36

It feels like hours before I hear another noise in the hallway. Here to rub in it? What could they possibly want from me now? To run tests? Fine. There's nothing else to take. Knowing that Tris is gone has left me empty.

I don't feel brave for coming here. I don't feel selfless for having to give her up.

I don't feel smart or honest or kind.

I feel hollow. Making space for the grief.

I stare down at the floor as the door slides open.

"What do-" but the breathing from the guard is heavy and labored, and I look up. Tris's body hangs slack in his arms. I've seen dead bodies before, but never like this. Never so close to the life they once had. Like if I shook her enough maybe she would come back. "Oh my God. Oh-" I feel like I'm drowning.

"Spare me your blubbering, okay?" Peter said. "She's not dead; she's just paralyzed. It'll only last for about a minute. Now get ready to run."

And the drowning is gone, replaced by air. Peter is… helping us? I don't have time to question it.

"Let me carry her," I say.

"No. You're a better shot than I am. Take my gun. I'll carry her."

I don't argue as I take the gun on his hip. I run my hand over Tris's forehead, only a minute before I get to see her eyes again, and relief washes through me.

We run.

"Left!" Peter yells at the first intersection.

A Dauntless traitor's head snaps up from the ground. "Hey, what-!" I shoot him with deadly accuracy. My feet are bare, but the slap of my feet against the cold tile reminds me that this is not a dream.

I wish we could move faster, Peter weighed down with Tris. "Right!" I shoot two more guards. "Whoa," Peter says. "Wait, stop here!" Peter opens another door.

"Careful!" Tris's voice, tight and strangled sounding, says, her arm out to keep her from hitting her head. The room Peter led us to is cramped and dark and lined with garbage cans. Peter drops Tris rather roughly to the ground, massaging his arms.

"Tris," I say in disbelief, squatting next to her.

"Beatrice," she says, her voice rough and beautiful. A laugh of relief escapes me.

"Beatrice," I say, kissing her, her hands holding onto my shirt.

"Unless you want me to throw up all over you guys, you might want to save it for later," Peter says.

"Where are we?" Tris asks, taking in the room around us.

"This is the trash incinerator," Peter says, hitting the door that must be the garbage chute. "I turned it off. It'll take us to the alley. And then your aim had better be perfect, Four, if you want to get out the Erudite sector alive."

"Don't concern yourself with my aim," I say, shooting him a look.

Peter opens the door, and I help Tris slip in, then Peter, hen jump in myself. We land on large rollers, my knees striking hard against them, and Tris helps me up. We are surrounded by the smell of ashes and almost complete darkness.

We walk out of the metal, dark room, and into a cement room.

"Got that gun?" Peter asks.

"No," I say, annoyed with the tone of his voice. "I figured I would shoot the bullets out of my nostrils, so I left it upstairs."

"Oh, shut up."

Peter has another gun in his hands, and we walk out of the incinerator room into a short, dark hallway with pipes close enough to my head that Peter and I feel the need to duck. I can see a sign glowing red.

EXIT.

We enter an alleyway, I'm in the lead, leaning around the corner, shooting down two guards. I push away thoughts of my fear landscape, fears that I'm killing someone who is innocent. Who has a family, who has a future until I decide they don't. I enter into that battle calm, the headspace that allows me to block out pain and fear and thought. I shoot one in the head, the other in the arm.

"Hurry," I say, motioning Tris and Peter in front of me.

We run through the streets.

"Take the least logical route!" I yell at Peter.

"What?" Peter asks.

"The least logical route," I say. "So they won't find us!" The Erudite are smart, but predictable.

Peter turns left, through an abandoned factionless alley, landing us back on Michigan Avenue, only a few buildings down from Erudite headquarters.

"Bad idea!" Tris says, her yell anxious.

Peter turns right, and we're running as fast as our legs can carry us. Until Tris grabs Peter's arm and pulls him to the door of a building, trying the door. Locked. I fire at the window until the glass shatters. I jump in, opening the door from inside, helping them inside. I don't question Tris's logic, though everything inside of me screams to run, to get the three of us out of here.

The building is empty. No furniture.

We crawl beneath the emergency stairwell, so we are hidden from the view of the windows. I sit next to Tris, Peter across from us, his legs curled up, making himself small. A good bit of me still hates Peter, but today I'm thankful for him. For the fact for some reason he decided to save the girl sitting next to me, curled in a tiny ball like Peter, but still bursting with life, still breathing and beating.

"What?" he asks, and it takes a second for me to realize he's talking to Tris. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"How did you do it?" she asks.

"It wasn't that hard," he says. "I dyed a paralytic serum purple and switched it out with the death serum. Replaced the wire that was supposed to read your heartbeat with a dead one. The bit with the heart monitor was harder; I had to get some Erudite help with a remote and stuff- you wouldn't understand it if I explained it to you."

"Why did you do it?" Tris says. "You want me dead. You were willing to do it yourself! What changed?"

His lips press into a thin line, looking straight at Tris. Most people would look away from a gaze as strong as hers. Would look away as they thought of how to answer such a loaded question. But he doesn't, he holds her gaze. Perhaps they are a match in willpower. I always thought they were both stubborn, they harbored the same intensity, but in different ways- such different ways.

"I can't be in anyone's debt. Okay? The idea that I owed you something made me sick. I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I was going to vomit. Indebted to a Stiff? It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And I couldn't have it."

"What are you talking about? You owed me something?" From the corner of my eye, I saw the confused pinch between Tris's eyebrows.

