CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TRIS POV
I wake from the best dream ever. I dreamt that Tobias had come back home. I rise from my bed and I actually feel the happiest I have since he has been gone.
I walk downstairs and I sit at the kitchen table. Mum is in here making breakfast.
"Do you want some help?" I ask.
"Sure, that would be nice," mum says. "You seem happier today."
"I had the strangest dream last night," I say. "I dreamt that Tobias had come to visit."
"It wasn't a dream," she says.
"What? Really?" I say.
"Yes, he came to ask for some advice," Mum says.
"Oh," I say. Disappointed that it wasn't to see me.
"He went up to your room to say goodbye but you had fallen back asleep. He didn't want to wake you."
"I wish he had."
"Beatrice I think you would have made it almost impossible for him to leave if you had been awake," mum says.
"I know, I just miss him so much," I say.
"I know you do sweetie but every day you get closer to being with him again."
"You won't be mad if I leave?"
"I want only happiness for you, Caleb and Tobias. Where you need to be for that to happen is your decision. Your father and I came here for that exact reason and while it isn't always easy we know that we made the right decision."
"Even after everything that has happened with Marcus?"
"More so because of it. If we hadn't come here, then we can't be sure that Tobias would have been safe. He may still be stuck in Abnegation dealing with Marcus. Also Natasha is now safe and so is her unborn baby. I know we have seemed upset with Abnegation at times but that will happen wherever you are. You can't always agree with everyone; you just have to make the best of your situation."
"You don't think he will find a sexy Dauntless girl?"
Mum starts to laugh at me. "Why would you ever think such a thing?"
"I see the way they dress. He's a boy, isn't that what they look for?"
"Beatrice, Tobias loves you. It has nothing to do with how you dress. It's what is in here," she says as she holds her hand to my heart.
"Do you really think that is enough?"
"I think that it is all that matters," she says.
"Thank you mum," I say and I give her a hug. I wish I had been able to spend more time with Tobias but I also know that mum is right. I would have made it as hard as possible for him to leave. Why is it that when you want to grow up it seems to take so long?
TOBIAS POV – YEAR ONE IN DAUNTLESS
I wake early and wish I could roll over and go back to sleep. But I can't I start leadership training today. I am nervous but not as nervous as I would have been if Marcus was still in charge of Abnegation. It makes my decision to try for the position of leader a lot easier. Knowing if I do become leader I will not have to face him. It might make me a coward in the eyes of my new faction but hopefully one day soon I will start to feel braver. One day, hopefully, I will be able to face this fear head on.
I reach the tenth floor and have no idea where to go. I spot a dark head turning a corner in front of me. Eric. I follow him, partly because he probably knows where he's going, but partly because I want to know what he's doing even if he's not going to the same place I am. But when I turn the corner, I see Max standing in a conference room that has glass walls, surrounded by young Dauntless. The oldest one is maybe twenty, and the youngest is probably not much older than I am. Max sees me through the glass and motions for me to come in. Eric sits close to him—Suck-up, I think—but I sit at the other end of the table, between a girl with a ring though her nostrils and a boy whose hair is such a bright shade of green I can't look straight at him. I feel plain by comparison—I may have gotten Dauntless flames tattooed on my side during initiation, but it's not like they're on display.
"I think everyone is here, so let's get started." Max closes the door to the conference room and stands before us. He looks strange in such an ordinary environment, like he's here to break all the glass and cause chaos rather than lead this meeting.
"You're all here because you've shown potential, first, but also because you've displayed enthusiasm for our faction and its future." I don't know how I've done that. "Our city is changing, faster now than ever before, and in order to keep up with it, we'll have to change, too. We'll have to become stronger, braver, better than we are now. And among you are the people who can get us there, but we'll have to figure out who they are. We'll be doing a combination of instruction and skills test for the next several months, to teach you what you'll need to know if you make it through this program, but also to see how quickly you learn." That sounds a little like something the Erudite would value, not the Dauntless—strange.
Mum said that Erudite were trying to interfere with Dauntless leadership, so why would Max be thinking like an Erudite when he doesn't want them interfering?
"The first thing you'll do is fill out this info sheet," he says, and I almost laugh. There's something ridiculous about a tough, hardened Dauntless warrior with a stack of papers he calls "info sheets," but of course some things have to be ordinary, because it's more efficient that way. He sends the stack around the table, along with a bundle of pens. "All this will do is tell us more about you and give us a starting point by which to measure your progress. So it's in your best interest to be honest, and not to make yourself sound better than you are."
I feel unsettled, staring at the sheep of paper. I fill out my name—which is the first question—and my age—the second. The third asks for my faction of origin, and the fourth asks for my number of fears. The fifth asks what those fear are.
Three are easy to describe—heights, losing my family and losing a loved one—but the next one? What am I supposed to write about my father, that I'm afraid of Marcus Eaton? I decide that the best way to describe it is physical threat, although I know that this doesn't make me sound very Dauntless.
