Divergent - Roth Veronica - Страница 53
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“Don’t you think I would know if I was being manipulated?”
“If they’re as smart as you think, then no. I don’t think you would know.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says, shaking his head.
“Yeah. How could I possiblyknow what a corrupt faction looks like? I’m just training to be Dauntless, for God’s sake,” I say. “At least I know what I’m a part of, Caleb. Youare choosing to ignore what we’ve known all our lives — these people are arrogant and greedy and they will lead you nowhere.”
His voice hardens. “I think you should go, Beatrice.”
“With pleasure,” I say. “Oh, and not that it will matter to you, but Mom told me to tell you to research the simulation serum.”
“You saw her?” He looks hurt. “Why didn’t she—”
“Because,” I say. “The Erudite don’t let the Abnegation into their compound anymore. Wasn’t that information available to you?”
I push past him, walking away from the mirror cave and the sculpture, and start down the sidewalk. I should never have left. The Dauntless compound sounds like home now — at least there, I know exactly where I stand, which is on unstable ground.
The crowd on the sidewalk thins, and I look up to see why. Standing a few yards in front of me are two Erudite men with their arms folded.
“Excuse me,” one of them says. “You’ll have to come with us.”
One man walks so close behind me that I feel his breath against the back of my head. The other man leads me into the library and down three hallways to an elevator. Beyond the library the floors change from wood to white tile, and the walls glow like the ceiling of the aptitude test room. The glow bounces off the silver elevator doors, and I squint so I can see.
I try to stay calm. I ask myself questions from Dauntless training. What do you do if someone attacks you from behind ?I envision thrusting my elbow back into a stomach or a groin. I imagine running. I wish I had a gun. These are Dauntless thoughts, and they have become mine.
What do you do if you ’ re attacked by two people at once ?I follow the man down an empty, glowing corridor and into an office. The walls are made of glass — I guess I know which faction designed my school.
A woman sits behind a metal desk. I stare at her face. The same face dominates the Erudite library; it is plastered across every article Erudite releases. How long have I hated that face? I don’t remember.
“Sit,” Jeanine says. Her voice sounds familiar, especially when she is irritated. Her liquid gray eyes focus on mine.
“I’d rather not.”
“Sit, ”she says again. I have definitely heard her voice before.
I heard it in the hallway, talking to Eric, before I got attacked. I heard her mention Divergents. And once before — I heard it…
“It was your voice in the simulation,” I say. “The aptitude test, I mean.”
Sheis the danger Tori and my mother warned me about, the danger of being Divergent. Sitting right in front of me.
“Correct. The aptitude test is by far my greatest achievement as a scientist,” she replies. “I looked up your test results, Beatrice. Apparently there was a problem with your test. It was never recorded, and your results had to be reported manually. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Did you know that you’re one of two people ever to get an Abnegation result and switch to Dauntless?”
“No,” I say, biting back my shock. Tobias and I are the only ones? But his result was genuine and mine was a lie. So it is really just him.
My stomach twinges at the thought of him. Right now I don’t care how unique he is. He called me pathetic.
“What made you choose Dauntless?” she asks.
“What does this have to do with anything?” I try to soften my voice, but it doesn’t work. “Aren’t you going to reprimand me for abandoning my faction and seeking out my brother? ‘Faction before blood,’ right?” I pause. “Come to think of it, why am I in your office in the first place? Aren’t you supposed to be important or something?”
Maybe that will take her down a few pegs.
Her mouth pinches for a second. “I will leave the reprimands to the Dauntless,” she says, leaning back in her chair.
I set my hands on the back of the chair I refused to sit in and clench my fingers. Behind her is a window that overlooks the city. The train takes a lazy turn in the distance.
“As to the reason for your presence here…a quality of my faction is curiosity,” she says, “and while perusing your records, I saw that there was another error with another one of your simulations. Again, it failed to be recorded. Did you know that?”
“How did you access my records? Only the Dauntless have access to those.”
“Because Erudite developed the simulations, we have an… understandingwith the Dauntless, Beatrice.” She tilts her head and smiles at me. “I am merely concerned for the competence of our technology. If it fails while you are around, I have to ensure that it does not continue to do so, you understand?”
I understand only one thing: She is lying to me. She doesn’t care about the technology — she suspects that something is awry with my test results. Just like the Dauntless leaders, she is sniffing around for the Divergent. And if my mother wants Caleb to research the simulation serum, it is probably because Jeanine developed it.
But what is so threatening about my ability to manipulate the simulations? Why would it matter to the representative of the Erudite, of all people?
I can’t answer either question. But the look she gives me reminds me of the look in the attack dog’s eyes in the aptitude test — a vicious, predatory stare. She wants to rip me to pieces. I can’t lie down in submission now. I have become an attack dog too.
I feel my pulse in my throat.
“I don’t know how they work,” I say, “but the liquid I was injected with made me sick to my stomach. Maybe my simulation administrator was distracted because he was worried I would throw up, and he forgot to record it. I got sick after the aptitude test too.”
“Do you habitually have a sensitive stomach, Beatrice?” Her voice is like a razor’s edge. She taps her trimmed fingernails against the glass desk.
“Ever since I was young,” I reply as smoothly as I can. I release the chair back and sidestep it to sit down. I can’t seem tense, even though I feel like my insides are writhing within me.
“You have been extremely successful with the simulations,” she says. “To what do you attribute the ease with which you complete them?”
“I’m brave,” I say, staring into her eyes. The other factions see the Dauntless a certain way. Brash, aggressive, impulsive. Cocky. I should be what she expects. I smirk at her. “I’m the best initiate they’ve got.”
I lean forward, balancing my elbows on my knees. I will have to go further with this to make it convincing.
“You want to know why I chose Dauntless?” I ask. “It’s because I was bored.” Further, further. Lies require commitment. “I was tired of being a wussy little do-gooder and I wanted out.”
“So you don’t miss your parents?” she asks delicately.
“Do I miss getting scolded for looking in the mirror? Do I miss being told to shut up at the dinner table?” I shake my head. “No. I don’t miss them. They’re not my family anymore.”
The lie burns my throat on the way out, or maybe that’s the tears I’m fighting. I picture my mother standing behind me with a comb and a pair of scissors, faintly smiling as she trims my hair, and I want to scream rather than insult her like this.
“Can I take that to mean…” Jeanine purses her lips and pauses for a few seconds before finishing. “…that you agree with the reports that have been released about the political leaders of this city?”
The reports that label my family as corrupt, power-hungry, moralizing dictators? The reports that carry subtle threats and hint at revolution? They make me sick to my stomach. Knowing that she is the one who released them makes me want to strangle her.
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