Allegiant (Divergent #3)(84)
Author: Veronica Roth

“Don’t you dare.” She clenches her hands into fists and almost spits at me, “Don’t you dare.”

“I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it,” I say, coming to my feet. “He was a tyrant in our house and now you’re a tyrant in this city, and you can’t even see that it’s the same!”

“So that’s why you brought this,” she says, and she wraps her hand around the vial, holding it up to look at it. “Because you think this is the only way to mend things.”

“I . . .” I am about to say that it’s the easiest way, the best way, maybe the only way that I can trust her.

If I erase her memories, I can create for myself a new mother, but.

But she is more than my mother. She is a person in her own right, and she does not belong to me.

I do not get to choose what she becomes just because I can’t deal with who she is.

“No,” I say. “No, I came to give you a choice.”

I feel suddenly terrified, my hands numb, my heart beating fast—

“I thought about going to see Marcus tonight, but I didn’t.” I swallow hard. “I came to see you instead because . . . because I think there’s a hope of reconciliation between us. Not now, not soon, but someday. And with him there’s no hope, there’s no reconciliation possible.”

She stares at me, her eyes fierce but welling up with tears.

“It’s not fair for me to give you this choice,” I say. “But I have to. You can lead the factionless, you can fight the Allegiant, but you’ll have to do it without me, forever. Or you can let this crusade go, and . . . and you’ll have your son back.”

It’s a feeble offer and I know it, which is why I’m afraid—afraid that she will refuse to choose, that she will choose power over me, that she will call me a ridiculous child, which is what I am. I am a child. I am two feet tall and asking her how much she loves me.

Evelyn’s eyes, dark as wet earth, search mine for a long time.

Then she reaches across the table and pulls me fiercely into her arms, which form a wire cage around me, surprisingly strong.

“Let them have the city and everything in it,” she says into my hair.

I can’t move, can’t speak. She chose me. She chose me.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

TRIS

THE DEATH SERUM smells like smoke and spice, and my lungs reject it with the first breath I take. I cough and splutter, and I am swallowed by darkness.

I crumple to my knees. My body feels like someone has replaced my blood with molasses, and my bones with lead. An invisible thread tugs me toward sleep, but I want to be awake. It is important that I want to be awake. I imagine that wanting, that desire, burning in my chest like a flame.

The thread tugs harder, and I stoke the flame with names. Tobias. Caleb. Christina. Matthew. Cara. Zeke. Uriah.

But I can’t bear up under the serum’s weight. My body falls to the side, and my wounded arm presses to the cold ground. I am drifting. . . .

It would be nice to float away, a voice in my head says. To see where I will go . . .

But the fire, the fire.

The desire to live.

I am not done yet, I am not.

I feel like I am digging through my own mind. It is difficult to remember why I came here and why I care about unburdening myself from this beautiful weight. But then my scratching hands find it, the memory of my mother’s face, and the strange angles of her limbs on the pavement, and the blood seeping from my father’s body.

But they are dead, the voice says. You could join them.

They died for me, I answer. And now I have something to do, in return. I have to stop other people from losing everything. I have to save the city and the people my mother and father loved.

If I go to join my parents, I want to carry with me a good reason, not this—this senseless collapsing at the threshold.

The fire, the fire. It rages within, a campfire and then an inferno, and my body is its fuel. I feel it racing through me, eating away at the weight. There is nothing that can kill me now; I am powerful and invincible and eternal.

I feel the serum clinging to my skin like oil, but the darkness recedes. I slap a heavy hand over the floor and push myself up.

Bent at the waist, I shove my shoulder into the double doors, and they squeak across the floor as their seal breaks. I breathe clean air and stand up straighter. I am there, I am there.

But I am not alone.

“Don’t move,” David says, raising his gun. “Hello, Tris.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

TRIS

“HOW DID YOU inoculate yourself against the death serum?” he asks me. He’s still sitting in his wheelchair, but you don’t need to be able to walk to fire a gun.

I blink at him, still dazed.

“I didn’t,” I say.

“Don’t be stupid,” David says. “You can’t survive the death serum without an inoculation, and I’m the only person in the compound who possesses that substance.”

I just stare at him, not sure what to say. I didn’t inoculate myself. The fact that I’m still standing upright is impossible. There’s nothing more to add.

“I suppose it no longer matters,” he says. “We’re here now.”

“What are you doing here?” I mumble. My lips feel awkwardly large, hard to talk around. I still feel that oily heaviness on my skin, like death is clinging to me even though I have defeated it.

I am dimly aware that I left my own gun in the hallway behind me, sure I wouldn’t need it if I made it this far.

“I knew something was going on,” David says. “You’ve been running around with genetically damaged people all week, Tris, did you think I wouldn’t notice?” He shakes his head. “And then your friend Cara was caught trying to manipulate the lights, but she very wisely knocked herself out before she could tell us anything. So I came here, just in case. I’m sad to say I’m not surprised to see you.”

“You came here alone?” I say. “Not very smart, are you?”

His bright eyes squint a little. “Well, you see, I have death serum resistance and a weapon, and you have no way to fight me. There’s no way you can steal four virus devices while I have you at gunpoint. I’m afraid you’ve come all this way for no reason, and it will be at the expense of your life. The death serum may not have killed you, but I am going to. I’m sure you understand—officially we don’t allow capital punishment, but I can’t have you surviving this.”