Chapter 39 Chapter 39: The Road to Escape

No shots were fired.He still looked at me fiercely, but his body didn't move.Why didn't he shoot me?His heart was pounding under my palm, and mine was beating faster too.He is the Divergent.He can fight situational simulations, against any situational simulation. "Tobias," I called softly, "it's me." I took a few steps forward and put my arms around him tightly.He was stiff and his heart was beating faster.I could feel his heartbeat even on my face, and suddenly felt the thud.It was the sound of a gun falling to the ground.He grabbed my shoulder - so hard his fingers dug into the skin of my wound.He pushed me back, and I couldn't help but yelp.Maybe he wanted to kill me in a more brutal way?

"Tracey." He called softly.He came back again, touching mine with his mouth. He wrapped his arms around me, lifted me off the ground, and held me close to him, his hands gripping my back.His face and the back of his neck were covered with sweat, and he was shaking.My shoulder hurts sharply, but I don't care, don't care at all, don't care at all. He put me down, looked at me, and gently stroked my forehead, eyebrows, cheeks, and lips with his fingers. He suddenly let out a sound that was like a sob or a sigh and a moan, and kissed me again, with tears in his eyes.I never thought Tobias would cry, and it hurts my heart.

I threw myself on his chest, crying through his shirt.All the pain came back, the throbbing of the head, the pain from the wound in the shoulder, the body was so heavy that it seemed to be doubled in weight, I leaned on him and he hurried to hold me. "How did you get out of the situational simulation?" I asked. "I don't know, I just heard your voice," he replied. A few seconds later, I remembered the reason here, so I took two steps back, wiped the tears off my face with the heel of my palm, turned to look at the big screen, and my eyes fell on a screen above the automatic water dispenser.No wonder he was silent the other day when I complained about Dauntless, just staring straight at the wall above the water cooler.Now I know why.

Tobias and I both stood there for a while, and I thought I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking the same thing: How did something so small manage to control so many people? "Am I manipulating the simulation?" he asked. "I don't know if it's manipulation or surveillance," I said. "It's done. I don't know how it's done, but Jeanine set it up like this, and it just works." He shook his head and said, "It's... unbelievable. Horrible, evil...but it's incredible." I saw movement on a screen, and then saw my brother, Marcus, and Pete standing on the first floor of the building.The Dauntless soldiers surrounding them were all dressed in black and armed with weapons.

"Tobias, hurry up!" He rushed to the computer screen and tapped his fingers on it a few times, I couldn't see what he was doing, only my brother.He held up the gun I had given him, as if about to fire.I bit my lip tightly: "Don't shoot." Tobias pressed the screen a few more times, typing some letters that didn't make sense to me. "Don't shoot." I saw a flash of light—a spark from a gun—and gasped.My brother, Marcus, and Pete all crouched on the ground with their heads in their hands.After a while, they all moved, and I knew they were alive, and the Dauntless soldiers moved on.A group of dark shadows surrounded my brother.

"Tobias," I called. He tapped the screen again, and everyone on the first floor stopped in place in an instant, motionless. Their arms hang down at their sides. Then the Dauntless started to move.They turned their heads from side to side, dropped their guns, moved their mouths as if they were yelling, and pushed each other, some of them knelt on the ground, holding their heads, and kept shaking them back and forth. My tight chest finally relaxed, I sat down on my buttocks, and let out a long breath. Tobias crouched next to the computer, unpacking the box next to it. "I have to get the data out, or they'll restart the scenario."

I watched the crazy scene on the screen and thought it must be the same crazy scene in the street.I scanned the screens one by one, searching for the one that showed the Disinterested section of the city.There was only one—far off in the far corner of the room, at the very bottom.On that screen, the Dauntless were firing at each other, shoving each other, and screaming — chaos.Men and women dressed in black fell to the ground one after another, and people ran in all directions. "Found it." Tobias held the computer hard drive in his hand, a metal piece the size of his palm, handed it to me, and I stuffed it into my back pocket.

"It's time for us to leave." I said standing up and pointing to the screen on the right. "Yes, let's go." He put his arms around my shoulders, "Quick." We went down the corridor together and turned a corner. The elevator reminded me of my father.I couldn't resist looking for his body. He was lying in the corridor to the right of the elevator, next to the bodies of several guards.A choked scream came out of my mouth, and I turned around, unable to bear to look any further.Bile rushed up my throat, and I leaned on the wall to vomit. At that moment, everything in my heart collapsed.I squatted next to a dead body, forcing myself to breathe through my mouth to avoid the smell of blood, and then covered my mouth with my hand, afraid that I would cry out.Five more seconds, five seconds of vulnerability, and I stand up and face all odds.Timing starts: one, two, three, four.

Fives. I didn't pay much attention to my surroundings.There's an elevator, a glass room, a cold draft, and a bunch of shouting Dauntless soldiers in black.I searched for Caleb's face, but there was nowhere until we stepped out of the glass building and out into the sunlight. As I walked through the door, Caleb ran towards me, and I threw myself into his arms, and he hugged me tightly. "Where's Dad?" he asked. I just shook my head. "Oh." He was so choked up that he could barely speak, "This is the way he wanted." I looked over Caleb, and Tobias' foot stopped in mid-air.He saw Marcus, and his body froze there.Only then did I realize that in my rush to destroy the situational simulation system just now, I forgot to warn him that Marcus was coming too.

