Tris' POV

Someone shakes my shoulder. I jerk awake, my eyes wide and searching, and I see Tobias kneeling over me. The blood streams from a wound on his ear—the top of his ear is gone. I wince.

"What happened?" I say.

"Get up. We have to run."

I sit up and wrap my arms around him, pressing my face into his neck. His arms tighten around me and squeeze.

Warmth courses through me, and comfort. If he is here, that means I'm safe. My tears make his skin slippery.

He stands and pulls me to my feet, which makes my wounded shoulder throb.

"Reinforcements will be here soon. Come on."

I let him lead me out of the room. We make it down the first hallway without difficulty, but in the second hallway, we encounter two Dauntless guards, one a young man and one a middle-aged woman. Tobias fires twice in a matter of seconds, both hits, one in the head and one in the chest. The woman, who was hit in the chest, slumps against the wall but doesn't die.

We keep moving. One hallway, then another, all of them look the same. Tobias's grip on my hand never falters. I know that if he can throw a knife so that it hits just the tip of my ear, he can fire accurately at the Dauntless soldiers who ambush us. We step over fallen bodies—the people Tobias killed on the way in, probably—and finally reach a fire exit.

Tobias lets go of my hand to open the door, and the fire alarm screeches in my ears, but we keep running. I am gasping for air but I don't care, not when I'm finally escaping, not when this nightmare is finally over. My vision starts to go black at the edges, so I grab Tobias's arm and hold on tight, trusting him to lead me safely to the bottom of the stairs.

I run out of steps to run down, and I open my eyes. Tobias is about to open the exit door, but I hold him back. "Got to … catch my breath…."

He pauses, and I put my hands on my knees, leaning over. My shoulder still throbs. I frown, and look up at him.

"Come on, let's get out of here," he says insistently.

My stomach sinks. I stare into his eyes. They are dark blue, with a patch of light blue on his right iris.

I take his chin in hand and pull his lips down to mine, kissing him slowly, sighing as I pull back.

"We can't get out of here," I say. "Because this is a simulation."

He pulled me to my feet with my right hand. The real Tobias would have remembered the wound in my shoulder.

"What?" He scowls at me. "Don't you think I would know if I was under a simulation?"

"You aren't under a simulation. You are the simulation." I look up and say in a loud voice, "You'll have to do better than that, Jeanine."

All I have to do now is wake up, and I know how—I have done it before, in my fear landscape, when I broke a glass tank just by touching my palm to it, or when I made a gun appear in the grass to shoot descending birds. I take a knife from my pocket—a knife that wasn't there a moment ago—and will my leg to be hard as diamond.

I thrust the knife toward my thigh, and the blade bends.

I wake with tears in my eyes. I wake to Jeanine's scream of frustration.

"What is it?" She grabs Peter's gun out of his hand and stalks across the room, pressing the barrel to my forehead. My body stiffens, goes cold. She won't shoot me. I am a problem she can't solve. She won't shoot me.

"What is it that clues you in? Tell me. Tell me or I will kill you."

I slowly push myself up from the chair, coming to my feet, pushing my skin harder into the cold barrel.

"You think I'm going to tell you?" I say. "You think I believe that you would kill me without figuring out the answer to this question?"

"You stupid girl," she says. "You think this is about you, and your abnormal brain? This is not about you. It is not about me. It is about keeping this city safe from the people who intend to plunge it into hell!"

I summon the last of my strength and launch myself at her, clawing at whatever skin my fingernails find, digging in as hard as I can. She screams at the top of her lungs, a sound that turns my blood into fire. I punch her hard in the face.

A pair of arms wraps around me, pulling me off her, and a fist meets my side. I groan, and lunge toward her, held at bay by Peter.

"Pain can't make me tell you. Truth serum can't make me tell you. Simulations can't make me tell you. I'm immune to all three."

Her nose is bleeding, and I see lines of fingernail scrapes in her cheeks, on the side of her throat, turning red with blossoming blood. She glares at me, pinching her nose closed, her hair disheveled, her free hand trembling.

"You have failed. You can't control me!" I scream, so loud it hurts my throat. I stop struggling and sag against Peter's chest. "You will never be able to control me."

I laugh, mirthless, a mad laugh. I savor the scowl on her face, the hate in her eyes. She was like a machine; she was cold and emotionless, bound by logic alone. And I broke her.

I broke her.

(All that was taken from Insurgent, so I take no credit for that. Belongs to Veronica Roth)

Tobias POV

Evelyn comes over here to discuss the attack plan with the rebels. We discussed the attack plan along with Johanna and Andrew; they both agreed with to it.

"We know that the Erudite's power lies not in its people but in its information," Evelyn says, "As long as they still possess that information, we will never be free of them."

"A single, large group will attempt to penetrate Erudite headquarters and work its way up through the building, cleansing it of Erudite's influence. Several other, smaller groups will proceed immediately to the higher levels of the building to dispense with certain key Erudite officials. You will receive your group assignments later this evening," I say.

"The attack will occur in three days' time," says Evelyn. "Prepare yourselves. This will be dangerous and difficult. But the factionless are familiar with difficulty—"

At this, the factionless cheer.

I clear my throat and shout, "All those who were from Dauntless, come over here." A couple people walk up and stand next to me. "We will train you as much as possible during the next three days."

They all nod, but someone who is most likely from Abnegation shouts out, "But Tobias is from Abnegation!" They all stare at me with curious, accusing eyes.

"I've been training with a Dauntless for the past couple months. How I got to train is none of your business," I say.

They all grudgingly agree.

Later that night, Marcus comes up to speak with me. "I need to speak with you about the information Jeanine stole." I glare at him, but tell him to, "Continue."

"It's about the video," he says.

"What is on it?" I ask.

He shakes his head, and says, "I can't tell you."

I grit my teeth in annoyance. I don't know if I'm getting annoyed even more easily because it's Marcus or because he won't tell me, but he's really getting on my nerves. I'm honestly thinking about punching him if he won't tell me right now. I give him one more chance. "Why?"

"The information is about the outside, and I can't explain what's outside. It's too complicated."

I guess that's all the information I'm going to get. "You want me to save the video," I simply state.

He nods, and I say, "Alright, I'll do what I can, but I need to save a particular person first."

"It's Beatrice, isn't it?" he asks.

"Tris," I correct him, "and yes."

Marcus curtly says, "You like her."

"Yes," I state.

He shakes his head, irritating me even more. "You can't be with her."

Something in me snaps when he says that, and I darkly say, "What?"

"She left Abnegation, and you're in Abnegation." Technically not, but I don't want to tell him that.

I state, "I don't think it's any of your business."

"I'm your father, of course it's my business." After everything he put me through, he still calls himself my father? I punch him right at the jaw before he can continue. He covers his jaw with his hand, looking surprised.

I walk away after that.

Tris POV

Jeanine stops by my room, and I the scratches I left behind on her. "Since you're going to die soon anyways, I want you to know to know who has been assisting me in my endeavors." She smiles a little. "Who told me what three factions you had an aptitude for, and what our best chance was to get you to come here, and to put your mother in the last simulation to make it more effective."

She looks toward the doorway.

Caleb.

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