Page 50 of The Sixth Fraction

Weaver waves the other sentries off. I trade a wide-eyed look with Rory, who’s still lingering between the giant tanks, Colin at her side.

Jove stays where she is until the sentries have left the room and then shakes out her hands, which are trembling. Carr is giving her a strange look.

“It wasn’t true, what she said,” Carr says. “Was it?”

“Are you kidding? They’ll take any opportunity to make us miserable. Doesn’t matter what the truth is.”

Carr scratches his beard. He doesn’t look convinced, but he gestures for me to follow him back to the tank.

Chapter 17

Tris

We return to the Rookery a few hours later. I didn’t say anything the whole way back. I was just thinking about Weaver’s accusation, and the way Carr seemed to believe it, despite Jove’s denial. Or are we a sixth faction of criminal masterminds?

I’m still thinking about it when we walk into the lobby. At night the atrium is always bustling—it’s in the middle of the Rookery, like the core of an apple, so it’s one of the only places where we can light lanterns at night and see the night sky without worrying about sentries. Some people are playing music. A handful are toasting each other in the corner, looking celebratory.

“Are those Foxes?” I ask Rory, nudging her with my elbow.

“Might be,” she says, shrugging. “Why?”

“Just wondering if they’re toasting their victory,” I say, thinking of the breakout at the detention facility.

Rory looks confused. “What victory?”

Standing near the edge of the room, leaning up against a pillar, is Evelyn. I’ve seen her since I arrived—she’s always drifting in and out with the Foxes in the morning—but there’s no way to get close to her. All the factionless seem to almost worship her. She’s always surrounded, and who am I? Just a stray. Just nobody.

I watch Jove walk over to Evelyn, and move a little closer in the hope of hearing what she’s saying. But I don’t want to make it too obvious, so all I catch is Jove’s parting words:

“—might want to make it up to him.”

“Noted,” Evelyn replies. “It was worth it, though.”

I’m sure she’s talking about the attack on the detention facility. I wonder who they broke out of holding cells and what they were in for.

Then Evelyn sees me watching her. Before I can avert my eyes, she pulls away from the pillar and walks right up to me.

“Can I borrow you for a moment?” she asks me.

She’s wearing a deep green jacket made of canvas. Her eyes are lined with dark pencil. I wonder what it was like for her when she first left Abnegation. Since I’ve been here, I’ve heard it was harder to be factionless back then. They didn’t grow any of their own food, and they didn’t have a gang of thieves stealing necessities. To hear some people talk about it, it’s her who made the difference. Her ideas, her leadership, her plans.

And maybe it was her plans that got Robert killed.

Over her shoulder I see the Mender carrying Mae up the stairs. She’s asleep against his shoulder, her hair over her face.

“Let’s go outside,” Evelyn says, and she leads me through the lobby, across the scuffed wooden floors that have seen better days.

At the back of the building, we descend the steps into the tunnel. It’s not the entrance I used to get in, but it’s the one I use more often, now. The factionless don’t want to risk the sentries finding all their hideaways, so they come up with clever ways to disguise their entrances and exits. This one is a tunnel that connects the Rookery to the building next to it. It smells like mildew, and the path is lined with solar-charged lanterns to light our way.

We walk for a while before Evelyn says anything.

“I need your help with something.”

The sharpness in Evelyn’s eyes reminds me of a coyote that wandered through the Abnegation sector when I was a child. Not rabid, my father said, but wild and hungry.

Evelyn is hungry, too. For what, I’m not sure.

“My help?” I say. “With what?”