Page 158 of The Sixth Fraction

Chapter 56

Tris

“Caleb,” I say in a low, calm voice that’s the exact opposite of how I feel. “What are you doing?”

The gun is all black—loaded with bullets, not needles—and he holds it like he’s held one before. It’s as if he set off a fire alarm in my mind. A shrieking, pulsing kind of panic that takes over my entire body.

“Caleb,” I say again.

“Put your gun on the floor,” Caleb says to me. “And step back.”

“I will if you will,” I say.

“Just do it, Beatrice!” Caleb snaps, and there’s something in his voice that makes me listen. He’s not trembling, like that boy who almost killed me in the alley next to Abnegation headquarters. He’s steady.

He is, somehow, ready for this.

I bend down slowly and set my gun on the ground. I take a step back.

Tobias, kneeling in front of my brother with his hands still immersed in the simulated flames, has gone completely still.

“This isn’t like you, Caleb,” I say. “You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I don’t, that’s correct,” Caleb says evenly. “But I made a deal with Jeanine to save our father’s life, and I intend to keep my end of it.” He pushes the barrel of the gun into Tobias’s skull. “Put my sister under a simulation. She doesn’t need to be a part of this.”

I think of our nighttime talks, growing up. How I would slide my window open and breathe in the night air and tell him whatever I was worried about. How he responded in such measured tones, every time, helping me think through whatever the problem was. He was always calm, my brother, and I assumed it was because he was so focused on helping me. But maybe that calm was colder than I realized.

Maybe I don’t know anyone at all. I didn’t know my mother was anything more than a devoted Abnegation wife and mother. I didn’t know my father was capable of manipulating my mind. I didn’t know Marcus was violent, or that Evelyn would threaten to kill me just to get my mother to talk. And I didn’t know my brother was this.

But I should have, shouldn’t I? When I went to visit him in Erudite headquarters, he didn’t try to help me. He didn’t stop them from taking me away. He barely seemed happy to see me.

Why can’t I see what’s right in front of me, even now?

“Caleb,” I say, my voice now choked.

Caleb still isn’t looking at me. He’s focused on where he’s pointing his gun.

Tobias raises his eyes to mine.

“Just do it,” I say to him. “Do whatever he tells you.”

And the simulation swallows me whole.

Chapter 57

Four

The barrel was cold when Caleb first pressed it to my head, but it’s warm now. It feels wrong, somehow. The nearness of death—just centimeters from my skull, in fact—should be cold, and stay cold.

But I guess death isn’t some exceptional thing. It feels extraordinary to the person being threatened with it, but it’s actually one of the most ordinary things that exists. Everything that lives dies.

I watch Tris’s eyes glaze over as the simulation takes her. But Caleb doesn’t know her like I do. He doesn’t know she’s Divergent, and simulations don’t grip her as tightly as they grip everyone else. It never occurred to him that she might be special, that she might be capable in a way that he isn’t.

My life now rests in her ability to face her fear simulation quickly. But if there’s anyone who’s capable of doing that, it’s the girl across from me.

So I take a deep, slow breath.

“What now?” I ask him.