Allegiant (18 page)

Today I volunteered to go inside the city. David said the Divergent are dying and someone has to stop it, because that’s a waste of our best genetic material. I think that’s a pretty sick way to put it, but David doesn’t mean it that way—he just means that if it wasn’t the Divergent dying, we wouldn’t intervene until a certain level of destruction, but since it’s them it has to be taken care of now.

Just a few years, he said. All I have here are a few friends, no family, and I’m young enough that it will be easy to insert me—just wipe and resupply a few people’s memories, and I’m in. They’ll put me in Dauntless, at first, because I already have tattoos, and that would be hard to explain to the people inside the experiment. The only problem is that at my Choosing Ceremony next year I’ll have to join Erudite, because that’s where the killer is, and I’m not sure I’m smart enough to make it through initiation. David says it doesn’t matter, he can alter my results, but that feels wrong. Even if the Bureau thinks the factions don’t mean anything, that they’re just a kind of behavioral modification that will help with the damage, those people believe they do, and it feels wrong to play with their system.

I’ve been watching them for a couple years now, so there’s not much I need to know about fitting in. I bet I know the city better than they do, at this point. It’s going to be difficult to send my updates—someone might notice that I’m connecting to a distant server instead of an intra-city server, so my entries will probably come less often, if at all. It will be hard to separate myself from everything I know, but maybe it will be good. Maybe it will be a fresh start.

I could really use one of those.

It’s a lot to take in, but I find myself rereading the sentence:
The only problem is that at my Choosing Ceremony next year I’ll have to join Erudite, because that’s where the killer is
. I don’t know what killer she’s referring to—Jeanine Matthews’s predecessor, maybe?—but more confusing even than that is that she
didn’t
join Erudite.

What happened to make her join Abnegation instead?

The alarms stop, and my ears feel muffled in their absence. The others trickle out slowly, but Tobias lingers for a moment, tapping his fingers against his leg. I don’t speak to him—I’m not sure I want to hear what he has to say right now, when we’re both on edge.

But all he says is, “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” I say, relieved.

He bends down and touches my cheek, then kisses me softly.

Well, he knows how to improve my mood, at least.

“I didn’t think about Marcus. I should have,” I say.

He shrugs. “It’s over now.”

I know it’s not over. It’s never over with Marcus; the wrongs he committed are too great. But I don’t press the issue.

“More journal entries?” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “Just some memories of the compound so far. But it’s getting interesting.”

“Good,” he says. “I’ll leave you with it.”

He smiles a little, but I can tell he’s still tired, still upset. I don’t try to stop him from going. In a way, it feels like we are leaving each other to our grief, his over the loss of his Divergence and whatever hopes he had for Marcus’s trial, and mine, finally, over the loss of my parents.

I tap the screen to read the next entry.

Dear David,

I raise my eyebrows. Now she’s writing to David?

Dear David,

I’m sorry, but it’s not going to happen the way we planned it. I can’t do it. I know you’re just going to think I’m being a stupid teenager, but this is my life and if I’m going to be here for years, I have to do this my way. I’ll still be able to do my job from outside of Erudite. So tomorrow, at the Choosing Ceremony, Andrew and I are going to choose Abnegation together.

I hope you’re not angry. I guess even if you are, I won’t hear about it.

—Natalie

I read the entry again, and again, letting the words sink in.
Andrew and I are going to choose Abnegation together.

I smile into my hand, lean my head against the window, and let the tears fall in silence.

My parents did love each other. Enough to forsake plans and factions. Enough to defy “faction before blood.” Blood before faction—no,
love
before faction, always.

I turn off the screen. I don’t want to read anything that will spoil this feeling: that I am adrift in calm waters.

It’s strange how, even though I should be grieving, I feel like I am actually getting back pieces of her, word by word, line by line.

T
RIS

T
HERE ARE ONLY
a dozen more entries in the file, and they don’t tell me everything I want to know, though they do give me more questions. And instead of just containing her thoughts and impressions, they are all written
to
someone.

