“Are we sure she’s not just an Erudite spy?” Lynn says.

“Lynn, she saved half our faction from thisstuff,” says Marlene, tapping the bandage on her arm from where the Dauntless traitors shot her. “Well, half of half of our faction.”

“In some circles they call that a quarter, Mar,” Lynn says.

“Anyway, who cares if she is a traitor?” Zeke says. “We’re not planning anything that she can inform them about. And we certainly wouldn’t include her if we were.”

“There is plenty of information for her to gather here,” Lynn says. “How many of us there are, for example, or how many of us aren’t wired for simulations.”

“You didn’t see her when she was telling me why she left,” says Zeke. “I believe her.”

Cara and Christina have gotten up, and are walking out of the room.

“I’ll be right back,” I say. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

I wait until Cara and Christina have gone through the doors, then half walk, half jog in that direction. I open one of the doors slowly, so it doesn’t make any noise, and then close it slowly behind me. I am in a dim hallway that smells like garbage — this must be where the Candor trash chute is.

I hear two female voices around the corner and creep toward the end of the hallway to hear better.

“… just can’t handle her being here,” one of them sobs. Christina. “I can’t stop picturing it … what she did…. I don’t understand how she could have done that!”

Christina’s sobs make me feel like I am about to crack open.

Cara takes her time responding.

“Well, I do,” she says.

“What?” Christina says with a hiccup.

“You have to understand; we’re trained to see things as logically as possible,” says Cara. “So don’t think that I’m callous. But that girl was probably scared out of her mind, certainly not capable of assessing situations cleverly at the time, if she was ever able to do so.”

My eyes fly open. What a—I run through a short list of insults in my mind before listening to her continue.

“And the simulation made her incapable of reasoning with him, so when he threatened her life, she reacted as she had been trained by the Dauntless to react: Shoot to kill.”

“So what are you saying?” says Christina bitterly. “We should just forget about it, because it makes perfect sense?”

“Of course not,” says Cara. Her voice wobbles, just a little, and she repeats herself, quietly this time. “Of coursenot.”

She clears her throat. “It’s just that you have to be around her, and I want to make it easier for you. You don’t have to forgive her. Actually, I’m not sure why you were friends with her in the first place; she always seemed a bit erratic to me.”

I tense up as I wait for Christina to agree with her, but to my surprise — and relief — she doesn’t.

Cara continues. “Anyway. You don’t have to forgive her, but you should try to understand that what she did was not out of malice; it was out of panic. That way, you can look at her without wanting to punch her in her exceptionally long nose.”

My hand moves automatically to my nose. Christina laughs a little, which feels like a hard poke to the stomach. I back up through the door to the Gathering Place.

Even though Cara was rude — and the nose comment was a low blow — I am grateful for what she said.

Tobias emerges from a door hidden behind a length of white cloth. He flicks the cloth out of the way irritably before coming toward us and sitting beside me at the table in the Gathering Place.

“Kang is going to meet with a representative of Jeanine Matthews at seven in the morning,” he says.

“A representative?” Zeke says. “She’s not going herself?”

“Yeah, and stand out in the open where a bunch of angry people with guns can take aim?” Uriah smirks a little. “I’d like to see her try. No, really, I would.”

“Is Kang the Brilliant taking a Dauntless escort, at least?” Lynn says.

“Yes,” Tobias says. “Some of the older members volunteered. Bud said he would keep his ears open and report back.”

I frown at him. How does he know all this information? And why, after two years of avoiding becoming a Dauntless leader at all costs, is he suddenly acting like one?

“So I guess the real question is,” says Zeke, folding his hands on the table, “if you were Erudite, what would yousay at this meeting?”

They all look at me. Expectantly.

“What?” I say.

“You’re Divergent,” Zeke replies.

“So is Tobias.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t have aptitude for Erudite.”

“And how do you know I do?”

Zeke lifts his shoulder. “Seems likely. Doesn’t it seem likely?”

Uriah and Lynn nod. Tobias’s mouth twitches, as if in a smile, but if that’s what it was, he suppresses it. I feel like a stone just dropped into my stomach.

“You all have functional brains, last time I checked,” I say. “You can think like the Erudite, too.”

“But we don’t have special Divergentbrains!” says Marlene. She touches her fingertips to my scalp and squeezes lightly. “Come on, do your magic.”

“There’s no such thing as Divergent magic, Mar,” says Lynn.

“And if there is, we shouldn’t be consulting it,” says Shauna. It’s the first thing she’s said since we sat down. She doesn’t even look at me when she says it; she just scowls at her younger sister.

“Shauna—” Zeke starts.

“Don’t ‘ Shauna ’me!” she says, focusing her scowl on him instead. “Don’t you think someone with the aptitude for multiple factions might have a loyalty problem? If she’s got aptitude for Erudite, how can we be sure she’s not workingfor Erudite?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Tobias, his voice low.

“I am not being ridiculous.” She smacks the table. “I know I belong in Dauntless because everything I did in that aptitude test told me so. I’m loyal to my faction for that reason — because there’s nowhere else I could possibly be. But her? And you?” She shakes her head. “I have no idea who you’re loyal to. And I’m not going to pretend like everything’s okay.”

She gets up, and when Zeke reaches for her, she throws his hand aside, marching toward one of the doors. I watch her until the door closes behind her and the black fabric that hangs in front of it settles.

I feel wound up, like I might scream, only Shauna isn’t here for me to scream at.

“It’s not magic,” I say hotly. “You just have to ask yourself what the most logical response to a particular situation is.”

I am greeted with blank stares.

“Seriously,” I say. “If I were in this situation, staring at a group of Dauntless guards and Jack Kang, I probably wouldn’t resort to violence, right?”

“Well, you might, if you had your own Dauntless guards. And then all it takes is one shot — bam, he’s dead, and Erudite’s better off,” says Zeke.

“Whoever they send to talk to Jack Kang isn’t going to be some random Erudite kid; it’s going to be someone important,” I say. “It would be a stupid move to fire on Jack Kang and risk losing whoever they send as Jeanine’s representative.”

“See? This is why we need you to analyze the situation,” Zeke says. “If it was me, I would kill him; it would be worth the risk.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. I already have a headache. “Fine.”

I try to put myself in Jeanine Matthews’s place. I already know she won’t negotiate with Jack Kang. Why would she need to? He has nothing to offer her. She will use the situation to her advantage.

“I think,” I say, “that Jeanine Matthews will manipulate him. And that he will do anything to protect his faction, even if it means sacrificing the Divergent.” I pause for a moment, remembering how he held his faction’s influence over our heads at the meeting. “Or sacrificing the Dauntless. So we needto hear what they say in that meeting.”

Uriah and Zeke exchange a look. Lynn smiles, but it isn’t her usual smile. It doesn’t spread to her eyes, which look more like gold than ever, with that coldness in them.