Page 156 of The Sixth Fraction

“That update you installed on the Dauntless computer,” he’s saying. “You didn’t know what it was?”

“No, of course not,” Caleb says.

“You didn’t ask?”

“Jeanine said it was a system update.”

I look over my shoulder and meet my father’s eyes. I know we’re thinking the same thing: Jeanine. Not “Representative Matthews,” or “Ms. Matthews,” but “Jeanine.” Caleb’s on a first-name basis with the representative of Erudite.

Neither of us mentions it. I don’t see the point, not right now. Faction loyalties have never felt farther away from me than they do right now.

“Tobias,” I say as the train rises. We must be getting close to the jumping point, where the train coasts alongside the top of a building for a brief time before dipping back down again. A Dauntless absurdity rendered even more absurd by what’s going on right now.

“All right, line up,” Tobias says. “When I say go, jump as far as you can. Don’t hesitate.”

“We’re going to jump off?” Caleb says.

“You can always stay behind,” I tell him. “We can meet you later.”

Caleb shakes his head a little too hard. “No. I’m the only one who knows how the simulation code works.”

I don’t argue. Maybe he, like me, feels the need to do something right now instead of thinking about what just happened. And it’s not my place to talk him out of it. So I just stand at the edge of the doorway, my father and Marcus in front of me as they prepare to jump, Caleb, Tobias, and me in a line behind them. I check that the safety of the gun I’m carrying is on. I don’t want to risk firing it while I jump.

The train pulls alongside the roof’s edge, and Tobias shouts, “Go!”

My father and Marcus jump, and without thinking about it, I step forward and launch myself from the train. A weightless moment, and my feet slam into the rooftop, sending gravel in every direction. I stumble forward to recover my balance.

Caleb fell when he landed, but he made it on the roof. Tobias holds out a hand to help him to his feet. I notice he doesn’t even look at his father when he walks forward to the other side of the roof. It’s like he’s pretending Marcus doesn’t exist. I’m trying to do the same.

“Now what?” Marcus asks.

“Now we jump,” I say, as I walk past him.

I stand on the edge of the roof, with Tobias a few paces behind me. The numbness is making me bold. I reach my free hand back, the way I did in his fear landscape, when I knew we had to jump off the Hub to move past his fear of heights. He takes it, and comes to stand beside me.

“See you at the bottom,” I say to him.

I step off the roof.

Nothing in my life has prepared me for this: falling through the air like a stone, the air rushing around my body and gravity drawing me down, the horrifying emptiness of nothing beneath me, nothing to hold on to, nothing to stop me from hitting the ground—

Then the net swallows us both, wrapping around us with taut, hard fibers and then flattening. My arm aches. I let out a strangled laugh. I think of talking to Christina and Colin about Dauntless initiation, how Colin didn’t think he could have jumped. I guess now I know that I could have.

I hook my fingers in the net and pull myself to the side, where a metal bar holds the net’s edge in place. Tobias swings his legs over the side and drops down to a platform. I try to do the same, but it’s hard with my arm still injured and my body trembling from the rush of adrenaline. I manage to tumble over the edge, and his hands steady me, one on my waist and the other on the side of my neck.

I stand in front of him, looking up into his eyes. I don’t feel anything right now, but thinking of the way he was so careful with me in the church sanctuary, but didn’t ask me if I was okay as if that was a valid question, didn’t try to get me to talk about it—it almost breaks through the static in my mind. Here with what’s left of my family, why do I feel like he’s the only one who actually knows me?

I turn to see a gray shape falling through the open space above us and hitting the net with a slap. My father’s limbs flail as he searches for stability, and then he rolls to the side of the net, and Tobias offers him a hand. He grabs it, and sits on the metal bar so that he can drop down to the platform.

Caleb goes next, and as he falls I think I see a dark patch on the back of his shirt, covered up by his jacket—almost like he was bleeding, or something. But when he rolls to the side, he seems fine.

Tobias jumps down from the platform before Marcus lands in the net, so my father helps the council leader instead. I join Tobias on the ground, the map of Dauntless headquarters unfurling in my mind. At the end of this long hallway, we’ll reach the Pit. We’ll climb the path that wraps around the Pit up to the top, and we’ll be a few short hallways away from the simulation room.

“Let’s go,” I say, when the others have made it off the platform. My legs are aching and trembling from exertion, but I force myself to run anyway, my gun now in both hands, slightly in front of me, just in case. My arm is more painful now than it has been so far, burning and aching every time my feet touch the ground. I try to ignore it.

It’s too early for most of Dauntless to be awake. It’ll probably be another hour before anyone learns about what’s happening in Abnegation, if Erudite even releases a report. We run through the patches of darkness and pools of light that come from the emergency lamps, and reach the bottom of the Pit.

“Why is there such a powerful river here?” Caleb says in between panting breaths.