Insurgent Read Online Free PDF Page B

am: that it would be nice if life worked this way, stripping the dirt from our lives and sending us out into the world clean. But some dirt is destined to linger.
    I stare at the back of Marcus’s head. I have to do this now.
    Now .
    “I heard you, the other day,” I blurt out.
    Marcus whips his head around. “What are you doing, Beatrice?”
    “I followed you here.” I fold my arms over my chest. “I heard you talking to Johanna about what motivated Jeanine’s attack on Abnegation.”
    “Did the Dauntless teach you that it’s all right to invade another person’s privacy, or did you teach yourself?”
    “I’m a naturally curious person. Don’t change the subject.”
    Marcus’s forehead is creased, especially between the eyebrows, and there are deep lines next to his mouth. He looks like a man who has spent most of his life frowning. He might have been handsome when he was younger—perhaps he still is, to women his age, like Johanna—but all I see when I look at him are the black-pit eyes from Tobias’s fear landscape.
    “If you heard me talking to Johanna, then you know that I didn’t even tell her about this. So what makes you think that I would share the information with you ?”
    I don’t have an answer at first. But then it comes to me.
    “My father,” I say. “My father is dead.” It’s the first time I’ve said it since I told Tobias, on the train ride over, that my parents died for me. “Died” was just a fact to me then, detached from emotion. But “dead,” mingling with the churning and bubbling noises in this room, strikes a blow like a hammer to my chest, and the monster of grief awakens, clawing at my eyes and throat.
    I force myself to continue.
    “He may not have actually died for whatever information you were referring to,” I say. “But I want to know if it was something he risked his life for.”
    Marcus’s mouth twitches.
    “Yes,” he says. “It was.”
    My eyes fill with tears. I blink them away.
    “Well,” I say, almost choking, “then what on earth was it? Was it something you were trying to protect? Or steal? Or what?”
    “It was …” Marcus shakes his head. “I’m not going to tell you that.”
    I step toward him. “But you want it back. And Jeanine has it.”
    Marcus is a good liar—or at least, someone who is skilled at hiding secrets. He does not react. I wish I could see like Johanna sees, like the Candor see—I wish I could read his expression. He could be close to telling me the truth. If I press just hard enough, maybe he’ll crack.
    “I could help you,” I say.
    Marcus’s upper lip curls. “You have no idea how ridiculous that sounds.” He spits the words at me. “You may have succeeded in shutting down the attack simulation, girl, but it was by luck alone, not skill. I would die of shock if you managed to do anything useful again for a long time.”
    This is the Marcus that Tobias knows. The one who knows right where to hit to cause the most damage.
    My body shudders with anger. “Tobias is right about you,” I say. “You’re nothing but an arrogant, lying piece of garbage.”
    “He said that, did he?” Marcus raises his eyebrows.
    “No,” I say. “He doesn’t mention you enough to say anything like that. I figured it out all on my own.” I clench my teeth. “You’re almost nothing to him, you know. And as time goes on, you become less and less.”
    Marcus doesn’t answer me. He turns back to the water purifier. I stand for a moment in my triumph, the sound of rushing water combining with the heartbeat in my ears. Then I leave the building, and it isn’t until I’m halfway across the field that I realize I didn’t win. Marcus did.
    Whatever the truth is, I’ll have to get it from somewhere else, because I won’t be asking him again.
     
     
    That night I dream that I am in a field, and I encounter a flock of crows clustered on the ground. When I swat a few of them away, I realize that they are perched on top of a man,