When the ones nearest to us see us, a young boy takes off running and screams, “Raid! Raid!”
“Don’t worry about that,” Amar says to me. “They think we’re soldiers. Sometimes they raid to transport the kids to orphanages.”
I barely acknowledge the comment. Instead I start walking down one of the aisles, as most people take off or shut themselves inside their lean-tos with cardboard or more tarp. I see them through the cracks between the walls, their houses not much more than a pile of food and supplies on one side and sleeping mats on the other. I wonder what they do in the winter. Or what they do for a toilet.
I think of the flowers inside the compound, and the wood floors, and all the beds in the hotel that are unoccupied, and say, “Do you ever help them?”
“We believe that the best way to help our world is to fix its genetic deficiencies,” Amar says, like he’s reciting it from memory. “Feeding people is just putting a tiny bandage on a gaping wound. It might stop the bleeding for a while, but ultimately the wound will still be there.”
I can’t respond. All I do is shake my head a little and keep walking. I am beginning to understand why my mother joined Abnegation when she was supposed to join Erudite. If she had really craved safety from Erudite’s growing corruption, she could have gone to Amity or Candor. But she chose the faction where she could help the helpless, and dedicated most of her life to making sure the factionless were provided for.
They must have reminded her of this place, of the fringe.
I turn my head away from Amar so he won’t see the tears in my eyes. “Let’s go back to the truck.”
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
We both turn around to head back to the truck, but then we hear gunshots.
And right after them, a shout. “Help!”
Everyone around us scatters.
“That’s George,” Amar says, and he takes off running down one of the aisles on our right. I chase him into the scrap-metal structures, but he’s too quick for me, and this place is a maze—I lose him in seconds, and then I am alone.
As much automatic, Abnegation-bred sympathy as I have for the people living in this place, I am also afraid of them. If they are like the factionless, then they are surely desperate like the factionless, and I am wary of desperate people.
A hand closes around my arm and drags me backward, into one of the aluminum lean-tos. Inside everything is tinted blue from the tarp that covers the walls, insulating the structure against the cold. The floor is covered with plywood, and standing in front of me is a small, thin woman with a grubby face.
“You don’t want to be out there,” she says. “They’ll lash out at anyone, no matter how young she is.”
“They?” I say.
“Lots of angry people here in the fringe,” the woman says. “Some people’s anger makes them want to kill everyone they perceive as an enemy. Some people’s makes them more constructive.”
“Well, thank you for the help,” I say. “My name is Tris.”
“Amy. Sit.”
“I can’t,” I say. “My friends are out there.”
“Then you should wait until the hordes of people run to wherever your friends are, and then sneak up on them from behind.”
That sounds smart.
I sink to the floor, my gun digging into my leg. The bulletproof vest is so stiff it’s hard to get comfortable, but I do the best I can to seem relaxed. I hear people running outside and shouting. Amy flicks the corner of the tarp back to see outside.
“So you and your friends aren’t soldiers,” Amy says, still looking outside. “Which means you must be Genetic Welfare types, right?”
“No,” I say. “I mean, they are, but I’m from the city. I mean, Chicago.”
Amy’s eyebrows pop up high. “Damn. Has it been disbanded?”
“Not yet.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” I frown at her. “That’s my home you’re talking about, you know.”
“Well your home is perpetuating the belief that genetically damaged people need to be fixed—that they’re damaged, period, which they—we—are not. So yes, it’s unfortunate that the experiments still exist. I won’t apologize for saying so.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. To me Chicago has to keep existing because the people I have lost lived there, because the way of life I once loved continues there, though in a broken form. But I didn’t realize that Chicago’s very existence could be harmful to people outside who just want to be thought of as whole.
“It’s time for you to go,” Amy says, dropping the corner of the tarp. “They’re probably in one of the meeting areas, northwest of here.”
“Thank you again,” I say.
She nods to me, and I duck out of her makeshift home, the boards creaking beneath my feet.
I move through the aisles, fast, glad that all the people scattered when we arrived so there is no one to block my way. I jump over a puddle of—well, I don’t want to know what it is—and emerge into a kind of courtyard, where a tall, gangly boy has a gun pointed at George.
A small crowd of people surrounds the boy with the gun. They have distributed among them the surveillance equipment George was carrying, and they’re destroying it, hitting it with shoes or rocks or hammers.
George’s eyes shift to me, but I touch a finger to my lips, hastily. I am behind the crowd now; the one with the gun doesn’t know I’m there.
“Put the gun down,” George says.
“No!” the boy answers. His pale eyes keep shifting from George to the people around him and back. “Went to a lot of trouble to get this, not gonna give it to you now.”
“Then just . . . let me go. You can keep it.”
“Not until you tell us where you’ve been taking our people!” the boy says.
“We haven’t taken any of your people,” George says. “We’re not soldiers. We’re just scientists.”
“Yeah, right,” the boy says. “A bulletproof vest? If that’s not soldier shit, then I’m the richest kid in the States. Now tell me what I need to know!”
I move back so I’m standing behind one of the lean-tos, then put my gun around the edge of the structure and say, “Hey!”
Everyone in the crowd turns at once, but the boy with the gun doesn’t stop aiming at George, like I’d hoped.
“I’ve got you in my sights,” I say. “Leave now and I’ll let you go.”
“I’ll shoot him!” the boy says.
“I’ll shoot you,” I say. “We’re with the government, but we aren’t soldiers. We don’t know where your people are. If you let him go, we’ll all leave quietly. If you kill him, I guarantee there will be soldiers here soon to arrest you, and they won’t be as forgiving as we are.”
At that moment Amar emerges into the courtyard behind George, and someone in the crowd screeches, “There are more of them!” And everyone scatters. The boy with the gun dives into the nearest aisle, leaving George, Amar, and me alone. Still, I keep my gun up by my face, in case they decide to come back.
Amar wraps his arms around George, and George thumps his back with a fist. Amar looks at me, his face over George’s shoulder. “Still don’t think genetic damage is to blame for any of these troubles?”
I walk past one of the lean-tos and see a little girl crouching just inside the door, her arms wrapped around her knees. She sees me through the crack in the layered tarps and whimpers a little. I wonder who taught these people to be so terrified of soldiers. I wonder what made a young boy desperate enough to aim a gun at one of them.
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
I have better people to blame.