But I am too late.
The spectacles fall, hit the edge of the ladder, and topple to the pavement.
In a wave, the Candor below twist and fire upward. Fernando yells, and collapses against the ladder. One bullet hit his leg. I didn’t see where the others went, but I know when I see blood drip between the rungs of the ladder that it was not a good place.
Fernando stares at Christina, his face ashen. Christina surges forward, through the window, about to reach for him.
“Don’t be an idiot!” he says, his voice weak. “Leave me.”
It is the last thing he says.
Chapter 43
CHRISTINA STEPS BACK into the room. We are all still.
“I don’t mean to be insensitive,” says Marcus, “but we have to go before the Dauntless and factionless enter this building. If they haven’t already.”
I hear tapping against the window and jerk my head to the side, for a split second believing that it is Fernando, trying to get in. But it’s just rain.
We follow Cara out of the bathroom. She is our leader now. She knows Erudite headquarters best. Christina follows, then Marcus, then me. We leave the bathroom, and we are in an Erudite hallway like every other Erudite hallway: pale, bright, sterile.
But this hallway is more active than I have ever seen it. People in Erudite blue sprint back and forth, in groups and alone, shouting things at each other like, “They’re at the front doors! Go as high as you can!” and “They’ve disabled the elevators! Run for the stairs!” It’s only there, in the midst of chaos, that I realize I forgot the stunner in the bathroom. I am unarmed again.
Dauntless traitors also run past us, though they are less frantic than the Erudite. I wonder what Johanna, the Amity, and the Abnegation are doing in this chaos. Are they tending to the wounded? Or are they standing between Dauntless guns and Erudite innocents, taking bullets for the sake of peace?
I shudder. Cara leads us to a back staircase, and we join a group of terrified Erudite as we run up one, two, three flights of stairs. Then Cara shoves her shoulder into a door next to the landing, holding her gun close to her chest.
I recognize this floor.
It is my floor.
My thoughts become sluggish. I almost died here. I craved death here.
I slow down and fall behind. I can’t break out of the daze, though people keep rushing past me, and Marcus shouts something at me, but his voice is muffled. Christina doubles back and grabs me, dragging me toward Control-A.
Inside the control room, I see rows of computers but I don’t really see them; there is a film covering my eyes. I try to blink it away. Marcus sits at one of the computers, and Cara sits at another. They will send all the data from the Erudite computers to the other faction computers.
Behind me, the door opens.
And I hear Caleb say, “What are you doing here?”
His voice wakes me. I turn and stare right at his gun.
His eyes are my mother’s eyes — a dull green, almost gray, though his blue shirt makes their color appear more potent.
“Caleb,” I say. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m here to stop whatever you’re doing!” His voice trembles. The gun wavers in his hands.
“We’re here to save the Erudite data that the factionless want to destroy,” I say. “I don’t think you want to stop us.”
“That’s not true,” he says. He jerks his head toward Marcus. “Why would you bring him if you weren’t trying to find something else? Something more important to him than all the Erudite data combined?”
“She told youabout it?” Marcus says. “ You, a child?”
“She didn’t tell me at first,” Caleb says. “But she didn’t want me to choose a side without knowing the facts!”
“The facts,” says Marcus, “are that she is terrified of reality, and the Abnegation were not. Are not. And neither is your sister. To her credit.”
I scowl. Even when he is complimenting me, I want to smack him.
“My sister,” says Caleb gently, looking at me again, “doesn’t know what she’s getting into. Doesn’t know what it is that you want to show everyone … doesn’t know it will ruin everything!”
“We are here to serve a purpose!” Marcus is almost yelling now. “We have completed our mission, and it is time for us to do what we were sent here to do!”
I don’t know the purpose or the mission that Marcus is referring to, but Caleb doesn’t look confused.
“ Wewere not sent here,” Caleb says. “We have no responsibility to anyone but ourselves.”
“That kind of self-interested thinking is what I have come to expect from those who have spent too much time with Jeanine Matthews. You are so unwilling to relinquish your comfort that your selfishness drains you of humanity!”
I don’t care to hear more. While Caleb stares down Marcus, I turn and kick hard at Caleb’s wrist. The impact shocks him, and his gun topples from his hands. I slide it across the floor with my toes.
“You need to trust me, Beatrice,” he says, chin wobbling.
“After you helped her torture me? After you let her almost killme?”
“I didn’t help her tort—”
“You certainly didn’t stop her! You were right there, and you just watched—”
“What could I have done? What—”
“You could have tried, you coward!” I scream so loud my face gets hot and tears jump into my eyes. “Tried, and failed, because you love me!”
I gasp, just to take in enough air. All I hear is the click of keys as Cara works on the task at hand. Caleb doesn’t seem to have a response. His pleading look slowly disappears, replaced by a blank stare.
“You won’t find what you’re looking for here,” he says. “She wouldn’t keep such important files on public computers. That would be illogical.”
“So she hasn’t destroyed it?” Marcus says.
Caleb shakes his head. “She does not believe in the destruction of information. Only its containment.”
“Well, thank God for that,” says Marcus. “Where is she keeping it?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” Caleb says.
“I think I know,” I say. Caleb said she wouldn’t keep the information on a public computer. So he must mean she is keeping it on a private one: either the one in her office or the one in the laboratory Tori told me about.
Caleb doesn’t look at me.
Marcus picks up Caleb’s revolver and turns it in his hand so the butt of the gun protrudes from his fist. Then he swings, striking Caleb under the jaw. Caleb’s eyes roll back, and he falls to the floor.
I don’t want to know how Marcus perfected that maneuver.
“We can’t have him running off to tell someone what we’re doing,” says Marcus. “Let’s go. Cara can take care of the rest, right?”
Cara nods without looking up from her computer. A sick feeling in my stomach, I follow Marcus and Christina out of the control room and toward the stairs.
The hallway outside is now empty. There are scraps of paper and footprints on the tile. Marcus, Christina, and I jog in a line to the stairwell. I stare at the back of his head, where the shape of his skull shows through his buzzed hair.
All I can see when I look at him is a belt swinging toward Tobias, and the butt of a gun slamming into Caleb’s jaw. I don’t care that he hurt Caleb — I would have done it, too — but that he is simultaneously a man who knows how to hurt people and a man who parades around as the self-effacing leader of Abnegation, suddenly makes me so angry I can’t see straight.
Especially because I chose him. I chose himover Tobias.
“Your brother is a traitor,” says Marcus as we turn a corner. “He deserved worse. There’s no need to look at me that way.”
“Shut up!” I shout, shoving him hard into the wall. He is too surprised to push back. “I hate you, you know that! I hate you for what you did to him, and I am nottalking about Caleb.” I lean close to his face and whisper, “And while I may not shoot you myself, I will definitely not help you if someone tries to kill you, so you’d better hope to God we don’t get into that situation.”