Page 146 of The Sixth Fraction

“Just here to observe, remember?” he says, and he claps my shoulder good-naturedly. He’s wearing something on his back. Black, with a deep orange glow at its center. Its structure looks familiar.

And I feel . . . an itch. It reminds me of how I feel when I have a head cold, sometimes, like I want to crack open my head and scratch inside it just to make the creeping sensation go away. It takes me a few seconds to identify where it’s coming from.

Eric. It’s coming from Eric.

I stare at the back of his head when he stands by the door to the train car, his black hair blowing in the wind. He’s never looked at me like that before, with approval instead of hostility. And he’s definitely never patted my arm like we’re pals, either.

Where are we going? I ask myself again, and this time my voice sounds, feels louder. I feel that answering reassurance, that I know where we’re going, but it doesn’t dispel all my doubt.

Where are we going? I ask again.

Where are we going?

I run my fingers over the handle of the gun and observe the faultless black of the barrel. It’s not a needle gun. This weapon is darker and heavier, from the weight of the lethal ammunition.

The bullet, I think, and I remember how it looked in Tris’s small hand, rounded at one end and flat on the other.

And then I remember the crate that Tris helped the factionless move. The weapons the factionless were smuggling away from the wall.

I look at the initiates standing around me. Even Christina is here, with her eye patch, like she never left. None of them are speaking, all of them are facing the open doorway of the train with a gun in one hand.

I’m in a simulation. And so are they.

My breath quickens. I’m in a simulation, and I don’t know what kind it is. I don’t feel afraid, like I do in the fear simulations. I feel, instead, the way I did during the aptitude test. There was a kind of certainty about what I was supposed to do there: Get through the maze. Save the girl. Escape the smoke.

It’s like there’s a program written in my mind, telling me each step to perform as I do it. But it’s not telling me why, or what the point of it all is.

But if my mother is responsible for the weapon in my hand, maybe she also told me what I need to know. Tell Tobias my dream is about to come true.

I don’t remember what she’s referring to. There’s an entire lifetime of conversations in my memory. On Mondays when she made pancakes, she sometimes asked me about my dreams. Not the ones I had while I was sleeping—the ones I had for my life. I didn’t really know what to tell her. I’d only ever been Abnegation. My dreams were about living in a house where I wasn’t constantly being watched. My dreams were small.

One day, though, I asked her what her dreams were.

And she said, I dream about everyone being able to be exactly what they are, instead of what they’re supposed to be. And I knew what she really meant.

She dreamed about the end of the faction system.

I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. If that’s what Evelyn’s doing, if that’s what’s coming, people will get hurt. People will die, and not just my father. I have to get out of this. And I know how to get out of simulations, don’t I? It’s through a concentrated effort of will.

Let me out, I think.

The train is thundering north, through the dull blue light of predawn. We’re just passing the factionless sector now, with its crumbling buildings, its cracked and sinking streets.

Let me out. I don’t care about Marcus. I know my life would be better if he was gone. And I no longer care about the faction system staying intact—not now that I’ve left it behind.

But just like with the fire in Candor headquarters, the cost of this, whatever it is, is too high. A troop of Dauntless puppets holding stolen weapons. A troop of Dauntless puppets on their way to commit murder, if the weight of the gun in my hand is any indication.

I won’t let them be used as puppets.

I won’t be a puppet, either.

Let me out! I scream in my head, and something inside me snaps.

I blink, and nothing’s changed, but everything’s changed. I no longer feel that urgency in my chest; I no longer feel certain of where I’m going.

I’m free from the simulation. And I know what I have to do:

Find Marcus Eaton.