Allegiant (Ending Rewritten)

Chapter 50

Tris

"How did you inoculate yourself against the death serum?" he asks me. He's still sitting in his wheelchair, but you don't need to be able to walk to fire a gun. I have one too though, and my aim is probably far better.

I still stare though, trying to comprehend the scenario.

"I didn't," I say.

"Don't be stupid," David says, "You can't survive without an inoculation, and I'm the only person in the compound who possesses that substance."

I'm not sure what to say though. I didn't inoculate myself. The fact that I am standing upright is impossible. There's nothing more to add.

"I suppose it no longer matters," he says. "We're here now."

"What are you doing here?" I mumble. My lips feel awkwardly large, hard to talk around. I still feel that oily heaviness on my skin, like death is clinging to me even though I have defeated it.

"I knew something was going on," David says. "You've been running around with genetically damaged people all week, Tris. Did you think I wouldn't notice?" He shakes his head. "And then your friend Cara was caught trying to manipulate the lights, but she very wisely knocked herself out before she could tell us anything. So I came here, just in case. I'm sad to say I'm not surprised to see you."

"You came here alone?" I say. "Not very smart, are you?"

His bright eyes squint a little. "Well, you see, I have death serum resistance and a weapon, and you have no way to fight me . There's no way you can steal four virus devices while I have you at gunpoint. I'm afraid that you've come all this way for no reason, and it will be at the expense of your life. The death serum may not have killed you, but I am going to. I'm sure you understand officially we don't allow capitol punishment, but I can't have you surviving this."

He thinks I am here to steal the weapons that will reset the experiments, not deploy one of them. Of course he does. And most importantly, he thinks I am unarmed.

I try to guard my expression. I sweep my eyes across the room, searching for the device that will release the memory serum virus. I was there when Matthew described it to Caleb in painstaking detail earlier: a black box with a silver keypad, marked with a strip of blue tape with a model number written on it. It is one of the only items on the counter along the left wall just a few feet away from me.

I'll have to wait for the right moment to shoot him and type it, and do it fast.

"I know what you did," I say. I start to back up, hoping that the accusation will distract him. "I know you designed the attack simulation, I know you're responsible for my parents' deaths- for my mother's death. I know."

"I am not responsible for her death!" David says, the words bursting from him, too loud and too sudden. "I told her what was coming just before the attack began, so she had enough time to escort her loved ones to a safe house. If she had stayed put, she would have lived. But she was a foolish woman who didn't understand making sacrifices for the greater good, and it killed her!"

I frown at him. There's something about his reaction- about the glassiness of his eyes- something that he mumbled when Nita shot him with the fear serum-something about her.

"Did you love her?" I say, "All those years she was sending you correspondence... the reason you never wanted her to stay there... the reason you told her you couldn't read her updates anymore, after she married my father..."

David sits still, like a statue, like a man of stone.

"I did," he says, "But that time is past."