find myself in the atrium garden again, and this time, light glows behind the windows. The flowers look beautiful and savage in the daylight, like vicious creatures suspended in time, motionless.
Cara jogs into the atrium, her hair askew and floating over her forehead. "There you are. It is frighteningly easy to lose people in this place."
"What is it?"
"Well—are you all right, Four?"
I bite down on my lip so hard I feel a pinch. "I'm fine. What is it?"
"We're having a meeting, and your presence is required."
"Who is 'we,' exactly?"
"GDs and GD sympathizers who don't want to let the Bureau get away with certain things," she says, and then she cocks her head to the side. "But better planners than the last ones you fell in with."
I wonder who told her. "You know about the attack simulation?"
"Better still, I recognized the simulation serum in the microscope when Tris showed it to me," Cara says. "Yes, I know."
I shake my head. "Well, I'm not getting involved in this again."
"Don't be a fool," she says. "The truth you heard is still true. These people are still responsible for the deaths of most of the Abnegation and the mental enslavement of the Dauntless and the utter destruction of our way of life, and something has to be done about them."
I'm not sure I want to be in the same room with Tris, knowing that we might be on the verge of ending, like standing on the edge of a cliff. It's easier to pretend it's not happening when I'm not around her. But Cara says it so simply I have to agree with her: yes, something has to be done.
She takes my hand and leads me down the hotel hallway. I know she's right, but I'm uncertain, uneasy about participating in another attempt at resistance. Still, I am already moving toward it, part of me eager for a chance to move again, instead of standing frozen before the surveillance footage of our city, as I have been.
When she's sure I'm following her, she releases my hand and tucks her stray hair behind her ears.
"It's still strange not to see you in blue," I say.
"It's time to let all that go, I think," she answers. "Even if I could go back, I wouldn't want to, at this point."
"You don't miss the factions?"
"I do, actually." She glances at me. Enough time has passed between Will's death and now that I no longer see him when I look at her, I just see Cara. I have known her far longer than I knew him. She has just a touch of his goodnaturedness, enough to make me feel like I can tease her without offending her. "I thrived in Erudite. So many people devoted to discovery and innovation—it was lovely. But now that I know how large the world is . . . well. I suppose I have grown too large for my faction, as a consequence." She frowns. "I'm sorry, was that arrogant?"
"Who cares?"
"Some people do. It's nice to know you aren't one of them."
I notice, because I can't help it, that some of the people we pass on the way to the meeting give me nasty looks, or a wide berth. I have been hated and avoided before, as the son of Evelyn Johnson, factionless tyrant, but it bothers me more now. Now I know that I have done something to make myself worthy of that hatred; I have betrayed them all.
Cara says, "Ignore them. They don't know what it is to make a difficult decision."
"You wouldn't have done it, I bet."
"That is only because I have been taught to be cautious when I don't know all the information, and you have been taught that risks can produce great rewards." She looks at me sideways. "Or, in this case, no rewards."
She pauses at the door to the labs Matthew and his supervisor use, and knocks. Matthew tugs it open and takes a bite out of the apple he's holding. We follow him into the room where I found out I was not Divergent.
Tris is there, standing beside Christina, who looks at me like I am something rotten that needs to be discarded. And in the corner by the door is Caleb, his face stained with bruises. I am about to ask what happened to him when I realize that Tris's knuckles are also discolored, and that she very intentionally isn't looking at him.
Or at me.
"I think that's everyone," Matthew says. "Okay . . . so .