“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.”
“God, Four!" I snap. "You don't want to have to tell me everything right away, but I have to tell you everything right away? Can't you see how stupid that is?""First of all, don't use that name like a weapon against me," he says, pointing at me.”
“I wake with tears in my eyes. I wake to Jeanine’s scream of frustration.“What is it?” She grabs Peter’s gun out of his hand and stalks across the room, pressing the barrel to my forehead. My body stiffens, goes cold. She won’t shoot me. I am a problem she can’t solve. She won’t shoot me.“What is it that clues you in? Tell me. Tell me or I will kill you.”I slowly push myself up from the chair, coming to my feet, pushing my skin harder into the cold barrel.“You think I’m going to tell you?” I say. “You think I believe that you would kill me without figuring out the answer to this question?”“You stupid girl,” she says. “You think this is about you, and your abnormal brain? This is not about you. It is not about me. It is about keeping this city safe from the people who intend to plunge it into hell!”I summon the last of my strength and launch myself at her, clawing at whatever skin my fingernails find, digging in as hard as I can. She screams at the top of her lungs, a sound that turns my blood into fire. I punch her hard in the face.A pair of arms wrap around me, pulling me off her, and a fist meets my side. I groan, and lunge toward her, held at bay by Peter.“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.”Her nose is bleeding, and I see lines of fingernail scrapes in her cheeks, on the side of her throat, turning red with blossoming blood. She glares at me, pinching her nose closed, her hair disheveled, her free hand trembling.“You have failed. You can’t control me!” I scream, so loud it hurts my throat. I stop struggling and sag against Peter’s chest. “You will never be able to control me.”I laugh, mirthless, a mad laugh. 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.I broke her.”
“feel Tobias brushing my hair back before the first simulation. I hear him telling me to be brave. I hear my mother telling me to be brave(...) I am brave.”
“I think that you are the liar!" I say, my voice quaking."You tell me you love me, you trust me, you think I'm more perceptive than the average person. And the first second that belief in my perceptiveness, that trust, that love is put to the test, it falls apart." I am crying now, but I am not ashamed of the tears shining on my cheeks or the thickness of my voice. "So you must have lied when you told me all those things... you must have, because I can't believe your love is really that feeble.”
“I can't force you. I can't make you want to survive this." He pulls me against him and runs his hand over my hair, tucking it behind my ear. His fingers trail down my neck and over my shoulder, and he says, "But you will do it. It doesn't matter if you believe you can or not. You will, because that's who you are.”
“How are you awake? I demand.He lifts his head,and I click the bullet into its chamber, raising an eyebrow at him."The Dauntless leaders...they evaluated my records and removed me from the simulation," he says. "Because they figured out that you already have murderous tendencies and wouldn't mind killing a few hundred people while conscious," I say. "Makes sense.""I'm not...murderous!""I never knew a Candor who was such a liar." I tap the gun against his skull. "Where are the computers that control the simulations,Peter?""You won't shoot me.""People tend to overestimate my character," I say quietly. "They think that because I'm small,or a girl, or a Stiff, I can't possibly be cruel. But they're wrong.”