Tris goes back to her cell and mopes about Caleb being a traitor.

Why did I never wonder how Eric and Jeanine knew that I had aptitude for three factions?

Why did it never occur to me that only three people in the world knew that particular fact: Tori, Caleb, and Tobias?

Because, despite all claims to the contrary, you are not actually curious about anything.

Peter comes by to feed her and take her to the showers, and in the hallway they pass by Tobias. Why do they keep letting these two meet? I mean, in the torture-interrogation room, sure, but why all the hallway meets? They apparently only have the two prisoners; it shouldn’t take that much thought to keep them from crossing.

Tobias lunges for a gun and starts shooting people in order to get Tris free.

See, this wouldn’t happen if you guys could figure out such basic concepts as “making a schedule.”

Tobias gets away with Tris, but he takes her past an exit.

He runs, and even with my weight, he is fast. Idly I think, How could he ever have been Abnegation? He seems designed specifically for speed and deadly accuracy.

Tris, your brain hurts me. At this point, I can’t even tell what your society thinks about factions, what you think about factions, or even how they’re intended to work. Too much of it doesn’t make sense.

Tobias runs through the building, saying he’s looking for something instead of trying to escape. They find a hallway full of offices and a control room, so Tobias shoots all the cameras around and hides in a closet. There he explains to Tris that he came here not on a suicide run, but to find the two main control rooms so that when Dauntless invades they’ll know where to head first. He also wants to tell Tris not to give in because there is a plan to get her out.

“According to one of our insiders, your execution is tentatively scheduled for two weeks from today,” he says. “At least, that’s Jeanine’s target date for the new, Divergent-proof simulation. So fourteen days from now, the factionless, the loyal Dauntless, and the Abnegation who are willing to fight will storm the Erudite compound

…is there any particular reason you’re playing things so close? Is something stopping you from doing this attack, say, tomorrow instead? It’s even right there in your statement: ‘tentatively’ scheduled, meaning it can be changed at any time. Jeanine finishes experimenting on Tris one day early and suddenly the invasion is too late.

Tris starts crying, because she’s not sure if she can survive two more weeks of being a prisoner, and she’s having suicidal thoughts and just wants to give in. And, like usual, Tris’s emotional subplot is really poignant and kind of heartbreaking. Tobias tries to give her a pep talk, though he’s Tobias, so it’s kind of shitty. Not sure if it’s supposed to be or not, though.

Although, this whole thing does underscore the whole “why the fuck are you waiting the entire two weeks?” I bet it’s just because the book wants Tris to suffer, isn’t it? Damn, it’s not like it’s that hard to justify, just a single line in there about how they’re gathering arms and trying to get organized. Although even then it shouldn’t take two weeks, but even a few days would probably seem like too much to Tris right now, so it could still work.

They get found out and Tobias surrenders without further fight.

Later Tris wakes up in a room with Caleb and starts berating him, but Caleb says she doesn’t understand the full situation and that there’s “something bigger” going on. Damnit, this again? Why can’t someone just spit out the big secret, especially here where there’s no actual reason for Caleb to be talking so cagey.

Arrogance is one of the flaws in the Erudite heart—I know. It is often in mine.

But greed is the other. And I do not have that. So I am halfway in and halfway out, as always.

I just really fucking hate you right now, book.

Caleb vaguely mentions the world outside the fence in all his vague vagueness.

I push the thought away for the time being.

I double fucking hate you. Be truly curious for once in your life, would you?

“I have always been Erudite,” he says softly. “Even when I was supposed to be Abnegation.”

You’d think this would be the cornerstone of their society but noooooooo.

They bicker some more about what should be an interesting concept and instead just boils down to “smart people are evil.” Then Jeanine comes in to talk about mirror neurons. I can’t even be arsed to wiki that. It’s in this book; I’m just going to assume it’s oversimplified to the point of being ridiculuous.

I lied, I did wiki it. And guess what? The definition in the book is copied almost word for word from the wiki page. I’m shocked, really.

A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.

vs

“Mirror neurons fire both when one performs an action and when one sees another person performing that action. They allow us to imitate behavior.”

Jeanine assumes this means that the person is a personality chameleon, rather than that they can just learn by observation easily.

Basically it all boils down to Tris having an uberspecial brain again, and my brain hurting.

a flexible personality—capable of mimicking others as the situation calls for it rather than remaining constant.”

Ironically, Tris is one of the most constant things in this book. Certainly more consistent than the plot.

They try out another simulation, which results in Tris thinking that Tobias has come to break her out and they’re running out of the building. But at the last minute she figures out that it’s not really him, because apparently his eyes are wrong. Or something.

You know, this isn’t fundamentally different than their first attempt, where they tried to get her mom to convince her to like them. And both are vastly different from the one they ran on the ‘normal’ people, which just turns them into zombies. What are they even trying to do here? Are they going to have to come up with a convoluted scenario to ‘convince’ her into doing every task they need from her? Did the others have a Matrix-dream playing in their heads the whole time? And why study her brain if all they keep doing is trying to make a Matrix-dream that’s just convincing enough?

Not only does none of this make sense, it doesn’t even really seem worth the effort.

Jeanine demands to know what tipped her off and how she knew it was a simulation, but Tris refuses and tries to attack her instead.

“Pain can’t make me tell you. Truth serum can’t make me tell you. Simulations can’t make me tell you. I’m immune to all three.”

Um, not that I’m advocating for it, but technically no one has tried pain yet. Actually, no one has tried any kind of interrogation technique. They’ve even got a torture cell with lights on the floor – they could keep her awake for days and then do verbal trickery. But no, not in this book, here the “smart” people can’t even figure out that much.

Jeanine demands to know because apparently there’s some big threat to the whole city that she’s trying to forestall. Tris just cackles in her face instead.

I savor the scowl on her face, the hate in her eyes. She was like a machine; she was cold and emotionless, bound by logic alone. And I broke her.

1) All the laughing makes it look more like Tris is the broken one. 2) Jeanine has literally never been cold and emotionless. If anything, she’s highly emotional. Her arguments are based on either personal gain or desperation, depending on which book you’re reading, and she’s been petty and cruel (which if you tell me that’s a ‘logical’ course of action I will slap your face), and even in her interactions she doesn’t seem all that cold. She’s fairly normal in that respect.

So, yeah, apparently Tris has cracked and her superspecial brain thinks she cracked Jeanine instead.

Hey, I bet if you follow up on this and interrogate her she’ll tell you stuff.

No? Nothing?

Fuck you, book.