Determinant: One choice will change everything

Chapter 17: Tris - Maps and Plans

Chapter 17: Tris – Maps and Plans

By the time Tobias comes upstairs for lunch, most of the others have gone – Christina for a follow-up on her leg, Uriah to practice with the mock Control Computer we used yesterday, and Cara to continue training downstairs with George. I expect Amar to go with them, but he stays, chatting comfortably with me and then with Tobias after he finally arrives.

Tobias doesn't say much. It's clear that he's calmer now, but his eyes are still full of thought, and he doesn't seem to want to talk about anything that happened downstairs. I can't blame him. After the way he was exposed at Candor, I'm sure he hated seeing Peter's secret forced into the open like that.

When we're done eating, Amar leads us back to Anna's office. She stands as we enter, smiling in greeting, and then gestures us toward the chairs. There are several maps strewn across her desk.

She gets right to the point. "I thought you'd like to see the plans, assuming you're still willing to go..." She raises an eyebrow hopefully, and I smile back at her. I guess there must be something of my mother in her mannerisms, because I always seem to want to please her.

"Yes, we're still going," I say immediately, not even trying to negotiate the point.

"However," Tobias states firmly, giving me a look, "we want input on the plans."

"Absolutely," Anna reassures him. "Nothing is set in stone here. In fact, there are a lot more unknowns than I'd like, so you're going to have to come up with a chunk of it on the fly. But let's start with what we know…."

Pulling one of the maps forward, she begins, "this is the country of NUSA. It will be hard for you to grasp the scale, but this distance here is fifty miles, and this is a city that's about ten times larger than ours." I stare, staggered by the size of the country. My entire world has always consisted of one city, but you could fit thousands of those inside NUSA.

Anna continues, "This shading indicates population density – the darker the color, the more people live in that area. Our city population is about this color here," and she indicates a spot that's almost white. Then, she runs her finger down a long, dark stretch that contains a dozen labeled dots, with Philadelphia in the center. "As you can see, the population is heavily concentrated along the coast, with the capital in the middle, and it gets sparser as you move west. " Her finger moves to the northwest corner of the map, to an area that appears to be in the middle of a huge lake. "We are approximately here."

"I never noticed that we live underwater," Tobias states evenly, and I bite back a laugh.

Amar grins. "Until very recently, that's exactly what NUSA thought." His smile fades as he adds, "Unfortunately, they know better now."

Tobias nods, looking back at the map. I doubt he grasps the size of this world any better than I do. I'm used to distances I can measure with my feet, not ones that would take months to walk, if it's even possible to cross them on foot.

Amar draws his finger along a line that travels south from us and then east, stopping on a dot labeled Pittsburgh. "We expect them to gather their forces in Pittsburgh and take this route to us," he says as he retraces the lines in reverse. "It's their westernmost city, so it's the closest point for attacking us, and this is the least damaged roadway leading from there to here, so it's a pretty safe bet."

"Based on that," Anna says, "we've sent forces to bomb the road here." She places her finger east of a point called Indianapolis. "No one lives there, so it will take NUSA a while to bring in supplies to fix the road or bypass it."

"In the meantime," Amar adds, "we'll be taking this route." His finger traces a line that runs almost directly east from us. "It's a much more difficult road, because large stretches of it washed away years ago. But that means NUSA is unlikely to use it, whereas we have some experience working around that." I nod. So far, it makes sense.