Dear David,

I thought you were more my friend than my supervisor, but I guess I was wrong.

What did you think would happen when I came in here, that I would live single and alone forever? That I wouldn’t get attached to anyone? That I wouldn’t make any of my own choices?

I left
everything
behind to come in here when no one else wanted to. You should be thanking me instead of accusing me of losing sight of my mission. Let’s get this straight: I’m not going to forget why I’m here just because I chose Abnegation and I’m going to get married. I deserve to have a life of my own. One that
I
choose, not one that you and the Bureau choose for me. You should know all about that—you should understand why this life would appeal to me after all I’ve seen and been through.

Honestly, I don’t really think you care that I didn’t choose Erudite like I was supposed to. It sounds like you’re actually just jealous. And if you want me to keep updating you, you’ll apologize for doubting me. But if you don’t, I won’t send you any more updates, and I certainly won’t leave the city to visit anymore. It’s up to you.

—Natalie

I wonder if she was right about David. The thought itches at my mind. Was he really jealous of my father? Did his jealousy fade over time? I can only see their relationship from her eyes, and I’m not sure she’s the most accurate source of information about it.

I can tell she’s getting older in the entries, her language becoming more refined as time separates her from the fringe where she once lived, her reactions becoming more moderate. She’s growing up.

I check the date on the next entry. It’s a few months later, but it’s not addressed to David the way some of the others have been. The tone is different too—not as familiar, more straightforward.

I tap the screen, flipping through the entries. It takes me ten taps to reach an entry that is addressed to David again. The date on the entry suggests that it came a full two years later.

Dear David,

I got your letter. I understand why you can’t be on the receiving end of these updates anymore, and I’ll respect your decision, but I’ll miss you.

I wish you every happiness.

—Natalie

I try to flip forward, but the journal entries are over. The last document in the file is a certificate of death. The cause of death says
multiple gunshot wounds to the torso
. I rock back and forth a little, to dispel the image of her collapsing in the street from my mind. I don’t want to think about her death. I want to know more about her and my father, and her and David. Anything to distract me from the way her life ended.

It’s a sign of how desperate I am for information—and action—that I go to the control room with Zoe later that morning. She talks to the manager of the control room about a meeting with David as I stare, determined, at my feet, not wanting to see what’s on the screens. I feel like if I allow myself to look at them, even for a moment, I will become addicted to them, lost in the old world because I don’t know how to navigate this new one.

As Zoe finishes her conversation, though, I can’t keep my curiosity in check. I look at the large screen hanging over the desks. Evelyn is sitting on her bed, running her hands over something on her bedside table. I move closer to see what it is, and the woman at the desk in front of me says, “This is the Evelyn cam. We track her 24-7.”

“Can you hear her?”

“Only if we turn the volume up,” the woman replies. “We mostly keep the sound off, though. Hard to listen to that much chatter all day.”

I nod. “What is that she’s touching?”

“Some kind of sculpture, I don’t know.” The woman shrugs. “She stares at it a lot, though.”

I recognize it from somewhere—from Tobias’s room, where I slept after my almost-execution in Erudite headquarters. It’s made of blue glass, an abstract shape that looks like falling water frozen in time.

I touch my fingertips to my chin as I search my memory. He told me that Evelyn gave it to him when he was young, and instructed him to hide it from his father, who wouldn’t approve of a useless-but-beautiful object, Abnegation that he was. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it must mean something to her, if she carried it all the way from the Abnegation sector to Erudite headquarters to keep on her bedside table. Maybe it was her way of rebelling against the faction system.

On the screen, Evelyn balances her chin on her hand and stares at the sculpture for a moment. Then she gets up and shakes out her hands and leaves the room.

No, I don’t think the sculpture is a sign of rebellion. I think it’s just a reminder of Tobias. Somehow I never realized that when Tobias charged out of the city with me, he wasn’t just a rebel defying his leader—he was a son abandoning his mother. And she is grieving over it.

