Page 133 of The Sixth Fraction

“Mom gave it to me.”

“I see.” He turns it in his hands, passing it from one to the other. “And what purpose does it serve?”

“Purpose?”

“Yes, purpose,” he snarls. “Because my son knows that in this faction, we value only that which we can put to use for the good of the community. My son wouldn’t indulge himself in this kind of frivolity. My son wouldn’t keep an object designed only to please himself!”

I flinch.

“Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you!” he shouts, and I force my gaze up to his.

He turns, and hurls the glass sculpture at the wall so hard it bursts into shards. Blue fragments of glass spray across my room, biting at my arm, my cheek. They litter my blanket, my dresser, my floor.

The last thing my mother gave me, gone.

She’s still alive, I tell myself. This already happened.

“You poison yourself—and this house—with your selfishness.” He puts a hand on my arm and wrenches it to the side, painfully. Then he raises his free hand like he’s going to backhand me.

“My face, Dad!” I cry out, and he stops, his hand still raised.

I cower against the dresser, shuddering. My hands are numb. My face is numb.

He tries not to bruise me where anyone can see.

He takes an unsteady breath, and says, “There have to be consequences for lying to me, Tobias.”

I know the steps of this dance. He’ll go and get a belt. He’ll take his time, so I have to stand here dreading it for as long as possible. Then he’ll hurt me, and he’ll tell me it’s for my own good.

I turn to face the dresser. I pull my shirt over my head. And I wait.

This version of the simulation always ends before the first blow falls. It’s not the pain I fear, it’s everything before it. The humiliation and the uncertainty and the awareness that my father doesn’t love me, can’t love me.

Still, I stand there with my eyes closed for a few seconds, gathering myself. I’m trembling, and the thought of looking at Eric when I feel like this makes me want to vomit.

I take a deep breath, and open my eyes. The simulation is over.

Everyone is staring at me, but I only look at Jeanine Matthews. Her eyes, usually so empty of feeling, glint with something like hunger.

I wonder if she knew that if she came here, she would win no matter what. Either she would get proof of Abnegation’s moral corruption, laid out before her in my fear landscape, or she’d get proof that I’m Divergent. Regardless, this is what she’s been waiting for.

“That was a memory, was it not?” she asks me.

I nod.

“And in that memory, you behaved exactly as you did in the past,” she says. “I suppose, in order for the pattern to be broken, a person has to undergo significant change before they’ll make different choices in their memory. That is, if they’re not aware during the simulation.” She raises an eyebrow. “Which you aren’t, of course.”

“Of course not,” I say. “That’s impossible.”

My throat is tight. I’m desperate to run. But I can’t run.

“No, of course not,” she repeats thoughtfully. “You’re much bigger now. Older. Trained in combat. If you were in control of your reaction to that memory, you would behave differently.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Eric smiling.

“Thank you . . . Mr. Eaton,” Jeanine says. “That will be all.”

Chapter 46