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"‘Resetting’ is our word for widespread memory erasure," David says "It is e do when the experier of falling apart We did it e first created each experiment that had a behavioral o was done a few generations before yours" He gives me an odd smile "Why did you think there was so much physical devastation in the factionless sector? There was an uprising, and we had to quell it as cleanly as possible"

I sit stunned inthe broken roads and shattered s and toppled streetlights in the factionless sector of the city, the destruction that is evident nowhere else--not even north of the bridge, where the buildings are empty but seem to have been vacated peacefully I always just took the broken-down sectors of Chicago in stride, as evidence of what happens when people are without community I never drea--and a subsequent resetting

I feel sick with anger That they want to stop a revolution, not to save lives, but to save their precious experih But why do they believe they have the right to rip people’s memories, their identities, out of their heads, just because it’s convenient for them?

But of course, I know the answer to that question To theenetic enes they pass on, and not for the brains in their heads or the hearts in their chests

"When?" one of the council ht hours," David says

Everyone nods as if this is sensible

I re to win this fight against genetic dae, ill need to make sacrifices You understand that, don’t you? I should have known, then, that he would gladly trade thousands of GD memories--lives--for control of the experi of alternatives--without feeling like he needed to bother to save theed, after all

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

TOBIAS

I PROP UP hten the laces Through the large s I see afternoon light winking in the side panels of the parked airplanes on the landing strip GDs in green suits walk across the wings and crawl under the noses, checking the planes before takeoff

"How’s your project with Matthew going?" I say to Cara, who is two beds away Tris let Cara, Caleb, and Matthew test their new truth seru, but I haven’t seen her since then

Cara is pushing a brush through her hair She glances around the room to make sure it’s empty before she answers "Not well So far Tris was immune to the new version of the serue that a person’s genes would make them so resistant to enes," I say, shrugging I switch feet "Maybe it’s some kind of superhuman stubbornness"

"Oh, are we at the insult part of the breakup?" she says "Because I got in a lot of practice after what happened with Will I have several choice things to say about her nose"

"We didn’t break up" I grin "But it’s nice to know you have such warize, I don’t knohy I jus toward your girlfriend are mixed, yes, but for the most part I have a lot of respect for her"

"I knoas just kidding It’s nice to see you get flustered every once in a while"

Cara glares atwith her nose?"

The door to the dormitory opens, and Tris walks in, hair unkeitated, like the ground I’et up and smooth my hand over her hair to put it back into place "What happened?" I say, ," Tris says She covers my hand with hers, briefly, then sits on one of the beds, her hands dangling between her knees

"I hate to be repetitive," Cara says, "butwhat happened?"

Tris shakes her head like she’s trying to shake the dust out of it "The council hasones"

She tells us, in fits and starts, about the council’s plan to reset the experis and presses forward into them until her wrists turn red

When she finishes Imy arm across her shoulders I look out the , at the planes perched on the runway, gleaht In less than two days those planes will probably drop the memory serum virus over the experiments

Cara says to Tris, "What do you intend to do about it?"

"I don’t know," Tris says "I feel like I don’t knohat’s right anymore"

They’re similar, Cara and Tris, tomen sharpened by loss The difference is that Cara’s pain has uarded her uncertainty, protected it, despite all she’s been through She still approaches everything with a question instead of an answer It is so I should probably admire more

For a few seconds we stew in silence, and I follow the path of hts as they turn over and over one another

"They can’t do this," I say "They can’t erase everyone They shouldn’t have the power to do that" I pause "All I can think is that this would be sowith a completely different set of people who could actually see reason Then wethe experi themselves up to other possibilities"

"Maybe we should i "And discard the old ones"

Tris’s face twists, and she touches a hand to her forehead, as if rubbing out some brief and inconvenient pain "No," she says "We don’t even need to do that"

She looks up atme still

"Memory serum," she says "Alan and Matthew came up with a way to make the seruh an entire population without injecting everyone That’s how they’re planning to reset the experiments But we could reset them" She speaks faster as the idea takes shape in her ious; it bubbles inside me like the idea is esting a solution to our proble that we cause yet another probleanda, without the disdain for GDs Then they’ll never risk the er will be gone forever"

Cara raises her eyebrows "Wouldn’t erasing theirtheet e is stored in the brain, otherwise the first faction members wouldn’t have kno to speak or tie their shoes or anything" Tris comes to her feet "We should ask Matthew He knoorks better than I do"

I get up too, putting ht on the airplane wings blind me so I can’t see her face