this city. Nor will you be executed as a traitor. Instead, you will be sent outside the fence, beyond the Amity compound, and you will not be allowed to return."
Marcus looks surprised. I don't blame him.
"Congratulations," says Evelyn. "You have the privilege of beginning again."
Should I feel relieved, that my father isn't going to be executed? Angry, that I came so close to finally escaping him, but instead he'll still be in this world, still hanging over my head?
I don't know. I don't feel anything. My hands go numb, so I know I'm panicking, but I don't really feel it, not the way I normally do. I am overwhelmed with the need to be somewhere else, so I turn and leave my parents and Nita and the city where I once lived behind me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TRIS
THEY ANNOUNCE THE attack drill in the morning, over the intercom, as we eat breakfast. The crisp, female voice instructs us to lock the door to whatever room we are in from the inside, cover the windows, and sit quietly until the alarms no longer sound. "It will take place at the top of the hour," she says. Tobias looks worn and pale, with
dark circles under his eyes. He picks at a muffin, pinching small pieces off and sometimes eating them, sometimes forgetting to.
Most of us woke up late, at ten, I suspect because there was no reason not to. When we left the city, we lost our factions, our sense of purpose. Here there is nothing to do but wait for something to happen, and far from making me feel relaxed, it makes me feel jittery and tense. I am used to having something to do, something to fight, all the time. I try to remind myself to relax.
"They took us up in a plane yesterday," I say to Tobias. "Where were you?"
"I just had to walk around. Process things." He sounds terse, irritated. "How was it?"
"Amazing, actually." I sit across from him so that our knees touch in the space between our beds. "The world is . . . a lot bigger than I thought it was."
He nods. "I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it. Heights, and all."
I don't know why, but his reaction disappoints me. I want him to say that he wishes he had been there with me, to experience it with me. Or at least to ask me what I mean when I say that it was amazing. But all he can say is that he wouldn't have liked it?
"Are you all right?" I say. "You look like you barely slept."
"Well, yesterday carried quite the revelation," he says, putting his forehead into his hand. "You can't really blame me for being upset about it."
"I mean, you can be upset about whatever you want," I say, frowning. "But from my perspective, it doesn't seem like there's much to be upset about. I know it's a shock, but as I said, you're still the same person you were yesterday and the day before, no matter what these people say about it."
He shakes his head. "I'm not talking about my genes. I'm talking about Marcus. You really have no idea, do you?" The question is accusatory, but his tone isn't. He gets up to toss his muffin
in the trash.
I feel raw and frustrated. Of course I knew about Marcus. It was buzzing around the room when I woke up. But for some reason I didn't think it would upset him to know his father wasn't going to be executed. Apparently I was wrong.
It doesn't help that the alarms sound at that exact moment, preventing me from saying anything else to him. They are loud, screeching, so painful to listen to that I can barely think, let alone move. I keep one hand clamped over my ear and slide my other hand under my pillow to pick up the screen with my mother's journal on it.
Tobias locks the door and draws the curtains closed, and everyone sits on their cots. Cara wraps a pillow around her head. Peter just sits with his back against the wall, his eyes closed. I don't know where Caleb is—researching whatever made him so distant yesterday, probably—or where Christina and Uriah are—exploring the compound, maybe. Yesterday after dessert they seemed determined to discover every corner of the place. I decided to discover my mother's thoughts about it instead—she wrote several entries about her first impressions of the compound, the strange cleanliness of the place, how everyone smiled all the time, how