He turns to look at me. Lately when he looks at me it’s without his usual malice—instead he just seems exhausted, his posture slouched, his wounded arm in a sling. But I am not fooled.
“What are you doing in my room?”
He walks closer to me. “What are you doing stalking Marcus? I saw you after breakfast yesterday.”
I match his stare with my own. “That’s none of your business. Get out.”
“I’m here because I don’t know why you get to keep track of that hard drive,” he says. “It’s not like you’re particularly stable these days.”
“I’m unstable?” I laugh. “I find that a little funny, coming from you.”
Peter pinches his lips together and says nothing.
I narrow my eyes. “Why are you so interested in the hard drive anyway?”
“I’m not stupid,” he says. “I know it contains more than the simulation data.”
“No, you aren’t stupid, are you?” I say. “You think if you deliver it to the Erudite, they’ll forgive your indiscretion and let you back in their good graces.”
“I don’t want to be back in their good graces,” he says, stepping forward again. “If I had, I wouldn’t have helped you in the Dauntless compound.”
I jab his sternum with my index finger, digging in my fingernail. “You helped me because you didn’t want me to shoot you again.”
“I may not be an Abnegation-loving faction traitor.” He seizes my finger. “But no one gets to control me, especially not the Erudite.”
I yank my hand back, twisting so that he won’t be able to hold on. My hands are sweaty.
“I don’t expect you to understand.” I wipe my hands on the hem of my shirt as I inch toward the dresser. “I’m sure if it had been Candor and not Abnegation that got attacked, you would have just let your family get shot between the eyes without protest. But I’m not like that.”
“Careful what you say about my family, Stiff.” He moves with me, toward the dresser, but I carefully shift so that I stand between him and the drawers. I’m not going to reveal the hard drive’s location by getting it out while he’s in here, but I don’t want to leave the path to it clear, either.
His eyes shift to the dresser behind me, to the left side, where the hard drive is hidden. I frown at him, and then notice something I didn’t before: a rectangular bulge in one of his pockets.
“Give it to me,” I say. “Now.”
“No.”
“Give it to me, or so help me, I will kill you in your sleep.”
He smirks. “If only you could see how ridiculous you look when you threaten people. Like a little girl telling me she’s going to strangle me with her jump rope.”
I start toward him, and he shifts back, into the hallway.
“Don’t call me ‘little girl.’”
“I’ll call you whatever I want.”
I jerk into action, aiming my left fist where I know it will hurt the worst: at the bullet wound in his arm. He dodges the punch, but instead of trying again, I seize his arm as hard as I can and wrench it to the side. Peter screams at the top of his lungs, and while he’s distracted by the pain, I kick him hard in the knee, and he falls to the ground.
People rush into the hallway, wearing gray and black and yellow and red. Peter surges toward me in a half crouch, and punches me in the stomach. I hunch over, but the pain doesn’t stop me—I let out something between a groan and a scream, and launch myself at him, my left elbow pulled back near my mouth so that I can slam it into his face.
One of the Amity grabs me by the arms and half lifts, half pulls me away from Peter. The wound in my shoulder throbs, but I hardly feel it through the pulse of adrenaline. I strain toward him and try to ignore the stunned faces of the Amity and the Abnegation—and Tobias—around me, and the woman kneels next to Peter, whispering words in a soothing tone of voice. I try to ignore his groans of pain and the guilt stabbing at my stomach. I hate him. I don’t care. I hate him.
“Tris, calm down!” Tobias says.
“He has the hard drive!” I yell. “He stole it from me! He has it!”
Tobias walks over to Peter, ignoring the woman crouched beside him, and presses his foot into Peter’s rib cage to keep him in place. He then reaches into Peter’s pocket and takes out the hard drive.
Tobias says to him—very quietly—“We won’t be in a safe house forever, and this wasn’t very smart of you.” Then he turns toward me and adds, “Not very smart of you, either. Do you want to get us kicked out?”
I scowl. The Amity man with his hand on my arm starts to pull me down the hallway. I try to wrench my body out of his grasp.
“What do you think you’re doing? Let go of me!”
“You violated the terms of our peace agreement,” he says gently. “We must follow protocol.”
“Just go,” says Tobias. “You need to cool down.”
I search the faces of the crowd that has gathered. No one argues with Tobias. Their eyes skirt mine. So I allow two Amity men to escort me down the hallway.
“Watch your step,” one of them says. “The floorboards are uneven here.”
My head pounds, a sign that I am calming down. The graying Amity man opens a door on the left. A label on the door says CONFLICT ROOM.
“Are you putting me in time-out or something?” I scowl. That is something the Amity would do: put me in time-out, and then teach me to do cleansing breaths or think positive thoughts.
The room is so bright I have to squint to see. The opposite wall has large windows that look out over the orchard. Despite this, the room feels small, probably because the ceiling, like the walls and floor, is also covered with wooden boards.
“Please sit,” the older man says, gesturing toward the stool in the middle of the room. It, like all other furniture in the Amity compound, is made of unpolished wood, and looks sturdy, like it is still attached to the earth. I do not sit.
“The fight is over,” I say. “I won’t do it again. Not here.”
“We have to follow protocol,” the younger man says. “Please sit, and we’ll discuss what happened, and then we’ll let you go.”
All their voices are so soft. Not hushed, like the Abnegation speak, always treading holy ground and trying not to disturb. Soft, soothing, low—I wonder, then, if that is something they teach their initiates here. How best to speak, move, smile, to encourage peace.