My alternate ending for Allegiant, the third book in Veronica Roth's Divergent series.
A lot of chapters I kept word for word for continuity reasons. I altered some details slightly, and added 8 new chapters. However, I want to say again, that not every chapter was written by me. I kept some of VR's chapters! Please don't accuse me of plagiarism :)
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE –TRIS
The death serum smells like smoke and spice, and my
lungs reject it with the first breath I take. I cough and splutter, and I am
swallowed by darkness.
I
crumple to my knees. My body feels like someone has replaced my blood with
molasses, and my bones with lead. And invisible thread tugs me toward sleep,
but I want to be awake. It is important that I want to be awake. I imagine that
wanting, that desire, burning in my chest like a flame.
The
thread tugs harder, and I stoke the flame with names. Tobias. Caleb. Christina.
Matthew. Cara. Zeke. Uriah.
But I
can’t bear up under the serum’s weight. My body falls to the side, and my
wounded arm presses to the cold ground. I am drifting…
It
would be nice to float away, a voice in my head says. To see where I
will go…
But the fire, the
fire.
The
desire to live.
I am
not done yet, I am not.
I
feel like I am digging through my own mind. It is difficult to remember why I
came here and why I care about unburdening myself from this beautiful weight.
But then my scratching hands find it. The memory of my mother’s face, and the
strange angles of her limbs on the pavement, and the blood seeping from my
father’s body.
But
they are dead, the voice says. You could join them.
They
died for me, I answer. And now I have something to do, in return. I
have to stop other people from losing everything, I have to save the city and
the people my mother and father loved.
If I
go to join my parents, I want to carry with me a good reason, not this
-- this senseless collapsing at the threshold.
The
fire, the fire. It rages within, a campfire and then an inferno, and my body is
its fuel. I feel it racing through me, eating away at the weight. There is
nothing that can kill me know; I am powerful and invincible and eternal.
I
feel the serum clinging to my skin like oil, but the darkness recedes. I slap a
heavy hand over the floor and push myself up.
Bent
at the waist, I shove my shoulder into the double doors, and the squeak across
the floor as their seal breaks. I breathe clean air and stand up straighter. I
am there, I am there.
But I am not
alone.
“Don’t
move,” David says, raising his gun. “Hello, Tris.”
CHAPTER FIFTY –TRIS
“How did you inoculate yourself against the death
serum?” he asks me. He’s still sitting in his wheelchair, but you don’t need to
be able to walk to fire a gun.
I
blink at him, still dazed.
“I
didn’t,” I say.
“Don’t
be stupid,” David says. “You can’t survive the death serum without an
inoculation, and I’m the only person in the compound who possesses that
substance.”
I
just stare at him, not sure what to say. I didn’t inoculate myself. The fact
that I’m still standing upright is impossible. There’s nothing more to add.
“I
suppose it no longer matters,” he says. “We’re here now.”
“What
are you doing here?” I mumble. My lips feel awkwardly large, hard to talk
around. I still feel that oily heaviness on my skin, like death is clinging to
me even though I have defeated it.
I am
dimly aware that I left my own gun in the hallway behind me, sure I wouldn’t
need it if I made it this far.
“I
knew something was going on,” David says. “You’ve been running around with
genetically damaged people all week, Tris, did you think I wouldn’t notice?” He
shakes his head. “And then your friend Cara tried to manipulate the lights, but
she very wisely knocked herself out before she could tell us anything. So I
came here, just in case. I’m sad to say I’m not surprised to see you.”
“You came here alone?” I say.
“Not very smart are you?”
His
bright eyes squint a little. “Well, you see, I have death serum resistance and
a weapon, and you have no way to fight me. There’s no way you can steal four
virus devices while I have you at gunpoint. I’m afraid you’ve come all this way
for no reason, and it will be at the expense of your life. The death serum may
not have killed you, but I am going to. I’m sure you understand -- officially
we don’t allow capital punishment, but I can’t have you surviving this.”
He
thinks I’m here to steal the weapons that will reset the experiments, not
deploy one of them. Of course he does.
I try
to guard my expression, though I’m sure it’s still slack. I sweep my eyes
across the room, searching for the device that will release the memory serum
virus. I was there when Matthew described it to Caleb in painstaking detail
earlier: a black box with a silver keypad, marked with a strip of blue tape
with a model number written on it. It is one of the only items on the counter
along the left wall, just a few feet away from me. But I can’t move, or else
he’ll kill me.
I’ll
have to wait for the right moment, and
do it fast.
