The side of her face is badly bruised, and there's a bandage on her head, but that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is the troubled look on her face.
"What is it?" I say.
Cara shakes her head.
"Where's Tris?" I say.
"I'm sorry, Tobias."
"Sorry about what?" Christina says roughly. "Tell us what happened!"
"Tris went into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb," Cara says. "She survived the death serum, and set off the memory serum, but she . . . she was shot. And she didn't survive. I'm so sorry."
Most of the time I can tell when people are lying, and this must be a lie, because Tris is still alive, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed and her small body full of power and strength, standing in a shaft of light in the atrium. Tris is still alive, she wouldn't leave me here alone, she wouldn't go to the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.
"No," Christina says, shaking her
head. "No way. There has to be some mistake."
Cara's eyes well up with tears.
It's then that I realize: Of course Tris would go into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.
Of course she would.
Christina yells something, but to me her voice sounds muffled, like I have submerged my head underwater. The details of Cara's face have also become difficult to see, the world smearing together into dull colors.
All I can do is stand still—I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is all right. Christina hunches over, unable to support her own grief, and Cara embraces her, and
all I'm doing is standing still.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
TOBIAS
WHEN HER BODY first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable—except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had jumped first.
Even I didn't jump first.
Her eyes were so stern, so insistent.
Beautiful.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
TOBIAS
BUT THAT WASN'T the first time I ever saw her. I saw her in the hallways at school, and at my mother's false funeral, and walking the sidewalks in the Abnegation sector. I saw her, but I didn't see her; no one saw her the way she truly was until she jumped.
I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
TOBIAS
I GO TO see her body . . . sometime. I don't know how long it is after Cara tells me what happened. Christina and I walk shoulder to shoulder; we walk in Cara's footsteps. I don't remember the journey from the entrance to the morgue, really, just a few smeared images and whatever sound I can make out through the barrier that has gone up inside my
head.
She lies on a table, and for a moment I think she's just sleeping, and when I touch her, she will wake up and smile at me and press a kiss to my mouth. But when I touch her she is cold, her body stiff and unyielding.
Christina sniffles and sobs. I squeeze Tris's hand, praying that if I do it hard enough, I will send life back into her body and she will flush with color and wake up.
I don't know how long it takes for me to realize that isn't going to happen, that she is gone. But when I do I feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
IN THE DAYS that follow, it's movement, not stillness, that helps to keep the grief at bay, so I walk the compound halls instead of sleeping. I watch everyone else recover from the memory serum that altered them permanently as if from a great distance.
Those lost in the memory serum haze are gathered into groups and given the truth: that human nature is complex, that all our genes are different, but neither damaged nor pure. They are also given the lie: that their memories were erased because of a freak accident, and that they were on the verge of lobbying the government for equality for GDs.
I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don't even know of what, because I