Marcus walked over to Tobias and put his arms around his son.Tobias was motionless, his arms hanging at his sides, his face expressionless, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, his eyes on the ceiling. "Son." Marcus sighed. Tobias flinched back. "Hello." I broke away from Caleb's arms.I still remember the feeling of Marcus' belt around my wrist in Tobias' "Fear Room."I stood between the two of them and pushed Marcus away, "Hey, get away from him." Tobias's breath was on my neck, and his breathing was a little short. "Get away from him!" I hissed.

"Beatrice, what are you doing?" Caleb asked me. "Tracey." Tobias called me. Marcus looked at me in shock, which seemed too fake to me—his eyes were too wide open, his mouth was too open.No matter what to pretend, I immediately felt that his smile was extremely hypocritical.If I could get that fake look off his face, I would. "The Erudite articles don't seem to be all lies," I said, squinting at Marcus. "What are you talking about?" Marcus said softly. "I don't know what was said to you, Beatrice, but..." "The only reason I haven't shot you yet is because he's the one who should kill you," I said. "Stay away from him, or I won't have much control." Tobias put his hand on my arm and held on tightly.Marcus' eyes stared at me for a moment, as they did in Tobias' "Fear Zone," and I couldn't help thinking that they were two bottomless black holes.Then he looked away. "We have to go," said Tobias uneasily. "The train will arrive any minute." We walked on hard ground, toward the train tracks.Tobias gritted his teeth and stared straight ahead.A pang of regret stung my heart.Maybe I should let him handle his own business with his father. "Sorry." I mumbled. "You have nothing to be sorry about." He took my hand, his fingers still shaking. "If we take the reverse train, instead of going into the city, but out of the city, we can reach Amity headquarters," I said. "Everyone else has gone there." "What about the Honesty?" Caleb asked. "What do you think they'll do?" I don't know how the honest party will react to this attack.They wouldn't side with the Erudites - they never did mean things, but they couldn't stand up against the Erudites either. The train was approaching, and we stood by the track for a few minutes.Finally, Tobias picked me up because I couldn't stand anymore.I leaned my head on his shoulder and breathed deeply the scent of his skin.Because he saved me when I was attacked, his breath always reminded me of safety, and at this moment, as long as I concentrate on this breath, I feel safe. In fact, I don't feel safe as long as Marcus and Pete are with us.I try not to look at them, but their presence is like a blanket over my face.Fate is cruel. When the people I love die behind me, I have to go forward with the people I hate. Either die or wake up to find that he is a murderer.Where are Christina and Tori now?Wandering the streets, feeling guilty for what you've done?Or turn their guns on those who forced them to commit crimes?Or, are they dead too?Wish I knew the answer. At the same time, I wish I never knew.If she was alive, Christina would find Will's body; if she saw me again, her honesty-trained eyes would see that I was the one who killed him, and I knew that.I also knew that guilt would haunt me, choke me, squeeze my body, so I had to let myself forget about it. The train is coming.Tobias put me down so I could hop in the car.I jogged a few steps along the carriage, then jumped up sideways, landed on my left arm first, twisted my body to climb in, and sat down against the wall.Caleb sat across from me and Tobias sat next to me.This is the best way to sit, to create a barrier between me and Marcus and Pete.my enemy.his enemy. The train turns a corner, and the city falls behind us, and it will get smaller and smaller until we see the end of the track, where there are forests and fields, the last time I saw them I was too young to appreciate them.The kindness and kindness of the Amity faction will appease us for a while, but it cannot stay there forever.Soon, the leaders of the Erudite and corrupt Dauntless will be coming for us, and we must move on. Tobias pulled me closer to him, and we bent our knees and bowed our heads so that we could be close together in the little space we had made, without looking at the people who were bothering us.Our breaths are also intertwined and fused together. "My parents, they died today," I said. Even though I said it, even though I knew it was true, it felt so unreal. "They died for me." I emphasized that this is extremely important. "They love you. There's no better way for them to tell you that than this." I nodded, watching the outline of his jaw. "You almost died today, I almost killed you, why didn't you shoot me, Triss?" "I can't do that. It would be like shooting myself." He looked heartbroken and his face was getting closer to mine so his lips brushed mine when he spoke. "I want to tell you something," he said. I ran my fingers over the tendon in his hand and looked at him. "I may be in love with you," he smiled slightly, "but, I've been waiting until I'm sure." "You're so reasonable." I smiled, too. "We should get some paper so you can make a list, or a form or something." I can feel him smiling beside me, his nose sliding under my chin, his lips pressed behind my ear. "Maybe I'm sure," he said softly, "I just didn't want to scare you." I smiled: "Then you should be more sure." "Well, I love you," he said. I kissed him as the train rolled into the dark unknown.Kissed for as long as I wanted, longer than I should have - come to think of it, my brother was sitting less than a meter away. I reached into my pocket, took out the hard drive containing the situational simulation data, and turned it over in my hand. The "metal" reflected the increasingly dim light behind me.Marcus' eyes followed my every move greedily.Not safe enough, I thought, not safe enough. I pressed the hard drive to my chest, leaned my head on Tobias' shoulder, squinted my eyes, and tried to fall asleep. The Almighty and the Dauntless are fragmented, their members scattered.Now we are like non-partisan people.Out of the faction, I don't know what life would be like, it feels as if I have nowhere to go, like a leaf flying away from the tree it grew from.We are the lost bunch, leaving everything behind.Without a home, without a road, everything is uncertain.I am no longer Tris the Selfless, and Tris the Brave. At this moment, I thought, I have to go beyond both.