Divergent Chapter 12 Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Two days later, the initiates get woken up at night for another field trip. We won't keep you in suspense: they're going to play some sort of capture the flag paintball game.
  • Eric and Four are the two captains and they choose people for their team. Surprise, surprise: Four chooses Tris, probably like this.
  • It's nighttime in Chicago, which is a pretty perfect place for paintball. (Trust us: we know both paintball and Chicago.) Four's team decides to go to Navy Pier, which has a giant Ferris wheel in our time. In their time, they've got a giant rusted Ferris wheel.
  • While Four's team argues about the best tactics, Tris decides to climb the Ferris wheel to try to find Eric's team and get an advantage. And Four follows her.
  • The only problem is that Four is afraid of heights. Dauntless our left foot. But on the plus side, while Four is having trouble breathing, Tris does see where the enemy team is.
  • On their way down, though, a piece of the ladder of the Ferris wheel comes off and Tris almost falls. So Four rescues her in the most logical and awesome manner: he turns on the Ferris wheel. (How is this Ferris wheel still powered? Don't let that bother you too much. Remember, this book is from Tris's point of view and she's not an engineer who deals with the power plants.)
  • After Tris jumps to safety, she informs the rest of the team where Eric's team has hidden their flag. And then Tris comes up with the plan to capture it. She's kind of rocking this whole paintball challenge.
  • In fact, she's rocking it so much that Four's team wins. But Tris and Christina get into a tiny fight over who should grab the flag itself. Christina takes it—she's taller and Tris has done enough, but there might be some jealousy there. After all, it's hard to be "friends" and "compete" at the same time.
  • One of the Dauntless-born initiates named Uriah congratulates Tris on being so, you know, Dauntless; and his friend Marlene also makes nice with Tris. So now she's got lots of friends—or frenemies, as it were, since they're competing against each other.