Tris is in shock from seeing someone exectued so suddenly right in front of her. Despite my rant from last chapter, I do approve, because there’s a difference between someone needing to die and being totally okay with that fact. Everyone else rambunctiously parades out of the building in a grand showing of Dauntless-ness.

Tobias sets his hand on my back. I know because I see him come up behind me and do it, not because I feel it. I don’t feel anything at all.

I…but…how?

They run into Jack and a bunch of Candor on the way out the building, merrily announce that they executed Eric according to their own laws (erm, they have a shitty justice system, but I guess that’s not the point at the moment) and also that they’re leaving. Jack is upset, because now he can’t fulfill his promise to the Erudite.

“Didn’t you come here to find allies?” Jack scowls. “If you do this, we will side with Erudite, I promise you, and you will never find an ally in us again, you—”

Hun, you weren’t exactly being an ally to start with, so why would you think you could bring up that? I mean, they wanted an ally to go against Erudite and he went and basically rolled over for them, then still thinks he gets to cry ally? Obviously he’s grasping for straws, but that’s still a very strange one to be grasping at there.

And instead of pointing out this fact, they just crow that they don’t need allies so hahaha. Now that the book is done with this Candor setting, all the reasons for why it started are getting undone. Nothing has really been resolved, the situation hasn’t changed (at least, the situation outside this building) but it’s time to move one so…fuck it, now all those other reasons don’t count anymore?

They make it back to Dauntless HQ and start hitting all the cameras with paintballs in order to knock them out of usefulness. (Isn’t there a control room in this compound? There was one in the last book, what happened to it? Why can’t you turn off your own cameras?)

Tris and Zeke talk about how Shauna is going to live, but probably be paralyzed, and how she can’t be Dauntless if she’s paralyzed. Tris insists that she can be Dauntless in a wheelchair, and they shouldn’t kick her out of the faction, despite that being their modus operandi until now.

“She won’t want me to push her [in a wheelchair].” His voice cracks a little. “She won’t want me to lift her, or carry her.”

“She’ll have to get over it, then.

So, I know Dauntless doesn’t deal with disabled because they are horrible, but what about the other factions? Are there wheelchair users elsewhere? And Abnegation seems like the class most likely to be inclusive/helpful in the matter, so if there are such people in their society, Tris should have run across them. She brings up the concept of a wheelchair as if it’s a normal thing to her. Because, see, no one likes needing to be carried around, and being paralyzed from the waist-down doesn’t make one helpless. Plenty of people who are in this situation are able to roll their own wheelchairs and haul themselves in and out of said chair under their own power. Tris, instead of pointing this out, just talks as if it’s a given that Shauna won’t be able to push her own wheelchair. Wheelchairs only used for temporary injuries? So…no disabled people in Chicago? Or maybe Tris is just self-absorbed. Yes, let’s save some sanity and just go with that; it fits anyway.

After Tris gives her little can-do, let’s-not-drop-Shauna do-gooder quota for this episode, they join in the paintballing spree. Tris manages to hit a camera perfectly on her first try while firing on her non-dominant side. Because this book hates me, that’s why. Then everyone breaks out into a rambunctious paintball fight of fun.

I decide to keep the [paint-splattered] shirt to remind me why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because they are alive. Because they are free.

Talking about how this faction is ‘free’ right after talking about how they kick out and abandon anyone not in perfect physical health is just…really, really bad. “Woo, yes, free and alive! So long as you fit our very narrow definition of acceptable, but hey, I fit that definition so! Wheeeeee!”

Later there is banter and socializing and two side characters making out over dinner. Tobias comes by to steal her away, saying that he has a meeting with someone and he wants her to come along and help assess the situation.

“Why do you need me to—”

“Because you’re better at it than I am.”

Have we actually seen any evidence of this? Granted, the books plot has heavily relied on circumstantial forces to propel it along, rather than actions by our main characters, so there’s not been a ton of opportunity for people to truly “assess the situation on make decisions,” but when it does happen…well, Tris operates mostly on very lucky guessing and Tobias is a fair hand at figuring things out. In fact, of the two of them, he seems to be the more proactive one, because all Tris does is guess things at the very last minute and then spring into action; Tobias is the one who actually makes plans.

On our way out, we walk through the dank room in which I faced my fear landscape. Judging by the syringe on the floor, someone has been there recently.

…and yet there’s no comment on the fact that whoever it was left the syringe just…hanging out on the floor? Does that mean this is your standard practice for hazardous sharp objects?

