He pushes his hair, soaked from the snow, out of his eyes. "So what are we going to do, break a window? Look for a back door?" "I'm just going to walk in," I say. "I'm her son." "You also betrayed her and left the city when she forbade anyone from doing that," he says, "and she sent people after you to stop you. People with guns." "You can stay here if you want," I say. "Where the serum goes, I go," he says. "But if you get shot at, I'm going to grab it and run." "I don't expect anything more." He is a strange sort of person.

I fell in love with him. But I don't just stay with him by default as if there's no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.

Did you just call me BEATRICE?

All three combined is...a different kind of stupid formerly unheard of by humankind.

I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten.

Before I chose Dauntless...I felt assured of my long lifespan, if nothing else. Now there are no reassurances except that where I go, I go because I choose to.

I also don't believe that whatever come after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions-that sounds too much like an Erudite afterlife to me, all accuracy and no feeling.