Chapter 20
Tris
A light breeze whips at my hair as I step out of the car, and I breathe in the familiar scent of the city. The jagged hole in the fence beckons me, a portal back to the city, back to a world I know. I seems hard to believe that merely months ago I thought the world ended at this fence, yet now I've seen beyond it I find myself wishing more and more that it did.
"Tris?" Will walks over to where I'm standing, motionless. "Are you sure you're ok with this?"
I nod even without thinking, how can I even consider turning back now?
"Let's go," I say, striding forward towards the buildings just visible through the fence.
The street beyond the gap is unfamiliar to me, a corner of the city deserted even by the factionless. It seems eerily quiet and still, the sun's feeble rays failing to penetrate the shadowy recesses. I walk close behind Will, my hand instinctively straying to my waistband, hovering over my gun.
We walk on, the only sound is the light crunch our shoes on the broken tarmac.
Finally I break the silence.
"Where is everyone?" I ask, whispering even though there's no one around to overhear me.
"This is the heart of the factionless sector, they can't all be asleep."
"The factionless don't live here anymore," says Will, as though this was an obvious fact.
He sees the exasperated look on my face and hastily begins to explain, "Kate told me, Evelyn has abolished the faction system now, and the factionless have all been moved out of here into new housing. I suppose Evelyn wants them to have a better place in society now."
We're almost at the Abnegation sector, my heart beginning to pump faster as I recognise the streets around me. Unconsciously my strides lengthen, overtaking Will as I pick up my pace. Just around that corner…
Movement ahead causes me to jump back into the shadow of a dilapidated doorway, Will right behind me. A man walks across the street in front of me, wearing an odd combination of mismatched clothing – black Dauntless trousers, a grey Abnegation shirt, a red Amity jumper.
I do not dare move until he is well out of sight, cautiously edging back out into the road. In front of me, I see the corner of the street I grew up on, a neat row of identical grey brick houses stretching around the bend. As I make to begin walking again, a door opening makes me freeze and retreat to the shadows once more.
A young man backs out of the doorway, talking to someone inside who I can't see. He's wearing all black, the top of a tattoo just visible above his collar…
My heart skips a beat, my breath catching in my throat.
It's him.
I want to run to him, but my legs seem to have turned to lead. Four starts walks away from the house, followed by a tall girl – Christina! But something's not right, the way he's looking at her, holding her hand like he used to hold mine. Even as I watch, my mind struggling to compute what I'm seeing, they stop in the road ahead of me, Four pulling her closer to him.
Their lips meet.
My stomach lurches, I want to shout, scream at them, tell them to stop, but I'm frozen. A kind of strangled cry escapes me, and it's enough for them to hear.
It seems to take an age for Four to turn around, as though I'm watching in slow motion. At last his dark blue eyes meet mine, the moment I've been waiting for. But suddenly I can't look at him, my mind still stuck on the image of them kissing.
Feeling suddenly surges back into my legs, and tears fill my eyes as I turn on my heel and begin to run.