Oh…this is just precious.  Tris wants to tell Tobias about her mind-control discovery, but there’s too many people around trying to congratulate her.  Then she decides to do it later, but she’s falls asleep instead.  It’s like you can just feel the author going “oh, shit, wait, I didn’t mean for that to happen yet.  Um…nap time!  Yeah, that’ll work.”

Tris, you’ve just been injected with mind control serum.  Who cares if people want to celebrate with you?  Tell them to fuck off and get on with stuff.  Priorities, girl!

She wakes up to see that all her friends are already zombies.  See, this wouldn’t have happened if you’d just flipped off the party and done something last night.  Or, this could have also been fixed by her just not making that realization last night.  She could have just as easily figured it out right now.

Of course, then she still would have been at a party instead of warning her family or getting the word out about Erudite’s plan. 

Wait, wait.  It gets better.

I grit my teeth and hold on as hard as I can, digging my heels into the ground. He just drags me along with him.

They are sleepwalkers.

She figured out mind control last night, but she can’t put it together right now.  She thinks everyone in the room is sleepwalking.

But then she goes right on with them being brain controlled, because she gets in line and pretends to be a zombie as well.  Okay…then why call them sleepwalkers? 

They march into a room where the whole faction is waiting, also brain dead, and they’re arming up with guns.  Tris keeps playing along and imitating everyone, because she doesn’t know what’ll happen if she’s found out.

I will pretend long enough to get to the Abnegation sector of the city. I will save my family. And whatever happens after that doesn’t matter. A blanket of calm settles over me.

“As long as the people I like are okay, then fuck everyone else.”

Wow, selfish much?

They get on the train, which actually stops this time, and she finds Tobias and determines that he’s just pretending, too.  Since they both have their super-special Divergent brains.

They get to the Abnegation sector, and Tris marches along like a good zombie, and she hears gunshots in the distance.  Some guy gets dragged out of his house and shot.  She says he’s one of the Abnegation leaders, but…is that by design or by coincidence?  Are they shooting everyone they find, or are they targeting people?  They turned out the entire Dauntless faction; did they need that many people just to get the heads of state?  Doesn’t seem likely, so are they shooting whole families?  Children?  Tris doesn’t wonder any of these questions, because she doesn’t give a damn about anyone who isn’t fuckable or related to her.

As things go on, more people get shot, but it seems most of them are being herded into a building. 

A sea of black-clothed soldiers guard the doors. The only people I do not see are the Abnegation leaders. Maybe they are already dead.

Apparently Tris knows absolutely everyone in the faction and can see them all at once?

In fact, how big are these factions? 

Let’s think just about Dauntless for a moment.  Let’s assume that 10 people get in every year, and that they are non-retired until they turn…eh, 50.  10 people every year between the ages of 16 and 50.  That’s only 340 active, adult members.  Add in kids and old folks, let’s round it up to 500.  And they’re probably low, because they only keep about half their applicants.

So let’s assume Abnegation is 1,000 people.

Tris is telling us that she’s looking at a crowd of 1,000 people, and the only people she doesn’t see are the handful of council members.

She overhears Eric talking to someone else, explaining what we already know: that they’re all mind-controlled.  Thanks, book.  It’s not like you already spelled this out for us once, or nothing.  Then Eric mocks Tobias, who he thinks is also a zombie, and decides to kill the guy because he’s just evil and jealous and can.  Tris stops pretending long enough to point her own gun at Eric.

“You won’t shoot me,” Eric replies.

“Interesting theory,” I say. But I can’t murder him; I can’t. I grit my teeth and shift my arm down, firing at Eric’s foot.

Come on, Tris, you’ve been a perfectly serviceable sociopath until now.  Why can’t you kill Eric?  If ever there’s a time to start shooting people, this is it.  She doesn’t even give us a reason.  Normally, I would assume it’s because it’s just really, really hard to make yourself shoot people, but psychology is so fucked up in this book that it doesn’t really fit anymore.

Tobias and Tris try and run off, but Tris gets shot and Tobias won’t leave her, so they get captured.

“Divergent rebels,” Eric says,

Stop calling them rebels!  They aren’t rebelling against anything!  They’re just existing!  WORDS FUCKING MEAN THINGS, YOU CAN’T JUST TOSS THEM AROUND WILLY-NILLY!

They both get taken to see Jeanine, since she’s the epitome of evil, in case you forgot.  She taunts them, saying that she knew Tris was Divergent.  Well, genius, then why didn’t you shoot her way back when?  It’s not like you’re afraid of breaking the law.  Anyway, she’s not going to kill them now because she’s got a new serum to test that she thinks will work on Divergent people as well as everyone else.

Then she starts explaining her plan.  Come on!  This is, like, bad comic book villain shit.  This is not only a bad trope, but it’s one that we’ve been making fun of for decades.

Her plan is pretty standard.  She wants to be in charge because she thinks she can do it better.  But then it gets better.

“Yes, improved,” Jeanine says. “Improved, and working toward a world in which people will live in wealth, comfort, and prosperity.”

“At whose expense?” I ask, my voice thick and sluggish. “All that wealth…doesn’t come from nowhere.”

“Currently, the factionless are a drain on our resources,” Jeanine replies. “As is Abnegation.

So she’s going to kill them all.

WHAT?

First of all, that bit that Tris said sounds seriously out of place.  This isn’t modern day America.  This isn’t a question of the one percent stepping on the little guy.  THIS.  IS.  DYSTOPIA!  You don’t have enough asphalt to pave the roads!  You are all one single little town of people surrounded by barbed wire!  To throw your own words back at you, that wealth doesn’t come from nowhere and you guys don’t have it in your society to begin with.

Second, Jeanine, really?  You’re going to kill all the factionless?  You mean, THE ONLY PEOPLE ACTUALLY DOING ANY WORK IN YOUR SOCIETY?

Remember, folks.  The factionless are all the blue collar workers, the trash collectors and bus drivers and factory workers.  The people who actually produce things.  The people who A PROSPEROUS SOCIETY DEPENDS ON.  And she’s going to kill them all.  Because she’s a fucking genius, I guess.

This…this has got to be the author’s ideas showing through.  It really, really feels like a comment on our current economic times, which is fine if you want to comment on that, but it’s being shoved into a situation that just completely doesn’t work.  You can’t whine about the super-rich wanting to get rid of the annoying homeless when no one is super rich and your homeless are the only people working.

Fucking hell, that is some concentrated fail right there.

Well.  They all banter a bit, Jeanine says most of the Divergents come from Abnegation and that’s why she wants the Divergent-capable serum, because she’s not going to kill Abnegation.  Instead she’s going to mind-control all of them. 

Jeanine injects Tobias with the serum, and it doesn’t mind-control him (maybe?) but instead makes him think he’s seeing things that aren’t there, or aren’t right.  He tries to attack Tris, but for some odd reason everyone stops him.  Jeanine already said she was going to be executed, so why not let Tobias kill her?  Well, whatever, instead they’re split up.  Tobias gets sent to go work, and Tris gets sent to a prison cell.