“I had a long list of things I wanted to bring up,” Amy said. “I haven’t been idle. I’ve been trying to help Gimel. I’ve been trying to heal people who nobody else could help, or use my healing to do more good. I’ve figured some things out and gathered resources. Capes, even.”

“Assuming I can trust you, which we really haven’t established.”

“You can trust me, Vicky.”

“Can I? Based on what?”

“Based on the fact that I’ve had good intentions every step of the way. I’ve always been on your side.”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

“Fuck off, Vicky,” she said. “Fuck. I have enough good info and resources that you and I could sit down for an hour and you wouldn’t want to imprison me or anything. You’d want to keep talking. If you’d give me a chance.”

“I think my stomach would be all ulcers and I’d be incapable of sleeping after. Or did you forget that you got a taste of what I feel right now? Or is that something you only conveniently bring up?”

“I fucking remember, Vicky,” she said, angry now. She paced, not facing me at any point, but still testing my tolerances, setting that panicky feeling into motion. Like being in a cage with a tiger. “It gets easier each time.”

“It gets harder.”

“No. I can show you that this is doable, you can set the terms of the conversation—”

“Drugged, locked in a room I didn’t ask to come to, cornered?”

“No,” she said, still angry. Angrier.

“Then I’m free to go? If I open that door—”

“It’s a prison, Vicky.”

“But you have the power to let us go, you said that earlier.”

“Stop!” she shouted, wheeling on me.

She wasn’t at the far end of the room now. She was in the center. I was on the bed in the corner, all tension.

But that was the crack.

Cracks, though, were unpredictable. They traced across weak points and forked and terminated early. It was hard to predict the route they’d take.

So I waited, tense, not breathing.

“Teacher’s exploiting the system,” she said, her voice almost emotionless. “He’s going to pick a fight sooner or later, and it’s going to be devastating. He manufactured a crack, he’s going to intentionally create more. Each one gives him more access to the system and more control over the levers and knobs that decide everything else. He can force-create a Dauntless and the ones he makes will listen to him.”

I was silent.

“Teacher was one of the only other people in the Birdcage who kind of ‘got it’, who engaged with me when I talked about that stuff.”

She paused.

“I shouldn’t have said as much as I did to Teacher,” Amy said.

“You gave him ideas?” I asked.