hard to hear anything over the music and the chatter, but after a few seconds I get used to it, and I hear Nita when she says, "This way! Want a drink?"
I'm about to answer when someone runs into the room. He's short, and the T-shirt he wears hangs from his body, two sizes too large for him. He gestures for the musicians to stop playing, and they do, just long enough for him to shout, "It's verdict time!"
Half the room gets up and rushes toward the door. I give Nita a questioning look, and she frowns, creating a crease in her forehead.
"Whose verdict?" I say.
"Marcus's, no doubt," she replies.
And I'm running.
I sprint back down the tunnel, finding the open spaces between people and pushing my way through if there are none. Nita runs at my heels, shouting for me to stop, but I can't stop. I am separate from this place and these people and my own body, and besides, I have always been a good runner.
I take the stairs three at a time, clutching the railing for balance. I don't know what I am so eager for—Marcus's conviction? His exoneration? Do I hope that Evelyn finds him guilty and executes him, or do I hope that she spares him? I can't tell. To me each outcome feels like it is made of the same substance. Everything is either Marcus's evil or Marcus's mask, Evelyn's evil or Evelyn's mask.
I don't have to remember where the control room is, because the people in the hallway lead me to it. When I reach it, I push my way to the front of the crowd and there they are, my parents, shown on half the screens. Everyone moves away from me, whispering, except Nita, who stands beside me, catching her breath.
Someone turns up the volume, so we can all hear their voices. They crackle, distorted by the microphones, but I know my father's voice; I can hear it shift at all the right times, lift in all the right places. I can almost predict his words before he says them.
"You took your time," he says, sneering. "Savoring the moment?"
I stiffen. This is not Marcus's mask. This is not the person who the city knows as my father—the patient, calm leader of Abnegation who would never hurt anyone, least of all his own son or wife. This is the man who slid his belt out loop by loop and wrapped it around his knuckles. This is the Marcus I know best, and the sight of him, like the sight of him in my fear landscape, turns me into a child.
"Of course not, Marcus," my mother says. "You have served this city well for many years. This is not a decision I or any of my advisers have taken lightly."
Marcus is not wearing his mask, but Evelyn is wearing hers. She sounds so genuine she almost convinces me.
"I and the former representatives of the factions have had a lot to consider. Your years of service, the loyalty you have inspired among your faction members, my lingering feelings for you as my former husband . . ."
I snort.
"I am still your husband," Marcus says. "The Abnegation do not allow divorce."
"They do in cases of spousal abuse," Evelyn replies, and I feel that same old feeling again, the hollowness and the weight. I can't believe she just admitted that in public.
But then, she now wants the people in the city to see her a certain way—not as the heartless woman who took control of their lives, but as the woman Marcus attacked with his might, the secret he hid behind a clean house and pressed gray clothing.
I know, then, what the outcome of this will be.
"She's going to kill him," I say.
"The fact remains," says Evelyn, almost sweetly, "that you have committed egregious crimes against this city. You deceived innocent children into risking their lives for your purposes. Your refusal to follow the orders of myself and Tori Wu, the former leader of Dauntless, resulted in countless deaths in the Erudite attack. You betrayed your peers by failing to do as we agreed and by failing to fight against Jeanine Matthews. You betrayed your own faction by revealing what was supposed to be a guarded secret."
"I did not—"
"I am not finished," Evelyn says. "Given your record of service to this city, we have decided on an alternate solution. You will not, unlike the other former faction representatives, be forgiven and allowed to consult on issues regarding