The next few questions are strange, confusing. They're statements, trickily worded, that I'm supposed to agree or disagree with. It's okay to steal if it's to help someone else. Well, that's easy enough—agree. Some people are deserving of rewards than others. Maybe. It depends on the rewards. Power should be given only to those who earn it. Difficult circumstances form stronger people. You don't know how strong a person really is until they're tested. I glance around the table at the others. Some people seem puzzled, but no one looks the way I feel—disturbed, almost afraid to circle an answer beneath each statement.
I don't know what to do, so I circle "agree" for each one and pass my sheet back with everyone else's.
It has been a full on day and my head is swimming with information and questions. I see Shauna storm away from Lynn and their brother Hector in the dining hall and decided to follow her and see if she wants to come to the training room with me. I could do with some physical exertion after being stuck in an office all day.
"So Ezekiel couldn't convince you to go on the double date tonight?" she asks.
I laugh a little and shake my head no. "Ezekiel," I say, cringing. "I forgot that was his whole name. Yeah there was no way I was going to do that."
"So are you going to tell me who she is?"
"Who?"
"The girl who is stopping you from going on double dates with Zeke?"
I shake my head no.
"One day, maybe?" she asks.
"Maybe," I say.
"I was thinking of going to the training room, get some exercise in. Want to go?"
"Yeah," I say. "That is exactly where I was headed."
"How was your first day of leadership training?"
"Intense," I say. How do I describe sitting in a room, of what I would call misfits, trying to answer questions that made no sense to me.
We head toward the training room and I can see something ahead that I don't think Shauna is going to want to see. I try to stop Shauna with a hand, but I'm too late—she sees their two bodies pressed together, her eyes wide. Zeke and Maria are currently ahead of us. Shauna pauses for a moment, and I hear smacking noises I wish I hadn't heard. Then she moves down the hallway, walking so fast I have to jog to catch up to her.
"Shauna—"
"Training room," she says.
When we get there, she starts immediately on the punching bag, and I've never seen her hit so hard before. I wish I could help her to feel better but I wouldn't know how.
"Though it might seem strange, it's important for high-level Dauntless to understand how a few programs work," Max says. "The surveillance program in the control room is an obvious one—a Dauntless leader will sometimes have to monitor the things happening in the faction. Then there's the simulation programs, which you have to understand in order to evaluate Dauntless initiates. Also the currency tracking program, which keeps commerce in our faction running smoothly, among others. Some of these programs are pretty sophisticated, which means you'll have to be able to learn computer skills easily, if you don't already have them. That's what we'll be doing today."
He gestures to the woman standing at his left shoulder. I recognize her from the game of Dare. She's young, with purple streaks in her short hair and more piercings than I can easily count.
"Lauren here will be teaching you some of the basics, and then we'll test you," Max says. "Lauren is one of our initiation instructors, but in her downtime she works as a computer technician in Dauntless headquarters. It's a little Erudite of her, but we'll let it slide for the sake of convenience."
Max winks at her, and she grins.
"Go ahead," he says. "I'll be back in an hour."
Max leaves, and Lauren claps her hands together.
"Right," she says. "Today we're going to talk about how programming works. Those of you who already have some experience with this, please feel free to tune out. The rest of you better keep focused because I'm not going to repeat myself. Learning this stuff is like learning a language—it's not enough to memorize the words; you also have to understand the rules and why they work the way they do."
The next hour passes in a blur of technical terms I can barely keep up with. I try to jot some notes on a piece of scrap paper I found on the floor, but she's moving so fast it's hard for my hand to keep up with my ears, so I abandon the effort after a few minutes and just try to pay attention. She shows examples of what she's talking about on a screen at the front of the room, and it's hard not to be distracted by the view from the windows behind her—from this angle, the Pire displays the city's skyline, the prongs of the Hub piercing the sky, the marsh peeking from between the glimmering buildings.
I'm not the only one who seems overwhelmed—the other candidates lean over to one another to whisper frantically, asking for definitions they missed. Eric, however, sits comfortably in his chair, drawing on the back of his hand. Smirking. I recognise that smirk. Of course he already knows all this stuff. He must have learned it in Erudite, probably when he was a child, or else he wouldn't look quite so smug.
Before I can really register the passage of time, Lauren is pressing a button for the display screen to withdraw into the ceiling.
"On the desktop of your computer, you'll find a file marked 'Programming Test,'" she says. "Open it. It will take you to a timed exam. You'll go through a series of small programs and mark the errors you find that are causing them to malfunction. They might be really big things, like the order of the code, or really small things, like a misplace word or marking. You don't have to fix them right now, but you do have to be able to spot them. There will be one error per program. Go."
Everyone starts frantically tapping at their screens. Eric leans over to me and says, "Did your Stiff house even have a computer, Four?"
"No," I say.
