Insurgent (Divergent #2)(32)
Author: Veronica Roth

I see a flicker of blue over Lauren’s shoulder, and peer around her to get a better look.

Then the guns go off.

The glass doors explode into fragments. Dauntless soldiers with blue armbands stand on the sidewalk outside, carrying guns I’ve never seen before, guns with narrow, blue beams of light streaming from above their barrels.

“Traitors!” someone screams.

The Dauntless draw their guns, almost in unison. I do not have one to draw, so I duck behind the wall of loyal Dauntless in front of me, my shoes crunching pieces of glass beneath their soles, and pull my knife out of my back pocket.

All around me, people drop to the ground. My fellow faction members. My closest friends. All of them falling—they must be dead, or dying—as the earsplitting bang of bullets filling my ears.

Then I freeze. One of the blue beams is fixed on my chest. I dive sideways to get out of the line of fire, but I don’t move fast enough.

The gun goes off. I fall.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE PAIN SUBSIDES to a dull ache. I slide my hand under my jacket and feel for the wound.

I’m not bleeding. But the force of the gunshot knocked me down, so I had to have been hit with something. I run my fingers over my shoulder, and feel a hard bump where the skin used to be smooth.

I hear a crack against the floor next to my face, and a metal cylinder about the size of my hand rolls to a stop against my head. Before I can move it, white smoke sprays out of both ends. I cough, and throw it away from me, deeper into the lobby. It isn’t the only cylinder, though—they are everywhere, filling the room with smoke that does not burn or sting. In fact, it only obscures my view for a few seconds before evaporating completely.

What was the point of that?

Lying on the floor all around me are Dauntless soldiers with their eyes closed. I frown as I look Uriah up and down—he doesn’t seem to be bleeding. I see no wound near his vital organs, which means he isn’t dead. So what knocked him unconscious? I look over my left shoulder, where Lynn fell in a strange, half-curled position. She’s also unconscious.

The Dauntless traitors walk into the lobby, their guns held up. I decide to do what I always do when I’m not sure what’s going on: I act like everyone else. I let my head drop and close my eyes. My heart pounds as the Dauntless’s footsteps come closer, and closer, squeaking on the marble floors. I bite my tongue to suppress a cry of pain as one of them steps on my hand.

“Not sure why we can’t just shoot them all in the head,” one of them says. “If there’s no army, we win.”

“Now, Bob, we can’t just kill everyone,” a cold voice says.

The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I would know that voice anywhere. It belongs to Eric, leader of the Dauntless.

“No people means no one left to create prosperous conditions,” Eric continues. “Anyway, it’s not your job to ask questions.” He raises his voice. “Half in the elevators, half in the stairwells, left and right! Go!”

There’s a gun a few feet to my left. If I opened my eyes, I could grab it and fire at him before he knew what hit him. But there’s no guarantee I would be able to touch it without panicking again.

I wait until I hear the last footstep disappear behind an elevator door or into a stairwell before opening my eyes. Everyone in the lobby appears to be unconscious. Whatever they gassed us with, it had to be simulation-inducing or I wouldn’t be the only one awake. It doesn’t make any sense—it doesn’t follow the simulation rules I’m familiar with—but I don’t have time to think it through.

I grab my knife and get up, trying to ignore the ache in my shoulder. I run over to one of the dead Dauntless traitors near the doorway. She was middle-aged; there are hints of gray in her dark hair. I try not to look at the bullet wound in her head, but the dim light glows on what looks like bone, and I gag.

Think. I don’t care who she was, or what her name was, or how old she was. I care only about the blue armband she wears. I have to focus on that. I try to hook my finger around the fabric, but it doesn’t come loose. It appears to be attached to her black jacket. I will have to take that, too.

I unzip my jacket and toss it over her face so I don’t have to look at her. Then I unzip her jacket and pull it, first from her left arm, and then from her right arm, gritting my teeth as I slide it from beneath her heavy body.

“Tris!” someone says. I turn around, jacket in one hand, knife in the other. I put the knife away—the invading Dauntless weren’t carrying them, and I don’t want to be conspicuous.

Uriah stands behind me.

“Divergent?” I ask him. There is no time to be shocked.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Get a jacket,” I say.

He crouches next to one of the other Dauntless traitors, this one young, not even old enough to be a Dauntless member. I flinch at the sight of his death-pale face. Someone so young shouldn’t be dead; shouldn’t even have been here in the first place.

My face hot with anger, I shrug the woman’s jacket on. Uriah pulls his own jacket on, his mouth pinched.

“They’re the only ones who are dead,” he says quietly. “Something about that seem wrong to you?”

“They must have known we would shoot at them, but they came anyway,” I say. “Questions later. We have to get up there.”

“Up there? Why?” he says. “We should get out of here.”

“You want to run away before you know what’s going on?” I scowl at him. “Before the Dauntless upstairs know what hit them?”

“What if someone recognizes us?”

I shrug. “We just have to hope they won’t.”

I sprint toward the stairwell, and he follows me. As soon as my foot touches the first stair, I wonder what on earth I intend to do. There are bound to be more of the Divergent in this building, but will they know what they are? Will they know to hide? And what do I expect to gain from submerging myself in an army of Dauntless traitors?

Deep inside me I know the answer: I am being reckless. I will probably gain nothing. I will probably die.

And more disturbing still: I don’t really care.

“They’ll work their way upward,” I say between breaths. “So you should . . . go to the third floor. Tell them to . . . evacuate. Quietly.”

“Where are you going, then?”

“Floor two,” I say. I shove my shoulder into the second-floor door. I know what to do on the second floor: look for the Divergent.