the wall, so directly beneath each one is a slit of shadow. I am small enough to hide in it, if I turn to the side. I can creep along the edge of the room and surprise whatever guard is shooting at us before he gets the chance to fire a bullet into my brain. Maybe.
One of the things I thank Dauntless for is the preparedness that eliminates my fear.
“Whoever’s there,” a voice shouts, “surrender your weapons and put your hands up!”
I turn to the side and press my back to the stone wall. I shuffle quickly sideways, one foot crossing over the other, squinting to see through the semidarkness. Another gunshot fires into silence. I reach the last light and stand for a moment in shadow, letting my eyes adjust.
I can’t win a fight, but if I can move fast enough, I won’t have to fight. My footsteps light, I walk toward the guard who stands by the door. A few yards away, I realize that I know that dark hair that always gleams, even in relative darkness, and that long nose with a narrow bridge.
It’s Peter.
Cold slips over my skin and around my heart and into the pit of my stomach.
His face is tense—he isn’t a sleepwalker. He looks around, but his eyes search the air above me and beyond me. Judging by his silence, he does not intend to negotiate with us; he will kill us without question.
I lick my lips, sprint the last few steps, and thrust the heel of my hand up. The blow connects with his nose, and he shouts, bringing both hands up to cover his face. My body jolts with nervous energy and as his eyes squint, I kick him in the groin. He drops to his knees, his gun clattering to the ground. I grab it and press the barrel to the top of his head.
“How are you awake?” I demand.
He lifts his head, and I click the bullet into its chamber, raising an eyebrow at him.
“The Dauntless leaders…they evaluated my records and removed me from the simulation,” he says.
“Because they figured out that you already have murderous tendencies and wouldn’t mind killing a few hundred people while conscious,” I say. “Makes sense.”
“I’m not…murderous!”
“I never knew a Candor who was such a liar.” I tap the gun against his skull. “Where are the computers that control the simulation, Peter?”
“You won’t shoot me.”
“People tend to overestimate my character,” I say quietly. “They think that because I’m small, or a girl, or a Stiff, I can’t possibly be cruel. But they’re wrong.”
I shift the gun three inches to the left and fire at his arm.
His screams fill the hallway. Blood spurts from the wound, and he screams again, pressing his forehead to the ground. I shift the gun back to his head, ignoring the pang of guilt in my chest.
“Now that you realize your mistake,” I say, “I will give you another chance to tell me what I need to know before I shoot you somewhere worse.”
Another thing I can count on: Peter is not selfless.
He turns his head and focuses a bright eye on me. His teeth close over his lower lip, and his breaths shake on the way out. And on the way in. And on the way out again.
“They’re listening,” he spits. “If you don’t kill me, they will. The only way I’ll tell you is if you get me out of here.”
“What?”
“Take me…ahh…with you,” he says, wincing.
“You want me to take you,” I say, “the person who tried to kill me…with me?”
“I do,” he groans. “If you expect to find out what you need to know.”
It feels like a choice, but it isn’t. Every minute that I waste staring at Peter, thinking about how he haunts my nightmares and the damage he did to me, another dozen Abnegation members die at the hands of the brain-dead Dauntless army.
“Fine,” I say, almost choking on the word. “Fine.”
I hear footsteps behind me. Holding the gun steady, I look over my shoulder. My father and the others walk toward us.
My father takes off his long-sleeved shirt. He wears a gray T-shirt beneath it. He crouches next to Peter and loops the fabric around his arm, tying it tightly. As he presses the fabric to the blood running down Peter’s arm, he looks up at me and says, “Was it really necessary to shoot him?”
I don’t answer.
“Sometimes pain is for the greater good,” says Marcus calmly.