Divergent (Divergent Series) by Roth Veronica

Author:Roth, Veronica [Roth, Veronica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

I walk straight to the tattoo place where I last saw Tori.

There aren’t many people out, because it’s midafter-noon and most of them are at work or at school. There are three people in the tattoo place: the other tattoo artist, who is drawing a lion on another man’s arm, and Tori, who is sorting through a stack of paper on the counter. She looks up when I walk in.

“Hello, Tris,” she says. She glances at the other tattoo artist, who is too focused on what he’s doing to notice us. “Let’s go in the back.”

I follow her behind the curtain that separates the two rooms. The next room contains a few chairs, spare tattoo needles, ink, pads of paper, and framed artwork. Tori draws the curtain shut and sits in one of the chairs. I sit next to her, tapping my feet to give myself something to do.

“What’s going on?” she says. “How are the simulations going?”

“Really well.” I nod a few times. “A little too well, I hear.”

“Ah.”

“Please help me understand,” I say quietly. “What does it mean to be…” I hesitate. I should not say the word “Divergent” here. “What the hell am I? What does it have to do with the simulations?”

Tori’s demeanor changes. She leans back and crosses her arms. Her expression becomes guarded.

“Among other things, you…you are someone who is aware, when they are in a simulation, that what they are experiencing is not real,” she says. “Someone who can then manipulate the simulation or even shut it down. And also…” She leans forward and looks into my eyes. “Someone who, because you are also Dauntless…tends to die.”

A weight settles on my chest, like each sentence she speaks is piling there. Tension builds inside me until I can’t stand to hold it in anymore—I have to cry, or scream, or…

I let out a harsh little laugh that dies almost as soon as it’s born and say, “So I’m going to die, then?”

“Not necessarily,” she says. “The Dauntless leaders don’t know about you yet. I deleted your aptitude results from the system immediately and manually logged your result as Abnegation. But make no mistake—if they discover what you are, they will kill you.”

I stare at her in silence. She doesn’t look crazy. She sounds steady, if a little urgent, and I’ve never suspected her of being unbalanced, but she must be. There hasn’t been a murder in our city as long as I’ve been alive. Even if individuals are capable of it, the leaders of a faction can’t possibly be.

“You’re paranoid,” I say. “The leaders of the Dauntless wouldn’t kill me. People don’t do that. Not anymore. That’s the point of all this…all the factions.”

“Oh, you think so?” She plants her hands on her knees and stares right at me, her features taut with sudden ferocity. “They got my brother, why not you, huh? What makes you special?”

“Your brother?” I say, narrowing my eyes.

“Yeah. My brother. He and I both transferred from Erudite, only his aptitude test was inconclusive.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.