“Well, a few of the people inside still knew how to make weapons. They made a bomb—you know, an explosive—and set it off in the government building,” she says. “Lots of people died. And after that, the Bureau decided our experiment was a failure. They erased the memories of the bombers and relocated the rest of us. I’m one of the only ones who wanted to come here.”
“I’m sorry,” Tris says softly. Sometimes I still forget to look for the gentler parts of her. For so long all I saw was the strength, standing out like the wiry muscles in her arms or the black ink marking her collarbone with flight.
“It’s all right. It’s not like you guys don’t know about stuff like this,” says Nita. “With what Jeanine Matthews did, and all.”
“Why haven’t they shut our city down?” Tris says. “The same way they did to yours?”
“They might still shut it down,” says Nita. “But I think the Chicago experiment, in particular, has been a success for so long that they’ll be a little reluctant to just ditch it now. It was the first one with factions.”
I take the cotton ball away from my arm. There is a tiny red dot where the needle went in, but it isn’t bleeding anymore.
“I like to think I would have chosen Dauntless,” says Nita. “But I don’t think I would have had the stomach for it.”
“You’d be surprised what you have the stomach for, when you have to,” Tris says.
I feel a pang in the middle of my chest. She’s right. Desperation can make a person do surprising things. We would both know.
Matthew returns right at the hour mark, and he sits at the computer for a long time after that, his eyes flicking back and forth as he reads the screen. A few times he makes a revelatory noise, a “hmm!” or an “ah!” The longer he waits to tell us something, anything, the more tense my muscles become, until my shoulders feel like they are made of stone instead of flesh. Finally he looks up and turns the screen around so we can see what’s on it.
“This program helps us to interpret the data in an understandable way. What you see here is a simplified depiction of a particular DNA sequence in Tris’s genetic material,” he says.
The picture on the screen is a complicated mass of lines and numbers, with certain parts selected in yellow and red. I can’t make any sense of the picture beyond that—it is above my level of comprehension.
“These selections here suggest healed genes. We wouldn’t see them if the genes were damaged.” He taps certain parts of the screen. I don’t understand what he’s pointing at, but he doesn’t seem to notice, caught up in his own explanation. “These selections over here indicate that the program also found the genetic tracker, the simulation awareness. The combination of healed genes and simulation awareness genes is just what I expected to see from a Divergent. Now, this is the strange part.”
He touches the screen again, and the screen changes, but it remains just as confusing, a web of lines, tangled threads of numbers.
“This is the map of Tobias’s genes,” Matthew says. “As you can see, he has the right genetic components for simulation awareness, but he doesn’t have the same ‘healed’ genes that Tris does.”
My throat is dry, and I feel like I’ve been given bad news, but I still haven’t entirely grasped what that bad news is.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means,” Matthew says, “that you are not Divergent. Your genes are still damaged, but you have a genetic anomaly that allows you to be aware during simulations anyway. You have, in other words, the appearance of a Divergent without actually being one.”
I process the information slowly, piece by piece. I’m not Divergent. I’m not like Tris. I’m genetically damaged.
The word “damaged” sinks inside me like it’s made of lead. I guess I always knew there was something wrong with me, but I thought it was because of my father, or my mother, and the pain they bequeathed to me like a family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation. And this means that the one good thing my father had—his Divergence—didn’t reach me.
I don’t look at Tris—I can’t bear it. Instead I look at Nita. Her expression is hard, almost angry.
“Matthew,” she says. “Don’t you want to take this data to your lab to analyze?”
“Well, I was planning on discussing it with our subjects here,” Matthew says.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tris says, sharp as a blade.
Matthew says something I don’t really hear; I’m listening to the thump of my heart. He taps the screen again, and the picture of my DNA disappears, so the screen is blank, just glass. He leaves, instructing us to visit his lab if we want more information, and Tris, Nita, and I stand in the room in silence.
“It’s not that big a deal,” Tris says firmly. “Okay?”
“You don’t get to tell me it’s not a big deal!” I say, louder than I mean to be.
Nita busies herself at the counter, making sure the containers there are lined up, though they haven’t moved since we first came in.
“Yeah, I do!” Tris exclaims. “You’re the same person you were five minutes ago and four months ago and eighteen years ago! This doesn’t change anything about you.”
I hear something in her words that’s right, but it’s hard to believe her right now.
“So you’re telling me this affects nothing,” I say. “The truth affects nothing.”
“What truth?” she says. “These people tell you there’s something wrong with your genes, and you just believe it?”
“It was right there.” I gesture to the screen. “You saw it.”
“I also see you,” she says fiercely, her hand closing around my arm. “And I know who you are.”
I shake my head. I still can’t look at her, can’t look at anything in particular. “I . . . need to take a walk. I’ll see you later.”
“Tobias, wait—”
I walk out, and some of the pressure inside me releases as soon as I’m not in that room anymore. I walk down the cramped hallway that presses against me like an exhale, and into the sunlit halls beyond it. The sky is bright blue now. I hear footsteps behind me, but they’re too heavy to belong to Tris.
“Hey.” Nita twists her foot, making it squeak against the tile. “No pressure, but I’d like to talk to you about all this . . . genetic-damage stuff. If you’re interested, meet me here tonight at nine. And . . . no offense to your girl or anything, but you might not want to bring her.”