A/N: While I sometimes pride myself in being a decent writer, I don't think I can ever do justice to how Veronica Roth wrote Tris fighting the death serum. So this chapter begins right after Tris conquered it and David finds her. I highly recommend rereading Chapter 49 of Allegiant before reading this.

"Don't move," David says, raising his gun. "Hello, Tris."

I am frozen.

He asks me how I inoculated myself against the death serum. I tell him I didn't. He doesn't believe me, but I don't argue and he adds nothing more.

I am impossible.

I still feel its remnants in my skin, and my breathing stays heavy, but I am alive. I am alive when I should be crumpled on the floor, having breathed my last breath. Yet I won the impossible battle.

I am also unarmed.

Everything coming out of David's lips is a blur. I catch a few sentences here and there, but my attention is actually directed towards finding the device that will deploy the memory serum. David thinks I am here to steal the serums. Of course he does. I spot a black box with a silver keypad a few feet away from me, and I know I need to get to it before David manages to kill me. If I continue to stand still, he will shoot me. If I move, he will shoot me. Although he is still in his wheelchair, David is inoculated against the serum, holding a gun, and my gun is somewhere in the hall while I am just about ready to collapse onto the ground. My only possible salvation at this point would be agility.

I try to distract him, telling him that I knew he was responsible for the death of my parents. His attack simulation forced my mother to give her own life to save my own. The accusation brings out an agitated response from David, and he doesn't notice me taking a few steps back. Something in his reaction startles me, though. There was more to the story than he was letting on. I could sense it. It wasn't just the attack simulation, or the lives it took...it was her.

Before I can stop myself, I blurt out, "Did you love her?" and David's face is suddenly still.

"I did," he says. "But that time is past."

He loved my mother once. That's why he treated me with so much trust and kindness when we'd arrived. I was given opportunities that weren't even considered for my companions. It wasn't because I was genetically pure unlike Tobias, but because I am a piece of my mother. A piece of what he thought he'd lost forever.

I hear footsteps coming and I wonder if the air is clear of the death serum.

David loved my mother. But while those pent-up feelings may still be lodged somewhere inside him, she is gone. I am not my mother, only my mother's daughter. No amount of my flesh and blood could bring her back to him, and I can tell he realizes this because his finger is lingering on the trigger, ready than ever to rid the world of me.

I don't think. I only lunge for the device, and I hear a gunshot. I feel a searing pain in my body, but my brain does not bother to find out where the bullet went. Instead I recall the code Matthew had made Caleb repeat several times and practically bash the corresponding buttons on the keypad.

A second gunshot fires and I know I am finished. I smash my palm onto the green button, and I drop to the ground. I see a light turn on behind the green button. I hear a beep and a churning sound and I know the memory serum is airborne.

I have done what I needed to, and I close my eyes so my mind can finally rest.

Only it doesn't.

It questions why the second gunshot never buried a bullet in me, or made a sound if the bullet missed and hit the wall. I wonder why David has not made a sound since the shots fired, and I wonder who is so loudly yelling my name.

"Tris! Oh God, no. Tris!"

Arms fold themselves around me and I am lifted off of the floor. I force my eyelids open enough for me to see a figure slumped in a wheelchair, its head a gruesome mess of blood and raw skin. Immediately I turn away, repulsed. I catch a glimpse of dark hair and a brown-skinned face above me before my eyes close themselves once more.

"You're insane," he's telling me. "You're insane and you could have died in there. I'm sure they can get that bullet out of you-you just have to hold on a little bit more, but you're still insane and if I lost you in there, I..." He sighs and doesn't continue.

"Thank you," I manage to get out.

Uriah's voice sounds troubled, but I can sense him trying to soften it for my sake. "You saved me, I saved you. That's just how it works."

"Yeah," I murmur. "That's just how we work."

Somehow I am not totally unconscious. I am well enough to identify that the bullet hit me on my left hip, but not well enough to bear the pain. I feel my face contort and I bury it in Uriah's chest. He's running now, and he's calling for Cara and Matthew.

I'm glad not to have lost my sense of hearing, but I can no longer open my eyes or speak.

"Tris!" I hear Caleb call. "What happened to her?"

"She went in the room. I'm pretty sure she fought off the death serum-she's still breathing-and she managed to release the memory serum. The guards I ran past were unconscious. Before she got to deploy it, David shot her...but I've taken care of him."

"She needs her bullet wound treated right now. She's losing a lot of blood," a woman's voice-Cara-says. "You need to get checked too, Uriah. You just came out of a coma and you aren't rested enough. You should be dead by now, having entered that room."

"I think I fought it off too," Uriah mutters. "There wasn't too much of it left. If I had been there from the moment it was released, I wouldn't be here. I can only fight serums off for so long before my body caves."

"We're all we have right now, though." Matthew sounds panicked. "All the doctors and medical staff would be under the memory serum by now."

"Shit," Cara whispers.

I can hear someone sniffling, and I'm almost positive it's Caleb.

"You're Erudite," Uriah says firmly. "Shouldn't you know how to treat these things?"

"Cara and I know how the procedure goes," Caleb says. "But I-I'm not sure how to-"

"This is your sister!" I've never heard Uriah sound so livid. "Had she not gone in there, you would be dead. There was no way for her to be sure that she could fight off the serum, but she went in there because she loves you."

There was no way for Uriah to be sure he could fight off the serum either, I tell myself. But he went in.

"Don't you think it's about time you learn from her, stop being a coward, and save her?" I feel Uriah's hands tighten around me. His voice catches at his throat. "Please. We can't lose her. I can't lose her."

Caleb begins to say something, but I'm too overcome by shock to pay attention to it. Uriah's grip has faltered, and I am falling onto the ground. I am enveloped by pain when I land, and I realize I've landed on my hip. The bullet must have been lodged deeper into my body by now.

"Shit!" Cara exclaims.

Did Uriah drop me? I am too stunned to feel hurt.

I hear someone scrambling onto the ground. "Uriah! Uriah, wake up!" Caleb says. "He's unconscious."

I feel Caleb's hands around me as he takes me in his arms and stands. His arms are not strong or cradling like Uriah's. I can feel them struggling under my weight. "Matthew, get Uriah. We need to attend to both of them right away. Cara, you'll help me with this, won't you?"

"Of course," I hear her say. "Though I don't think we can do anything to fix Uriah."

A loud grunt comes from somewhere to my right, and I try to imagine Matthew's lean figure trying to carry Uriah's muscular one. If I weren't so engulfed in pain and worry for Uriah, it might have been amusing.

"What do you mean?" Caleb says, walking at a brisk pace. I hear the others follow him.

There's a moment of silence, and I wish I could see what their expressions looked like.

"Oh," Matthew mumbles.

"What is it?" Caleb insists.

Cara sighs. "He isn't hurt. It's just that...we never inoculated him against the memory serum."