some memory serum," I say. "While you, Amar, and Peter are looking for your family and Uriah's family, I'll take care of it. I probably won't have enough time to get to both of my parents, but one of them will do."
"How will you get away from the rest of us?"
"I need . . . I don't know, we need to add a complication. Something that requires one of us leaving the pack."
"What about flat tires?" Christina says. "We're going at night, right? So I can tell Amar to stop so I can go to the bathroom or something, slash the tires, and then we'll have to split up, so you
can find another truck."
I consider this for a moment. I could tell Amar what's really going on, but that would require undoing the dense knot of propaganda and lies the Bureau has tied in his mind. Assuming I could even do it, we don't have time for that.
But we do have time for a well-told lie. Amar knows that my father taught me how to start a car with just the wires when I was younger. He wouldn't question me volunteering to find us another vehicle.
"That will work," I say.
"Good." She tilts her head. "So you're really going to erase one of your parents' memories?"
"What do you do when your parents are evil?" I say. "Get a new parent. If one of them doesn't have all the baggage they currently have, maybe the two of them can negotiate a peace agreement or something."
She frowns at me for a few seconds like she wants to say something, but eventually, she just nods.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
TRIS
THE SMELL OF bleach tingles in my nose. I stand next to a mop in a storage room in the basement; I stand in the wake of what I just told everyone, which is that whoever breaks into the Weapons Lab will be going on a suicide mission. The death serum is unstoppable.
"The question is," Matthew says, "is this something we're willing to sacrifice
a life for."
This is the room where Matthew, Caleb, and Cara were developing the new serum, before the plan changed. Vials and beakers and scribbled-on notebooks are scattered across the lab table in front of Matthew. The string he wears tied around his neck is in his mouth now, and he chews it absentmindedly.
Tobias leans against the door, his arms crossed. I remember him standing that way during initiation, as he watched us fight each other, so tall and so strong I never dreamed he would give me more than a cursory glance.
"It's not just about revenge," I say. "It's not about what they did to the Abnegation. It's about stopping them before they do something equally bad to the people in all the experiments—about taking away their power to control thousands of lives."
"It is worth it," Cara says. "One death, to save thousands of people from a terrible fate? And cut the compound's power off at the knees, so to speak? Is it even a question?"
I know what she is doing—weighing a single life against so many lifetimes and memories, drawing an obvious conclusion from the scales. That is the way an Erudite mind works, and the way an Abnegation mind works, but I am not sure if they are the minds we need right now. One life against thousands of memories, of course the answer is easy, but does it have to be one of our lives? Do we have to be the ones who act?
But because I know what my answer will be to that question, my thoughts turn to another question. If it has to be one of us, who should it be?
My eyes shift from Matthew and Cara, standing behind the table, to Tobias, to Christina, her arm slung over a broom handle, and land on Caleb.
Him.
A second later I feel sick with myself.
"Oh, just come out with it," Caleb says, lifting his eyes to mine. "You want me to do it. You all do."
"No one said that," Matthew says, spitting out the string necklace.
"Everyone's staring at me," Caleb says. "Don't think I don't know it. I'm the one who chose the wrong side, who worked with Jeanine Matthews; I'm the one none of you care about, so I should be the one to die."
"Why do you think Tobias offered to get you out of the city before they executed you?" My voice comes out cold, quiet. The odor of bleach plays over my nose. "Because I don't care whether you