Duplicity [p.h]

I COULDN'T HELP but feel like pulling my hair out at how horribly organized Erudite's lab research was. One would think, having the anti-Divergent mandate that they do, that the simulator project would be at the top of the priority list.

Yet there I was, sitting behind a plexiglass wall — as my attention vacillated between the time on my watch (creeping later into the night than I felt was tolerable) and the scientists taking their sweet, sweet time — with only Eric and my thoughts to keep me company.

"You think they'll finally come up with something today?" Eric grumbled back something indiscernable, his answer muffled by a makeshift pillow. "I thought you told me you learned Latin, not jibberish. Speak up."

Eric dragged his head up with the most biting, murderous stare ever known to me. "I said," he droned, "I don't think we're going to here from them until the next Alexandria Day Festival."

"Only four years? I'd reckon double that."

"I'd bet you three book cookies I'm right."

"I'd bet you four book cookies and a poetry contest entry."

Eric slumped back onto his pillow. "Gods, those were the worst."

"Tell me about it. But in all seriousness, it's been weeks. How do they have nothing?"

With an exasperated shake of his head, Eric hauled himself up from his chair as if he was moving through molasses, dragging his feet behind him to a nearby vending machine. "I don't know, Jax. Something you're going to have to learn when it comes to being in leadership is that it's never easy having to rely on other people. If they want to tinker around with glucocorticoid receptors, even if I think that theory is complete and utter horsesh—"

"Language."

"Oh, like you care," Eric sneered over his shoulder. With a tap of a card, the vending machine hummed to life, complete with bright lights illuminating the display of 'healthy snacks' and a blue-tinted screen with buttons galore.  "Want a chocolate milk?"

"Please."

Eric plucked a few more buttons on the screen and tapped his card on the machine's sensor once more. "As I was saying, no matter how much we bully them to hurry up, we can't control what their results are going to be. Of course," Eric shrugged, tossing the carton of chocolatey goodness my way, "that isn't going to stop me from yelling at them."

I hadn't even had the chance to open my milk carton before the door to the lab flew open and three Erudite scientists burst through, their hair sticking out in ways that didn't seem to obey the laws of physics and eyes that twitched every few seconds if you looked closely enough.

"We did it," one of them blurted out. "We solved it." She thrust forward a tablet with charts and tables and graphs on pages that seemed to go on forever —

— but she was right. It all made sense.

They had done it.

"So they ditched the glucocortocoids."

"See? I told you so." Eric grinned wider than I had ever seen before. It would have taken me aback more had his reaction not been spurred by the innovation of something so catastrophically dangerous.

It was at that moment that I realized this was more than tapping my fingers and smoothing out my lies.  We were finally getting to the end of this charade.

And that mortified me.

• • •

"SO THE PLAN," Eric began, pointing to the holographic proposal of what to do with our newfound information with the end of his clear glass stylus, "is to launch an ambush on the Candor Headquarters."