Divergent (Divergent, #1)

by Veronica Roth

Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it’s so important that we don’t rely on it. My father’s words.

there might come a day when there is no flashlight, there is no gun, there is no guiding hand. And I want to be ready for it.

“You won,” Four mutters. “Stop.” I wipe the sweat from my forehead. He stares at me. His eyes are too wide; they look alarmed. “I think you should leave,” he says. “Take a walk.” “I’m fine,” I say. “I’m fine now,” I say again, this time for myself. I wish I could say I felt guilty for what I did. I don’t.

Then I see her. My mother stands alone near the railing with her hands clasped in front of her.

tell him to research the simulation serum.

My mother was Dauntless.

The blade is stuck in Edward’s eye.

“One of the lines I remember from the Dauntless manifesto is, ‘We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.’”

I believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.

In order to get down, I have to trust them to catch me. I have to accept that these people are mine, and I am theirs. It is a braver act than sliding down the zip line.

“How long do you think you spent in that hallucination, Tris?” “I don’t know.” I shake my head. “A half hour?” “Three minutes,” he replies. “You got out three times faster than the other initiates.

becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it, that’s the point.”

I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.

You manipulated the simulation; you’re Divergent. I’ll delete the footage, but unless you want to wind up dead at the bottom of the chasm, you’ll figure out how to hide it during the simulations!

if they discover what you are, they will kill you.”

changing the simulation isn’t what they care about; it’s just a symptom of something else.

My name is in the first slot.

“You belong here, you know that?” he says. “You belong with us. It’ll be over soon, so just hold on, okay?”

I reach out and take his hand. His fingers slide between mine. I can’t breathe. I stare up at him, and he stares down at me. For a long moment, we stay that way. Then I pull my hand away and run after Uriah and Lynn and Marlene. Maybe now he thinks I’m stupid, or strange. Maybe it was worth it.

“Never come near me again.” Our eyes meet. His are dark and glassy. I am nothing. “If you do, I swear to God I will kill you,” I say. “You coward.”

Suicide, to them, is an act of selfishness. Someone who is truly selfless does not think of himself often enough to desire death.

Tori was the only one in the tattoo place, so I felt safe getting the symbol of Abnegation—a pair of hands, palms up as if to help someone stand, bounded by a circle—on my right shoulder.

They were trying to develop a longer-lasting serum for the simulations,”

You woukd think she would have more to say about this.

The Erudite accused Marcus of cruelty. For once the Erudite were right. I look at Four—Tobias—and he seems frozen.

HAND IN HAND, we walk toward the Pit.

“My result was as expected,” he says. “Abnegation.”

“Fine.” He leans his face closer to mine, his eyes focusing on my chin, and my lips, and my nose. “I watched you because I like you.”

Then he touches my face and leans in close, brushing my lips with his.

“Most of you will have anywhere from ten to fifteen fears in your fear landscapes. That is the average number,” she says.

“A few weeks ago, before training started, I was at work and I found a way into the Dauntless secure files. Apparently we are not as skilled as the Erudite are at security,” he says, “and what I discovered was what looked like war plans. Thinly veiled commands, supply lists, maps. Things like that. And those files were sent by Erudite.”

“What job are you going to pick?” I ask her. “I’m thinking I might want a job like Four’s. Training initiates,” she says. “Scaring the living daylights out of them. You know, fun stuff.

One: Colored serum contains transmitters. Two: Transmitters connect the mind to a simulation program. Three: Erudite developed the serum. Four: Eric and Max are working with the Erudite.

Her eyes are open, but blank, and her facial muscles are slack. She moves without looking at what she’s doing, her mouth half-open, not awake but seeming awake. And everyone else looks just like her.

Tobias, as blank-faced as the rest of them. Was I wrong? Is he not Divergent? Tears spark behind my eyes, and I blink them back as I turn away from him.

And then something peculiar happens: fingers lace with mine, and a palm presses to my palm. Tobias, holding my hand. My entire body is alive with energy. I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. He is awake. I was right.

Far ahead of us, I see a Dauntless soldier push a gray-clothed man to his knees. I recognize the man—he is a council member. The soldier takes her gun out of her holster and, with sightless eyes, fires a bullet into the back of the council member’s skull.

“They receive commands from our computers in the transmitters we injected them with

The pain is sharp and sudden, beginning in my shoulder and spreading outward with electric fingers. A scream stops in my throat, and I fall, my cheek scraping the pavement. I lift my head to see Tobias’s knees by my face, and yell, “Run!”

“Why are most of the Divergent weak-willed, God-fearing nobodies from Abnegation, of all factions?”

Divergence is just another problem for her to solve, and that is what makes her so terrifying—because she is smart enough to solve anything, even the problem of our existence.

A palm presses to the glass in front of my face, and for a moment as I stare through the water, I think I see my mother’s blurry face. I hear a bang, and the glass cracks.

Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again.”

“I was only safe because my mother was a Dauntless leader. On Choosing Day, she told me to leave my faction and find a safer one. I chose Abnegation.”

our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can’t be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.”

I dropped out of initiation when I figured out what was happening. I would have warned you, but it was too late,” he says. “I’m factionless now.”

I turn the gun in my hands and press it into Tobias’s palm.

The cruelty of fate is that I must travel with the people I hate when the people I love are dead behind me.

If she is still alive, Christina will find Will’s body. And if she sees me again, her Candor-trained eyes will see that I am the one who killed him, I know it. I know it and the guilt strangles me and crushes me, so I have to forget it. I make myself forget it.