Determinant: One choice will change everything

Chapter 39: Tris - One Choice Changes Everything

Chapter 39: Tris – One Choice Changes Everything

The soldiers stay near me as we walk, but at least they don't hold my arms like they did earlier. That helps, since by now it's extremely difficult to move. My ribs are throbbing with a level of pain I've never experienced in my life, and knives of agony are spreading from there into my lungs, causing me to breathe raggedly.

I'm beginning to suspect that I have more than a cracked rib. As a guess, at least one is completely broken, and being lifted and dragged the way I was must have caused the bones to split farther apart. It feels like they're now digging into places where ribs should never be.

But I can't let it stop me. I have to buy Tobias the time he needs to reach the Control Computer, so I keep hobbling forward, leading my enemies away from the people I love.

Eventually, I lose all sense of time. There's nothing except the current moment and the torture of taking another step. That reality consumes me so completely that I almost don't notice when the signal comes, indicating that a broadcast is starting. It's not until I'm standing still, facing the same direction as everyone else, that my mind fully registers what's happening, and a surge of hope goes through me. Please be Tobias. Please. I almost sob with relief when it is.

"Stop!" he shouts inside my mind. "Stop shooting each other!" The message is overwhelming, and every muscle in my body freezes in place. For the first time, I understand what broadcasts are like for other people – it's impossible to move right now, impossible to do anything except listen.

"Stop killing. Stop hurting people. Just stop everything and listen to me." And everyone does. I can tell that even though I can't make my eyes move. The air is charged with attention, and through it I can hear that people are barely breathing. Everyone in this country is focusing on Tobias.

"It is time to change things," he says even more intensely, starting the message that Anna taught us. I listen as raptly as everyone else, unable to do anything different. I don't know how much of that is because I'm loaded up with Suggestibility Serum, and how much is because of the potent receiver attached to my head, and how much is just Tobias, but his transmission is far more powerful than the ones I heard earlier from Dan Miter. They don't even seem to be the same phenomenon.

It's not until he's a third of the way through Anna's message that I realize just what this means. We've succeeded. Somehow, against all odds, we've completed this impossible mission.

A jump of victory goes through me, and I find myself following Tobias' words back to the rest of his thoughts. I'm not seeking information the way I did with the earlier broadcasts; I just want to feel close to him at this moment of triumph.

He's thinking about me, I realize abruptly. I'm sure no one else can detect it, the same way they couldn't see the "extra" information in any other broadcast, but I can see the way he's holding my image in his mind. And I can't help but notice every nuance of love and regret and worry that he currently associates with me.

But there's more to it than that. I can actually see myself through his eyes, can see the way he views me. And it's not what I expected.

I suppose I never really believed Tobias when he said that he liked the way I looked. It's not that I thought he was lying, exactly, but I assumed he was trying to spare my feelings. Or maybe I felt he didn't see me realistically, as if he was looking at me through rose-colored glasses. But it's not like that at all.

He sees me as I am – it's the same image I glimpse in the mirror, other than being reversed and viewed from a greater height. What's different is how he perceives that image. I've always felt that my eyes are too wide for my narrow face, but he loves the way they absorb him, the way the blue and gray play back and forth, surrounding the black pupils in a mixture of my three aptitudes. They capture every part of him in a way that nothing else ever has, making him feel awake and alive. Without a doubt, they're as fiercely attractive to him as his eyes are to me.