I breathe in the smell of warm asphalt and set off at a slow run, my sneakers slapping the ground. The streets that surround the Dauntless sector of the city are empty; my faction lives huddled together, like a pack of sleeping dogs. That’s why, I realize, Max seemed so concerned about my living alone. If I’m really Dauntless, shouldn’t I want my life to overlap with theirs as much as possible, shouldn’t I be looking for ways to fold myself into my faction until we are inextricable?
I consider it as I run. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m not doing a very good job of integrating myself; maybe I’m not pushing myself hard enough. I find a steady rhythm, squinting at the street signs as I pass them, to keep track of where I’m going. I know when I reach the ring of buildings the factionless occupy because I can see their shadows moving around behind blacked-out and boarded windows. I move to run under the train tracks, the latticed wood stretching out far ahead of me and curving away from the street.
The Hub grows larger and larger in my sight as I get closer. My heart is pounding, but I don’t think it’s from the running. I stop abruptly when I reach the train platform, and as I stand at the foot of the stairs, catching my breath, I remember when I first climbed these steps, the sea of hooting Dauntless moving around me, pressing me forward. It was easy to be carried by their momentum then. I have to carry myself forward now. I start to climb, my footsteps echoing on the metal, and when I reach the top, I check my watch.
Two o’clock.
But the platform is empty.
I walk back and forth over it, to make sure no dark figures are hiding in dark corners. A train rumbles in the distance, and I pause to look for the light fixed to its nose. I didn’t know the trains ran this late—all power in the city is supposed to shut off after midnight, to conserve energy. I wonder if Marcus asked the factionless for a special favor. But why would he travel on the train? The Marcus Eaton I know would never dare to associate himself so closely with Dauntless. He would sooner walk the streets barefoot.
The train light flashes, just once, before it careens past the platform. It pounds and churns, slowing but not stopping, and I see a person leap from the second-to-last car, lean and lithe. Not Marcus. A woman.
I squeeze the paper tighter into my fist, and tighter, until my knuckles ache.
The woman strides toward me, and when she’s a few feet away, I can see her. Long curly hair. Prominent hooked nose. Black Dauntless pants, gray Abnegation shirt, brown Amity boots. Her face is lined, worn, thin. But I know her, I could never forget her face, my mother, Evelyn Eaton.
“Tobias,” she breathes, wide-eyed, like she’s as stunned by me as I am by her, but that’s impossible. She knew I was alive, but I remember how the urn containing her ashes looked as it stood on my father’s mantel, marked with his fingerprints.
I remember the day I woke to a group of grave-faced Abnegation in my father’s kitchen, and how they all looked up when I entered, and how Marcus explained to me, with sympathy I knew he didn’t feel, that my mother had passed in the middle of the night, complications from early labor and a miscarriage.
She was pregnant? I remember asking.
Of course she was, son. He turned to the other people in our kitchen. Just shock, of course. Bound to happen, with something like this.
I remember sitting with a plate full of food, in the living room, with a group of murmuring Abnegation around me, the whole neighborhood packing my house to the brim and no one saying anything that mattered to me.
“I know this must be . . . alarming for you,” she says. I hardly recognize her voice; it’s lower and stronger and harder than in my memories of her, and that’s how I know the years have changed her. I feel too many things to manage, too powerfully to handle, and then suddenly I feel nothing at all.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” I say, flat. It’s a stupid thing to say. Such a stupid thing to say to your mother when she comes back from the dead, but it’s a stupid situation.
“I know,” she says, and I think there are tears in her eyes, but it’s too dark to tell. “I’m not.”
“Obviously.” The voice coming from my mouth is snide, casual. “Were you ever even pregnant?”
“Pregnant? Is that what they told you, something about dying in childbirth?” She shakes her head. “No, I wasn’t. I had been planning my exit for months—I needed to disappear. I thought he might tell you when you were old enough.”
I let out a short laugh, like a bark. “You thought that Marcus Eaton would admit that his wife left him. To me.”
“You’re his son,” Evelyn says, frowning. “He loves you.”
Then all the tension of the past hour, the past few weeks, the past few years builds inside me, too much to contain, and I really laugh, but it comes out sounding strange, mechanical. It scares me even though I’m the one doing it.
“You have a right to be angry that you were lied to,” she says. “I would be angry, too. But Tobias, I had to leave, I know you understand why. . . .”
She reaches for me, and I grab her wrist, push her away. “Don’t touch me.”
“All right, all right.” She puts her palms up and backs away. “But you do understand, you must.”
“What I understand is that you left me alone in a house with a sadistic maniac,” I say.
It looks like something inside her is collapsing. Her hands fall to her sides like two weights. Her shoulders slump. Even her face goes slack, as it dawns on her what I mean, what I must mean. I cross my arms and put my shoulders back, trying to look as big and strong and tough as possible. It’s easier now, in Dauntless black, than it ever was in Abnegation gray, and maybe that’s why I chose Dauntless as a haven. Not out of spite, not to hurt Marcus, but because I knew this life would teach me a stronger way to be.