that exists in the cities also exists in the compound; it's just a little harder to see."
I watch the fringe disappear in the rearview mirror, distinct from the abandoned buildings around it only by that string of electric lights draped over the narrow street.
We drive past dark houses with boarded-up windows, and I try to imagine them clean and polished, as they must have been at some point in the past. They have fenced-in yards that must have once been trim and green, windows that must once have glowed in the evenings. I imagine that the lives lived here were peaceful ones, quiet ones.
"What did you come out here to talk to them about, exactly?" I say.
"I came out here to solidify our plans," Nita says. I notice, in the glow of the dashboard light, that there are a few cuts on her lower lip, like she has spent too much time biting it. "And I wanted them to meet you, to put a face on the people inside the faction experiments. Mary used to be suspicious that people like you were actually colluding with the government, which of course isn't true. Rafi, though . . . he was the first person to give me proof that the Bureau, the government, was lying to us about our history."
She pauses after she says it, like that will help me to feel the weight of it, but I don't need time or silence or space to believe her. I have been lied to by my government for my entire life.
"The Bureau talks about this golden age of humanity before the genetic manipulations in which everyone was genetically pure and everything was peaceful," Nita says. "But Rafi showed me old photographs of war."
I wait a beat. "So?"
"So?" Nita demands, incredulous. "If genetically pure people caused war and total devastation in the past at the same magnitude that genetically damaged people supposedly do now, then what's the basis for thinking that we need to spend so many resources and so much time working to correct genetic damage? What's the use of the experiments at all, except to convince the right people that the government is doing something to make all our lives better, even though it's not?"
The truth changes everything—isn't that why Tris was so desperate to get the Edith Prior video shown that she allied herself with my father to do it? She knew that the truth, whatever it was, would change our struggle, would shift our priorities forever. And here, now, a lie has changed the struggle, a lie has shifted priorities forever. Instead of working against the poverty or crime that have run rampant over this country, these people have chosen to work against genetic damage.
"Why? Why spend so much time and energy fighting something that isn't really a problem?" I demand, suddenly frustrated.
"Well, the people fighting it now probably fight it because they have been taught that it is a problem. That's another thing that Rafi showed me—examples of the propaganda the government released about genetic damage," Nita says. "But initially? I don't know. It's probably a dozen things. Prejudice against GDs? Control, maybe? Control the genetically damaged population by teaching them that there's something wrong with them, and control the genetically pure population by teaching them that they're healed and whole? These things don't happen overnight, and they don't happen for just one reason."
I lean the side of my head against the cold window and close my eyes. There is too much information buzzing in my brain to focus on any single part of it, so I give up trying and let myself drift off.
By the time we make it back through the tunnel and I find my bed, the sun is about to rise, and Tris's arm is hanging over the edge of her bed again, her fingertips brushing the floor.
I sit down across from her, for a moment watching her sleeping face and thinking of what we agreed, that night in Millennium Park: no more lies. She promised me, and I promised her. And if I don't tell her about what I heard and saw tonight, I will be going back on that promise. And for what? To protect her? For Nita, a girl I barely know?
I brush her hair away from her face, gently, so I don't wake her.
She doesn't need my protection. She's strong enough on her own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
TRIS
PETER IS ACROSS the room, gathering a stack of books into a pile and shoving them into