Insurgent (Divergent #2)(34)
Author: Veronica Roth

He twists his hands so the calluses scrape against my arms. I shift my body slightly to the left as I walk, trying to position one of my feet between his advancing feet. I notice with fierce pleasure that he’s limping.

“Sometimes creativity seems wasteful, illogical . . . unless it’s done for a greater purpose. In this case, the accumulation of knowledge.”

I stop walking just long enough to bring my heel up, hard, between his legs. A high-pitched cry hitches in his throat, stopped before it really began, and his hands go limp for just a moment. In that moment, I twist my body as hard as I can and break free. I don’t know where I will run, but I have to run, I have to—

He grabs my elbow, yanking me back, and pushes his thumb into the wound in my shoulder, twisting until pain makes my vision go black at the edges, and I scream at the top of my lungs.

“I thought I recalled from the footage of you in that water tank that you got shot in that shoulder,” he says. “It seems I was right.”

My knees crumple beneath me, and he grabs my collar almost carelessly, dragging me toward the elevator bank. The fabric digs into my throat, choking me, and I stumble after him. My body throbs with lingering pain.

When we reach the elevator bank, he forces me to my knees next to the Candor woman I saw earlier. She and four others sit between the two rows of elevators, kept in place by Dauntless with guns.

“I want one gun on her at all times,” says Eric. “Not just aimed at her. On her.”

A Dauntless man pushes a gun barrel into the back of my neck. It forms a cold circle on my skin. I lift my eyes to Eric. His face is red, his eyes watering.

“What’s the matter, Eric?” I say, raising my eyebrows. “Afraid of a little girl?”

“I’m not stupid,” he says, pushing his hands through his hair. “That little-girl act may have worked on me before, but it won’t work again. You’re the best attack dog they’ve got.” He leans closer to me. “Which is why I’m sure you’ll be put down soon enough.”

One of the elevator doors opens, and a Dauntless soldier shoves Uriah—whose lips are stained with blood—toward the short row of the Divergent. Uriah glances at me, but I can’t read his expression well enough to know if he succeeded or failed. If he’s here, he probably failed. Now they’ll find all the Divergent in the building, and most of us will die.

I should probably be afraid. But instead a hysterical laugh bubbles inside me, because I just remembered something:

Maybe I can’t hold a gun. But I have a knife in my back pocket.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I SHIFT MY hand back, centimeter by centimeter, so the soldier pointing a gun at me doesn’t notice. The elevator doors open again, bringing more of the Divergent with more Dauntless traitors. The Candor woman on my right whimpers. Strands of her hair are stuck to her lips, which are wet with spit, or tears, I can’t tell.

My hand reaches the corner of my back pocket. I keep it steady, my fingers shaking with anticipation. I have to wait for the right moment, when Eric is close.

I focus on the mechanics of my breathing, imagining air filling every part of my lungs as I inhale, then remembering as I exhale how all my blood, oxygenated and unoxygenated, travels to and from the same heart.

It’s easier to think of biology than the line of the Divergent sitting between the elevators. A Candor boy who can’t be older than eleven sits to my left. He’s braver than the woman to my right—he stares at the Dauntless soldier in front of him, unflinching.

Air in, air out. Blood pushed all the way to my extremities—the heart is a powerful muscle, the strongest muscle in the body in terms of longevity. More Dauntless arrive, reporting successful sweeps of specific floors of the Merciless Mart. Hundreds of people unconscious on the floor, shot with something other than bullets, and I have no idea why.

But I am thinking of the heart. Not of my heart anymore, but of Eric’s, and how empty his chest will sound when his heart is no longer beating. Despite how much I hate him, I don’t really want to kill him, at least not with a knife, up close where I can see the life leave him. But I have one chance left to do something useful, and if I want to hit the Erudite where it hurts, I have to take one of their leaders from them.

I notice that no one ever brought the Candor girl I warned to the elevator bank, which means she must have gotten away. Good.

Eric clasps his hands behind his back and begins to pace, back and forth, before the line of Divergent.

“My orders are to take only two of you back to Erudite headquarters for testing,” says Eric. “The rest of you are to be executed. There are several ways to determine who among you will be least useful to us.”

His footsteps slow when he approaches me. I tense my fingers, about to grab the knife handle, but he doesn’t come close enough. He keeps walking and stops in front of the boy to my left.

“The brain finishes developing at age twenty-five,” says Eric. “Therefore your Divergence is not completely developed.”

He lifts his gun and fires.

A strangled scream leaps out of my body as the boy slumps to the ground, and I squeeze my eyes shut. Every muscle in my body strains toward him, but I hold myself back. Wait, wait, wait. I can’t think of the boy. Wait. I force my eyes open and blink tears from them.

My scream accomplished one thing: now Eric stands in front of me, smiling. I caught his attention.

“You are also rather young,” he says. “Nowhere near finished developing.”

He steps toward me. My fingertips inch closer to the knife handle.

“Most of the Divergent get two results in the aptitude test. Some only get one. No one has ever gotten three, not because of aptitude, but simply because in order to get that result, you have to refuse to choose something,” he says, moving closer still. I tilt my head back to look at him, at all the metal gleaming in his face, at his empty eyes.

“My superiors suspect that you got two, Tris,” he says. “They don’t think you’re that complex—just an even blend of Abnegation and Dauntless—selfless to the point of idiocy. Or is that brave to the point of idiocy?”

I close my hand around the knife handle and squeeze. He leans closer.

“Just between you and me . . . I think you might have gotten three, because you’re the kind of bullheaded person who would refuse to make a simple choice just because she was told to,” he says. “Care to enlighten me?”

I lurch forward, pulling my hand out of my pocket. I close my eyes as I thrust the blade up and toward him. I don’t want to see his blood.