+ + +
I wake with his name in my mouth.
Will.
There are so many faces that I
should see in my nightmares, but for the past few weeks, it has only been him.
I watch him crumple to the pavement every night. Dead. My doing.
It is not night now, though. It is
midafternoon. I hear insects buzzing in the distant trees. Warm metal touches
the back of my skull and my knees, the rails of the train tracks.
The trains haven’t run since the
simulation attack. I take that as a good sign. If the trains were running, that
would mean that some order has returned to the city behind us, and the only
order that is possible right now is the kind we would find under Erudite
control. As long as the trains are still, everyone’s minds are their own. It is
consolation enough.
On my right are Tobias’s
denim-covered legs. He lies with his head on the other rail, his eyes closed.
He wears Abnegation gray, because we didn’t bring any clothes with us when we
escaped the Dauntless compound. I barely notice it most of the time. The color
looks right on him.
I think he’s asleep, but he takes my
wrist and sits up, looking down at me. Sweat runs down the side of his face,
making it shine.
“You okay?” he says.
I sit up too, massaging my aching
neck. “Yeah. Why?” I sound too defensive. He’ll know I’m trying to hide
something.
Or maybe he’s gotten so used to
deceit in my voice that he won’t notice. I lie to him all the time now.
“You cried out,” he says. “If you’re
screaming in your sleep, Tris, you aren’t okay.”
I have two dead parents, I killed
one of my best friends, and Tobias, one of the only people I have left, has
barely touched me since he told me he loved me and I didn’t say it back. If
okay exists, it is not this.
“I’m fine,” I say. “All right?”
He nods, and releases my wrist.
“We should go back soon,” he says,
standing. He wipes his face with the hem of his shirt. I catch a glimpse of the
patch of Dauntless flames tattooed on his side, over his rib cage. He may wear
Abnegation clothing now, but he will always be Dauntless; it’s written on his
skin, like it’s written on mine.
“Trains are still out of commission,”
he adds. “That’s good.”
We talk this way a lot now—short
sentences, nothing deep or profound. It isn’t because there’s nothing to talk
about. It’s just the opposite. There is too much to talk about, so we don’t. We
spend hours together without conversation.
I twist around to see the skyline.
All the buildings are covered with the haze of too much distance, but I can
still see the Hub’s two prongs stabbing the sky. I feel a pang of
something—sadness, maybe, or longing—in my stomach. I want to go back. I have to go back.
“I won’t be able to stand it here
for much longer,” I say.
“I won’t either.”
I know that. We were both built for
war. The worse things are, the stronger we are. Hiding in the peace of the
Amity compound, we are both weak. Useless.
He offers me his hand. “Come on.
Time to go.”
I put one hand on the rail and grab
his hand with the other. But before I let him pull me up, I pause, frowning.
The rail hums beneath my hand. I hold it tightly, my lips moving in a prayer
with words I don’t know. Please, is
all I can think. I don’t know who I’m begging, or what exactly I’m begging them
for.
Trains mean order. Order means
Erudite. Maybe I am asking for chaos.
I turn so I’m on my knees, and press
my ear to the rail, closing my eyes. I hear a low groan in the metal, like a
beast waking after hibernation. It is unmistakable.
The trains are running again.
