My body goes weak, and I lean into the broom handle for support.
A hand touches my shoulder, and I twitch away from it. But it’s just a Candor girl—a child. She looks up at me, wide-eyed.
“Are you all right?” she says, her voice high and indistinct.
“I’m fine,” I say. Too sharply. I hurry to amend it. “Just tired. Thank you.”
“I think you’re lying,” she says.
I notice a bandage peeking out from the end of her sleeve, probably covering the needle puncture. The idea of this little girl under a simulation nauseates me. I can’t even look at her. I turn away.
And I see them: outside, a traitor Dauntless man, propping up a woman with a bleeding leg. I see the gray streaks in the woman’s hair and the end of the man’s hooked nose and the blue armband of a Dauntless traitor just beneath their shoulders, and recognize them both. Tori and Zeke.
Tori is trying to walk, but one of her legs drags behind her, useless. A wet, dark patch covers most of her thigh.
The Candor stop sweeping and stare at them. The Dauntless guards standing near the elevators rush toward the entrance with their guns lifted. My fellow sweepers back up to get out of the way, but I stay where I am, heat rushing through me as Zeke and Tori approach.
“Are they even armed?” someone says.
Tori and Zeke reach what used to be the doors, and he puts up one of his hands when he sees the row of Dauntless with guns. The other he keeps wrapped around Tori’s waist.
“She needs medical attention,” says Zeke. “Right now.”
“Why should we give a traitor medical attention?” a Dauntless man with wispy blond hair and a double-pierced lip asks over his gun. A patch of blue dye marks his forearm.
Tori moans, and I slip between two Dauntless to reach for her. She puts her hand, which is sticky with blood, in mine. Zeke lowers her to the ground with a grunt.
“Tris,” she says, sounding dazed.
“Better step back, girl,” the blond Dauntless man says.
“No,” I say. “Put your gun down.”
“Told you the Divergent were crazy,” one of the other armed Dauntless mutters to the woman next to him.
“I don’t care if you bring her upstairs and tie her to a bed to keep her from going on a shooting spree!” says Zeke, scowling. “Don’t let her bleed to death in the lobby of Candor headquarters!”
Finally, a few Dauntless come forward and lift Tori up.
“Where should we . . . take her?” one of them asks.
“Find Helena,” Zeke says. “Dauntless nurse.”
The men nod and carry her toward the elevators. Zeke and I meet eyes.
“What happened?” I ask him.
“The traitor Dauntless found out we were collecting information from them,” he says. “Tori tried to get away, but they shot her as she was running. I helped her get here.”
“That’s a nice story,” says the blond Dauntless man. “Want to tell it again under truth serum?”
Zeke shrugs. “All right.” He puts his wrists together in front of him dramatically. “Haul me away, if you’re so desperate to.”
Then his eyes focus on something over my shoulder, and he starts walking. I turn to see Uriah jogging from the elevator bank. He is grinning.
“Heard a rumor you were a dirty traitor,” Uriah says.
“Yeah, whatever,” says Zeke.
They collide in an embrace that looks almost painful to me, slapping each other’s backs and laughing with their fists clasped between them.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us,” says Lynn, shaking her head. She sits across from me at the table, her arms crossed and one of her legs propped up.
“Oh, don’t get all huffy about it,” says Zeke. “I wasn’t even supposed to tell Shauna and Uriah. And it sort of defeats the purpose of being a spy if you tell everyone that’s what you are.”
We sit in a room in Candor headquarters called the Gathering Place, which the Dauntless have taken to saying in a mocking way whenever they can. It is large and open, with black-and-white cloth draped on every wall, and a circle of podiums in the center of the room. Large round tables surround the podiums. Lynn told me they host monthly debates here, for entertainment, and also hold religious services here once a week. But even when no events are scheduled, the room is usually full.
Zeke was cleared by the Candor an hour ago, in a short interrogation on the eighteenth floor. It was not as somber an occasion as Tobias’s and my interrogation, partly because there was no suspicious video footage implicating Zeke, and partly because Zeke is funny even when under truth serum. Maybe especially so. In any case, we came to the Gathering Place “for a ‘Hey, you’re not a dirty traitor!’ celebration,” as Uriah put it.
“Yeah, but we’ve been insulting you since the simulation attack,” Lynn says. “And now I feel like a jerk about it.”
Zeke puts his arm around Shauna. “You are a jerk, Lynn. It’s part of your charm.”
Lynn launches a plastic cup at him, which he deflects. Water sprays over the table, hitting him in the eye.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” says Zeke, rubbing his eye, “I was mostly working on getting Erudite defectors out safely. That’s why there’s a big group of them here, and a small group at Amity headquarters. But Tori . . . I have no idea what she was doing. She kept sneaking away for hours at a time, and whenever she was around, it was like she was about to explode. It’s no wonder she gave us away.”
“How’d you get the job?” says Lynn. “You’re not that special.”
“It was more because of where I was after the simulation attack. Smack-dab in a pack of Dauntless traitors. I decided to go with it,” he says. “Not sure about Tori, though.”
“She transferred from Erudite,” I say.
What I don’t say, because I’m sure she wouldn’t want everyone to know, is that Tori probably seemed explosive in Erudite headquarters because they murdered her brother for being Divergent.
She told me once that she was waiting for an opportunity to get revenge.
“Oh,” says Zeke. “How do you know that?”
“Well, all the faction transfers have a secret club,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “We meet every third Thursday.”