“I
know what you did,” I say. I start to back up, hoping that the accusation will
distract him. “I know you designed the attack simulation. I know you’re
responsible for my parents’ deaths -- for my mother’s death. I know.”
“I am
not responsible for her death!” David says, the words bursting from him, too
loud and too sudden. “I told her what was coming just before the attack
began, so she had enough time to escort her loved ones to a safe house. If she
had stayed put, she would have lived. But she was a foolish woman who didn’t
understand making sacrifices for the greater good, and it killed her!”
I
frown at him. There’s something about his reaction -- about the glassiness of
his eyes -- something that he mumbled when Nita shot him with the fear serum --
something about her.
“Did
you love her?” I say. “All those years she was sending you correspondence… the
reason you never wanted her to stay there… the reason you told her you couldn’t
read her updates anymore, after she married my father…”
David sits still, like a
statue, like a man of stone.
“I
did,” he says. “But that time is past.”
That
must be why he welcomed me into his circle of trust, why he gave me so many
opportunities. Because I am a piece of her, wearing her hair and speaking with
her voice. Because he has spent his life grasping at her and coming up with
nothing.
I
hear footsteps in the hallway outside. The soldiers are coming. Good -- I need
them to. I need them to exposed to the
airborne serum, to pass it on to the rest of the compound. I hope they wait
until the air is clear of death serum.
“My
mother wasn’t a fool,” I say. “She just understood something you didn’t. That
it’s not sacrifice if it’s someone else’s life you’re giving away, it’s
just evil.”
I
back up another step and say, “She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it
should be done from love, not misplaced disgust for another person’s genetics.
That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other
options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they
don’t have enough of their own. That’s why I need to stop you from
‘sacrificing’ all those people and their memories. Why I need to rid the world
of you once and for all.”
I shake my head.
“I
didn’t come here to steal anything David.
I twist and lunge toward the device. The gun goes off.
Then again. But this time it sounds different. Pain pulses through my body. I
hear Caleb’s voice repeating the code, as if standing behind me helping me,
encouraging me. My vision is starting to blacken. It will not end here. I won’t
let it. I hear Caleb’s voice again as I finish typing in the code. The green
button.
So much pain.
But how when my body feels so numb?
I start to fall and slam my hand onto the keypad on my
way down.
A light turns on behind the green button. I hear a
beep, and a churning sound.
I slide to the
floor. I feel something warm dripping down my forehead onto my cheek. I raise a
shaky hand and touch it.
Red. Blood is a
strange color. Dark.
From the corner of my eye, I see David slumped over in
his chair, a bullet in his shoulder. It doesn’t make sense. But then again,
nothing does anymore.
I feel a hand interlock with mine. I must be dying.
Death has come to guide me to my fate.
I
am done here.
It’s when I feel a squeeze that I open my eyes to see
Caleb, lying next to me, gun in hand.
He had come back for me. But not from guilt. The look
in his eyes tells of a different reason.
Love.
As we both drift off into the unknown, I whisper, “I
love you” just before he is gone.
Caleb is dead. He came back to help me. He couldn’t
let his sister die for him, for his guilt. He may have chosen Eurdite, helped
Jeanine, and delivered me to my own execution, but the last little part of him
that was Abnegation told him that running away wasn’t the right thing to do.
Fighting side by side with me, he died like my
parents. For me. For something bigger than all of us.
Everyone in my family is dead, but they did not die
for nothing.
And I won’t have either.
The threads of the serum that tugged me earlier tug
again.
This time I do not resist. I go with them.
I am done here.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
–TOBIAS
Evelyn brushes the tears from her eyes with her thumb.
We stand by the windows, shoulder to shoulder, watching the snow swirl past.
Some of the flakes gather on the windowsill outside, piling at the corners.
The
feeling as returned to my hands. As I stare out at the world, dusted in white,
I feel like everything has begun again, and it will be better this time.
“I
think I can get in touch with Marcus over the radio to negotiate a peace
agreement,” Evelyn says. “He’ll be listening in; he’d be stupid not to.”
“Before
you do that, I made a promise I have to keep,” I say. I touch Evelyn’s
shoulder. I expected to see strain at the edges of her smile, but I don’t.
I feel a twinge of guilt. I didn’t come here to ask
her to lay down arms for me, to trade in everything she’s worked for just to
get me back. But then again, I didn’t come here to give her any choice at all.
I guess Tris was right—when you have to choose between two bad options, you
pick the one that saves the people you love. I wouldn’t have been saving Evelyn
by giving her that serum. I would have been destroying her.
