We don't know what's happened out there since they put us in here, or how many generations have lived and died since they did.We could be the last people left.

There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.

He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife?

Suicide to them is an act of selfishness. Someone who is truly selfless does not think of himself often enough to desire death.

I'll have to keep looking for more of them, more brief moments of freedom in a world that refuses to allow it.

His hand touches my waist, steadies me. The touch sends a shock through my body, and all my insides burn like his fingers ignited them. I pull close to him, pressing my body against his, and lift my head to kiss him.

She walks away, and I am too stunned to follow her. At the end of the hallways she turns and says, "Have a piece of cake for me, all right? The chocolate. It's delicious." She smiles a strange, twisted smile, and adds," I love you, you know." And then she's gone. I stand alone in the blue light coming from the lamp above me, and I understand: She has been to the compound before. She remembered this hallways. She knows about the initiation process. My mother was a dauntless.