I am pale-skinned, pale-haired, and cold. I am curious about the pictures of my brain. I am like Jeanine. And I can either despise it, attack it, eradicate it … or I can use it.
"That's not true," I repeat. "No matter how many restraints you use, you can't keep me as still as I need to be for the pictures to be clear." I clear my throat. "I want to see the scans. You're going to kill me anyway, so does it really matter how much I know about my own brain before you do?"
Silence.
"Why do you want to see them so badly?" she says.
"Surely you, of all people, understand. I have equal aptitude for Erudite as I do for Dauntless and Abnegation, after all."
"All right. You can see them. Lie down."
I walk over to the tray and lie down. The metal feels like ice. The tray slides back, and I am inside the machine. I stare up at whiteness. When I was young, I thought that was what heaven would be like, all white light and nothing else. Now I know that can't be true, because white light is menacing.
I hear thumping, and I close my eyes as I remember one of the obstacles in my fear landscape, the fists pounding against my windows and the sightless men trying to kidnap me. I pretend the pounding is a heartbeat, a drumbeat. The river crashing against the walls of the chasm in the Dauntless compound. Feet stamping at the end-of-initiation ceremony. Feet pounding on the staircase after the Choosing Ceremony.
I don't know how much time has passed when the thumping stops and the tray slides back. I sit up and rub my neck with my fingertips.
The door opens, revealing Peter in the hallway. He beckons to me. "Come on. You can go see the scans now."
I hop down from the tray and walk toward him. When we're in the hallway, he shakes his head at me.
"What?"
"I don't know how you manage to always get what you want."
"Yeah, because I wanted to get myself into a cell in Erudite headquarters. I wanted to be executed."
I sound cavalier, like executions are something I face on a regular basis. But forming my lips around the word "executed" makes me shudder. I pretend I'm cold, squeezing my arms with my hands.
"Didn't you, though?" he says. "I mean, you did come here of your own free will. That's not what I call a good survival instinct."
He types in a series of numbers on a keypad outside the next door, and it opens. I enter the room on the other side of the mirror. It's full of screens and light, reflecting off the glass in the Erudites' spectacles. Across the room, another door clicks shut. There is an empty chair behind one of the screens, still turning. Someone just left.
Peter stands too close behind me-ready to grab me if I decide to attack anyone. But I won't attack anyone. How far could I get if I did? Down one hallway, or two? And then I would be lost. I couldn't get out of here even if there weren't guards stopping me from leaving.
"Put them up there," says Jeanine, pointing toward the large screen on the left wall. One of the Erudite scientists taps his own computer screen, and an image appears on the left wall. An image of my brain.
I don't know what I'm looking at, exactly. I know what a brain looks like, and generally what each region of it does, but I don't know how mine compares to others. Jeanine taps her chin and stares for what feels like a long time.
Finally she says, "Someone instruct Ms. Prior as to what the prefrontal cortex does."
"It's the region of the brain behind the forehead, so to speak," one of the scientists says. She doesn't look much older than I am, and wears large round glasses that make her eyes look bigger. "It's responsible for organizing your thoughts and actions to attain your goals."
"Correct," Jeanine says. "Now someone tell me what they observe about Ms. Prior's lateral prefrontal cortex."
"It's large," another scientist-this one a man with thinning hair-says.
"Specificity," says Jeanine. Like she's chastising him.
I am in a classroom, I realize, because every room with more than one Erudite in it is a classroom. And among them, Jeanine is their most valued teacher. They all stare at her with wide eyes and eager, open mouths, waiting to impress her.
"It's much larger than average," the man with thinning hair corrects himself.
"Better." Jeanine tilts her head. "In fact, it is one of the largest lateral prefrontal cortexes I've ever seen. Yet the orbitofrontal cortex is remarkably small. What do these two facts indicate?"
"The orbitofrontal cortex is the reward center of the brain. Those who exhibit reward-seeking behavior have a large orbitofrontal cortex," someone says. "That means that Ms. Prior engages in very little reward-seeking behavior."