Page 99 of The Sixth Fraction

Everything in Jeanine Matthews’s office is white. White tile floors, white-painted walls, high white ceilings. Across from the door is a wide stretch of windows that look out over the marsh. And in front of it, a glass desk, empty, with a handheld screen on top of it.

As I’m walking in, though, a boy is walking out. He’s dressed head to toe in black, and his face is studded with metal in so many places I couldn’t count the piercings if I tried. I turn to watch him go. I have no idea what a Dauntless boy is doing in Erudite headquarters—let alone in Jeanine Matthews’s office.

A moment later I realize I know who that Dauntless boy is, based on Christina’s description of him: Eric. One of the Dauntless leaders. The young one.

I stare at his retreating back for a few seconds before the Erudite man escorting me presses me forward, toward the office again.

Jeanine herself is standing at one of the lab tables on the left side of the white room, a diagram projected on the wall in front of her. I can’t make sense of it—it’s all numbers and measurements, fine lines and obscure markings. Written at the bottom of it is the phrase “portable signal repeater.”

She looks up when I come in. “Have a seat, please, Miss Prior.”

I stand behind one of the—no surprise—white chairs in front of her desk, but I don’t sit down. Not until she turns away from the wall diagram and walks back to her desk to sit across from me.

She’s wearing dark blue pants—the same shade as my dress—and a sleeveless top that looks almost liquid in the way it drapes. The Erudite always have the best fabric, thanks to their rooms full of fabricators—three-dimensional printers that produce all kinds of materials, including the coagulant I watched Carr pour into the water tank. I heard a rumor that one of the Foxes is going to try to steal a fabricator before the end of the year.

She gestures to one of the chairs again, and I perch on the edge of it. I suddenly feel ridiculous in the blue dress, like I’m wearing a costume. She and I both know I’m no Erudite.

“You look very convincing,” she says. “I admit that I find that surprising. The last time I saw you, you were choosing Abnegation at the makeup Choosing Ceremony, were you not?”

“Yes,” I say, a little surprised. I didn’t think she was paying attention to anyone at that ceremony, least of all me.

“I have a good memory,” she says smoothly, as if she’s reading my mind. “And your brother has, of course, mentioned you.”

“He has?” I frown. “What did he say?”

“Simply that he was concerned for you, given the troubling reports that have emerged about conditions in Abnegation,” she says. “He wasn’t aware, of course, that you had left them.”

I notice that she says the reports have “emerged” rather than that she encouraged them, maybe even suggested them.

“I must tell you that I find you somewhat fascinating.” She folds her hands on the desk and leans toward me, like she’s telling me a secret. “On the surface, everything about you is typical. An Abnegation-born girl gets an Abnegation result on the aptitude test and chooses—of course—Abnegation. But then, dig a little deeper and you find that the same girl didn’t complete initiation in a faction where failure is impossible. Dig deeper than that and you find out that there was an anomaly with her aptitude test, and her result had to be logged manually. Can you tell me about that?”

My heart speeds up. I feel it in my throat. Being the way you are, it destabilizes things. Tori’s words from after the aptitude test pulse in my mind. It’s dangerous. For you, and for everyone you tell.

“I started to feel sick right after the injection,” I tell her. “Maybe my test administrator was distracted and didn’t run the test properly. I don’t know—I was kind of busy trying not to throw up at the time.”

“Interesting. The test doesn’t usually have that effect.” Jeanine’s voice is pleasant. I’m not fooled. She taps her polished, shaped fingernails on the glass in front of her.

She doesn’t believe me. And if I can’t make her believe me, she might dig deeper. She might find Tori and ask her about it. She might figure me out.

So I decide to tell a better lie. One she’s sure to believe, because it’s the kind of lie she might tell.

“Actually,” I say. “There was something weird about my test.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“I got Dauntless.” I look at my fingers twisted together in my lap. “And I knew I couldn’t choose Dauntless, couldn’t do that to my parents. So I begged my test administrator to lie. Log the results manually so my parents wouldn’t find out what I was really like.”

“Your parents don’t have access to the aptitude test data.”

“My father’s a council member,” I say. “I didn’t know whether he could access my results or not. I was . . . afraid of getting in trouble.” I pause. “Afraid of another penalty.”

Her eyes glitter. “A Penalty of Silence, you mean.”

I nod. I look away. I hate the thought that I’m adding fuel to the fire of her accusations. That I’m betraying my parents by acting like I’m afraid of them.

“So you received a Dauntless result but chose Abnegation because of your parents,” she says, and her voice is gentler now. “And then couldn’t complete initiation, as a result. What have you been doing since then?”

“Surviving,” I say. “I came here to visit my brother. I just wanted something normal. Something familiar.”