Peter rolls his eyes, as if he can't believe that she would forget something like a life debt. But it was the Abnegation in her to forget sacrifices she made for other people.

"The Amity compound. Someone shot me- the bullet was at head level; it would have hit me right between the eyes. And you shoved me out of the way. We were even before that- I almost killed you during initiation, you almost killed me during the attack simulation; we're square, right? But after that…"

"You're insane," I say. "That's not the way the world works… with everyone keeping score."

"It's not?" Peter's eyebrows lift up to hair hairline. "I don't know what world you live in, but in mine, people only do things for you for one of two reasons. The first is if they want something in return. And the second is if they feel like they owe you something."

What a sad way to view the world.

"Those aren't the only reasons people do things for you," Tris says. "Sometimes they do them because they love you. Well, maybe not you, but…"

Peter gives a single, ugly sounding laugh. "That's exactly the kind of garbage I expect a delusional Stiff to say."

No, it's the type of thing a truly decent person like Tris would say.

"I guess we just have to make sure you owe us," I say. "Or you'll go running to whoever offers you the best deal."

"Yeah," Peter says. "That's pretty much how it is."

Tris shakes her head next to me, and I know how she feels. An almost pity for the boy in front of us, who somehow reached a point at which he lives without even the concept of love or decency or kindness.

"So when can we get out of here, you think?" Peter asks.

"Couple hours," I say. "We should go to the Abnegation sector. That's where the factionless and the Dauntless who aren't wired for simulations will be by now."

"Fantastic," Peter says as we all stand, my arm around Tris, her face pressed into my chest. Warm. Alive.

We walk the Abnegation sector, people staring at Tris like she's a ghost. Maybe some of them think she is. Surely they heard the news of her execution, and she does look incredibly pale. She winces a bit as she walks.

"Tris?" Uriah and Christina look up from their guns. Uriah drops his gun and runs over, Christina jogging after him.

Uriah is about to hug Tris, all the bruises and scratches and the bullet wound; I feel Tris bracing for impact. I press my hand to his shoulder before he can get too close, and she sags a bit against me.

"She's been through a lot," I say, giving him a meaningful glance. I know he means well, but now is not the time for his boundless energy. "She just needs to sleep. She'll be down the street- number thirty-seven. Come visit tomorrow."

Uriah looks at Tris, a sad look on his face, but he nods. "Okay. Tomorrow."

Christina squeezes her uninjured shoulder, their friendship standing in solidarity. When we finally make it to Marcus's house- my old home- I clench my teeth and move forward. I don't focus on the memories of this house. I focus on the present. On the girl I hold against my side. On my mother no longer dressed in gray in the kitchen. On Tori and Harrison, the people I trust standing next to her.

Tris leans against the wall as I walk into the kitchen, but I don't take my hand off her arm, a part of me afraid that if I do, she'll disappear again.

"I'm so glad to see you," my mother says, pulling me into a side hug, her eyes are bright with almost-formed tears. She knew how close I was to death. She presses her cheek to mine. "I never doubted you." I smile at her.

I turn back to Tris, helping her toward the stairs, trying to support her the best I can, unsure if carrying her would help or hurt, helping her into my old bedroom.

"Marcus didn't go into this room after I left, I'm pretty sure," I say. "Because nothing was moved when I came back here." I watch her eyes taking in my room, probably an exact copy of the one she lived in for sixteen years. Her eyes catch on the one thing I'm not supposed to have- the blue glass sculpture.

"My mother smuggled that to me when I was young. Told me to hide it," I say. "The day of the ceremony, I put it on my dresser before I left. So he would see it. A small act of defiance."

She nods.

"Let's take care of your feet," I say, moving my hand along her arm.

"Okay," she says, exhaustion in her voice.

We walk to the bathroom, and we sit on the ledge of the tub, waiting for it to fill. As soon as the water starts to pool, it turns pink with her blood. I take her feet, one by one, washing away the blood and dirt, helpless to wash away the pain in her eyes.

While I work, she turns a bar of soap over in her hands, and I wish I knew where her mind was, but I don't dare ask her, not yet. She holds her hands out, almost childlike, and I offer her my hands slowly, the way I'd offer something to scared, cornered prey. She washes them, carefully, meticulously, not quite meeting my eyes. I realize that I'm waiting. Waiting for her to fall apart. To lose it.

We splash water on ourselves, washing away the soap, and Tris starts to shiver. I get a towel and begin to dry her hands, they feel limp in mine.

"I don't…" she starts, her voice tight and choked. "My family is all dead, or traitors; how can I…" she shakes her head back and forth, her hands shake.

And she starts sobbing. The world finally catching up to her. It's a scary thing, to come out of the battle calm.

I hold her against me, a bit too tightly, hoping that will force her pieces back together, wishing I could fix her. I wait until her sobs sputter out. It doesn't take long. She's almost died so many times in the past few days, it's a miracle she's still awake.

"I'll be your family now," I say.

"I love you," she says. The words I've never heard her say to me, except for once in a dream. The night before she left for Erudite. And I had felt guilty when I woke up, because it had been so real, I wanted the first time I heard her say it to be in real, waking life. But once I had heard it in the dream, it had just echoed in my head, around and around.

"Say it again."

"Tobias," she says, "I love you."

I pull her into my arms, sliding my nose along the delicate curve of her neck, a joy, blind triumph in my chest, building inside of me. I kiss my way from her neck to her lips.

"I love you, too," I say.

Wow, okay so that was an intense chapter to write! I hope you enjoyed it, I know how pivotal this chapter is to the story, and I hope I did it justice for y'all!

4,

Katelyn