"I'm sorry," I say. "I don't know where to start."
"You might begin with the worst," Hana says. "Like what exactly happened to my son."
"He was seriously injured during an attack," I say. "There was an explosion, and he was very close to it."
"Oh God," Zeke says, and he rocks back and forth like his body wants to be a child again, soothed by motion as a child is.
But Hana just bends her head, hiding her face from me.
Their living room smells like garlic and onion, maybe remnants from that night's dinner. I lean my shoulder into the white wall by the doorway. Hanging crookedly next to me is a picture of the family-Zeke as a toddler, Uriah as a baby, balancing on his mother's lap. Their father's face is pierced in several places, nose and ear and lip, but his wide, bright smile and dark complexion are more familiar to me, because he passed them both to his sons.
"He has been in a coma since then," I say. "And . . ."
"And he isn't going to wake up," Hana says, her voice strained. "That is what you came to tell us, right?"
"Yes," I say. "I came to collect you so that you can make a decision on his behalf."
"A decision?" Zeke says. "You mean, to unplug him or not?"
"Zeke," Hana says, and she shakes her head. He sinks back into the couch. The cushions seem to wrap around him.
"Of course we don't want to keep him alive that way," Hana says. "He would want to move on. But we would like to go see him."
I nod. "Of course. But there's something else I should say. The attack . . . it was a kind of uprising that involved some of the people from the place where we were staying. And I participated in it."
I stare at the crack in the floorboards right in front of me, at the dust that has gathered there over time, and wait for a reaction, any reaction. What greets me is only silence.
"I didn't do what you asked me," I say to Zeke. "I didn't watch out for him the way I should have. And I'm sorry."
I chance a look at him, and he is just sitting still, staring at the empty vase on the coffee table. It is painted with faded pink roses.
"I think we need some time with this," Hana says. She clears her throat, but it doesn't help her tremulous voice.
"I wish I could give it to you," I say. "But we're going back to the compound very soon, and you have to come with us."
"All right," Hana says. "If you can wait outside, we will be there in five minutes."
The ride back to the compound is slow and dark. I watch the moon disappear and reappear behind the clouds as we bump over the ground. When we reach the outer limits of the city, it begins to snow again, large, light flakes that swirl in front of the headlights. I wonder if Tris is watching it sweep across the pavement and gather in piles by the airplanes. I wonder if she is living in a better world than the one I left, among people who no longer remember what it is to have pure genes.
Christina leans forward to whisper into my ear. "So you did it? It worked?"
I nod. In the rearview mirror I see her touch her face with both hands, grinning into her palms. I know how she feels: safe. We are all safe.
"Did you inoculate your family?" I say.
"Yep. We found them with the Allegiant, in the Hancock building," she says. "But the time for the reset has passed-it looks like Tris and Caleb stopped it."
Hana and Zeke murmur to each other on the way, marveling at the strange, dark world we move through. Amar gives the basic explanation as we go, looking back at them instead of the road far too often for my comfort. I try to ignore my surges of panic as he almost veers into streetlights or road barriers, and focus instead on the snow.
I have always hated the emptiness that winter brings, the blank landscape and the stark difference between sky and ground, the way it transforms trees into skeletons and the city into a wasteland. Maybe this winter I can be persuaded otherwise.
We drive past the fences and stop by the front doors, which are no longer manned by guards. We get out, and Zeke seizes his mother's hand to steady her as she shuffles through the snow. As we walk into the compound, I know for a fact that Caleb succeeded, because there is no one in sight. That can only mean that they have been reset, their memories forever altered.
"Where is everyone?" Amar says.
We walk through the abandoned security checkpoint without stopping. On the other side, I see Cara. The side of her face is badly bruised, and there's a bandage on her head, but that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is the troubled look on her face.
"What is it?" I say.
Cara shakes her head.
"Where's Tris?" I say.
"I'm sorry, Tobias."
"Sorry about what?" Christina says roughly. "Tell us what happened!"
"Tris went into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb," Cara says. "She survived the death serum, and set off the memory serum, but she . . . she was shot. And she didn't survive. I'm so sorry."
Most of the time I can tell when people are lying, and this must be a lie, because Tris is still alive, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed and her small body full of power and strength, standing in a shaft of light in the atrium. Tris is still alive, she wouldn't leave me here alone, she wouldn't go to the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.
"No," Christina says, shaking her head. "No way. There has to be some mistake."
Cara's eyes well up with tears.
It's then that I realize: Of course Tris would go into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.
Of course she would.
Christina yells something, but to me her voice sounds muffled, like I have submerged my head underwater. The details of Cara's face have also become difficult to see, the world smearing together into dull colors.
All I can do is stand still-I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is all right. Christina hunches over, unable to support her own grief, and Cara embraces her, and
all I'm doing is standing still.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-TWO
TOBIAS
WHEN HER BODY first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable-except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had jumped first.
Even I didn't jump first.
Her eyes were so stern, so insistent.
Beautiful.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-THREE
TOBIAS
BUT THAT WASN'T the first time I ever saw her. I saw her in the hallways at school, and at my mother's false funeral, and walking the sidewalks in the Abnegation sector. I saw her, but I didn't see her; no one saw her the way she truly was until she jumped.
I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FOUR
TOBIAS
I GO TO see her body . . . sometime. I don't know how long it is after Cara tells me what happened. Christina and I walk shoulder to shoulder; we walk in Cara's footsteps. I don't remember the journey from the entrance to the morgue, really, just a few smeared images and whatever sound I can make out through the barrier that has gone up inside my head.
She lies on a table, and for a moment I think she's just sleeping, and when I touch her, she will wake up and smile at me and press a kiss to my mouth. But when I touch her she is cold, her body stiff and unyielding.
Christina sniffles and sobs. I squeeze Tris's hand, praying that if I do it hard enough, I will send life back into her body and she will flush with color and wake up.
I don't know how long it takes for me to realize that isn't going to happen, that she is gone. But when I do I feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FIVE
IN THE DAYS that follow, it's movement, not stillness, that helps to keep the grief at bay, so I walk the compound halls instead of sleeping. I watch everyone else recover from the memory serum that altered them permanently as if from a great distance.
Those lost in the memory serum haze are gathered into groups and given the truth: that human nature is complex, that all our genes are different, but neither damaged nor pure. They are also given the lie: that their memories were erased because of a freak accident, and that they were on the verge of lobbying the government for equality for GDs.
I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don't even know of what, because I have lost everything already. My hands shake as I stop by the control room to watch the city on the screens. Johanna is arranging transportation for those who want to leave the city. They will come here to learn the truth. I don't know what will happen to those who remain in Chicago, and I'm not sure I care.
I shove my hands into my pockets and watch for a few minutes, then walk away again, trying to match my footsteps to my heartbeat, or to avoid the cracks between the tiles. When I walk past the entrance, I see a small group of people gathered by the stone sculpture, one of them in a wheelchair-Nita.
I walk past the useless security barrier and stand at a distance, watching them. Reggie steps on the stone slab and opens a valve in the bottom of the water tank. The drops turn into a stream of water, and soon water gushes out of the tank, splattering all over the slab, soaking the bottom of Reggie's pants.