Alternate ending of allegiant

Chapter 50

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 blink at him, still dazed.

"I didn't," I say.

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

I just stare at him, not sure what to say. I didn't inoculate myself.The fact that I'm still 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 am dimly aware that I left my own gun in the hallway behind me, sure I wouldn't need it if I made it this far.

"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 tried 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 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 capital punishment, but I can't have you surviving this."

He thinks I'm here to steal the weapons that will reset the experiments, not deploy one of them. Of course he does.

I try to guard my expression, though I'm sure it's still slack. 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. But I can't move, or else he'll kill me.

I'll have to wait for the right moment, 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 tou 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."

That must be why he welcomed me into his circle of trust, why he gave me so many opportunities. Because I am a piece of her, wearing her hair and speaking with her voice. Because he has spent his life grasping at her and coming up with nothing.

I hear footsteps in the hallway outside.The soldiers are coming. Good -- I need them to. I need them to exposed to the airborne serum, to pass it on to the rest of the compound. I hope they wait until the air is clear of death serum.

"My mother wasn't a fool," I say."She just understood something you didn't.That it's not sacrifice if it's someone else's life you're giving away, it's just evil."

I back up another step and say,"She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love, not misplaced disgust for another person's genetics.That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options.That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don't have enough of their own.That's why I need to stop you from 'sacrificing' all those people and their memories.Why I need to rid the world of you once and for all."

I shake my head.

"I didn't come here to steal anything David. I twist and lunge toward the device.The gun goes off.Then again. But this time it sounds different. Pain pulses through my body. I hear Caleb's voice repeating the code, as if standing behind me helping me, encouraging me. My vision is starting to blacken. It will not end here. I won't let it. I hear Caleb's voice again as I finish typing in the code.The green button.

So much pain.

But how when my body feels so numb?

I start to fall and slam my hand onto the keypad on my way down.

A light turns on behind the green button. I hear a beep, and a churning sound.

I slide to the floor. I feel something warm dripping down my forehead onto my cheek. I raise a shaky hand and touch it.

Red. Blood is a strange color. Dark.

From the corner of my eye, I see David slumped over in his chair, a bullet in his shoulder. It doesn't make sense. But then again, nothing does anymore.

I feel a hand interlock with mine. I must be dying. Death has come to guide me to my fate.

I am done here.

It's when I feel a squeeze that I open my eyes to see Caleb, lying next to me, gun in hand.

He had come back for me. But not from guilt.The look in his eyes tells of a different reason.

Love.

As we both drift off into the unknown, I whisper, "I love you" just before he is gone.

Caleb is dead. He came back to help me. He couldn't let his sister die for him, for his guilt. He may have chosen Erudite, helped Jeanine, and delivered me to my own execution, but the last little part of him that was Abnegation told him that running away wasn't the right thing to do.

Fighting side by side with me, he died like my parents. For me. For something bigger than all of us.

Everyone in my family is dead, but they did not die for nothing. And I won't have either.

The threads of the serum that tugged me earlier tug again. This time I do not resist. I go with them.

I am done here.