Page 137 of The Sixth Fraction

I don’t know what to say. I haven’t had to seek safety like that. I don’t really understand what this place means to him. I can’t understand.

So I put my arms around him, and I don’t say anything at all.

We take the back way out of Dauntless headquarters. A wide tunnel that leads away from the Pit, slanted upward until it ends at a gaping hole in the ceiling . . . with a net suspended underneath it.

“This is where your initiates first enter Dauntless?” I say. “Christina told me about it.”

He nods and walks under the net. It’s suspended high above his head, to leave enough room beneath it to catch falling initiates. But when he tips his head back, the moonlight casts crisscrossing shadows over his face as it shines through the ropes.

“I was the last one to jump,” he says.

I look up at the building high above us, the one with the elevated train tracks running alongside its roof. It’s an odd arrangement—the height of the tracks, the proximity of the roof, all seem designed only to flatter Dauntless sensibilities, rather than practicality. And maybe they were.

“You didn’t know what would be at the bottom?” I ask.

“No.” He gives me an odd look. Considering.

“What did your aptitude test say?” I ask him, suddenly realizing I don’t know the answer. “Did it point you toward Dauntless?”

“No, my father coached me pretty thoroughly,” Tobias says, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Said he knew there was something off about me and walked me through all the choices I would have to make to get the proper result. Which was Abnegation, of course.”

“So you have no idea what it would have said.”

“What did yours say?” he asks me.

“Tori found it confusing,” I reply. “Said maybe Abnegation, maybe Dauntless, maybe Erudite.”

“No Candor?”

I roll my eyes, and he laughs a little. But there’s still an odd look in his eyes.

“What if I left?” he says.

He’s standing in a web of shadows, his body, clad in black, blending into the darkness behind him. All I can see is his face, tipped up to catch the light of the moon.

“What’s the matter?” he says, when I don’t respond. “Weren’t you supposed to be the one recruiting me to join the factionless?”

“I only did that to figure out what the radical factionless are planning,” I say. “You know that.”

And I have, haven’t I? I realize it for the first time: I do know what the radical factionless are planning. They want to kill Marcus. That’s why they stole the gun that killed Robert, and it might even be why Robert died—maybe they were aiming for Marcus at the Choosing Ceremony and missed.

But the answers I was looking for when I first defected aren’t enough anymore. Now there’s Eric and Jeanine and whoever they’re working with in Dauntless, crates full of bullets and dead Divergent boys and Evelyn’s possible alliance with Erudite. Everything has gotten bigger.

His head tilts. “That’s sort of my point, actually.”

I walk under the net, into the grid of moonlight. “What do you mean?”

“On the train, the first time we met, you told me you could do more good outside of Abnegation than inside of it,” he says. “What if leaving Dauntless is the way I can do the most good?” His eyes are bright and focused when they find mine again. “You’ll go to Evelyn and you’ll make a deal. Show her the bullet, tell her you want in on her plan to kill Marcus—and whatever follows. And in exchange, you’ll bring her something she’s wanted for a long time: me.”

I stare at him.

The bullet is still in my pocket, a little weight that I carry with me wherever I go, and a reminder of the mission my mother gave me. The only trouble with it is that even as a Fox, I’m still not close enough to Evelyn to find out what I need to know.

This would put me right where I need to be.

“You shouldn’t have to do this,” I say. “You shouldn’t have to leave your faction just because Jeanine Matthews has a vendetta and Eric is a monster.”

“No,” Tobias agrees quietly. “I shouldn’t have to. But you and I both know how unfair life can be.”