“Just get on with it,” I say, before he tries to finish the sentence.
“She told me that if she didn’t survive, I should tell you . . .” Caleb chokes, then pulls himself up straight, fighting off tears. “That she didn’t want to leave you.”
I should feel something, hearing her last words to me, shouldn’t I? I feel nothing. I feel farther away than ever.
“Yeah?” I say harshly. “Then why did she? Why didn’t she let you die?”
“You think I’m not asking myself that question?” Caleb says. “She loved me. Enough to hold me at gunpoint so she could die for me. I have no idea why, but that’s just the way it is.”
He walks away without letting me respond, and it’s probably better that way, because I can’t think of anything to say that is equal to my anger. I blink away tears and sit down on the ground, right in the middle of the lobby.
I know why she wanted to tell me that she didn’t want to leave me. She wanted me to know that this was not another Erudite headquarters, not a lie told to make me sleep while she went to die, not an act of unnecessary self-sacrifice. I grind the heels of my hands into my eyes like I can push my tears back into my skull. No crying, I chastise myself. If I let a little of the emotion out, all of it will come out, and it will never end.
Sometime later I hear voices nearby—Cara and Peter.
“This sculpture was a symbol of change,” she says to him. “Gradual change, but now they’re taking it down.”
“Oh, really?” Peter sounds eager. “Why?”
“Um . . . I’ll explain later, if that’s okay,” Cara says. “Do you remember how to get back to the dormitory?”
“Yep.”
“Then . . . go back there for a while. Someone will be there to help you.”
Cara walks over to me, and I cringe in anticipation of her voice. But all she does is sit next to me on the ground, her hands folded in her lap, her back straight. Alert but relaxed, she watches the sculpture where Reggie stands under the gushing water.
“You don’t have to stay here,” I say.
“I don’t have anywhere to be,” she says. “And the quiet is nice.”
So we sit side by side, staring at the water, in silence.
“There you are,” Christina says, jogging toward us. Her face is swollen and her voice is listless, like a heavy sigh. “Come on, it’s time. They’re unplugging him.”
I shudder at the word, but push myself to my feet anyway. Hana and Zeke have been hovering over Uriah’s body since we got here, their fingers finding his, their eyes searching for life. But there is no life left, just the machine beating his heart.
Cara walks behind Christina and me as we go toward the hospital. I haven’t slept in days but I don’t feel tired, not in the way I normally do, though my body aches as I walk. Christina and I don’t speak, but I know our thoughts are the same, fixed on Uriah, on his last breaths.
We make it to the observation window outside Uriah’s room, and 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.
Inside the room, Zeke and Hana stand on either side of Uriah. Hana is holding one of his hands, and Zeke is holding the other. A doctor stands near the heart monitor, a clipboard outstretched, held out 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 there?” 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 kill—”
“Shut up!” I snap. David signs the clipboard and turns around, pushing himself toward 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, and my eyes are too 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 killed a rebel under duress.”
“A rebel,” I repeat. “That’s all she is now?”
“Was,” Cara says softly. “And no, of course not, but that’s what the government sees her as.”
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 friend, 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
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 the accelerator. The truck crushes dying grass and snow beneath its tires, and soon the ground turns to the 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.