Insurgent by Veronica Roth

I force a smile. “But you should go. Susan needs you. She seems better, but she still needs you.”
    “Okay.” Caleb nods. “Well, I’ll try to join you soon. Be careful, though.”
    “Aren’t I always?”
    “No, I think the word for how you usually are is ‘reckless.’”
    Caleb squeezes my good shoulder lightly. I eat another fingertip’s worth of peanut butter.
    Tobias emerges from the men’s bathroom a few minutes later, his red Amity shirt replaced by a black T-shirt, and his short hair glistening with water. Our eyes meet across the room, and I know it’s time to leave.
     
     
    Candor headquarters is large enough to contain an entire world. Or so it seems to me.
    It is a wide cement building that overlooks what was once the river. The sign says MERC IS MART —it used to read “Merchandise Mart,” but most people refer to it as the Merciless Mart, because the Candor are merciless, but honest. They seem to have embraced the nickname.
    I don’t know what to expect, because I have never been inside. Tobias and I pause outside the doors and look at each other.
    “Here we go,” he says.
    I can’t see anything beyond my reflection in the glass doors. I look tired and dirty. For the first time, it occurs to me that we don’t have to do anything. We could hole up with the factionless and let the rest of them sort through this mess. We could be nobodies, safe, together.
    He still hasn’t told me about the conversation he had with his mother last night, and I don’t think he’s going to. He seemed so determined to get to Candor headquarters that I wonder if he’s planning something without me.
    I don’t know why I walk through the doors. Maybe I decide that we’ve come this far, we might as well see what’s going on. But I suspect it’s more that I know what’s true and what’s not. I am Divergent, so I am not nobody, there’s no such thing as “safe,” and I have other things on my mind than playing house with Tobias. And so, apparently, does he.
    The lobby is large and well-lit, with black marble floors that stretch back to an elevator bank. A ring of white marble tiles in the center of the room form the symbol of Candor: a set of unbalanced scales, meant to symbolize the weighing of truth against lies. The room is crawling with armed Dauntless.
    A Dauntless soldier with an arm in a sling approaches us, gun held ready, barrel fixed on Tobias.
    “Identify yourselves,” she says. She is young, but not young enough to know Tobias.
    The others gather behind her. Some of them eye us with suspicion, the rest with curiosity, but far stranger than both is the light I see in some of their eyes. Recognition. They might know Tobias, but how could they possibly recognize me?
    “Four,” he says. He nods toward me. “And this is Tris. Both Dauntless.”
    The Dauntless soldier’s eyes widen, but she does not lower her gun.
    “Some help here?” she asks. Some of the Dauntless step forward, but they do it cautiously, like we’re dangerous.
    “Is there a problem?” Tobias says.
    “Are you armed?”
    “Of course I’m armed. I’m Dauntless, aren’t I?”
    “Stand with your hands behind your head.” She says it wildly, like she expects us to refuse. I glance at Tobias. Why is everyone acting like we’re about to attack them?
    “We walked through the front door,” I say slowly. “You think we would have done that if we were here to hurt you?”
    Tobias doesn’t look back at me. He just touches his fingertips to the back of his head. After a moment, I do the same. Dauntless soldiers crowd around us. One of them pats down Tobias’s legs while the other takes the gun tucked under his waistband. Another one, a round-faced boy with pink cheeks, looks at me apologetically.
    “I have a knife in my back pocket.” I say. “Put your hands on me, and I will make you regret it.”
    He mumbles some kind of apology. His fingers pinch the knife handle, careful not to touch me.
    “What’s going on?”