He doesn’t need to say anything else. I know what he means. Maybe Dauntless was formed with good intentions, with the right ideals and the right goals. But it has strayed far from them. And the same is true of Erudite, I realize. A long time ago, Erudite pursued knowledge and ingenuity for the sake of doing good. Now they pursue knowledge and ingenuity with greedy hearts. I wonder if the other factions suffer from the same problem. I have not thought about it before.
Despite the depravity I see in Dauntless, though, I could not leave it. It isn’t only because the thought of living factionless, in complete isolation, sounds like a fate worse than death. It is because, in the brief moments that I have loved it here, I saw a faction worth saving. Maybe we can become brave and honorable again.
“Let’s go to the cafeteria,” Will says, “and eat cake.”
“Okay.” I smile.
As we walk toward the Pit, I repeat the line Will quoted to myself so I don’t forget it.
I believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
It is a beautiful thought.
Later, when I return to the dormitory, Edward’s bunk is stripped clean and his drawers are open, empty. Across the room, Myra’s bunk looks the same way.
When I ask Christina where they went, she says, “They quit.”
“Even Myra?”
“She said she didn’t want to be here without him. She was going to get cut anyway.” She shrugs, like she can’t think of anything else to do. If that’s true, I know how she feels. “At least they didn’t cut Al.”
Al was supposed to get cut, but Edward’s departure saved him. The Dauntless decided to spare him until the next stage.
“Who else got cut?” I say.
Christina shrugs again. “Two of the Dauntless-born. I don’t remember their names.”
I nod and look at the blackboard. Someone drew a line through Edward and Myra’s names, and changed the numbers next to everyone else’s names. Now Peter is first. Will is second. I am fifth. We started stage one with nine initiates.
Now we have seven.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IT’S NOON. LUNCHTIME.
I sit in a hallway I don’t recognize. I walked here because I needed to get away from the dormitory. Maybe if I bring my bedding here, I will never have to go to the dormitory again. It may be my imagination, but it still smells like blood in there, even though I scrubbed the floor until my hands were sore, and someone poured bleach on it this morning.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. Scrubbing the floor when no one else wanted to was something that my mother would have done. If I can’t be with her, the least I can do is act like her sometimes.
I hear people approaching, their footsteps echoing on the stone floor, and I look down at my shoes. I switched from gray sneakers to black sneakers a week ago, but the gray shoes are buried in one of my drawers. I can’t bear to throw them away, even though I know it’s foolish to be attached to sneakers, like they can bring me home.
“Tris?”
I look up. Uriah stops in front of me. He waves along the Dauntless-born initiates he walks with. They exchange looks but keep moving.
“You okay?” he says.
“I had a difficult night.”
“Yeah, I heard about that guy Edward.” Uriah looks down the hallway. The Dauntless-born initiates disappear around a corner. Then he grins a little. “Want to get out of here?”
“What?” I ask. “Where are you going?”
“To a little initiation ritual,” he says. “Come on. We have to hurry.”
I briefly consider my options. I can sit here. Or I can leave the Dauntless compound.
I push myself to my feet and jog next to Uriah to catch up to the Dauntless-born initiates.
“The only initiates they usually let come are ones with older siblings in Dauntless,” he says. “But they might not even notice. Just act like you belong.”
“What exactly are we doing?”
“Something dangerous,” he says. A look I can only describe as Dauntless mania enters his eyes, but rather than recoil from it, as I might have a few weeks ago, I catch it, like it’s contagious. Excitement replaces the leaden feeling inside me. We slow when we reach the Dauntless-born initiates.
“What’s the Stiff doing here?” asks a boy with a metal ring between his nostrils.
“She just saw that guy get stabbed in the eye, Gabe,” says Uriah. “Give her a break, okay?”
Gabe shrugs and turns away. No one else says anything, though a few of them give me sidelong glances like they’re sizing me up. The Dauntless-born initiates are like a pack of dogs. If I act the wrong way, they won’t let me run with them. But for now, I am safe.
We turn another corner, and a group of members stands at the end of the next hallway. There are too many of them to all be related to a Dauntless-born initiate, but I see some similarities among the faces.
“Let’s go,” one of the members says. He turns and plunges through a dark doorway. The other members follow him, and we follow them. I stay close behind Uriah as I pass into darkness and my toe hits a step. I catch myself before falling forward and start to climb.
“Back staircase,” Uriah says, almost mumbling. “Usually locked.”
I nod, though he can’t see me, and climb until all the steps are gone. By then, a door at the top of the staircase is open, letting in daylight. We emerge from the ground a few hundred yards from the glass building above the Pit, close to the train tracks.
I feel like I have done this a thousand times before. I hear the train horn. I feel the vibrations in the ground. I see the light attached to the head car. I crack my knuckles and bounce once on my toes.
We jog in a single pack next to the car, and in waves, members and initiates alike pile into the car. Uriah gets in before me, and people press behind me. I can’t make any mistakes; I throw myself sideways, grabbing the handle on the side of the car, and hoist myself into the car. Uriah grabs my arm to steady me.
The train picks up its speed. Uriah and I sit against one of the walls.
I shout over the wind, “Where are we going?”
Uriah shrugs. “Zeke never told me.”
“Zeke?”
“My older brother,” he says. He points across the room at a boy sitting in the doorway with his legs dangling out of the car. He is slight and short and looks nothing like Uriah, apart from his coloring.
“You don’t get to know. That ruins the surprise!” the girl on my left shouts. She extends her hand. “I’m Shauna.”