Peter sits with his back to the wall in the hallway.
He looks up at me when I lean over him, his dark hair stuck to his forehead
from the melted snow.
“Did
you reset her?” he says.
“No,”
I say.
“Didn’t
think you would have the nerve.”
“It’s
not about nerve. You know what? Whatever.” I shake my head and hold up the vial
of memory serum. “Are you still set on this?”
He
nods.
“You
could just do the work, you know,” I say. “You could make better decisions,
make a better life.”
“Yeah
I could,” he says. “But I won’t. We both know that.”
I do
know that. I know change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the
work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is
forgotten. He is afraid that he will not be able to put in that work, that he
will squander those days, and that they will leave him worse off than he is
now. And I understand that feeling—I understand being afraid of yourself.
So I
have him sit on one of the couches, and I ask him what he wants me to tell him
about himself, after his memories disappear like smoke. He just shakes his
head. Nothing. He wants to retain nothing.
Peter
takes the vial with a shaking hand and twists off the cap. The liquid trembles
inside it, almost spilling over the lip. He holds it under his nose to smell
it.
“How
much should I drink?” he says, and I think I hear his teeth chattering.
“I
don’t think it makes a difference,” I say.
“Okay.
Well… here goes.” He lifts the vial up to the light like he is toasting me.
When
he touches it to his mouth I say, “Be brave.”
Then
he swallows.
And I
watch Peter disappear.
The air outside tastes like ice.
“Hey!
Peter!” I shout, my breaths turning to vapor.
Peter
stands by the doorway to the Eurdite headquarters, looking clueless. AT the
sound of his name—which I have told him at least ten times since he drank the
serum—he raises his eyebrows pointing to his chest. Matthew told us people
would be disoriented for a while after drinking the memory serum, but I didn’t
think “disoriented” meant “stupid” until now.
I
sigh. “Yes, that’s you! For the eleventh time! Come on, let’s go.”
I
thought that when I looked at him after he drank the serum, I would still see the
initiate who shoved a butter knife into Edward’s eye, and the boy who tried to
kill my girlfriend, and all the other things he has done, stretching backward
for as long as I’ve known him. But it’s easier than I thought to see that he
has no idea who he is anymore. His eyes still have that wide, innocent look,
but this time, I believe it.
Evelyn
and I walk side by side, with Peter trotting behind us. The snow has stopped
falling now, but enough has collected on the ground that it squeaks under my
shoes.
We
walk to Millennium Park, where the mammoth bean sculpture reflects the
moonlight, and then down a set of stairs. As we descend, Evelyn wraps her hand
around my elbow to keep her balance, and we exchange a look. I wonder if she is
as nervous as I am to see my father again. I wonder if she is nervous every
time.
At
the bottom of the steps is a pavilion with two glass blocks, each one at least
three times as tall as I am, at either end. This is where we told Marcus and
Johanna we would meet them—both parties armed, to be realistic but even.
They
are already there. Johanna isn’t holding a gun, but Marcus is, and he has it
trained on Evelyn. I point the gun Evelyn gave me at him just to be safe. I
notice the planes of his skull, showing through his shaved hair, and the jagged
path his crooked nose carves down his face.
“Tobias!”
Johanna says. She wears a coat in Amity red, dusted with snowflakes. “What are
you doing here?”
“Trying
to keep you all from killing each other,” I say. “I’m surprised you’re carrying
a gun.”
I nod
to the bulge in her coat pocket, the unmistakable contours of a weapon.
“Sometimes
you have to take difficult measures to ensure peace,” Johanna says. “I believe
you agree with that, as a principle.”
“We’re
not here to chat, Marcus says, looking at Evelyn. “You said you wanted to talk
about a treaty.”
The
past few weeks have taken something from him. I can see it in the turned-down
corners of his mouth, in the purple skin under his eyes. I see my own eyes set
into his skull, and think of my reflection in the fear landscape, how terrified
I was, watching his skin spread over mine like a rash. I still am nervous that
I will become him, even now. Standing at odds with him with my mother at my
side, like I always dreamed I would when I was a child.
But I
don’t think I’m still that afraid.
“Yes,”
Evelyn says. “I have some terms for us both to agree to. I think you will find
them fair. If you agree to them, I will step down and surrender whatever
weapons I have that my people are not using for personal protection. I will
leave the city and not return.”
Marcus
laughs. I’m not sure if it’s a mocking laugh or a disbelieving one. He’s
equally capable of either sentiment, an arrogant and deeply suspicious man.
“Let
her finish,” Johanna says quietly, tucking her hands into her sleeves.
