Allegiant (Divergent #3)(76)
Author: Veronica Roth

I draw her toward me, my hand on her hip. Her eyes are wide, alert, despite just having opened. I kiss her cheek, then her jaw, then her throat, lingering there for a few seconds. Her hands tighten around my waist, and she sighs into my ear.

My self-control is about to disappear in five, four, three . . .

“Tobias,” she whispers, “I hate to say this, but . . . I think we have just a few things to do today.”

“They can wait,” I say against her shoulder, and I kiss the first tattoo, slowly.

“No, they can’t!” she says.

I flop back onto the cushions, and I feel cold without her body parallel to mine. “Yeah. About that—I was thinking your brother could use some target practice. Just in case.”

“That might be a good idea,” she says quietly. “He’s only fired a gun . . . what, once? Twice?”

“I can teach him,” I say. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s aiming. And it might make him feel better to do something.”

“Thank you,” she says. She sits up and puts her fingers through her hair to comb it. In the morning light its color looks brighter, like it’s threaded with gold. “I know you don’t like him, but . . .”

“But if you’re going to let what he did go,” I say, taking her hand, “then I’m going to try to do the same.”

She smiles, and kisses my cheek.

I skim the lingering shower water from the back of my neck with my palm. Tris, Caleb, Christina, and I are in the training room in the GD area underground—it’s cold and dim and full of equipment, training weapons and mats and helmets and targets, everything we could ever need. I select the right practice gun, the one about the size of a pistol, but bulkier, and offer it to Caleb.

Tris’s fingers slide between mine. Everything comes easily this morning, every smile and every laugh, every word and every motion.

If we succeed in what we attempt tonight, tomorrow Chicago will be safe, the Bureau will be forever changed, and Tris and I will be able to build a new life for ourselves somewhere. Maybe it will even be a place where I trade my guns and knives for more productive tools, screwdrivers and nails and shovels. This morning I feel like I could be so fortunate. I could.

“It doesn’t shoot real bullets,” I say, “but it seems like they designed it so it would be as close as possible to one of the guns you’ll be using. It feels real, anyway.”

Caleb holds the gun with just his fingertips, like he’s afraid it will shatter in his hands.

I laugh. “First lesson: Don’t be afraid of it. Grab it. You’ve held one before, remember? You got us out of the Amity compound with that shot.”

“That was just lucky,” Caleb says, turning the gun over and over to see it from every angle. His tongue pushes into his cheek like he’s solving a problem. “Not the result of skill.”

“Lucky is better than unlucky,” I say. “We can work on skill now.”

I glance at Tris. She grins at me, then leans in to whisper something to Christina.

“Are you here to help or what, Stiff?” I say. I hear myself speaking in the voice I cultivated as an initiation instructor, but this time I use it in jest. “You could use some practice with that right arm, if I recall correctly. You too, Christina.”

Tris makes a face at me, then she and Christina cross the room to get their own weapons.

“Okay, now face the target and turn the safety off,” I say. There is a target across the room, more sophisticated than the wooden-board target in the Dauntless training rooms. It has three rings in three different colors, green, yellow, and red, so it’s easier to tell where the bullets hit. “Let me see how you would naturally shoot.”

He lifts up the gun with one hand, squares off his feet and shoulders to the target like he’s about to lift something heavy, and fires. The gun jerks back and up, firing the bullet near the ceiling. I cover my mouth with my hand to disguise my smile.

“There’s no need to giggle,” Caleb says irritably.

“Book learning doesn’t teach you everything, does it?” Christina says. “You have to hold it with both hands. It doesn’t look as cool, but neither does attacking the ceiling.”

“I wasn’t trying to look cool!”

Christina stands, her legs slightly uneven, and lifts both arms. She stares at the target for a moment, then fires. The training bullet hits the outer circle of the target and bounces off, rolling on the floor. It leaves a circle of light on the target, marking the impact site. I wish I’d had this technology during initiation training.

“Oh, good,” I say. “You hit the air around your target’s body. How useful.”

“I’m a little rusty,” Christina admits, grinning.

“I think the easiest way for you to learn would be to mimic me,” I say to Caleb. I stand the way I always stand, easy, natural, and lift both my arms, squeezing the gun with one hand and steadying it with the other.

Caleb tries to match me, beginning with his feet and moving up with the rest of him. As eager as Christina was to tease him, it’s his ability to analyze that makes him successful—I can see him changing angles and distances and tension and release as he looks me over, trying to get everything right.

“Good,” I say when he’s finished. “Now focus on what you’re trying to hit, and nothing else.”

I stare at the center of the target and try to let it swallow me. The distance doesn’t trouble me—the bullet will travel straight, just like it would if I was closer. I inhale and brace myself, exhale and fire, and the bullet goes right where I meant to put it: in the red circle, in the center of the target.

I step back to watch Caleb try it. He has the right way of standing, the right way of holding the gun, but he is rigid there, a statue with a gun in hand. He sucks in a breath and holds it as he fires. This time the kickback doesn’t startle him as much, and the bullet nicks the top of the target.

“Good,” I say again. “I think what you mostly need is to get comfortable with it. You’re very tense.”

“Can you blame me?” he says. His voice trembles, but just at the end of each word. He has the look of someone who is trapping terror inside. I watched two classes of initiates with that expression, but none of them was ever facing what Caleb is facing now.

I shake my head and say quietly, “Of course not. But you have to realize that if you can’t let that tension go tonight, you might not make it to the Weapons Lab, and what good would that do anyone?”