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As if on cue, Matthew opens a desk drawer and takes out a sertip, and an ie appears on it It’s one of the documents he just had open on his computer He offers the tablet to
"Don’t worry, it’s practically indestructible," David says "I’m sure you want to return to your friends Mattheould you please walk Miss Prior back to the hotel? I have sos to take care of"
"And I don’t?" Matthew says Then he winks "Kidding, sir I’ll take her"
"Thank you," I say to David, before he walks out
"Of course," he says "Let me know if you have any questions"
"Ready?" Matthew says
He’s tall, ht as Caleb, and his black hair is artfully tousled in the front, like he spent a lot of ti it look like he’d just rolled out of bed that way Under his dark blue unifor around his throat It shifts over his Adam’s apple when he ss
I ith hiain The crowd that was here before has thinned They must have settled in to work, or breakfast There are whole lives being lived in this place, sleeping and eating and working, bearing children and raising fa This is a placeto freak out," he says "After finding out all this stuff at once"
"I’ defensive I already did, I think, but I’s "I would But fair enough"
I see a sign that says HOTEL ENTRANCE up ahead I clutch the screen to et back to the dormitory and tell Tobias about s ," Matthew says "I ondering if you and that other guy--Marcus Eaton’s son?--would enes"
"Why?"
"Curiosity" He shrugs "We haven’t gotten to test the genes of soeneration of the experiment before, and you and Tobias seem to be sos"
I raise my eyebrows
"You, for example, have displayed extraordinary seruent aren’t as capable of resisting serums as you are," Matthew says "And Tobias can resist simulations, but he doesn’t display soent I can explain in more detail later"
I hesitate, not sure if I want to see enes, or to compare theer, almost childlike, and I understand curiosity
"I’ll ask hi When?"
"This et you in an hour or so You can’t get into the labs without me anyway"
I nod I feel excited, suddenly, to learnas reading et pieces of her back
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TOBIAS
IT’S STRANGE TO see people you don’t knoell in the , with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks; to know that Christina is cheerful in the , and Peter wakes up with his hair perfectly flat, but Cara co her way, li I do is shower and change into the clothes they provided for us, which aren’t much different from the clothes I aether like they don’tto the people here, and they probably don’t I wear a black shirt and blue jeans and try to convince myself that it feels nor
My father’s trial is today I haven’t decided if I’ to watch it or not
When I return, Tris is already fully dressed, perched on the edge of one of the cots, like she’s ready to leap to her feet at any rab a ht us, and sit across fro You were up early"
"Yeah," she says, scooting her foot forward so it’s wedged between --David had so on the cot beside her It glohen she touches it, showing a document "It’s my mother’s file She wrote a journal--a small one, from the look of it, but still" She shifts like she’s uncomfortable "I haven’t looked at itit?"
"I don’t know" She puts it down, and the screen turns off autoation children rarely know their parents in any significant way, because Abnegation parents never reveal therow to a particular age They keep theray cloth armor and selfless acts, convinced that to share is to be self-indulgent This is not just a piece of Tris’s liet of who Natalie Prior was
I understand, then, why she holds it like it’s athat could disappear in a moment And why she wants to leave it undiscovered for a while, which is the same way I feel aboutshe doesn’t want to know
I follow her eyes across the roo on a bite of cereal-- to show it to him?" I say
She doesn’t respond
"Usually I don’t advocate giving hi," I say "But in this casethis doesn’t really just belong to you"