“In
return,” Evelyn says, “you will not attack or try to seize control of the city.
You will allow those people who wish to leave and seek a new life elsewhere to
do so. You will allow those who choose to stay to vote on new leaders and a new social system. And most importantly, you, Marcus, will not be eligible to
lead them.”
It is
the only purely selfish term of the peace agreement. She told me she couldn’t
stand the thought of Marcus duping more people into following him, and I didn’t
argue with her.
Johanna
raises her eyebrows. I notice that she has pulled her hair back on both sides,
to reveal the scar in its entirety. She looks better that way—stronger, when
she is not hiding behind a curtain of hair, hiding who she is.
“No
deal,” Marcus says. “I am the leader of these people.”
“Marcus,”
Johanna says.
He
ignores her. “You don’t get to decide
whether I lead them or not because you have a grudge against me Evelyn.”
“Excuse
me,” Johanna says loudly. “Marcus, what she is offering is too good to be
true—we get everything we want without all the violence! How can you possibly
say no?”
“Because
I am the rightful leader of these people!” Marcus says. “I am the leader of the
Allegiant! I—“
“No
you are not,” Johanna says calmly. “I
am the leader of the Allegiant. And you are going to agree to this treaty, or I
am going to tell them that you had a chance to end this conflict without
bloodshed if you sacrificed your pride and you said no.”
Marcus’s
passive mask is gone, revealing the malicious face beneath it. But even he
can’t argue with Johanna, whose perfect calm and perfect threat have mastered
him. He shakes his head but doesn’t argue again.
“I
agree to your terms,” Johanna says, and she holds out her hand, her footsteps
squeaking in the snow.
Evelyn
removes her glove fingertip by fingertip, reaches across the gap, and shakes.
“In
the morning we should gather everyone together and tell them the new plan,”
Johanna says. “Can you guarantee a sage gathering?”
“I’ll
do my best,” Evelyn says.
I
check my watch. An hour has passed since Amar and Christina separated from us
near the Hancock building, which means he probably knows that the serum virus
didn’t work. Or maybe he doesn’t. Either way, I have to do what I came here to
do—I have to find Zeke and his mother and tell them what happened to Uriah.
“I
should go,” I say to Evelyn. “I have something else to take care of. But I’ll
pick you up from the city limits tomorrow afternoon?”
“Sounds
good,” Evelyn says, and he rubs my arm briskly with a gloved hand, like she
used to when I came in from the cold as a child.
“You
won’t be back, I assume?” Johanna says to me. “You’ve found a life for yourself
on the outside?”
“I
have,” I say. “Good luck in here. The people outside—they’re going to try to
shut the city down. You should be ready for them.”
Johanna
smiles. “I’m sure we can negotiate with them.”
She
offers me her hand, and I shake it. I feel Marcus’s eyes on me like an
oppressive weight threatening to crush me. I force myself to look at him.
“Good
bye,” I say to him, and I meant it.
Hana, Zeke’s mother, has small feet that don’t touch
the ground when she sits in the easy chair in their living room. She is wearing
a ragged black bathrobe and slippers, but the air she has, with her hands
folded in her lap and her eyebrows raised, is so dignified that I feel like I
am standing in front of a world leader. I glance at Zeke, who is rubbing his
fists to wake up.
Amar
and Christina found them, not among the other revolutionaries near the Hancock
building, but in the family apartment in the Pire, above the Dauntless
headquarters. I only found them because Christina thought to leave Peter and me
a note with their location on the useless truck. Peter is waiting in the new
van Evelyn found for us to drive to the Bureau.
“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.
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, 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 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 other
limits of the city. It begins to snow again, large, light flakes that swirl in
front of the head lights. 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 there, 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 blanket 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 was shot… in the head. She’s
alive… but it doesn’t look good. I’m so sorry.”
Most of
the time I can tell when people are lying, and this must be a lie, because Tris
is fine. Her eyes bright and cheeks flushed and her small body fully of power,
and strength, standing in a shaft of light in the atrium. Tris is fine, she
wouldn’t leave me here alone, and she wouldn’t go into the Weapons Lab instead
of Caleb.
I take off running to the hospital
wing where she remains fighting.
As I’m running I realize: of course
Tris would go to the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.
Of course she would.
Christina yells after me, but to me
her voice sounds muffled, like I have submerged my head underwater. The details
of the halls are difficult to see, the world smearing together into dull
colors.
When I reach her room, I look in.
All I can do is stand still—if I stand still I can pretend everything is all
right. That she isn’t dying right in front of me.
