Allegiant - 04 by Veronica Roth

Author:Veronica Roth [Roth, Veronica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-THREE

TOBIAS

“LOOK WHO IT is,” Peter says as I walk

into the dormitory. “The traitor.”

There are maps spread across his cot

and the one next to his. They are white

and pale blue and dull green, and they

draw me to them by some strange

magnetism. On each one Peter has drawn

a wobbly circle—around our city,

around Chicago. He’s marking the limits

of where he’s been.

I watch that circle shrink into each

map, until it’s just a bright red dot, like a

drop of blood.

And then I back away, afraid of what

it means that I am so small.

“If you think you’re standing on some

kind of moral high ground, you’re

wrong,” I say to Peter. “Why all the

maps?”

“I’m having trouble wrapping my

head around it, the size of the world,” he

says. “Some of the Bureau people have

been helping me learn more about it.

Planets and stars and bodies of water,

things like that.”

He says it casually, but I know from

the frantic scribbling on maps that his

interest isn’t casual—it’s obsessive. I

was obsessive about my fears, once, in

the same way, always trying to make

sense of them, over and over again.

“Is it helping?” I say. I realize that

I’ve never had a conversation with Peter

that didn’t involve yelling at him. Not

that he didn’t deserve it, but I don’t

know anything about him. I barely

remember his last name from the initiate

roster. Hayes. Peter Hayes.

“Sort of.” He picks up one of the

bigger maps. It shows the entire globe,

pressed flat like kneaded dough. I stare

at it long enough to make sense of the

shapes on it, the blue stretches of water

and the multicolored pieces of land. On

one of the pieces is a red dot. He points

at it. “That dot covers all the places

we’ve ever been. You could cut that

piece of land out of the ground and sink

it into this ocean and no one would even

notice.”

I feel that fear again, the fear of my

own size. “Right. So?”

“So? So everything I’ve ever

worried about or said or done, how can

it possibly matter?” He shakes his head.

“It doesn’t.”

“Of course it does,” I say. “All that

land is filled with people, every one of

them different, and the things they do to

each other matter.”

He shakes his head again, and I

wonder, suddenly, if this is how he

comforts himself: by convincing himself

that the bad things he’s done don’t

matter. I see how the mammoth planet

that terrifies me seems like a haven to

him, a place where he can disappear into

its great space, never distinguishing

himself,

and

never

being

held

responsible for his actions.

He bends over to untie his shoes.

“So, have you been ostracized from your

little crowd of devotees?”

“No,” I say automatically. Then I

add, “Maybe. But they aren’t my

devotees.”

“Please. They’re like the Cult of

Four.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Jealous?

Wish you had a Cult of Psychopaths to

call your very own?”

One of his eyebrows twitches up. “If

I was a psychopath, I would have killed

you in your sleep by now.”

“And added my eyeballs to your

eyeball collection, no doubt.”

Peter laughs too, and I realize that I

am exchanging jokes and conversation

with the initiate who stabbed Edward in

the eye and tried to kill my girlfriend—if

she’s still that. But then, he’s also the

Dauntless who helped us end the attack

simulation and saved Tris from a

horrible death.

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.