not fair to direct all of that at David, but I can't help it. He's the leader of this compound—of the Bureau.
"Yes, of course," he says. "I recognize you."
From where? The creepy cameras that followed my every move? I pull my arms tighter across my chest.
"Right." I wait a beat, then say, "I need to know about my mother. Zoe gave me a picture of her, and you were standing right next to her in it, so I figured you could help."
"Ah," he says. "Can I see the picture?"
I take it out of my pocket and offer it to him. He smooths it down with his fingertips, and there is a strange smile on his face as he looks at it, like he's caressing it with his eyes. I shift my weight from one foot to the other—I feel like I'm intruding on a private moment.
"She took a trip back to us once," he says. "Before she settled into motherhood. That's when we took this."
"Back to you?" I say. "Was she one of you?"
"Yes," David says simply, like it's not a word that changes my entire world. "She came from this place. We sent her into the city when she was young to resolve a problem in the experiment."
"So she knew," I say, and my voice shakes, but I don't know why. "She knew about this place, and what was outside the fence."
David looks puzzled, his bushy eyebrows furrowed. "Well, of course."
The shaking moves down my arms and into my hands, and soon my entire body is shuddering, as if rejecting some kind of poison that I've swallowed, and the poison is knowledge, the knowledge of this place and its screens and all the lies I built my life on. "She knew you were watching us at every moment . . . watching as she died and my father died and everyone started killing each other! And did you send in someone to help her, to help me? No! No, all you did was take notes."
"Tris . . ."
He tries to reach for me, and I push his hand away. "Don't call me that. You shouldn't know that name. You shouldn't know anything about us."
Shivering, I walk back into the room.
Back inside, the others have picked their
beds and put their things down. It's just us in here, no intruders. I lean against the wall by the door and push my palms down the front of my pants to get the sweat off.
No one seems to be adjusting well. Peter lies facing the wall. Uriah and Christina sit side by side, having a conversation in low voices. Caleb is massaging his temples with his fingertips. Tobias is still pacing and gnawing on his fingernails. And Cara is on her own, dragging her hand over her face. For the first time since I met her, she looks upset, the Erudite armor gone.
I sit down across from her. "You don't look so good."
Her hair, usually smooth and perfect in its knot, is disheveled. She glowers at me. "That's kind of you to say."
"Sorry," I say. "I didn't mean it that way."
"I know." She sighs. "I'm . . . I'm an Erudite, you know."
I smile a little. "Yeah, I know."
"No." Cara shakes her head. "It's the only thing I am. Erudite. And now they've told me that's the result of some kind of flaw in my genetics . . . and that the factions themselves are just a mental prison to keep us under control. Just like Evelyn Johnson and the factionless said." She pauses. "So why form the Allegiant? Why bother to come out here?"
I didn't realize how much Cara had already cleaved to the idea of being an Allegiant, loyal to the faction system, loyal to our founders. For me it was just a temporary identity, powerful because it could get me out of the city. For her the attachment must have been much deeper.
"It's still good that we came out here," I say. "We found out the truth. That's not valuable to you?"
"Of course it is," Cara says softly. "But it means I need other words for what I am."
Just after my mother died, I grabbed hold of my Divergence like it was a hand outstretched to save me. I needed that word to tell me who I was when everything else was coming apart around me. But now I'm wondering if I need it anymore, if we ever really need these words, "Dauntless," "Erudite," "Divergent," "Allegiant," or if we can