All I’m doing is standing still.
Helpless.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO –TOBIAS
As I sat
next to her bed, I remembered 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
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’ve been
with her for a week now. They say she gets better every day, but she’s a
fighter, I hoped she would. I’d be excited about her progress, but everyone has
warned me that when she’s finally awake, I might not have my Tris back.
They don’t know what she’ll be like.
No one’s ever survived the death serum. Not to mention she was shot in the head,
and laid there dying while everyone was gassed. And I was nowhere near her.
I should have been there. I didn’t
feel right leaving her alone with this big of a task.
I’m always right, I can hear her say.
But this time she wasn’t. I’ve let
her down so many times because I wouldn’t listen to her. For trusting my own
instincts over my own.
I was so worried about letting her
down again, that I ignored what I felt completely.
And now she’s here. And it’s my
fault.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE –TOBIAS
I’m in a
daze. I haven’t slept, but I don’t feel tired. I try to keep busy, keep the
company of others, and am crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I feel like
I have lost everything. I watch everyone else recover from the memory serum
that altered them permanently. Those that are lost are gathered into groups and
given the truth: that human nature is complex, that all our genes are
different, but neither damaged nor pure, and Tris is a hero. They were also
given a 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 GD’s.
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 was
there for some of Uriah’s last breaths. Christina found me to let me know that
they were unplugging him.
We go to the observation window, my body
aching with each step. Evelyn is there—Amar picked her up in my stead, a few
days ago. She tries to touch my shoulder and I yank it away, not wanting to be
comforted. I don’t deserve it.
Inside the room, Zeke and Hana stand on either
side, holding his hands. I notice a doctor standing near the heart rate
monitor, extending a clipboard not to Hana or Zeke but to David. Sitting in his wheelchair. Hunched and dazed, like all the
others who have lost their memories.
“What is he doing here?” I feel like
all my muscles and bones and nerves are on fire.
“He’s still technically the leader
of the Bureau, at least until they replace him,” Cara says from behind me.
“Tobias, he doesn’t remember anything. The man you knew doesn’t exist anymore;
he’s as good as dead. That man
doesn’t remember shooting—“
“Shut up!” I snap. David signs the
clipboard and turns around, pushing himself through the door. It opens and I
can’t stop myself—I lunge toward him, and only Evelyn’s wiry frame stops me
from wrapping my hands around his throat. He gives me a strange look and pushes
himself down the hallway as I press against my mother’s arm, which feels like a
bar across my shoulders.
“Tobias,”
Evelyn says. “Calm down.”
“Why didn’t someone lock him
up?” I demand, my eyes to blurry to see out of.
“Because he still works for
the government,” Cara says. “Just because they’ve declared it an unfortunate
accident doesn’t mean they’ve fired everyone. And the government isn’t going to
lock him up just because he shot a rebel under duress.”
“A rebel,” I repeat. “That’s
all she is now?”
“Of
course not,” Cara says softly. “She’s a hero now, but as far as everyone is
concerned now, it was an accident. Confusion. It was chaos around here. No one
knew who the good guys were.”
I’m about to respond, but
Christina interrupts, “Guys, they’re doing it.”
In
Uriah’s room, Zeke and Hana join their free hands over Uriah’s body. I see
Hana’s lips moving, but I can’t tell what she’s saying—do the Dauntless have
prayers for the dying? The Abnegation react to death with silence and service,
not words. I find my anger ebbing away, and I’m lost in muffled grief again,
this time not just for Tris, but for Uriah, whose smile is burned into my
memory. My friend’s brother, and then my friends too, though not for long
enough to let his humor work its way into me, not for long enough.
The
doctor flips some switches, his clipboard clutched to his stomach, and the
machines stop breathing for Uriah. Zeke’s shoulders shake, and Hana squeezes
his hand tightly, until her knuckles go white.
Then
she says something, and her hands spring open, and she steps back from Uriah’s
body. Letting him go.
I
move away from the window, walking at first, and then running, pushing my way
through the hallways, careless, blind, empty.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX –TRIS
Bright
lights.
Am I
alive?
My name
is Beatrice Prior…
I know
nothing else.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN –Tobias
I wake
up to Christina standing over me, eyes wild with excitement.
“Tris!” She’s pants. “She’s awake!”
Before I
even realize it, I’m jumping out of my bed and take off running. When I reach
the hospital, I shove doctors out of my way and practically kick her door open.
She stares at me. She’s there.
Awake.
I don’t know what I expected, but it
wasn’t this.
She looks the same, yet different.
