After Tobias falls asleep, Tris sneaks out so she can go and turn herself into Erudite. Man, didn’t take her long to break that promise, did it? Although I don’t really mind. The book’s done a fair job of setting her up as brash and impulsive as a result of everything that’s been going on. So it’s stupid, but eh, stupid happens.

She wakes up Christina before she goes in order to tell her about that awkward “someone knows something” plot that got half-kind-of set up way a long time ago. Remember that one? (If you don’t it’s probably because I’m doing this book so slow, sorry about that.) I still can’t get over how inorganic that little plot nugget was introduced, even several dozen chapters later.

“The thing is, I haven’t been able to find out very much about this, because Marcus Eaton is the only person who knows everything, and he won’t tell me.

Do we ever have a good reason for why Marcus won’t tell her? And also, are there no other Abnegation leaders left alive? Surely Marcus wasn’t the only person who knew about this whatever-it-is, right? Or was he? It’s all so very vague. I’m pretty sure at least one of our little “adventures in another faction” episodes could have been cut to make room for this plot to be expanded.

I had almost forgotten—she was under the simulation. How many Abnegation did she kill, guided by the simulation? How did she feel when she awoke from that dream a murderer? I have never asked, and I never will.

I simultaneously want to hit you for being such a fucking uncurious narrator robbing us of subplots and want to forgive it because, yeah, that’s heavy shit on top of a lot of other heavy shit going on, I’d avoid it, too.

Tris says she wanted Christina to know, “just in case,” and claims she’s off to visit her brother. Christina is suspicious, but tentatively accepts this. Having now lied to everyone she still cares about, Tris heads off to martyr herself.

Frankly, except for all the problems I had with Tris going into the book, I’m liking her as a fucked-up character. She’s making a hell of a lot of bad decisions and being screwed up in general, but it all feels like it’s a reaction to the crisis, like something that almost has to happen because being sensible in this situation would be unrealistic. It’s been set up well, the emotional side of it is going well, I rather like it. I want to shake her, but that doesn’t make it a bad story.

None of the city lights are on in this area,

It just randomly occurred to me that they must be using a nuclear power plant for their electricity. They’re self-sustaining (ish), don’t include a coal mine, and solar power is apparently a “Erudite only” thing. This is apropos of nothing in the story, I just wanted to bring up cracky-fic possibilities.

You know what else has randomly occurred to me? There is no money in this society. Last book, Tris had some sort of points system thing going on that allowed her to buy clothes, but it seemed like something that only works within the Dauntless, and there’s been no mention of commerce in the city at large. Everyone has jobs according to their faction, but there’s no…like, supermarket or mall or city-wide economy. At least three of the five factions all live in one building, possibly in dorm/bay accommodations, and eat in a cafeteria that they don’t seem to have to pay for. No one goes shopping except for luxuries like tattoos and dresses.

Back to the story. Tris walks around her nuclear-powered communist cult commune, on her way to turn herself into the murder faction, and thinks morose thoughts.

And then I’m standing in front of Erudite headquarters.

Inside, crowds of blue-shirted people sit around tables, typing on computers or bent over books or passing sheets of paper back and forth. Some of them are decent people who do not understand what their faction has done, but if their entire building collapsed in on them before my eyes, I might not find it in myself to care.

This is the last moment I will be able to turn back. The cold air stings my cheeks and my hands as I hesitate. I can walk away now. Take refuge in the Dauntless compound. Hope and pray and wish that no one else dies because of my selfishness.

But I can’t walk away, or the guilt, the weight of Will’s life, and my parents’ lives, and now Marlene’s life, will break my bones, will make it impossible to breathe.

I slowly walk toward the building and push open the doors.

This is the only way to keep from suffocating.

I just…really, really like this bit.

no one notices me, not even the two Dauntless traitor guards milling around near the entryway.

And then we’re back to nonsense. Seriously, are the Dauntless ever good at anything they’re supposed to do?

Tris has to announce herself, and that makes people finally react to her being there. Peter shows up to escort her upstairs.

Jeanine must have known that I would come, she must have chosen Peter on purpose to collect me, she must have.

Well, yeah, since there’s literally no other reason for him to still be in this story other than “general fuckery directed at the protagonist.” He outlived his usefulness a long time ago, and even now the only thing he manages to contribute is dancing around and saying “haha, you know me!”

Instead of taking her Jeanine, they take her to a small cell/room where the walls and floor are made of panels that light up, and all I can think about is how that’s literally a torture technique. Leaving someone in bright lights, even if they manage to sleep through that, will seriously fuck up their hormone cycles and eventually the stress will do bad things to their brain. I don’t know if that’s what the book was going for, but when even the floor lights up, yeah, I’m just going to assume it’s a torture chamber.

They leave Tris in her room until she starts to pace, and she gets anxious about not knowing how much time has passed. It’s a nice little bit, although I wish the fact that the floor is made of lightbulbs got more of a mention. Once again, this book has a tendency to just toss things out for the sake of “future-y-different-y” and then not care about it.

Jeanine shows up, and Tris suddenly doesn’t have any feelings?

an Erudite look of superiority that I was taught by my father to hate. […] But I don’t feel hate when I look at her. I don’t feel anything at all, even though I know she’s responsible for countless deaths, including Marlene’s. The deaths exist in my mind as a string of meaningless equations, and I stand frozen, unable to solve them.

Weird. Although she has been oddly accepting of her impending death, so I guess it’s a symptom of shock, but kind of a bland narrative choice. She just suddenly doesn’t hate now. Did the book use up its good moments on sidequests and episodes?

Also, Peter is still there. Because of course.

How does Peter find himself in such a prestigious position, as Jeanine Matthews’s bodyguard? Where is the logic in that?

