“What were you waiting for, then?” he says, but not harshly. His voice sounds somehow detached from him, like it is floating between us.
“It’s not the kind of news you deliver in a cafeteria,” I say.
“Fair enough,” he says.
We wait in silence for the elevator, Tobias chewing on his lip and staring into space. He does that all the way to the eighteenth floor, which is empty. There, the silence wraps around me like Caleb’s embrace did, calming me. I sit down on one of the benches on the edge of the interrogation room, and Tobias pulls Niles’s chair over to sit in front of me.
“Didn’t there used to be two of these?” he says, frowning at the chair.
“Yeah,” I say. “I, uh . . . it got thrown out the window.”
“Strange,” he says. He sits. “So what did you want to talk about? Or was that about Marcus?”
“No, that wasn’t it. Are you . . . all right?” I say cautiously.
“I don’t have a bullet in my head, do I?” he says, staring at his hands. “So I’m fine. I’d like to talk about something else.”
“I want to talk about simulations,” I say. “But first, something else—your mother thought Jeanine would go after the factionless next. Obviously she was wrong—and I’m not sure why. It’s not like the Candor are battle ready or anything—”
“Well, think about it,” he says. “Think it through, like the Erudite.”
I give him a look.
“What?” he says. “If you can’t, the rest of us have no hope.”
“Fine,” I say. “Um . . . it had to be because Dauntless and Candor were the most logical targets. Because . . . the factionless are in multiple places, whereas we’re all in the same place.”
“Right,” he says. “Also, when Jeanine attacked Abnegation, she got all the Abnegation data. My mother told me that the Abnegation had documented the factionless Divergent populations, which means that after the attack, Jeanine must have found out that the proportion of Divergent among the factionless is higher than among the Candor. That makes them an illogical target.”
“All right. Then tell me about the serum again,” I say. “It has a few parts, right?”
“Two,” he says, nodding. “The transmitter and the liquid that induces the simulation. The transmitter communicates information to the brain from the computer, and vice versa, and the liquid alters the brain to put it in a simulation state.”
I nod. “And the transmitter only works for one simulation, right? What happens to it after that?”
“It dissolves,” he says. “As far as I know, the Erudite haven’t been able to develop a transmitter that lasts for more than one simulation, although the attack simulation lasted far longer than any simulation I’ve seen before.”
The words “as far as I know” stick in my mind. Jeanine has spent most of her adult life developing the serums. If she’s still hunting down the Divergent, she’s probably still obsessed with creating more advanced versions of the technology.
“What’s this about, Tris?” he says.
“Have you seen this yet?” I say, pointing at the bandage covering my shoulder.
“Not up close,” he says. “Uriah and I were hauling wounded Erudite up to the fourth floor all morning.”
I peel away the edge of the bandage, revealing the puncture wound—no longer bleeding, thankfully—and the patch of blue dye that doesn’t seem to be fading. Then I reach into my pocket and take out the needle that was buried in my arm.
“When they attacked, they weren’t trying to kill us. They were shooting us with these,” I say.
His hand touches the dyed skin around the puncture wound. I didn’t notice it before because it was happening right in front of me, but he looks different than he used to, during initiation. He’s let his facial hair grow in a little, and his hair is longer than I’ve ever seen it—dense enough to show me that it is brown, not black.
He takes the needle from me and taps the metal disc at the end of it. “This is probably hollow. It must have contained whatever that blue stuff in your arm is. What happened after you were shot?”
“They tossed these gas-spewing cylinders into the room, and everyone went unconscious. That is, everyone but Uriah and me and the other Divergent.”
Tobias doesn’t seem surprised. I narrow my eyes.
“Did you know that Uriah was Divergent?”
He shrugs. “Of course. I ran his simulations, too.”
“And you never told me?”
“Privileged information,” he says. “Dangerous information.”
I feel a flare of anger—how many things is he going to keep from me?—and try to stifle it. Of course he couldn’t tell me Uriah was Divergent. He was just respecting Uriah’s privacy. It makes sense.
I clear my throat. “You saved our lives, you know,” I say. “Eric was trying to hunt us down.”
“I think we’re past keeping track of who has saved whose life.” He looks at me for a few long seconds.
“Anyway,” I say to break the silence. “After we figured out that everyone was asleep, Uriah ran upstairs to warn the people who were up there, and I went to the second floor to figure out what was going on. Eric had all the Divergent by the elevators, and he was trying to figure out which of us he was going to take back with him. He said he was allowed to take two. I don’t know why he was going to take any.”
“Odd,” he says.
“Any ideas?”
“My guess is that the needle injected you with a transmitter,” he says, “and the gas was an aerosol version of the liquid that alters the brain. But why . . .” A crease appears between his eyebrows. “Oh. She put everyone to sleep to find out who the Divergent were.”
“You think that’s the only reason for shooting us with transmitters?”
He shakes his head, and his eyes lock on mine. Their blue is so dark and familiar that I feel like it could swallow me whole. For a moment I wish it would, so that I could escape this place and all that has happened.
“I think you’ve already figured it out,” he says, “but you want me to contradict you. And I’m not going to.”
“They’ve developed a long-lasting transmitter,” I say.
He nods.
“So now we’re all wired for multiple simulations,” I add. “As many as Jeanine wants, maybe.”