I pause a second. He doesn't look at me the way Will, Christina, and Al sometimes do - like I am too small and too weak to be of any use, and they pity me for it.

That quality frightens me now, because I know what he told me: that I was broken, that I was worthless, that I was nothing. How many of those things did he make me believe?

Beatrice. We should think of our family. But. But we must also think of ourselves.

The man running toward me is not a man, he is a boy. A shaggy-haired boy with a crease between his eyebrows. Will. Dull-eyed and mindless, but still Will. He stops running and mirrors me, his feet planted and his gun up. In an instant, I see his finger poised over the trigger and hear the bullet slide into the chamber, and I fire. My eyes squeezed shut. Can't breathe. The bullet hit him in the head. I know because that's where I aimed it.

It's not cruelty, maybe, but a desire to understand that motivates them.

She must love me, to worry about me. She must still be capable of love.

Do you know him well?" I ask.I am too curious; I always have been. "Everyone knows Four," she says. "We were initiates together.I was bad at fighting,so he taught me every night after everyone was asleep." She scratches the back of her neck, her expression suddenly serious. "Nice of him." She gets up and stands behind the members sitting in the doorway. In a second, her serious expression is gone,but I still feel rattled by what she said, half confused by the idea of Four being "nice" and half wanting to punch her for no apparent reason.