I start to fall, and slam my hand into the keypad on my way down. A light turns on behind the green button.
I hear a beep, and a churning sound.
I slide to the floor. I feel something warm on my neck, and under my cheek. Red. Blood is a strange color. Dark.
From the corner of my eye, I see David slumped over in his chair.
And my mother walking out from behind him.
She is dressed in the same clothes she wore the last time I saw her, Abnegation gray, stained with her blood, with bare arms to show her tattoo. There are still bullet holes in her shirt; through them I can see her wounded skin, red but no longer bleeding, like she's frozen in time. Her dull blond hair is tied back in a knot, but a few loose strands frame her face in gold.
I know she can't be alive, but I don't know if I'm seeing her now because I'm delirious from the blood loss or if the death serum has addled my thoughts or if she is here in some other way.
She kneels next to me and touches a cool hand to my cheek.
"Hello, Beatrice," she says, and she smiles.
"Am I done yet?" I say, and I'm not sure if I actually say it or if I just think it and she hears it.
"Yes," she says, her eyes bright with tears. "My dear child, you've done so well."
"What about the others?" I choke on a sob as the image of Tobias comes into my mind, of how dark and how still his eyes were, how strong and warm his hand was, when we first stood face-toface. "Tobias, Caleb, my friends?"
"They'll care for each other," she says. "That's what people do."
I smile and close my eyes.
I feel a thread tugging me again, but this time I know that it isn't some sinister force dragging me toward death.
This time I know it's my mother's
hand, drawing me into her arms. And I go gladly into her embrace.
Can I be forgiven for all I've done to get here?
I want to be.
I can.
I believe it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
TOBIAS
EVELYN BRUSHES THE tears from her eyes with her thumb. We stand by the windows, shoulder to shoulder, watching the snow swirl past. Some of the flakes gather on the windowsill outside, piling at the corners.
The feeling has returned to my hands. As I stare out at the world, dusted in white, I feel like everything has begun again, and it will be better this time.
"I think I can get in touch with Marcus over the radio to negotiate a peace agreement," Evelyn says. "He'll be listening in; he'd be stupid not to."
"Before you do that, I made a promise I have to keep," I say. I touch Evelyn's shoulder. I expected to see strain at the edges of her smile, but I don't.
I feel a twinge of guilt. I didn't come here to ask her to lay down arms for me, to trade in everything she's worked for just to get me back. But then again, I didn't come here to give her any choice at all. I guess Tris was right—when you have to choose between two bad options, you pick the one that saves the people you love. I wouldn't have been saving Evelyn by giving her that serum. I would have been destroying her.
Peter sits with his back to the wall in the hallway. He looks up at me when I lean over him, his dark hair stuck to his forehead from the melted snow.
"Did you reset her?" he says.
"No," I say.
"Didn't think you would have the nerve."
"It's not about nerve. You know what? Whatever." I shake my head and hold up the vial of memory serum. "Are you still set on this?"
He nods.
"You could just do the work, you
know," I say. "You could make better decisions, make a better life."
"Yeah, I could," he says. "But I won't. We both know that."
I do know that. I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten. He is afraid that he will not be able to put in that work, that he will squander those days, and that they will leave him worse off than he is now. And I understand that feeling—I understand being afraid of yourself.