I twist and lunge toward the device. The gun goes off and pain races through my body. I don't even know where the bullet hit me.
I can still hear Caleb repeating the code for Matthew. With a quaking hand I type in the numbers on the keypad.
The gun goes off again.
More pain, and black edges on my vision, but I hear Caleb speaking again. The green button.
So much pain.
But how, when my body feels so numb?
I start to fall, and slam my hand into the keypad on my way down. A light turns on behind the green button.
I hear a beep and a churning sound.
I slide to the floor. I feel something warm underneath e, and an ache in my neck. From the corner of my eye, I see David slumped over in his chair.
And my mother walking out from behind him. She is dressed in the same clothes she wore the last time I saw her, Abnegation gray, stained with her blood, with bare arms to show her tattoo. There are still bullet holes in her shirt; through them I can see her wounded skin, red but no longer bleeding, like she's frozen in time. Her dull blonde hair is tied back in a knot, but a few loose strands fram her face in gold.
I know she can't be alive, but I don't know if I'm seeing her now because of the blood loss that I must have or if it is a side effect of the death serum or if she is here in some other way.
She kneels down next to me and touches a cool hand to my cheek.
"Hello Beatrice," she says, and she smiles, "My dear child, you've done so well."
"Am I done yet?" I say. My head is swimming. I'm not sure if I am talking about the mission or something much graver.
"Yes." She says with a smile. I smile too, closing my eyes.
But something seems odd about this—wrong.
"What about the others?" I almost choke on a sob, thinking of Christina, Caleb, Tobias…
"They can care for themselves." She says quickly. Then I feel the familiar tug of the thread.
This isn't right.
My eyelids are heavy, but I force them open anyway. My mother is still beside me, smiling. Something is different about her.
She leans closer to me. My eyelids are getting heavier, but I fight to keep them open. My mother wraps her arms around me, putting most of her weight on me.
This is wrong.
I try to stand, but am pinned down. I try to pull back, but her grip on me is tight. Too tight. She pulls her head back to look me in the eyes, but her eyes are no longer eyes. They are black pits, just as Marcus' had been in Tobias' fear landscape. Then it hits me.
This isn't real. This is a simulation.