"I heard something yesterday," I say, testing the waters. "About the Bureau. About my city, and the simulations."
He straightens up and gives me a strange look.
"What?" I say.
"Did you hear that something from Nita?" he says.
"Yes. How did you know that?"
"I've helped her a couple times," he says. "I let her into that storage room. Did she tell you anything else?"
Matthew is Nita's informant? I stare at him. I never thought that Matthew, who went out of his way to show me the difference between my "pure" genes and Tobias's "damaged" genes, might be helping Nita.
"Something about a plan," I say slowly.
He gets up and walks toward me, oddly tense. I lean away from him by instinct.
"Is it happening?" he says. "Do you know when?"
"What's going on?" I say. "Why would you help Nita?"
"Because all this 'genetic damage' nonsense is ridiculous," he says. "It's very important that you answer my questions."
"It is happening. And I don't know when, but I think it will be soon."
"Shit." Matthew puts his hands on his face. "Nothing good can come of this."
"If you don't stop saying cryptic things, I'm going to slap you," I say, getting to my feet.
"I was helping Nita until she told me what she and those fringe people wanted to do," Matthew says. "They want to get to the Weapons Lab and—"
"—steal the memory serum, yeah, I heard."
"No." He shakes his head. "No, they don't want the memory serum, they want the death serum. Similar to the one the Erudite have—the one you were supposed to be injected with when you were almost executed. They're going to use it for assassinations, a lot of them. Set off an aerosol can and it's easy, see? Give it to the right people and you have an explosion of anarchy and violence, which is exactly what those fringe people want."
I do see. I see the tilt of a vial, the quick press of a button on an aerosol can. I see Abnegation bodies and Erudite bodies sprawled over streets and staircases. I see the little pieces of this world that we've managed to cling to bursting into flames.
"I thought I was helping her with something smarter," Matthew says. "If I had known I was helping her start another war, I wouldn't have done it. We have to do something about this."
"I told him," I say softly, but not to Matthew, to myself. "I told him she was lying."
"We may have a problem with the way we treat GDs in this country, but it's not going to be solved by killing a bunch of people," he says. "Now come on, we're going to David's office."
I don't know what's right or wrong. I don't know anything about this country or the way it works or what it needs to change. But I do know that a bunch of death serum in the hands of Nita and some people from the fringe is no better than a bunch of death serum in the Weapons Lab of the Bureau. So I chase Matthew down the hallway outside. We walk quickly in the direction of the front entrance, where I first entered this compound.
When we walk past the security checkpoint, I spot Uriah near the sculpture. He lifts a hand to wave to me, his mouth pressed into a line that could be a smile if he was trying harder. Above his head, light refracts through the water tank, the symbol of the compound's slow, pointless struggle.
I'm just passing the security checkpoint when I see the wall next to Uriah explode.
It is like fire blossoming from a bud. Shards of glass and metal spray from the center of the bloom, and Uriah's body is among them, a limp projectile. A deep rumble moves through me like a shudder. My mouth is open; I am screaming his name, but I can't hear myself over the ringing in my ears.
Around me, everyone is crouched, their arms curled around their heads. But I am on my feet, watching the hole in the compound wall. No one comes through it.
Seconds later, everyone around me starts running away from the blast, and I hurl myself against them, shoulder first, toward Uriah. An elbow hits me in the side and I fall down, my face scraping something hard and metal—the side of a table. I struggle to my feet, wiping blood from my eyebrow with a sleeve. Fabric slides over my arms, and limbs, hair,