Tris goes back to her room to mope about how Abnegation is the greatest of all factions because her parents were saints or something like that. IDK, I can hardly care about any of the faction stuff at this point because let’s be real, it’s pretty frikkin impossible to tell what we’re supposed to take seriously and what’s Tris just being biased. At least, I hope at least some of that is supposed to be her bias.

Peter comes in to tell her that she’s going to be executed tomorrow instead of in two weeks, because of course. Tris takes it like a person too tired to care. Which, frankly, seems appropriate.

The Dauntless will elect a new leader. All the loose ends I will leave will be easily tied up.

You…aren’t a leader? Did I forget something in all those weeks I took off? I thought she turned down being a leader.

She tries to tell Peter she could have forgiven him for his part, and he’s all “yeah, I didn’t ask you to” but Tris cares not because she’s stuck in philosophical about-to-die mode.

I don’t know why I told him that. Maybe just because it’s true, and tonight, of all nights, is the time for honesty. Tonight I will be honest, and selfless, and brave. Divergent.

But not smart. Absolutely not smart. Never smart. Because smart is evil.

She cries and ruminates on how Erudite is evil and Christianity Abnegation is pure and good and then that’s it.

The next day she gets up and gets dressed (she ever got undressed? They gave her pajamas?) but it’s not time to go yet.

I find myself lacing my fingers together and bowing my head. Sometimes my father did this in the morning before sitting down at the breakfast table, but I never asked him what he was doing.

The Christianity is strong in these chapters.

Which, frankly, I wouldn’t mind. Except she’s tying all these things to Abnegation, to the faction, instead of religion when we saw in the first book that religion is still a thing. She’s going on and on about Abnegation being the way to a peaceful afterlife and talking about her parents being the embodiment of both good and Abnegation like they’re the same thing and now with the praying thing and come on, you explicitly included Christianity in the first book, you don’t need to now turn Abnegation into your religious soapbox.

Peter shows up to escort her, because I guess he has nothing else to do in this place. Is he just Official Tris Wrangler? I know that’s his only purpose in the story, but does he have any other purpose in Erudite? Well, along the way they hear Tobias pitching a fit about wanting to see Tris. (Did they tell him she was going to die today? Why? I mean, I get being petty and taunting, but why not taunt after she’s gone so you don’t have a scene like this?)

The two lovebirds get to see each other through a window, and then we’re off again, this time walking through a room full of Dauntless-traitors who do some sort of impromptu salute thing and oh my god they’re really building this whole thing up aren’t they? God, everything about her walk to her execution is just so theatrical. Which really doesn’t make sense for the supposedly “emotionless” Erudite.

They get her into the execution room and strap her down and then she decides she doesn’t really want to die. That seems pretty normal. (Honestly, everything about her suicide/depression subplot is pretty cool. You know, until you start adding in other people/the society in general.)

But she’s tied down so too late now, and they inject her with whatever they’re using to execute her. It ends up paralyzing her instead. She’s paralyzed enough to trick the monitors in the room, and after she’s declared dead Peter wheels her out of there right quick.

Peter takes her to Tobias and says that she’s not dead, and she’ll get un-paralyzed soon, but they need to run now. So they do. Somewhere in the middle of escaping Tris gets her function back, and apparently is completely recovered in seconds. Just…yeah, just shakes off paralysis bad enough to make a heart monitor think she died. Not even so much as a tremor or a trip.

Well, at least the rest of their escape is pretty unobjectionable. Bland, but unobjectionable.

They hide in a building to wait out the chase and Peter explains what he did.

“It wasn’t that hard,” he says. “I dyed a paralytic serum purple and switched it out with the death serum.

I’m starting to wonder if, like, any chemical components exist in this world. I mean, outside of the fact that of course they exist, but like, does anyone get to play with them? Are there only a few scientists in Chicago who get to make things, and then everything they produce is shipped out ready-made? Are there no medicines, just “death serum” and “cough serum” and “broken bone serum”? Do they live in a world where everything comes handed to them in a bottle with the intended use and nothing else written on it, and that’s why everything is “death serum” instead, you know, fucking poison?

Or potassium chloride, or whatever it is they’re using.

When asked why he did all this, Peter says he owed her because she saved his life back at the Amity compound. The other two point out how ridiculous this is for me, but then, Peter’s character never has made much sense. When you make a one-dimensional bully and then cart his ass through the book way past all levels of reasonableness just for the sake of keeping the cast size small, of course you wind up having to make ridiculous excuses like this.

I mean, Caleb would have made much more sense as an 11^th-hour turncoat, but of course we can’t have any Erudites doing anything good, can we?

Several hours later they get to the Abnegation part of town, and everyone is oo-ing and ah-ing over Tris being so not dead. They go to Tobias’s old house and find Tori, Evelyn, and the other Dauntless leader Harrison there.

Why is Evelyn here, in Marcus’s house?

Uh, because it was her house, too, before she got chased out of it by a fucker who beat her and a faction that judged her?

Mother and son, reconciled. I am not sure it’s wise.

Yeah, well, I don’t trust you so too bad.

Tobias and Tris go up to his old bedroom.

And, strangely, a sculpture made of blue glass on his dresser.

“My mother smuggled that to me when I was young. Told me to hide it,” he says. “The day of the ceremony, I put it on my dresser before I left. So he would see it. A small act of defiance.”

But hey, don’t let that stand in the way of your unadulterated hatred of the woman!

They have a rather sweet little comfort/shipper moment, though, so that’s nice.