There isn’t any, and hanging a lampshade on it doesn’t help things.

They take her out of her cell, through a lab, and into a huge lab-sized room that has only a chair and a heart monitor in it. Because I guess they just have oodles of space to waste. Which, actually, they probably do since they’re living in a refit version of Chicago. I’d actually expect to see a lot more of this, with spaces built for one purpose but being used for something else and therefore not quite fitting. Instead, so far a lot of things have functioned as if they’re purpose-built.

“Even among the Divergent, you are somewhat of an oddity, because you have aptitude for three factions. Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite.”

Except that we’ve already been told that the only way to get this is for the test proctor to manually manipulate the simulation, so it’s entirely likely that Tris isn’t special, she just had a special test.

I mean, I’ve been in her head for a while now, and I’m not convinced.

Jeanine says that this means she’s the ‘strongest’ Divergent, which is a pretty meaningless title because we’ve seen literally no good metric for ‘strength’ yet when it comes to that. Strength requires resistance to measure against, and so far the only Divergent ‘power’ (to resist simulations) has been an on/off matter. But Jeanine is a bad scientist, so she assumes that abnormal test results = strength and that if her new Divergent-proof serum works against the ‘strongest’ one, it’ll work against all of them.

“And then, at the conclusion of my study, you will be executed.”

Because as we all know, one data point a proof does make. SCIENCE.

Jeanine says she’s going to be executed here, on this chair, and Tris assumes it’s all to get a reaction. So, despite being freaked out about her impending death (s’cool, knowing it’s coming and seeing the implements right in front of you are two different things) , she does her best to be bland and glib instead. All well and good, but

She wants to study my response.

This book just will never shut up when it comes to the Erudite and “studying.” I can’t tell if the Erudite are petty, cackling bastards and Tris just assumes it’s all for SCIENCE because she doesn’t know better, or if the author thinks this is really how studying things works.

She goes back to her room, then hours later Peter collects her and there’s some banter that I just really don’t care about. He takes her to an MRI machine, where she randomly decides to stop playing along and insists that she’ll only cooperate if they let her see the scans of her brain.

Why?

Because reasons, that’s why. She’s been completely un-curious this whole time, to the point where her sudden curiosity here is even commented on, and she’s never once shown any sort of propensity towards learning about her own condition. Add to that, she doesn’t have the base of knowledge necessary for understanding an MRI scan, so the only reason for her to ask to see it is “the author fucking said so, just go with it, gosh, readers wanting things to be consistent and logical, what is the world coming to?”

“Why do you want to see them so badly?” she says.

“Surely you, of all people, understand. I have equal aptitude for Erudite as I do for Dauntless and Abnegation, after all.”

“All right. You can see them. Lie down.”

BECAUSE REASONS!

They do the MRI scan and then take her next door to look at them. Surprise, surprise, she has no idea what any of the pretty brain pictures mean. So they helpfully explain them to her, even though that wasn’t part of the agreement and Jeanine thus far has taken every opportunity to needle her. Because…the author looked up a bunch of stuff on Wikipedia and just really, really wants to explain it, I guess.

There’s a bunch of mumbojumbo that I’m not qualified to agree or disagree with, and they conclude that she’s got an overdeveloped “organizing your thoughts and actions to attain your goals” section and an underdeveloped “reward center” portion of the brain. So she’s good at reaching her goals but isn’t motivated by personal gain. I’m not sure about the science side of all that, but just from what we’ve seen of her actions, I’m still calling bullshit.

Besides, it seems like a person without a reward response wouldn’t necessarily be altruistic. Wouldn’t they more be ruthless and goal-oriented? “My goal is to take down Erudite, and I don’t really care how many of my friends fling themselves off buildings as a result because my brain doesn’t give me happy-hormones for making friends.” That kind of thing?

I did not know that my entire personality, my entire being, could be discarded as the byproduct of my anatomy. What if I really am just someone with a large prefrontal cortex … and nothing more?

Oh my god, what if everything you are is based on…literally everything you are!

Really, I know people outside this book/author have the same kerfluffle, but I’ve never understood it. So your brain construction is a big factor of your personality; it’s still your brain, and that doesn’t really seem any worse than assuming your personality is based on…fucking magic, or whatever. What did Tris assume gave her Divergent powers before now? God? Heritage? (Both those things gave you your physical brain, too! Well, assuming you believe in God to begin with.)

And that’s the end of “What I Learned on Wikipedia” for today, because we leave the lab with all of that amounting to jack shit nothing. Really, is the story affected at all by regurgitating a bunch of stuff about cortexes? We knew the Erudite were developing a serum to control Divergents, and it’s not like we would roll along with not knowing the rest of the serum-making process but then pitch a fit if this one part wasn’t explained?

On the way back to her cell, OH NO, TOBIAS IS HERE. He’s been bloodied up and captured. As they pass each other in the hall, Tris gets all frantic asking “what did you do, what did you do?”

“You die, I die too.” Tobias looks over his shoulder at me. “I asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions.”

Oh, FUCK YOU, TOBIAS. Damn, what a despicable, low, scum trick to pull. Wow, I just cannot even with the amount of blame and manipulation in that statement, not to mention the utter lack of owning up to his own decisions. He might as well say “yup, you killed me” right as she’s at her lowest point.

Not to mention, what the fuck were you even thinking, Tobias? It’s kind of a fractious time right now, and getting two people killed instead of one really isn’t doing anyone any favors at all.

Tris begs Peter to find out what’s going to happen to Tobias, but he brushes her off and locks her in her cell.

I’m not even mad at Peter; I’m mad at Tobias, because now she’s stuck full of grief and guilt on her own in a torture cell AND YOU DID THAT, TOBIAS, YOU SCUM-SUCKING TOE FUNGUS.