"Why do you think we came here?" Nita switches on another set of lights that illuminate the drawers, and paces along the left wall. "It took me a long time to get clearance to go in here," she says. "Even longer to acquire the knowledge to understand what I saw. I had help from one of the GPs, actually. A sympathizer."
Her hand hovers over one of the low drawers. From it she takes a vial of orange liquid.
"Look familiar?" she asks me.
I try to remember the shot they gave me before the attack simulation began, right before the final round of Tris's initiation. Max did it, inserted the needle into the side of my neck as I had done myself dozens of times. Right before he did the glass vial caught the light, and it was orange, just like whatever Nita is holding.
"The colors match," I say. "So?"
Nita carries the vial to the microscope. Reggie takes a slide from a tray near the computer and, using a dropper, puts two drops of the orange liquid in its center, then seals the liquid in place with a second slide. As he places it on the microscope, his fingers are careful but certain; they are the movements of someone who has performed the same action hundreds of times.
Reggie taps the computer screen a few times, opening a program called "MicroScan."
"This information is free and available to anyone who knows how to use this equipment and has the system password, which the GP sympathizer graciously gave me," Nita says. "So in other words, it's not all that hard to access, but no one would think to examine it very closely. And GDs don't have system passwords, so it's not like we would have known about it. This storage room is for obsolete experiments —failures, or outdated developments, or useless things."
She looks through the microscope, using a knob on the side to focus the lens.
"Go ahead," she says.
Reggie presses a button on the computer, and paragraphs of text appear under the "MicroScan" bar at the top of the screen. He points to a paragraph in the middle of the page, and I read it.
"'Simulation Serum v4.2. Coordinates a large number of targets. Transmits signals over long distances. Hallucinogen from original formula not included—simulated reality is predetermined by program master.'"
That's it.
That's the attack simulation serum.
"Now why would the Bureau have this unless they had developed it?" Nita says. "They were the ones who put the serums into the experiments, but they usually left the serums alone, let the city residents develop them further. If Jeanine was the one who developed it, they wouldn't have stolen it from her. If it's here, it's because they made it."
I stare at the illuminated slide in the microscope, at the orange droplet swimming in the eyepiece, and release a
shaky breath.
Tris says, breathless, "Why?"
"Abnegation was about to reveal the truth to everyone inside the city. And you've seen what's happened now that the city knows the truth: Evelyn is effectively a dictator, the factionless are squashing the faction members, and I'm sure the factions will rise up against them sooner or later. Many people will die. Telling the truth risks the safety of the experiment, no question," Nita says. "So a few months ago, when the Abnegation were on the verge of causing that destruction and instability by revealing Edith Prior's video to your city, the Bureau probably thought, better that the Abnegation should suffer a great loss—even at the expense of several Divergent—than the whole city suffer a great loss. Better to end the lives of the Abnegation than to risk the experiment. So they reached out to someone who they knew would agree with them. Jeanine Matthews."
Her words surround me and bury themselves inside me.
I set my hands on the lab table, letting it cool my palms, and look at my distorted reflection in the brushed metal. I may have hated my father for most of my life, but I never hated his faction. Abnegation's quiet, their community, their routine, always seemed good to me. And now most of those kind, giving people are dead. Murdered, at the hands of the Dauntless, at the urging of Jeanine, with the power of the Bureau to back her.
Tris's mother and father were among them.
Tris stands so still, her hands dangling limply, turning red with the flush of her blood.
"This is the problem with their blind commitment to these experiments," Nita says next to us, as if