Insurgent (Divergent #2)(23)
Author: Veronica Roth

I cover his hand with mine. “That’s all it is,” I say weakly.

“Okay,” he says. He touches his mouth to mine. Guilt clutches at my stomach.

The door opens. A few people file in—two Candor with guns; a dark-skinned, older Candor man; a Dauntless woman I don’t recognize. And then: Jack Kang, representative of Candor.

By most faction standards, he is a young leader—only thirty-nine years old. But by Dauntless standards, that’s nothing. Eric became a Dauntless leader at seventeen. But that’s probably one of the reasons the other factions don’t take our opinions or decisions seriously.

Jack is handsome, too, with short black hair and warm, slanted eyes, like Tori’s, and high cheekbones. Despite his good looks, he isn’t known for being charming, probably because he’s Candor, and they see charm as deceptive. I do trust him to tell us what’s going on without wasting time on pleasantries. That is something.

“They told me you seemed confused about why you were arrested,” he says. His voice is deep, but strangely flat, like it could not create an echo even at the bottom of an empty cavern. “To me that means either you’re falsely accused or good at pretending. The only—”

“What are we accused of?” I interrupt him.

“He is accused of crimes against humanity. You are accused of being his accomplice.”

“Crimes against humanity?” Tobias finally sounds angry. He gives Jack a disgusted look. “What?”

“We saw video footage of the attack. You were running the attack simulation,” says Jack.

“How could you have seen footage? We took the data,” says Tobias.

“You took one copy of the data. All the footage of the Dauntless compound recorded during the attack was also sent to other computers throughout the city,” says Jack. “All we saw was you running the simulation and her nearly getting punched to death before she gave up. Then you stopped, had a rather abrupt lovers’ reconciliation, and stole the hard drive together. One possible reason is because the simulation was over and you didn’t want us to get our hands on it.”

I almost laugh. My great act of heroism, the only important thing I have ever done, and they think I was working for the Erudite when I did it.

“The simulation didn’t end,” I say. “We stopped it, you—”

Jack holds up his hand. “I am not interested in what you have to say right now. The truth will come out when you are both interrogated under the influence of truth serum.”

Christina told me about truth serum once. She said the most difficult part of Candor initiation was being given truth serum and answering personal questions in front of everyone in the faction. I don’t need to search myself for my deepest, darkest secrets to know that truth serum is the last thing I want in my body.

“Truth serum?” I shake my head. “No. No way.”

“There’s something you have to hide?” Jack says, lifting both eyebrows.

I want to tell him that anyone with an ounce of dignity wants to keep some things to herself, but I don’t want to arouse his suspicions. So I shake my head.

“All right, then.” He checks his watch. “It is now noon. The interrogation will be at seven. Don’t bother preparing for it. You can’t withhold information while under the influence of truth serum.”

He turns on his heel and walks out of the room.

“What a pleasant man,” says Tobias.

A group of armed Dauntless escort me to the bathroom in the early afternoon. I take my time, letting my hands turn red in the hot-faucet water and staring at my reflection. When I was in Abnegation and wasn’t allowed to look into mirrors, I used to think that a lot could change in a person’s appearance in three months. But it only took a few days to change me this time.

I look older. Maybe it’s the short hair or maybe it’s just that I wear all that has happened like a mask. Either way, I always thought I would be happy when I stopped looking like a child. But all I feel is a lump in my throat. I am no longer the daughter my parents knew. They will never know me as I am now.

I turn away from the mirror and shove the door to the hallway open with the heels of my hands.

When the Dauntless drop me off at the holding room, I linger by the door. Tobias looks like he did when I first met him—black T-shirt, short hair, stern expression. The sight of him used to fill me with nervous excitement. I remember when I grabbed his hand outside the training room, just for a few seconds, and when we sat together on the rocks next to the chasm, and I feel a pang of longing for how things used to be.

“Hungry?” he says. He offers me a sandwich from the plate next to him.

I take it and sit down, leaning my head on his shoulder. All that’s left for us to do is wait, so that’s what we do. We eat until the food is gone. We sit until we get uncomfortable. Then we lie down next to each other on the floor, shoulders touching, staring at the same patch of white ceiling.

“What are you afraid of saying?” he says.

“Any of it. All of it. I don’t want to relive anything.”

He nods. I close my eyes and pretend to sleep. There’s no clock in the room, so I can’t count down the minutes until the interrogation. Time might as well not exist in this place, except I feel it pressing against me as seven o’clock inevitably draws closer, pushing me into the floor tiles.

Maybe time would not feel as heavy if I didn’t have this guilt—the guilt of knowing the truth and stuffing it down where no one can see it, not even Tobias. Maybe I should not be so afraid of saying anything, because honesty will make me feel lighter.

I must fall asleep eventually, because I jerk awake at the sound of the door opening. A few Dauntless walk in as we get to our feet, and one of them says my name. Christina shoves her way past the others and throws her arms around me. Her fingers dig into the wound in my shoulder, and I cry out.

“Got shot,” I say. “Shoulder. Ow.”

“Oh God!” She releases me. “Sorry, Tris.”

She doesn’t look like the Christina I remember. Her hair is shorter, like a boy’s, and her skin is grayish instead of a warm brown. She smiles at me, but the smile doesn’t travel to her eyes, which still look tired. I try to smile back, but I’m too nervous. Christina will be there at my interrogation. She will hear what I did to Will. She will never forgive me.

Unless I fight the serum, swallow the truth—if I can.

But is that really what I want? To let it fester inside me forever?