Page 51 of The Sixth Fraction

“Advice. For a recruit.”

“A recruit?” I say. “I didn’t know you . . . recruited.”

“Not usually. But as you can imagine, we can use all the help we can get. So when we find out that someone’s not happy where they are . . .” She shrugs. “We make sure they know their options. Like we did with your friends—the ‘faction failures,’ I think they call themselves.”

I don’t know how the factionless would find out someone’s not happy where they are. But I’m not about to ask. Not when she’s on the cusp of trusting me with something.

“Why do you want my advice?” I say. “I just got here.”

We reach the end of the tunnel and climb up to the empty building next to the Rookery. Through the windows I can see the sky, now deep blue, the moon a high, thin crescent surrounded by pinpricks of stars. The floor is buckling here, but the factionless have set up boards to lead out to the alley. Tendrils of sickly ivy crawl over the walls.

“This recruit . . . you’re close to his age.” She pauses. “Most of our young members—the ones who weren’t born factionless—failed out of initiation. Not you. You left voluntarily, because your commitment wavered, just as his commitment is wavering now.”

“Oh,” I say. I hadn’t thought about it that way. It’s not technically possible to fail out of Abnegation initiation. Failing to comply will get you punished, but it won’t get you kicked out. Nothing will.

Looking up at her, I realize she and I have something in common. She had to get out of there, the same way I did. Only I don’t know what her reason was.

But that doesn’t matter. What matters is why I’m here: to find out why Robert died. To find out what the factionless are planning. And to do that, I need to be one of them. I need to be trusted.

“This recruit . . . you’re sure he’s not happy where he is?” I say.

She raises an eyebrow at me. “I’m sure.”

“Well . . .” I think of how my mother laid out the paths in front of me. Stay in Abnegation, and pretend to forget. Stay, and work to change my faction from within. Or go. Go and find something new.

She didn’t tell me what to do, where to go. Like the faction system that Evelyn hates, she only offered me choices.

I can’t imagine Evelyn—Evelyn with the hard eyes and the gun in her hand outside the Choosing Ceremony—doing the same.

“You can’t force it,” I say. “You just need to listen.”

I almost wince as I say it, knowing how insufficient it is. Sure enough, she snorts a laugh in response.

“That’s assuming he’ll talk to me,” she says. “And trust me, he won’t.”

She looks toward the tunnel like she’s about to suggest going back to the Rookery. My heart races. I need to offer her something more. I need to give her a reason to trust me.

“Then send someone else,” I say. “If he won’t talk to you . . . maybe he’d talk to me.”

It feels like a foolish suggestion, but she doesn’t react to it like it is. In fact she reacts like that’s what she was waiting for me to say from the start.

“Maybe he would,” she says.

Evelyn and I don’t go back to the Rookery. Instead we move through the grid of streets that surrounds the Rookery and then walk along a broken sidewalk to the nearest train station. Quincy, I tell myself, before I see the sign.

We climb the stairs to the platform. The buildings are hemming us in on all sides. Despite the warm air, I shiver.

“He’ll already be on when you board,” she says to me. “So don’t be alarmed.”

“What’s his name?”

She looks down at the tracks. “He goes by Four. Dauntless nickname.”

Four. I wonder why a Dauntless boy would have a number for a name.

“Thank you for your help,” she says.

Thank me if it does any good, I think, but I nod, trying to look confident. I spot the train gliding along in the distance; the moonlight glints in its metal side as it moves. It churns and pounds closer, and I start jogging. I can feel it behind me, its heat and its energy, and I break into a sprint so I won’t run out of ground.