She’s quiet and still.
And she’s scared. She’s looking at
me like a stranger…
She
doesn’t remember me.
CHAPTER
58 –Tobias
Doctors
come running in and drag me out of her room.
“I tried to stop you… to tell you,”
he says calmly.
“She doesn’t remember me, does she?
She never will…” I say. My face is getting hot, my eyes are burning. I can feel
my heart dropping.
Breaking.
“We’ve kept her sedated because of
her wounds. We wouldn’t know anything about her memory until she woke up. When
we got to her she was very weak... not only did she fight off the death serum,
which is a miracle in itself, she was shot pretty severely in the head, it was
all just too much. I’m so—“
“Sorry?” I say coldly. I turn and
walk out.
After
all we have been through, she’s alive. She’s mine to have again.
But she’s gone. She’s not Tris.
She’s not the same. She never will be.
I don’t
know if I can take this anymore. I’ve always been worried I’d lose her to
death. This is much worse. It sounds selfish, but I’d almost rather her be
dead. Just a memory for me to have forever.
Now she’ll be around, alive. I’ll
know she’s here, so close to me, but I can never have her. I’ll always love
her. Even the Tris who she becomes without her memories.
But will she love me?
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE –TOBIAS
The next
day I take a truck from the compound. The people there are still recovering
from their memory loss, so no one tries to stop me. I drive over the railroad
tracks toward the city, my eyes wandering over the skyline but not really
taking it in.
When I reach the fields that
separate the city from the outside world, I press down on the accelerator. The
truck crushes dying grass and snow beneath its tired, and soon the ground turns
into pavement in the Abnegation sector, and I barely feel the passage of time.
The streets are all the same, but my hands and feet know where to go, even if
my mind doesn’t bother to guide them. I pull up to the house near the stop sign,
with the cracked front walk.
My house.
I walk through the front door and up
the stairs, still with that muffled feeling in my ears, like I am drifting far
away from the world. People talk about the pain of grief, but I don’t know what
they mean. To me, grief is a devastating numbness, every sensation dulled.
I press my palm to the panel
covering the mirror upstairs, and push it aside. Though the light of sunset is
orange, creeping across the floor and illuminating my face from below, I have
never looked paler; the circles under my eyes have never been more pronounced.
I have spent the past few days somewhere between sleeping and waking, not quite
able to manage either extreme.
I plug the hair clippers into the
outlet near the mirror. The right guard is already in place, so all I have to
do is run it though my hair, bending my ears down to protect them from the
blade, turning my head to check the back of my neck for places I might have
missed. The shorn hair falls on my feet and shoulders, itching whatever bare
skin it finds. I run my hand over my head to make sure it’s even, but I don’t
need to check, not really. I learned to do this myself when I was young.
I spend a lot of time brushing it
from my shoulders and feet, then sweeping it into a dustpan. When I finish, I
stand in front of the mirror again, and I can see the edges of my tattoo, the
Dauntless flame.
I take a vial of memory serum from
my pocket. I know that one vial will erase most of my life, but not all of it.
I will still know how to write, how to speak, how to put together a computer,
but I won’t remember her. Our
memories.
The experiment is over. Johanna
successfully negotiated with the government—David’s superiors—to allow the
former faction members to stay in the city, provided they are self-sufficient,
submit to the government’s authority, and allow outsiders to come in and join
them, making Chicago just another metropolitan area, like Milwaukee. The
Bureau, once in charge of the experiment, will now keep order in Chicago’s city
limits.
It will be the only metropolitan
area in the country governed by people who don’t believe in genetic damage. A
kind of paradise. Matthew told me he hopes people from the fringe will trickle
in to fill all the empty spaces, and find there a life more prosperous than the
one they left.
All I want is to become someone new.
In this case, Tobias Johnson, son of Evelyn Johnson. Tobias Johnson may have
lived a dully and empty life, but he is at least a whole person, not this
fragment of a person that I am, too damaged by pain to become anything useful.
“Matthew told me you stole some of
the memory serum and a truck,” Says a voice at the end of the hallway.
Christina’s. “I have to say, I didn’t really believe him.”
I must not have heard her enter the
house through the muffle. Even her voice sounds like it is traveling through
water to reach my ears, and it takes me a few seconds to make sense of what she
says. When I do, I look at her and say, “Then why did you come, if you didn’t
believe him?”
“Just in case,” she says, starting
towards me. “Plus I wanted to see the city one more time before it all changes.
Give me the vial Tobias.”
“No.” I fold my fingers over
it to protect it from her. “This is my decision. Not yours.”
