Page 82 of The Sixth Fraction

Then my hands are on the rungs, and I’m following her. She’s nimble, like a spider picking a careful path across this web of metal. I focus on catching up to her instead of how the ground is getting farther and farther away from me. My mouth is dry. My hands shake a little as I grab each new rung.

I see her boots ahead of me and realize she’s stopped. She’s holding a rung with just one hand, the other loose at her side as she looks back at me.

“You’re afraid,” she says.

She doesn’t say it like she’s criticizing me for it. More like she realized it all of a sudden. And maybe that’s why I don’t even bother trying to deny it.

“Yeah.” The word comes out as a burst of air. A moment later I feel like I admitted too much. I sound defensive even to my own ears when I add, “So?”

“So . . . you’re here anyway.”

“Fear isn’t always useful.” I wish I could steady my breathing. “Over time, it gets easier to—ignore.”

Her mouth twitches into a smile. “It does, doesn’t it.”

She keeps climbing. Above us, at the center of the wheel, is a small platform. The wind is warm but it still blows right through me. A sudden gust of it pushes us from one side, and her balance shifts, her confident grip turning desperate.

I reach for her by instinct, my hand closing around her hip. My thumb hooks under one of her belt loops; my first two fingers press into the soft skin just beneath the hem of her jacket. For a second my breath catches, and I stare at my hand on her, suddenly aware of how warm she is.

I push her back, so she’s in balance again, and withdraw my hand. My fingertips prickle where I was touching her.

“You okay?” I ask her.

“Uh-huh.”

We’re both quiet until we reach the platform. I’m relieved to sit with my back against a metal support. It almost feels like I’m on solid ground again.

Tris, though, dangles her legs over the edge.

“This doesn’t bother you at all?” I say. “Are you even human?”

She smiles. “I used to climb the fire escape on Building A all the time.”

Building A is the name of one of the larger Abnegation complexes, where families live in community with each other. I’ve never been inside, but I remember the way it looked from the street, the way the families walking in and out of it all seemed to know each other. I used to be jealous of the people in Building A.

But it’s a tall structure, and the fire escape probably hasn’t been repaired in decades. So her climbing it sounds just as absurd to me as whatever we’re doing right now.

I tilt my head a little as I look at her.

“Why didn’t you choose Dauntless?” I say.

“How do you know I had the aptitude for it?”

I laugh. “How did you trick anyone into thinking you didn’t?”

She was avoiding my gaze a moment ago, but now she looks at me, an odd ferocity in her eyes. Something triumphant.

“You know, we met once. After you left Abnegation, I mean,” she says.

“No, we didn’t,” I say. “I would remember.”

“You helped me up, at the Choosing Ceremony attack,” she says. “You basically threw me at the emergency exit.”

I came late to the Choosing Ceremony, to support Zeke and Uriah. I snuck in the back, so I wouldn’t run into Marcus. Then—chaos. I tried to usher people toward all the exits, not just the most obvious one. I don’t remember a girl.

“I looked different then,” she says.

“I’ve sort of gone out of my way to avoid even looking at an Abnegation since I left,” I say. “If I don’t remember you, that’s why.”