I don't know what to say to that—I don't know what to do with the sympathy growing within me, for a man I know has done terrible things. I just stare at my hands, and I imagine that my insides are liquid metal hardening in the air, taking a shape they will never leave again.
"You'll have to go out there with our patrols tomorrow. You can see the fringe for yourself," he says. "It's something that's important for a future council member to see."
"I'd be very interested," I say.
"Lovely. Well, I hate to end our time together, but I have quite a bit of work to catch up on," he says. "I'll have someone notify you about the patrols, and our first council meeting is on Friday at ten in the morning, so I'll be seeing you soon."
I feel frantic—I didn't ask him what I wanted to ask him. I don't think there was ever an opportunity. It's too late now, anyway. I get up and move toward the doorway, but then he speaks again.
"Tris, I feel like I should be open with you, if we are to trust each other," he says.
For the first time since I've met him, David looks almost . . . afraid. His eyes are wide open, like a child's. But a moment later, the expression is gone.
"I may have been under the influence of a serum cocktail at the time," he says, "but I know what you said to them to keep them from shooting at us. I know you told them you would kill me to protect what was in the Weapons Lab."
My throat feels so tight I can hardly breathe.
"Don't be alarmed," he says. "It's one of the reasons why I offered you this opportunity."
"W-why?"
"You demonstrated the quality I most need in my advisers," he says. "Which is the ability to make sacrifices for the greater good. If we are going to win this fight against genetic damage, if we are going to save the experiments from being shut down, we will need to make sacrifices. You understand that, don't you?"
I feel a flash of anger and force myself to nod. Nita already told us that the experiments were in danger of being disbanded, so I am not surprised to hear it's true. But David's desperation to save his life's work doesn't excuse killing off a faction, my faction.
For a moment I stand with my hand on the doorknob, trying to gather myself together, and then I decide to take a risk.
"What would have happened, if they had set off another explosion to get into the Weapons Lab?" I say. "Nita said it would trigger a backup security measure if they did, but it seemed like the most obvious solution to their problem, to me."
"A serum would have been released into the air . . . one that masks could not have protected against, because it is absorbed into the skin," says David. "One that even the genetically pure cannot fight off. I don't know how Nita knows about it, since it's not supposed to be public knowledge, but I suppose we'll find out some other time."
"What does the serum do?"
His smile turns into a grimace. "Let's just say it's bad enough that Nita would rather be in prison for the rest of her life than come into contact with it."
He's right. He doesn't have to say anything more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
TOBIAS
"LOOK WHO IT is," Peter says as I walk into the dormitory. "The traitor."
There are maps spread across his cot and the one next to his. They are white and pale blue and dull green, and they draw me to them by some strange magnetism. On each one Peter has drawn a wobbly circle—around our city, around Chicago. He's marking the limits
of where he's been.
I watch that circle shrink into each map, until it's just a bright red dot, like a drop of blood.
And then I back away, afraid of what it means that I am so small.
"If you think you're standing on some kind of moral high ground, you're wrong," I say to Peter. "Why all the maps?"
"I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it, the size of the world," he says. "Some of the Bureau people have been helping me learn more about it. Planets and stars and bodies of water, things like that."
He says it casually, but I know from the frantic scribbling on maps that his interest isn't casual—it's obsessive. I was obsessive about my fears, once, in the