No matter how many times I ask why we are under arrest, no one says anything or even looks in my direction.

Sigh.

I’m sick of this trope. Do you know why it exists? To create false tension out of nothing. That’s it. That’s literally the only point to it. The guards keeping mum doesn’t have any reason or serve any greater purpose; it’s only there to drag things out because the author wants the ‘reveal’ to come at a better time/from a better character. Except most of the time this happens, ‘better’ isn’t really, it’s just ‘later’ and nothing would actually be harmed from the guards just fucking talking.

If you have to resort to senseless stalling tricks to create drama for you, then you have to resort to tricks because your drama sucks and maybe that’s a sign you should back things up a bit.

I hate writing tricks like this. Hate, hate, hate, hate.

They’re taken to a holding cell and left there to ruminate.

If Erudite didn’t take over, the only real crime left is siding with them. Did I do anything that could have been interpreted as siding with Erudite? My teeth dig into my lower lip so hard I wince. Yes, I did. I shot Will. I shot a number of other Dauntless. They were under the simulation, but maybe Candor doesn’t know that or doesn’t think it’s a good enough reason.

????

I thought you were smart?

No, I didn’t think you were smart, but the book keeps claiming you are, so.

What about anything going on makes you think that there is literally only one punishable offense left? I know the whole “Erudite is evil because reasons” thing is the central plot to the story, but to twist everything into focusing on your chosen main drama makes things rather flat and…well, twisted. It’s not like it would take much to fix this and keep her guilt-ridden drama, too. “What could I have done??? Oh, right, fucking murder is still illegal; maybe they think ‘the other guy was mind controlled’ isn’t a good defense. Not that I’d blame them.” There. Logical and self-depreciating!

They have a small moment of talking about trust issues because Tobias thinks she hasn’t told him everything that’s going on with her, and Tris continues to lie and withhold the fact that she shot Will. Not that I blame her; thanks to the extreme compressed timeline going on here, she hasn’t had time to process it and barely has had time to tell him even if she wanted to. In fact, Tobias is kind of a fuck for calling it a trust issue. Again, it’s been…what, less than a week? And they’ve been chased by a murderous faction that whole time? ‘Trust issue’ is way down on the list of possible reasons someone isn’t talking.

A bunch of people come in, including the Candor leader, Jack Kang.

By most faction standards, he is a young leader—only thirty-nine years old. But by Dauntless standards, that’s nothing. Eric became a Dauntless leader at seventeen. But that’s probably one of the reasons the other factions don’t take our opinions or decisions seriously.

First of all, fuck yes that’s why no one takes you seriously, and rightly so.

Second of all, what is the leadership system here? Erudite, Candor, and Amity seem to have absolute leaders, but Dauntless has some unknown number of leaders, and Abnegation has…???? Does Tris just not know political terms and she’s using ‘leader’ for everyone in administration, resulting in this clusterfuck?

Considering the smarts she’s shown so far, I’m just going to go with that for an explanation.

Jack explains, after yet more padding, that Tobias is being accused of running the simulation for Erudite and Tris is accused of helping him. They have footage of it happening, because these two numbskulls only deleted one copy of all that information. Which is in fact so reasonable that I don’t even care if it matches up with the last book or not. I’m just going to assume that Tobias is as arrogantly shortsighted as Tris and only thought he knew what was up when he did all that. Going with that read, there’s no plot hole here at all.

Although it does bring up the question “If you have footage, isn’t it fucking obvious that Tobias only started doing all that after he was simulated himself?” And also “Don’t you also have footage of Tris trying valiantly to stop him?”

Jack doesn’t want to listen to their counterarguments because there will be an interrogation later with truth serum.

Christina told me about truth serum once. She said the most difficult part of Candor initiation was being given truth serum and answering personal questions in front of everyone in the faction.

Um, excuse you, she said lie detector. I remember because I laughed uproariously at it.

The more ‘serums’ get introduce, the less sense the faction system makes. This is clearly not about people fitting in with one personality trait so much as it is people being chemically forced into a trait. And if the ideology of all this is still what we heard in the first book, then why haven’t Amity and Candor tried to use their serums on the other factions?

“All right, then.” He checks his watch. “It is now noon. The interrogation will be at seven. Don’t bother preparing for it. You can’t withhold information while under the influence of truth serum.”

He turns on his heel and walks out of the room.

Why…were you here?

The waste time until 7 and there’s some actual nice moments in there. It’s a short section, so it doesn’t feel like interminable time wasting. I like it.

When 7 comes, Christina is one of the group that arrives. They hug and reunite, and Christina struggles through breaking the news that Will died. Tris lies and said she saw him on a surveillance monitor, to explain why she looks distraught but not shocked.

They are escorted to a large room where the whole faction (and a half) are gathered to watch this ‘questioning’ go down, because Candor understands truth about as well as Dauntless understands bravery. They’re just taking whatever small, ancillary aspect of it serves the plot and clinging to that, because who cares about a deep study of the darker side of good traits when you can just have obviously-wrong mock-ups instead!

Tobias has to go first, but we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what he says.