"Tris." He pushes himself toward me and presses one of my hands between his. I keep my hand firmly in his, though his skin feels dry as paper and I am repulsed by him.
"You are so very brave," he says, and then he releases my hand. "How are your injuries?"
I shrug. "I've had worse. How are yours?"
"It will take me some time to walk again, but they're confident that I will. Some of our people are developing sophisticated leg braces anyway, so I can be their first test case if I have to," he says, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Could you push me behind the desk again? I am still having trouble steering."
I do, guiding his stiff legs under the tabletop and letting the rest of him follow. When I'm sure he's positioned correctly, I sit in the chair across from him and try to smile. In order to find some way to avenge my parents, I need to keep his trust and his fondness for me intact. And I won't do that with a scowl.
"I asked you to come here mostly so that I could thank you," he says. "I can't think of many young people who would have come after me instead of running for cover, or who would have been able to save this compound the way you did."
I think of pressing a gun to his head and threatening his life, and swallow hard.
"You and the people you came with have been in a regrettable state of flux since your arrival," he says. "We aren't quite sure what to do with all of you, to be honest, and I'm sure you don't know what to do with yourselves, but I have thought of something I would like you to do. I am the official leader of this compound, but apart from that, we have a similar system of governance to the Abnegation, so I am advised by a small group of councilors. I would like you to begin training for that position."
My hands tighten around the armrests.
"You see, we are going to need to make some changes around here now that we have been attacked," he says. "We are going to have to take a stronger stand for our cause. And I think you know how to do that."
I can't argue with that.
"What . . ." I clear my throat. "What would training for that entail?"
"Attending our meetings, for one thing," he says, "and learning the ins and outs of our compound-how we function, from top to bottom, our history, our values, and so on. I can't allow you to be a part of the council in any official capacity at such a young age, and there is a track you must follow-assisting one of the current council members-but I am inviting you to travel down the road, if you would like to."
His eyes, not his voice, ask me the question.
The councilors are probably the same people who authorized the attack simulation and ensured that it was passed on to Jeanine at the right time. And he wants me to sit among them, learn to become them. Even though I can taste bile in the back of my mouth, I have no trouble answering.
"Of course," I say, and smile. "I would be honored."
If someone offers you an opportunity to get closer to your enemy, you always take it. I know that without having learned it from anyone.
He must believe my smile, because he grins.
"I thought you would say yes," he says. "It's something I wanted your mother to do with me, before she volunteered to enter the city. But I think she had fallen in love with the place from afar and couldn't resist it."
"Fallen in love . . . with the city?" I say. "No accounting for taste, I suppose."
It's just a joke, but my heart isn't in it. Still, David laughs, and I know I've said the right thing.
"You were . . . close with my mother, while she was here?" I say. "I've been reading her journal, but she's not very wordy."
"No, she wouldn't be, would she? Natalie was always very straightforward. Yes, we were close, your mother and I." His voice softens when he talks about her-he is no longer the toughened leader of this compound, but an old man, reflecting on some fonder past.
The past that happened before he got her killed.
"We had a similar history. I was also plucked right out of the damaged world as a child . . . my parents were severely dysfunctional people who were both taken to prison when I was young. Rather than succumbing to an adoption system overburdened with orphans, my siblings and I ran to the fringe-the same place where your mother also took refuge, years later-and only I came out of there alive."
I don't know what to say to that-I don't know what to do with the sympathy growing within me, for a man I know has done terrible things. I just stare at my hands, and I imagine that my insides are liquid metal hardening in the air, taking a shape they will never leave again.
"You'll have to go out there with our patrols tomorrow. You can see the fringe for yourself," he says. "It's something that's important for a future council member to see."
"I'd be very interested," I say.
"Lovely. Well, I hate to end our time together, but I have quite a bit of work to catch up on," he says. "I'll have someone notify you about the patrols, and our first council meeting is on Friday at ten in the morning, so I'll be seeing you soon."
I feel frantic-I didn't ask him what I wanted to ask him. I don't think there was ever an opportunity. It's too late now, anyway. I get up and move toward the doorway, but then he speaks again.
"Tris, I feel like I should be open with you, if we are to trust each other," he says.
For the first time since I've met him, David looks almost . . . afraid. His eyes are wide open, like a child's. But a moment later, the expression is gone.
"I may have been under the influence of a serum cocktail at the time," he says, "but I know what you said to them to keep them from shooting at us. I know you told them you would kill me to protect what was in the Weapons Lab."
My throat feels so tight I can hardly breathe.
"Don't be alarmed," he says. "It's one of the reasons why I offered you this opportunity."
"W-why?"
"You demonstrated the quality I most need in my advisers," he says. "Which is the ability to make sacrifices for the greater good. If we are going to win this fight against genetic damage, if we are going to save the experiments from being shut down, we will need to make sacrifices. You understand that, don't you?"
I feel a flash of anger and force myself to nod. Nita already told us that the experiments were in danger of being disbanded, so I am not surprised to hear it's true. But David's desperation to save his life's work doesn't excuse killing off a faction, my faction.
For a moment I stand with my hand on the doorknob, trying to gather myself together, and then I decide to take a risk.
"What would have happened, if they had set off another explosion to get into the Weapons Lab?" I say. "Nita said it would trigger a backup security measure if they did, but it seemed like the most obvious solution to their problem, to me."
"A serum would have been released into the air . . . one that masks could not have protected against, because it is absorbed into the skin," says David. "One that even the genetically pure cannot fight off. I don't know how Nita knows about it, since it's not supposed to be public knowledge, but I suppose we'll find out some other time."
"What does the serum do?"
His smile turns into a grimace. "Let's just say it's bad enough that Nita would rather be in prison for the rest of her life than come into contact with it."
He's right. He doesn't have to say anything more.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
TOBIAS
"LOOK WHO IT is," Peter says as I walk into the dormitory. "The traitor."
There are maps spread across his cot and the one next to his. They are white and pale blue and dull green, and they draw me to them by some strange magnetism. On each one Peter has drawn a wobbly circle-around our city, around Chicago. He's marking the limits of where he's been.
I watch that circle shrink into each map, until it's just a bright red dot, like a drop of blood.
And then I back away, afraid of what it means that I am so small.
"If you think you're standing on some kind of moral high ground, you're wrong," I say to Peter. "Why all the maps?"
"I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it, the size of the world," he says. "Some of the Bureau people have been helping me learn more about it. Planets and stars and bodies of water, things like that."
He says it casually, but I know from the frantic scribbling on maps that his interest isn't casual-it's obsessive. I was obsessive about my fears, once, in the same way, always trying to make sense of them, over and over again.
"Is it helping?" I say. I realize that I've never had a conversation with Peter that didn't involve yelling at him. Not that he didn't deserve it, but I don't know anything about him. I barely remember his last name from the initiate roster. Hayes. Peter Hayes.
"Sort of." He picks up one of the bigger maps. It shows the entire globe, pressed flat like kneaded dough. I stare at it long enough to make sense of the shapes on it, the blue stretches of water and the multicolored pieces of land. On one of the pieces is a red dot. He points at it. "That dot covers all the places we've ever been. You could cut that piece of land out of the ground and sink it into this ocean and no one would even notice."
I feel that fear again, the fear of my own size. "Right. So?"