“Wait, you said they were waiting?” says Caleb. “What were they waiting for, exactly?”
“For the world to fall apart,” Edward says. “And now it has.”
The door opens, and a severe-looking woman with a lazy eye stands in the doorway. Her steady eye scans the four of us.
“Strays?” she says.
“Not hardly, Therese.” He jabs his thumb over his shoulder, at Tobias. “This one’s Tobias Eaton.”
Therese stares at Tobias for a few seconds, then nods. “He certainly is. Hold on.”
She shuts the door again. Tobias swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“You know who she’s going to get, don’t you,” says Caleb to Tobias.
“Caleb,” Tobias says. “Please shut up.”
To my surprise, my brother suppresses his Erudite curiosity.
The door opens again, and Therese steps back to let us in. We walk into an old boiler room with machinery that emerges from the darkness so suddenly I hit it with my knees and elbows. Therese leads us through the maze of metal to the back of the room, where several bulbs dangle from the ceiling over a table.
A middle-aged woman stands behind the table. She has curly black hair and olive skin. Her features are stern, so angular they almost make her unattractive, but not quite.
Tobias clutches my hand. At that moment I realize that he and the woman have the same nose—hooked, a little too big on her face but the right size on his. They also have the same strong jaw, distinct chin, spare upper lip, stick-out ears. Only her eyes are different—instead of blue, they are so dark they look black.
“Evelyn,” he says, his voice shaking a little.
Evelyn was the name of Marcus’s wife and Tobias’s mother. My grip on Tobias’s hand loosens. Just days ago I was remembering her funeral. Her funeral. And now she stands in front of me, her eyes colder than the eyes of any Abnegation woman I’ve ever seen.
“Hello.” She walks around the table, surveying him. “You look older.”
“Yes, well. The passage of time tends to do that to a person.”
He already knew she was alive. How long ago did he find out?
She smiles. “So you’ve finally come—”
“Not for the reason you think,” he interrupts her. “We were running from Erudite, and the only chance of escape we had required me to tell your poorly armed lackeys my name.”
She must have made him angry somehow. But I can’t help but think that if I discovered my mother was alive after thinking she was dead for so long, I would never speak to her the way Tobias speaks to his mother now, no matter what she had done.
The truth of that thought makes me ache. I push it aside and focus instead on what’s in front of me. On the table behind Evelyn is a large map with markers all over it. A map of the city, obviously, but I’m not sure what the markers mean. On the wall behind her is a chalkboard with a chart on it. I can’t decipher the information in the chart; it’s written in shorthand I don’t know.
“I see.” Evelyn’s smile remains, but without its former touch of amusement. “Introduce me to your fellow refugees, then.”
Her eyes drift down to our joined hands. Tobias’s fingers spring apart. He gestures to me first. “This is Tris Prior. Her brother, Caleb. And their friend Susan Black.”
“Prior,” she says. “I know of several Priors, but none of them are named Tris. Beatrice, however . . .”
“Well,” I say, “I know of several living Eatons, but none of them are named Evelyn.”
“Evelyn Johnson is the name I prefer. Particularly among a pack of Abnegation.”
“Tris is the name I prefer,” I reply. “And we’re not Abnegation. Not all of us, anyway.”
Evelyn gives Tobias a look. “Interesting friends you’ve made.”
“Those are population counts?” says Caleb from behind me. He walks forward, his mouth open. “And . . . what? Factionless safe houses?” He points to the first line on the chart, which reads 7 . . . . . . . . . . Grn Hse. “I mean, these places, on the map? They’re safe houses, like this one, right?”
“That’s a lot of questions,” says Evelyn, arching an eyebrow. I recognize the expression. It belongs to Tobias—as does her distaste for questions. “For security purposes, I will not answer any of them. Anyway, it is time for dinner.”
She gestures toward the door. Susan and Caleb start toward it, followed by me, and Tobias and his mother are last. We work our way through the maze of machinery again.
“I’m not stupid,” she says in a low voice. “I know you want nothing to do with me—though I still don’t quite understand why—”
Tobias snorts.
“But,” she says, “I will extend my invitation again. We could use your help here, and I know you are like-minded about the faction system—”
“Evelyn,” Tobias says. “I chose Dauntless.”
“Choices can be made again.”
“What makes you think I’m interested in spending time anywhere near you?” he demands. I hear his footsteps stop, and slow down so I can hear how she responds.
“Because I’m your mother,” she says, and her voice almost breaks over the words, uncharacteristically vulnerable. “Because you’re my son.”
“You really don’t get it,” he says. “You don’t have the vaguest conception of what you’ve done to me.” He sounds breathless. “I don’t want to join up with your little band of factionless. I want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
“My little band of factionless is twice the size of Dauntless,” says Evelyn. “You would do well to take it seriously. Its actions may determine the future of this city.”
With that, she walks ahead of him, and ahead of me. Her words echo in my mind: Twice the size of Dauntless. When did they become so large?
Tobias looks at me, eyebrows lowered.
“How long have you known?” I say.
“About a year.” He slumps against the wall and closes his eyes. “She sent a coded message to me in Dauntless, telling me to meet her at the train yard. I did, because I was curious, and there she was. Alive. It wasn’t a happy reunion, as you can probably guess.”
“Why did she leave Abnegation?”