"Well, you see, this is how you open a file," he says with an exaggerated tap on the file on his screen. "See, it looks like paper, but it's really just a picture on a screen—you know what a screen is, right?"
"Shut up," I say as I open the test.
I stare at the first program. It's like learning a language, I say to myself. Everything has to start in the right order. Just make sure that everything is in the right place.
I don't start at the beginning of the code and make my way down—instead, I look for the innermost kernel of code inside all the wrappers. There, I notice that the line of code finished in the wrong place. I mark the spot and press the arrow button that will allow me to continue the exam if I'm right. The screen changes, presenting me with a new program.
I raise my eyebrows. I must have absorbed more than I thought.
I start the next one in the same way, moving from the centre of the code to the outside, checking the top of the program with the bottom, paying attention to quotation marks and periods and backslashes. Looking for the code errors is strangely soothing, just a way of making sure that the world is still in the same order it's supposed to be, and as long as it is, everything will run smoothly.
I forget about all the people around me, even about the skyline beyond us, about finishing this exam will mean. I just focus on what's in front of me, on the tangle of words on my screen. I notice that Eric finishes first, long before anyone else looks ready to complete their exam, but I try not to let it worry me. Even when he decides to stay next to me and look over my shoulder as I work.
Finally I touch the arrow buttons and a new image pops up. EXAM COMPLETE, it says.
"Good job," Lauren says, when she comes by to check my screen. "You're the third one to finish."
I turn toward Eric.
"Wait," I say, "Weren't you about to explain what a screen was? Obviously I have no computer skills at all, so I really need your help."
He glowers at me, and I grin.
I finish training for the day and just like yesterday I am glad I am done for the day. I didn't realise just how intense training to be a Dauntless leader would be. I think I will go and see how Zeke's going in his job in the control room. It will be interesting to see just what his job entails and I can see what time he will be finishing work. Maybe I can see if he wants to go to the training room after dinner.
I ride the elevator to the fourth floor, then follow signs for the control room. It's down a short corridor and around the bend, the door wide open. A wall of screens greets me—a few people sit behind it, at desks, and then there are other desks along the wall where more people sit, each one with a screen of their own. The footage rotates every five seconds, showing different parts of the city—the Amity fields, the streets around the Hub, the Dauntless compound, even the Merciless Mart, with its grand lobby. I glimpse the Abnegation sector on one of the screens, wondering if I would be lucky enough to see Tris while I am in here.
I see Zeke sitting at a desk on the right wall, typing something into a dialog box on the left half of his screen while footage of the Pit plays on the right half. Everyone in the room is wearing headphones—listening, I assume, to whatever they're supposed to be watching.
"Zeke," I say quietly. Some of the others look at me, as if scolding me for intruding, but no one says anything.
"Hey!" he says. "I'm glad you came; I'm bored out of my mind."
I can't help but to laugh a little. It's only his second day and he is already bored. How is he going to do this job for the rest of his life?
"I came to see what time you get off. Do you want to go to the training room?" I ask.
I am watching the screens waiting for him to respond when something catches my eye. I see a flash of Max in what appears to be his office, sitting in one of the chairs, a woman sitting across from him. A woman with blond hair tied back in a tight knot. I put my hand on Zeke's shoulder.
"Wait," I say. "Go back."
He does, and I confirm what I suspected: Jeanine Matthews is in Max's office, a folder in her lap. Her clothes are perfectly pressed, her posture straight. I take the headphones from Zeke's head, and he scowls at me but he doesn't stop me.
Max's and Jeanine's voices are quiet, but I can still hear them.
I've narrowed it down to six," Max is saying. "I'd say that's pretty good for, what? The second day?"
"This is inefficient," Jeanine says. "We already have the candidate. I ensured it. This was always the plan."
"You never asked me what I thought of the plan, and this is my faction," Max says tersely. "I don't like him, and I don't want to spend all my days working with someone I don't like. So you'll have to let me at least try to find someone else who meets all the criteria—"
"Fine." Jeanine stands, pressing her folder to her stomach. "But when you fail to do so, I expect you to admit it. I have no patience for Dauntless pride."
"Yeah, because the Erudite are the picture of humility," Max says sourly.
"Hey," Zeke hisses. "My supervisor is looking. Give me back the headphones."
He snatches them from my head, and they snap around my ears in the process, making them sting.
"You have to get out of her or I'll lose my job," Zeke says. "I finish at six, I'll meet you in the dining hall for dinner."
I nod and quickly slip out of the control room, my mind racing.
I am trying to process what I just heard. We already have the candidate, I ensured it. They must have been talking about the candidate for Dauntless leadership.
This must be what mum and dad were talking about. Jeanine is trying to interfere with Dauntless. Obviously Eric is her choice. He would be the perfect lap dog for Jeanine. At least Max doesn't like him. I don't know how I am supposed to get through this training when Jeanine is going to be interfering, making sure that Eric gets the position. I am going to have to work harder to make sure that it doesn't happen.