Page 61 of The Sixth Fraction

He has no reason to think I’m anything but Evelyn’s “lackey,” but it still stings a little, hearing that he sees me that way. I know there’s not much to see when people look at me, just some factionless girl with the remnants of Abnegation clinging to me like dew. But I keep hoping that one day, there’ll be more.

I could be imagining it, but I think I see regret flicker across his face, like a shifting candle flame. Evelyn nods and starts to walk away. After a few paces, though, she turns back.

“You’re always welcome here,” she says to him. “Whether you knock or not.”

I watch Four and Christina say goodbye from a few paces away, still unsure of the relationship between them. She offers him a smile that he doesn’t return. He asks her if she’s going to be all right, and she nods. At the last second before he turns away, she throws her arms around him.

“Thank you, Four,” she says.

Then it’s just him and me, again. Evelyn’s recruit and Evelyn’s lackey.

We descend the steps that lead to the tunnel between buildings, and I think we might make this journey in complete silence, except for the echo of our footsteps. And then he speaks.

“How’d you become Evelyn’s favorite tin soldier so quickly? Didn’t you just defect?”

I scowl, even though he can’t see it.

“I know the rules,” I say. “There are only three; it’s not that hard.”

“You all look at her like she’s some kind of hero.”

I want to argue with him. Tell him he has no idea how I see her; that I’m not some starry-eyed factionless child who can’t see what’s going on right in front of her. I’m the one Evelyn pointed a gun at outside the Choosing Ceremony, after all. I’m the one who’s here to find out what Evelyn and her factionless radicals are plotting.

But I hold my tongue. I need to earn her trust, not his respect. If that gives him a low opinion of me, well, that’s too bad.

“If one of us is a ‘tin soldier,’ it’s you,” I say, to change the subject. “Aren’t you a sentry?”

He laughs a little. It’s disconcerting not being able to see his face. “Why do you think that?”

The memory of the Choosing Ceremony tugs at me again. His hand was on my arm. He pulled me up. What was he wearing? I thought it was a sentry uniform, but he might have just been in black. All I remember are his eyes. Such a strange color.

I don’t want to tell him we’ve met before. It feels too intimate, somehow, to admit that he saved me from getting trampled, but I’m too plain-faced for him to remember.

So I say, “Half your jobs involve patrolling this city or its wall with a weapon in hand.”

But there are other kinds of Dauntless. He seems capable, in every sense of the word. Steady on his feet and not easily rattled. He could be a paramedic, maybe.

“I’m an initiation instructor,” he says, “and a simulation technician.”

A teacher. I swallow a laugh. Not because it’s so unbelievable, but because if I’d chosen what I should have . . . he would have been my teacher.

Something brushes my knuckles—his fingers, slipping across mine in the dark as our hands swing in opposite directions. I pull away automatically. My face heats, and I’m glad he can’t see me, this time.

“A simulation technician?” I ask.

“Every Dauntless member is required to do two fear simulations a year. Most of them schedule a few practice sessions before they’re tested. I’m the one who administers them.”

“And fear simulations . . . they’re what they sound like?”

“A simulated encounter with your deepest fears made literal? Yes. They’re what they sound like.” He pauses. “Nightmarish, I guess.”

Daylight from the tunnel’s entrance is starting to filter in. I can see his straight, dark eyebrows and the corner of his jaw.

“Not really,” I say. “I’d like to know what I’m really afraid of. I’d rather look it in the eye.”

He looks down at me, a little crease in his brow.

“You make it sound so easy,” he says. “I wonder how you’d feel about it if you experienced it for yourself.”