TOBIAS
(continued from Allegiant's Chapter Fifty-One)
"Where is everyone?" Amar says.
We walk through the abandoned security checkpoint without stopping. On the other side, I see Cara. The side of her face is badly bruised, and there's a bandage on her head, but that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is the troubled look on her face.
"What is it?" I say.
Cara shakes her head.
"Where's Tris?" I say.
"I'm sorry, Tobias."
"Sorry about what?" Christina says roughly. "Tell us what happened!"
"Tris went into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb," Cara says. "She survived the death serum, and set off the memory serum, but she . . . she was shot. And she didn't survive. I'm so sorry."
Most of the time I can tell when people are lying, and this must be a lie, because Tris is still alive, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed and her small body full of power and strength, standing in a shaft of light in the atrium. Tris is still alive, she wouldn't leave me here alone, she wouldn't go to the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.
"No," Christina says, shaking her head. "No way. There has to be some mistake."
Cara's eyes well up with tears. It's then I realize: Of course Tris would go into the Weapons Lab instead of Caleb.
Of course she would.
Christina yells something, but to me her voice sounds muffled, like I have submerged my head underwater. The details of Cara's face have also become difficult to see, the world smearing together into dull colors.
All I can do is stand still - I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is all right. Christina hunches over, unable to support her own grief, and Cara embraces her, and all I'm doing is standing still.
When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blue. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain in all ways unremarkable-except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had jumped first.
Even I didn't jump first.
Her eyes were so stern, so insistent.
Beautiful.
But that wasn't the first time I ever saw her. I saw her in the hallways at school, at my mother's false funeral, and walking the sidewalks in Abnegation sector. I saw her, but I didn't see her; no one saw her the way she truly was until she jumped.
I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.
This chapter is identical to the book, I know. I did this so this alternate ending of mine could really be realistic.
Chapter 3 is already written, so I'll post that write away.
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