You guys are…terrible. There’s just no other word that fits.

“Did you go through your fear landscape today?” I say.

“What makes you say that?” His dark eyes skirt mine. He pushes the front door open, and the summer air swims around me. There is no wind.

“Your knuckles are cut up and someone’s been using that room.”

“This is exactly what I mean. You’re far more perceptive than most.”

*sigh* Several people in this book, Tobias included, have made observations more astute than that.

We walk to the tracks. The last time we did this, he wanted to show me that the lights were on in the Erudite compound, wanted to tell me that Erudite was planning an attack on Abnegation.

Like this, for example.

Move on. There’s a train coming.

I hear the train horn blasting to my left, but the light fixed to the first car is not on. Instead it slides over the rails like some hidden, creeping thing.

So the horn is blasting, but it’s a hidden thing? It’s running at full speed and you have to run like normal, but it’s creeping?

And how the hell do the factionless have access to the lights to turn them off? And why would they do that? Wouldn’t it just tip off any non-friendly Dauntless that something is up with the lights being off on certain trains? Or do the Dauntless have a curfew and that’s how they never noticed? This whole thing is just a terrible system.

Anyway, Tobias says to get onto the fifth car, which they do. Further down the line, Evelyn and Edward jump in as well. (What is Edward doing there? What position does he have with the factionless? I don’t get it?)

They verbally snipe a little bit and then get down to the business of making an alliance. In exchange for their help, the factionless want an equal place in whatever system gets built next and they want to destroy all the Erudite data.

My first instinct is to tell her she’s a fool. But something stops me. Without the simulation technology, without the data they had about all the other factions, without their focus on technological advancement, the attack on Abnegation would not have happened. My parents would be alive.

That last bit makes me think this is a very emotional reasoning from Tris, and in that case it would be a fine thing to include. She’s not being logical, she’s been angry and grieving. However, this book being what it is, I do not really have faith that it’s going to play out that way.

And I just don’t think there’s anything I can say about how terrible that statement is. I mean, at the very least it’s another retconning, because both reasons given for the attack (“the factionless are a drain” and “find that secret info,” depending on what book you’re reading) have nothing to do with technological advancement.

Tobias glances at me. I wish I could tell him why I feel so conflicted … explain to him why I, of all people, have reservations about burning Erudite to the ground, so to speak.

Um, why do you?

Both sides have no problems with the terms, and they decide to meet in neutral territory in a week’s time. Then Evelyn casually mentions that she was exiled from Abnegation all those years ago. Ish.

“No, the Abnegation were inclined toward forgiveness and reconciliation, as you might expect. But your father has a lot of influence over the Abnegation, and he always has. I decided to leave rather than face the indignity of public exile.”

So, technically not exiled. But, really, a moot point, because my question is FORGIVEN FOR WHAT? For the affair? Honestly, I’d almost forgotten that that was even a thing, because, silly me, I was so focused on the whole domestic abuse point. But oh, not this book, nope, the book seems to have forgotten about the domestic abuse and instead keeps harping on the affair. Which, mind you, was shoved into this plot so hastily and with so little lead in or comment that I swear it feels like an afterthought. Like maybe the original plot had her escaping abuse, someone thought that wasn’t good enough, and then they added in this? I don’t get it. I don’t understand why it even exists.

The other two jump off the train and leave Tris and Tobias to start fighting, first over the fact that Tris didn’t get to say anything before Tobias made his little deal and then because Tobias is all “you just don’t like my mom, well I suddenly like her now that I realize she didn’t leave me behind by her own decision.” Because…is that it? Is that what made this change? Because you needed a reason for the faction to force her out so Tobias could have this change of heart? Because him realizing that it’s a bad idea to blame a battered woman for escaping wasn’t good enough for you?

They go back and forth arguing for a little while, basically accusing each other of making overly emotional decisions.

“Of course it is! [Marcus] knows things, Tobias. And we should be trying to find out what they are.”

Speaking of shoehorned in plot points, this one was dropped in out of the blue, has yet to be integrated at all, and these random mentions stick out so poorly that it’s almost screaming “Hi, I was a last minute addition.”

They get back to the Dauntless HQ and go off on their separate ways to sulk.

I’m kind of upset about how thoroughly these two have fallen apart. It’s realistic, but in a storytelling sense, eh. Given how brief their romance was in the first book, it just doesn’t seem like there’s a enough of a base there to make this have the proper emotional payoff. I want to see them have a chance to be a real couple before all of this implosion stuff, otherwise why should I really care about said implosion?