His fingers leave streaks of cold on my skin, invisible to the eye, and I think about wrapping his shirt around my fist and pulling him in to kiss me; I think about pressing myself against him, but I can't, because all our secrets would keep a space between us.

I try to catch my breath and calm myself down, but it isn't easy. I was dead. I was dead, and then i wasn't, and why? Because of Peter? Peter? I stare at him. He still looks so innocent, despite all that he has done to prove that he is not. His hair lies smooth against his head, shiny and dark, like we didn't just run for a mile at full speed. His round eyes scan the stairwell and then rest on my face. "What?" he says. "Why are you looking at me like that?" " How did you do it?" I say.

I forget that he is another person; instead it feels like he is another part of me, just as essential as a heart or an eye or an arm.

Take away someone’s fear, or low intelligence, or dishonesty . . . and you take away their compassion. Take away someone’s aggression and you take away their motivation, or their ability to assert themselves. Take away their selfishness and you take away their sense of self-preservation.

It reminds me why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because they are alive. Because they are free.

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable- except that she had jumped first. The stiff had jumped first. Even I didn't jump first. Her eyes were so stern, so insistent. Beautiful.