Page 100 of The Sixth Fraction

“Forgive me for saying so, but you seem to be doing more than surviving,” Jeanine says. “You look very healthy, in fact. Not like the other factionless I’ve seen.”

“My mother’s been helping me,” I say.

She’s silent for a long stretch. Her head tilted so her hair spills over her collarbone. I can’t tell if I’ve convinced her or not, though I had an explanation for everything she was curious about.

“I’ll have Shawn escort you out,” she says, nodding to the Erudite man by the door. “I am obligated to remind you that you are not allowed in this building again. But I’m sorry for what you’ve endured.”

I force myself to say: “Thank you.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for you,” she says, and for some reason, it sounds like a threat.

Chapter 35

Tris

Shawn walks me out of Erudite headquarters, but not the way I came in. Instead he takes me to a freight elevator at the back of the building, which lets me out in a hallway that will take me to the alley. When he turns to leave, I ask him for the time, and he tells me it’s six o’clock—an hour after I first arrived in Erudite headquarters.

Technically, I passed the Foxes’ test: I lasted an hour in Erudite headquarters without getting arrested. I can only hope they see it that way.

The hallway I’m in smells like garbage. I hurry into the alley and see a dark figure at the end of it. When he turns to walk down the street, I see the side of his face. It’s Eric, the Dauntless leader.

I wonder, again, what he’s doing here. Why is a Dauntless leader—a Dauntless leader other than Max Young, their official representative—meeting with Jeanine Matthews by himself? This falls outside my mission to get close to Evelyn, but a moment later my breath catches as I realize he’s carrying something he wasn’t before.

A gun.

It’s not unusual for a Dauntless to be armed. But I can’t tell whether the gun he’s now holstering has the iridescent stripe of a needle gun on its side . . . or if it’s a lethal weapon, taken from the wall.

I’ve been assuming it was the factionless at the heart of the Choosing Ceremony attack, at the heart of whatever’s coming, the whole time. I never considered that the factionless aren’t the only ones with access to the weapons at the wall. I’ve made so many assumptions about the factionless that have turned out to be untrue—what if this is just another one? What if someone else had the gun?

It’s a wild thought. But it would make sense of what I’ve been seeing—that the factionless, the people who welcomed me and encouraged me and made me one of them from the start, don’t seem violent at all.

If I follow Eric, maybe I can find out what kind of weapon he’s carrying.

I rush to the end of the alley and peer around the corner. Eric is jogging away from the Erudite sector. I wait until he’s at the end of the block, and then I run.

I can’t be certain, but I suspect he’s running for the nearest train platform. He turns left at the next intersection, and I turn right, then break into a sprint. If I can make it to the stop before his, I can board the train without him ever seeing me.

My shoes aren’t built for sprinting, but I ignore the pain in my heels and the burning in my still-recovering lungs. When I reach the steps, I can hear the hum of the train’s approach. I make it to the platform right as it’s pulling into the station, slowing but not stopping.

I run alongside the fourth car, since it’s the one that will have the factionless emergency bag inside it. I curse my flimsy shoes as I grab the handle—my heels have popped out of the back of them, and I almost lose one as I stumble into the car.

I head straight for the front of the car, then pound on the dented wall panel so it opens. The bag inside it is almost empty, and the only black clothing I find inside it is a huge black T-shirt.

Sighing, I pull the Erudite dress over my head and stuff it in the bag, then put on the T-shirt. It’s so huge it hangs to the middle of my thighs. The air feels cool on my bare legs. I tug the rubber band out of my hair and shake my hair loose. It ripples down to my shoulders, still textured from the braid. It’s the best I can do.

I look behind me. The day is waning, but there’s still plenty of light to see Eric running alongside the train. He gets on ahead of me, in the first car.

When the train gets close to Dauntless headquarters, I crouch by the edge of the car and wait for Eric to jump off. Then I stay there until I’m almost out of platform before I jump off myself.

I have a map of Dauntless headquarters memorized, but that doesn’t mean I know all the entrances and exits. So I tread lightly, keeping Eric in my eyeline. I can’t see the gun from this distance; I need to find a way to get closer to him.

He bypasses the entrance to the glass building that stands on top of the Pit, instead ducking into a nearby alley. I hear the creak of wood as he climbs the back steps of the brick three-flat, and then I creep closer. If he goes into this building, I’m not sure I can keep following him without getting caught.

So it’s lucky that he stops on the second-floor landing and says, “Could you have picked a more exposed meeting spot?”

I can’t see him—or the person he’s talking to—from this angle, but I duck under the stairs to listen in.

His voice is deep enough that some of his words carry, though not all.