Cara clears her throat and continues. "Jeanine used Tris's strengths against her. She designed a serum that needs no code or a program because it's coming straight from the prefrontal cortex. It's like a self-sustaining fear landscape - Tris will just keep going until she masters herself. And that means either accepting or solving her challenges."
"Is she really going to be able to do that?" I say, with a sinking feeling.
"That's what worries me. There may be problems on her mind right now she can't solve, at least not by herself. The end result could be a permanent catatonic state."
"Translation," I snap.
"Trapped in her own mind and totally unresponsive to external stimuli."
"I don't understand," I say slowly, trying to ignore the fear rising in my throat, "why this would have been of interest to Jeanine. If all she wanted to do was disable the Divergent, she could have just killed us all. That would be easier than custom-designed mental prisons."
"You have to understand Jeanine," Cara says neutrally. "Jeanine believes she has the right to kill with impunity if she needs to, but prefers not to. It is inefficient. Better to control and make use of the Divergent."
"According to Caleb's notes, the next stage of the experiment was to add code to the purple serum. Caleb's hypothesis was that Tris was unusually resistant and he thought they could easily control other Divergent with a challenge serum. You were going to be the proof of principle. I gather a version of the attack simulation had worked on you for a little while, which Jeanine found very encouraging, and they had a test program set up for you. I destroyed it already."
I feel a chill down my neck and I clench my hands together tightly. "What was it?" I whisper hoarsely.
"You know what it was, Four," she says gently.
"They were going to make me kill Tris."
"Yes, and then yourself. The logic was that if they could make you do those two things, they could make anyone do anything."
"So are you telling me that this is hopeless? There's no way to get her out?"
"I'm not sure yet," Cara acknowledges, looking frustrated. "But I think we're going to have to try. I have a feeling we are running out of time to save her, whether the Erudite or the Factionless Alliance win control of this building," she says, walking over and covering Tris's hand with her own.
"What do you think we should do?"
"I think we should help her solve her unsolvable challenges."
I shake my head, ticking off the reasons that won't work. "First, we don't know what her unsolvable challenges are, since we can't actually hear her thoughts, and second, we don't know how to insert a program into this kind of simulation - and we don't know what it would do to her if we did."
"Leo and I sped up the footage and went through most of it, looking for patterns." Cara holds up Caleb's notebook. "And Caleb is actually
quite helpful, whether he meant to be or not."
"So you think you know her unsolvable problems?"
"Yes," Cara says simply. "She's already resolved some, but I think there are three big ones left. First is Caleb and his betrayal. I don't know if she needs to understand why he did it or if she needs him to change his mind, though I don't think she would accept the latter as realistic. Second, obviously: what information did Erudite steal from Abnegation? She has ideas, but she can't close the gap between her hunches and reality." Cara hesitates.
"And third?" I ask, even though I already know what it is.
"You."