Her dark eyes widen, and her
face is radiant with sunlight. It makes every strand of her thick, dark hair
gleam orange like it’s on fire.
“This is not your decision,” she says. “This is the decision of a coward,
and you’re a lot of things, Four, but not a coward. Never.”
“Maybe I am now,” I answer
passively. “Things have changed. I’m all right with it.”
“No you’re not.”
I feel so exhausted all I can do is
roll my eyes.
“You can’t become a person she would
hate,” Christina says, quietly this time. “And she would’ve hated this.”
Anger stampedes through me, hot and
lively, and the muffled feeling around my ears falls away, making even this
quiet Abnegation street sounds loud. I shudder with the force of it.
“Shut up!” I yell. “Shut up! You
don’t know what she would hate—no one does! Not even me! She’s not Tris
anymore! She’s just—“
“I know she wouldn’t want you to
just erase her from your memory like she didn’t even matter to you! No one
would!”
I lunge toward her, pinning her
shoulder to the wall, and lean closer to her face.
“If you dare suggest that again,” I say, “I’ll—“
“You’ll what?” Christina shoves me
back, hard. “Hurt me? You know, there’s a word for big, strong men who attack
women, and it’s coward.”
I remember my father’s screams
filling the house, and his hand around my mother’s throat, slamming her into
walls and doors. I remember watching from my doorway, my hand wrapped around
the door frame. And I remember hearing quiet sobs through her bedroom door, how
she locked it so I couldn’t get in.
I step back and slump against the
wall, letting my body collapse into it.
“I’m sorry.” I say.
“I know,” she answers.
We stand still for a few seconds, just
looking at each other. I remember hating her the first time I met her, because
she was a Candor, because words just dribbled out of her mouth unchecked,
careless. But over time she showed me who she really was, a forgiving friend,
faithful to the truth, brave enough to take action. I can’t help but like her
now, can’t help but see what Tris saw in her.
“I know how it feels to want to
forget everything,” she says. “I also know how it feels to lose someone you
love for no reason, and want to trade all your memories of them for just a
moment’s peace.”
She wraps her hand around
mine, which is wrapped around the vial.
“I didn’t know Will long,” she says,
“but he changed my life. He changed me.
And I know Tris changed you even more.”
The hard expression she wore a
moment ago melts away, and she touches my shoulders lightly.
“The person you became with her is
worth being,” she says. “If you swallow that serum, you’ll never be able to
find your way back to him.”
The tears come again, like when I
first learned how serious Tris’ condition was. This time, pain comes with them,
hot and sharp in my chest. I clutch the vial in my first, desperate for the
relief it offers, the protection from the pain of every memory clawing inside
me like an animal.
Christina puts her arms around my
shoulders, and her embrace only makes the pain worse, because it reminds me of
every time Tris’s thin arms slipped around me, uncertain at first but then
stronger, more confident, more sure of herself and of me. It reminds me that no
embrace will ever feel the same again, because no one will ever be like her
again, not even her. The Tris I know and love is gone.
Crying feels so useless, so stupid,
but it’s all I can do. Christina holds me upright and doesn’t say a word for a
long time.
Eventually I pull away, but her
hands stay on my shoulders, warm and rough with calluses. Maybe just as skin on
a hand grows tougher after pain in repetition, a person does too. But I don’t
want to become a calloused man.
There are other kinds of people in
this world. There is the kind like Tris, who after suffering and betrayal,
could still find enough love to sacrifice her life instead of her brothers. The
kind like Caleb, confused and cowardly, but will come through in the end to
help someone he loves. The kind like Peter, evil and unable to change. Or the
kind like Cara, who could still forgive the person who shot her brother in the
head. Or Christina, who lost friend after friend but still decided to stay
open, to make new ones. Appearing in front of me is another choice, brighter
and stronger than the ones I gave myself.
My eyes opening, I offer the vial to
her. She takes it and pockets it.
“I know Zeke’s still weird around
you,” she says slinging an arm across my shoulders. “But I can be your friend
in the meantime. We can even exchange bracelets if you want, like the Amity
girls used to.”
“I don’t think that will be
necessary.”
We walk down the stairs and out to
the street together. The sun has slipped behind the buildings of Chicago, and
in the distance I hear a train rushing over the rails, but we are moving away
from this place and all that it has meant to us, and that is all right.
There are so many ways to be brave
in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something
bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up
everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake
of something greater.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes it is nothing more than
gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk
toward a better life.
That is the sort of bravery I must
have now.
