me at the front and the others behind me. And I board the train.

Chapter 50

Tris

I should get as much sleep as I can before I have to meet Evelyn in the middle of the night, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to wake up on time. So instead, I dress in all my clothes that are easy to move in: my black Dauntless pants, made of some thick, stretchy material; my deep red T-shirt, dyed by the Mender himself; my jacket and boots. I put my hair up and lie on top of my blankets, waiting.

I left a message for my mother behind the brick at the donation center earlier today, telling her what I was about to do, and when. I can only hope she remembered to check for it this afternoon.