The answer surprises me—but why? I pinch my lips together for a moment. Because it’s true. If I say it here, it must be true.
That thought gives me the missing link in the chain of thought I was trying to find. I am here for a lie-detector test. Everything I say is true. I feel a bead of sweat roll down the back of my neck.
Lie-detector test. Truth serum. I have to remind myself. It is too easy to get lost in honesty.
“Tris, would you please tell us what happened the day of the attack?”
“I woke up,” I say, “and everyone was under the simulation. So I played along until I found Tobias.”
“What happened after you and Tobias were separated?”
“Jeanine tried to have me killed, but my mother saved me. She used to be Dauntless, so she knew how to use a gun.” My body feels even heavier now, but no longer cold. I feel something stir in my chest, something worse than sadness, worse than regret.
I know what comes next. My mother died and then I killed Will; I shot him; I killed him.
“She distracted the Dauntless soldiers so I could get away, and they killed her,” I say.
Some of them ran after me, and I killed them. But there are Dauntless in the crowd around me, Dauntless, I killed some of the Dauntless, I shouldn’t talk about it here.
“I kept running,” I say, “And . . .” And Will ran after me. And I killed him. No, no. I feel sweat near my hairline.
“And I found my brother and father,” I say, my voice strained. “We formed a plan to destroy the simulation.”
The edge of the armrest digs into my palm. I withheld some of the truth. Surely that counts as deception.
I fought the serum. And in that short moment, I won.
I should feel triumphant. Instead I feel the weight of what I did crush me again.
“We infiltrated the Dauntless compound, and my father and I went up to the control room. He fought off Dauntless soldiers at the expense of his life,” I say. “I made it to the control room, and Tobias was there.”
“Tobias said you fought him, but then stopped. Why did you do that?”
“Because I realized that one of us would have to kill the other,” I say, “and I didn’t want to kill him.”
“You gave up?”
“No!” I snap. I shake my head. “No, not exactly. I remembered something I had done in my fear landscape in Dauntless initiation . . . in a simulation, a woman demanded that I kill my family, and I let her shoot me instead. It worked then. I thought . . .” I pinch the bridge of my nose. My head is starting to ache and my control is gone and my thoughts run into words. “I was so frantic, but all I could think was that there was something to it; there was a strength in it. And I couldn’t kill him, so I had to try.”
I blink tears from my eyes.
“So you were never under the simulation?”
“No.” I press the heel of my hands to my eyes, pushing the tears out of them so they don’t fall on my cheeks where everyone can see them.
“No,” I say again. “No, I am Divergent.”
“Just to clarify,” says Niles. “Are you telling me that you were almost murdered by the Erudite . . . and then fought your way into the Dauntless compound . . . and destroyed the simulation?”
“Yes,” I say.
“I think I speak for everyone,” he says, “when I say that you have earned the title of Dauntless.”
Shouts rise up from the left side of the room, and I see blurs of fists pressing into the dark air. My faction, calling to me.
But no, they’re wrong, I’m not brave, I’m not brave, I shot Will and I can’t admit it, I can’t even admit it. . . .
“Beatrice Prior,” says Niles, “what are your deepest regrets?”
What do I regret? I do not regret choosing Dauntless or leaving Abnegation. I do not even regret shooting the guards outside the control room, because it was so important that I get past them.
“I regret . . .”
My eyes leave Niles’s face and drift over the room, and land on Tobias. He is expressionless, his mouth in a firm line, his stare blank. His hands, crossed over his chest, clasp his arms so hard his knuckles are white. Next to him stands Christina. My chest squeezes, and I can’t breathe.
I have to tell them. I have to tell the truth.
“Will,” I say. It sounds like a gasp, like it was pulled straight from my stomach. Now there is no turning back.
“I shot Will,” I say, “while he was under the simulation. I killed him. He was going to kill me, but I killed him. My friend.”
Will, with the crease between his eyebrows, with green eyes like celery and the ability to quote the Dauntless manifesto from memory. I feel pain in my stomach so intense that I almost groan. It hurts to remember him. It hurts every part of me.
And there is something else, something worse that I didn’t realize before. I was willing to die rather than kill Tobias, but the thought never occurred to me when it came to Will. I decided to kill Will in a fraction of a second.
I feel bare. I didn’t realize that I wore my secrets as armor until they were gone, and now everyone sees me as I really am.
“Thank you for your honesty,” they say.
But Christina and Tobias say nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I RISE FROM the chair. I don’t feel as dizzy as I did a moment ago; the serum is already wearing off. The crowd tilts, and I search for a door. I don’t usually run away from things, but I would run from this.
Everyone starts to file out of the room except for Christina. She stands where I left her, her hands in fists that are in the process of uncurling. Her eyes meet mine and yet they do not. Tears swim in her eyes and yet she is not crying.
“Christina,” I say, but the only words I can think of—I’m sorry—sound more like an insult than an apology. Sorry is what you are when you bump someone with your elbow, what you are when you interrupt someone. I am more than sorry.
“He had a gun,” I say. “He was about to shoot me. He was under the simulation.”
“You killed him,” she says. Her words sound bigger than words usually do, like they expanded in her mouth before she spoke them. She looks at me as if she doesn’t recognize me for a few seconds, then turns away.
A younger girl with the same skin color and the same height takes her hand—Christina’s younger sister. I saw her on Visiting Day, a thousand years ago. The truth serum makes the sight of them swim before me, or that could be the tears gathering in my eyes.