CHAPTER SIXTY –TRIS
It’s
strange, being told about your own life They say that boy—that man—that came
bursting into my room when I first woke up was my boyfriend once. Tobias? I
think his name was.
Handsome.
I
would say it was some sick joke they were playing on me, but the way he looked
at me, the hurt in his eyes, told me they weren’t lying.
I
guess I was a very brave and selfless person. Everyone, strangers, keeps
praising me as some sort of hero, but I don’t know why. I was a hero. But I that’s not who I am anymore.
I don’t know who I am.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
–TRIS
Tobias
keeps coming by to see me. Though he never comes in. I don’t know what this
feeling is, but when I look at him, I remember. Not events or details, but
emotions.
Wanting. Anger. Sadness. Joy.
Love.
I have no doubt he loves me. And I
know I loved him too, I can feel it. But could I love him again? He’s a
stranger. Though sometimes the way he looks at me, I know he’s seen more of me
than anyone.
I want to love him.
I want him to be happy.
I
ask for him.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO –TOBIAS
Tris
asked for me yesterday. I didn’t go. Walking by her room is torture enough, but
actually going in to talk to her? I can’t do it.
But
I do.
She’s
waiting for me when I get there.
“I didn’t think you’d come.” She
says.
“I wasn’t going to. But it didn’t
feel right, just leaving you.”
“I want to tell you something…”
She stares at her hands. It’s funny.
She may be a totally different person, but I can still read her emotions. She
doesn’t look confused or sad. She looks, embarrassed and uncomfortable.
“Sometimes when you look at me… I
can tell that we’ve… been intimate. You’ve seen more of me than anyone. I can
feel that,” her cheeks flush red with embarrassment, “I don’t remember you.” Her
words cut through me. It stings. Bad. “But when I see you, I get… emotional.
All of these feelings flood my thoughts. The strongest of them being love. I’m
telling you this because I want you to be happy. I loved you once, I’m sure of
it,” she continues.
Is she going to try and love me
again? Do I want her to?
“But I don’t… know you. And you
don’t know me. I don’t know if I can love you like before. I don’t know if I
can love you the way you want me to.”
I can feel my heart exploding. My
eyes are watering. I’m speechless. She’s just staring at me now, as if she
didn’t just rip my whole world apart. All of my memories of us come crashing
back. I let her in. I took her through my fear landscape. She helped me get
through all of it. How could I possibly live without her? She helped me
overcome some of my greatest fears. She knows my deepest secrets. I was able to
share my pain with her, and it felt amazing not having to carry that weight
alone anymore. And now it’s all back, on me, alone. Crushing me. Suffocating
me.
She’s still just sitting there.
Waiting. Waiting for me to react. I want to leave, but I can’t. I start to get
up, but there’s one more thing I need to do. I cannot just leave without it, at
least, I hope I don’t have to.
“I know you don’t remember anything.
About before, about me. Every time I thought I had lost you, all I wanted was
one more kiss. To wrap you in my arms one last time. And now that I am losing
you, it’s still all I want.” I know she understands what I am asking. But she
takes her time thinking about it. I can tell she doesn’t want me to. It was a
selfish thing to ask. But it’s what I need.
She can tell I’m collapsing.
She raises her hand, waving me
towards her.
I walk
toward her, awkwardly, timidly. It’s weird knowing everything about someone,
knowing them so intimately, but having them look at you like you are a
stranger. This is my last moment with her, ever. I’m next to the bed and I lean
toward her, looking deep into those eyes that I’ve stared into for so long.
Savoring every moment. Wishing it could last forever. I slide my hand toward
the side of her face, brushing a piece of her hair away as I have done so many
times before, so familiar but so new. We close our eyes, and I kiss her one
last time.
CHAPTER 63 –Tris
I didn’t
want to say yes, but I felt I owed it to him, for him to be happy.
His lips
meet mine. My head starts racing.
Trains. Net. Blue eyes. Strong
hand. Pain.
Desire. Ferris Wheel. Fear.
Secrets. War.
Serums. Fence. Bureau.
Experiments. Intimacy.
CHAPTER
64 –Tobias
I’m
about to pull away from my past, present, and future with Tris when she wraps
her arms around my neck and pulls me in deeper. And for a moment, it’s as if
the real Tris is here with me. Kissing me as she often did when we had been
separated, fighting for each other, for us.
I don’t know what is happening. I
don’t know why she is doing this. But I never want it to stop.
She
pulls away, holding my face between her hands grinning from ear to ear.
“I’ve missed kissing you… Four.”
