Insurgent: Chapters 28–37

I felt assured of my long lifespan, if nothing else. Now there are no reassurances, except that where I go, I go because I choose to.

It isn’t long before my body warms with the exertion of walking and checking over my shoulder and dodging hazards in the road.

A thousand potential reactions, ranging from launching myself at Peter’s throat to crying to making some kind of joke, rush through my mind at once. I can’t decide on one.

Again I feel guilt and grief clawing inside me, warring with each other for dominance, but terror is stronger than both.

Every piece of information she receives factors into her strategy, and she won’t tell me what time it is unless she decides that providing the information is more useful than withholding it.

If I am to develop a simulation that cannot be thwarted by the Divergent mind, I must study the strongest Divergent mind in order to shore up all weaknesses in the technology.

Now you’ll need to find a different weakness to exploit.

I am pale-skinned, pale-haired, and cold. I am curious about the pictures of my brain. I am like Jeanine. And I can either despise it, attack it, eradicate it... or I can use it.

“No matter how many restraints you use, you can’t keep me as still as I need to be for the pictures to be clear.”

I sound cavalier, like executions are something I face on a regular basis.

“It’s responsible for organizing your thoughts and actions to attain your goals.”

“That means that Ms. Prior engages in very little reward-seeking behavior.”

This explains both her tendency toward harmful-but-selfless behavior and, perhaps, her ability to wriggle out of simulations.

And what happens if they suppress the activity in my prefrontal cortex—if they damage my ability to make decisions?

I did not know that my entire personality, my entire being, could be discarded as the byproduct of my anatomy.

“You die, I die too.” Tobias looks over his shoulder at me. “I asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions.”

I read somewhere, once, that crying defies scientific explanation.

Because inside me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, toward life.

“I see no reason to provide that information,” says Jeanine. “And since you are all out of leverage, I see no way for you to give me a reason, unless you would like to change the terms of our agreement.”

I can’t make hasty decisions.

“You choose different ways of referring to yourself depending on what is convenient,” she says, leaning back in her chair.

“I worry that all your father’s blustering about Erudite has been to your detriment,” she says gently.

“We may both be bad, but there’s a huge difference between us—I’m not content with being this way.”

So I feel it’s only fair that you know exactly who has been assisting me in my endeavors.

“Who told me what three factions you had an aptitude for, and what our best chance was to get you to come here, and to put your mother in the last simulation to make it more effective.”

“He wasn’t Erudite,” I say after a few seconds. “He chose to leave them. He chose a different identity, just like you, and became something else. Only you chose this ... this evil.”

“Spoken like a true Dauntless,” says Caleb sharply. “It’s either one way or the other way. No nuances. The world doesn’t work like that, Beatrice. Evil depends on where you’re standing.”

“More specifically,” Jeanine says, and this time she does smile at me, broadly, forcing creases into her cheeks, “someone with many, strong mirror neurons could have a flexible personality—capable of mimicking others as the situation calls for it rather than remaining constant.”

“Pain can’t make me tell you. Truth serum can’t make me tell you. Simulations can’t make me tell you. I’m immune to all three.”

I savor the scowl on her face, the hate in her eyes. She was like a machine; she was cold and emotionless, bound by logic alone. And I broke her.

I also don’t believe that whatever comes after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions—that sounds too much like an Erudite afterlife to me, all accuracy and no feeling.

I believed that I wanted to be with my parents and for all of this to be over. I was sure I wanted to emulate their self-sacrifice.

Then he opens his mouth, hesitates, and finally says, “I can’t be in anyone’s debt. Okay? The idea that I owed you something made me sick. I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I was going to vomit. Indebted to a Stiff? It’s ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And I couldn’t have it.”

I feel a surge of gratitude.

Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion. Or afraid that I did not know what it was to love someone.

“You almost died, a sadistic pansycake saved you, and now we’re all waging some serious war with the factionless as allies.”

“Do not call attention to yourself,” he said. “It is not courteous to the people around you.”

But I still remember what she said to me about my transience in Tobias’s life.

Hopefully we won’t have to worry about faction distinctions anymore by the time this is over.

And it occurs to me that I might be meeting Tobias’s true faction. They are not characterized by a particular virtue. They claim all colors, all activities, all virtues, and all flaws as their own.