Is he?

Fraught with difficulty as their relationship has been, those ties never really break. They can’t possibly.

Zoe touches my shoulder. “You wanted to ask me something?”

I nod and turn away from the screens. Zoe was young in the photograph where she stood next to my mother, but she was still there, so I figure she must know something. I would have asked David, but as the leader of the Bureau, he is difficult to find.

“I wanted to know about my parents,” I say. “I’m reading her journal, and I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out how they even met, or why they joined Abnegation together.”

Zoe nods slowly. “I’ll tell you what I know. Mind walking with me to the labs? I need to leave a message with Matthew.”

She holds her hands behind her back, resting them at the bottom of her spine. I am still holding the screen David gave me. It’s marked all over with my fingerprints, and warm from my constant touch. I understand why Evelyn keeps touching that sculpture—it’s the last piece of her son she has, just like this is the last piece of my mother that I have. I feel closer to her when it’s with me.

I think that’s why I can’t give it to Caleb, even though he has a right to see it. I’m not sure I can let go of it yet.

“They met in a class,” Zoe says. “Your father, though a very smart man, never quite got the knack of psychology, and the teacher—an Erudite, unsurprisingly—was very hard on him for it. So your mother offered to help him after school, and he told his parents he was doing some kind of school project. They did this for several weeks, and then started to meet in secret—I think one of their favorite places was the fountain south of Millennium Park. Buckingham Fountain? Right by the marsh?”

I imagine my mother and father sitting beside a fountain, under the spray of water, their feet skimming the concrete bottom. I know the fountain Zoe is referring to hasn’t been operational for a long time, so the spraying water was never there, but the picture is prettier that way.

“The Choosing Ceremony was approaching, and your father was eager to leave Erudite because he saw something terrible—”

“What? What did he see?”

“Well, your father was a good friend of Jeanine Matthews,” says Zoe. “He saw her performing an experiment on a factionless man in exchange for something—food, or clothing, something like that. Anyway, she was testing the fear-inducing serum that was later incorporated into Dauntless initiation—long ago, the fear simulations weren’t generated by a person’s individual fears, you see, just general fears like heights or spiders or something—and Norton, then the representative of Erudite, was there, letting it go on for far longer than it should have. The factionless man was never quite right again. And that was the last straw for your father.”

She pauses in front of the door to the labs to open it with her ID badge. We walk into the dingy office where David gave me my mother’s journal. Matthew is sitting with his nose three inches from his computer screen, his eyes narrow. He barely registers our presence when we walk in.

I feel overwhelmed by the desire to smile and cry at the same time. I sit down in a chair next to the empty desk, my hands clasped between my knees. My father was a difficult man. But he was also a good one.

“Your father wanted out of Erudite, and your mother didn’t want in, no matter what her mission was—but she still wanted to be near Andrew, so they chose Abnegation together.” She pauses. “This caused a rift between your mother and David, as I’m sure you saw. He eventually apologized, but said he couldn’t receive updates from her anymore—I don’t know why, he wouldn’t say—and after that her reports were very short, very informational. Which is why they’re not in that journal.”

“But she was still able to carry out her mission in Abnegation.”

“Yes. And she was much happier there, I think, than she would have been among the Erudite,” Zoe says. “Of course, Abnegation turned out to be no better, in some ways. It seems there’s no escaping the reach of genetic damage. Even the Abnegation leadership was poisoned by it.”

I frown. “Are you talking about Marcus? Because he’s Divergent. Genetic damage had nothing to do with it.”

“A man surrounded by genetic damage cannot help but mimic it with his own behavior,” Zoe says. “Matthew, David wants to set up a meeting with your supervisor to discuss one of the serum developments. Last time Alan completely forgot about it, so I was wondering if you could escort him.”

“Sure,” Matthew says without looking away from his computer. “I’ll get him to give me a time.”