'For you see, we are one – even the factions are a part of us and our lifestyle. We are all-encompassing, and even if they choose to avoid us, we will welcome them with open arms. They may feel bitter about us for it, but we do not care—for we, the exiles, the outcasts, the greater than you all—we have that one choice none of you inside the factions have. We are free, and that is worth the price of not being in a faction.'
001
I walk between the towering and long-abandoned buildings looking for signs of anyone taking sanctuary in any of the building.
Finding a building with running water or electricity in the factionless part of the city is a comprehensive challenge. There are a few that the Abnegation have set aside as shelters for families during the bitter cold months, but other than that, it's difficult.
Very few of the factionless have homes to call their own, usually grouping into old warehouses that have long been out of use.
I hand a loaf to an elderly woman who stands huddled over in the middle of a vacant street leading more into the warehouses and shelter buildings. The old woman accepts the loaf without thanking me or even bothering to look me in the eye. I should expect that from her and everyone else who lives in these slums. I get to live in Abnegation with a sense of security, whereas the factionless do not have that privilege because of everyone who supports the faction system, including myself.
Members of the Abnegation wandering the streets of the factionless sector isn't an odd site at all —we've been coming here for many years now to give to those who have so little. And while they welcome our food, clothing, and shelter with open arms, most factionless hold hostility against the factions who had rejected them in the past.
However, it's really hard to be rejected from Abnegation if you put any sort of effort into it at all. They don't have a limit in their members like some of the other factions. Those who end up leaving our faction do so of their own free will, usually because they are tired of living for everyone but themselves.
I may be too familiar with that feeling—more than I'm willing to admit to myself, but I'm not a full member, I was only born into it and I can always transfer at my Choosing Ceremony.
The sun has begun to sink down in the sky and I realize that it's time to meet back up with Caleb.
I still have a few loaves of bread left, but it shouldn't be hard to find someone to unload them onto.
I'm almost tempted to taste one, but then I'll just spend the rest of the evening hating myself more than I already do for not following my faction's rules. Following these rules, however, is easier for my brother than me. Sometimes, I feel sour and jealous about him for being able to act so selflessly without any effort when I question my presence in our faction every single day.
In three months from now, Caleb and I, as well as all the other sixteen year olds in Chicago, will have to publicly declare the faction in which we have chosen to live out the rest of our lives. It must be nice to know with certainty where you belong long before that time has even come, but I only have a matter of hours after the test and before the Choosing Ceremony to decide where I belong.
"Got something for me to eat?" a haggard, strained voice asks me from the shadows as I pass a collapsed building that's remains have become something of a dumping ground for the factionless to reside at. It smells of human waste and rotting garbage and I wonder what possessed me to take this particular route. Then I remember it was Caleb who pointed for me to come down this path.
A middle-aged man emerges from the shadows wearing a denim jacket that is much too baggy on his bony frame, his strangely greyish hair sticking out from beneath a dirty stocking cap riddled with holes. He has a greasy smile and an unshaven face and is the exact definition of someone my father labels as "the neediest" of the factionless.
The man is repulsive to me. He smells of the sort of intense body odour that tells me he is not one of the lucky few who found an abode in any of the functioning buildings. His hands are matted with dirt and a type of fungus with long, cracked and discoloured fingernails, looking as if he were just digging through the garbage pile only moments ago.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he had been.
I don't want to speak to him. I don't even want to look at him. But yet, I am supposed to be helping him like all Abnegation.
He approaches me slowly as I watch him with anxiety bubbling in my stomach. I tell myself, he just wants something to eat, so I can calm down the nervousness inside of me.
The man grabs onto my basket a little too vehemently before pulling it towards himself and examining the inside contents.
"You make these yourself?" he asks me.
I nod wearily.
"Well, then I bet they're just delicious," he says, his light-green eyes fixed on mine. "You're still just a girl."
Not answering him, my eyes glance over my shoulder to see if Caleb has returned. There's something about the man's tone that doesn't quite sit right with me. "Are you waiting for your father?" he asks a little too smoothly for my liking.
"M-my older brother," I finally manage to stammer out.
Grinning, he leans in close to my face.
"If I had a daughter or sister as young and innocent as you are, I'm sure I wouldn't let her go out and wander the streets alone. Someone could take advantage of her," his breath makes a bile rise in my throat that I struggle to keep down.
He gives me the sort of look that makes one's skin crawl.
My eyes connect with his for a flash before I toss the whole basket of bread at him and make a run for it.
I'm small with petite legs, and not necessarily a quick runner as it is, but my feet move as quickly as I can make them and I pump my arms in an effort to gain speed. I can hear his footsteps growing louder behind me.
He may be well into his late forties, but he's fast on his feet and manages to catch up with me in seconds.
His body collides into mine severely, his thrust pummelling me to the hard concrete sidewalk below us. My right cheek grazes off the rough pavement and I fall unceremoniously on my hip, causing a searing pain to ring through my body.
"Hold still, princess," the man says, laughing, "It won't hurt a bit. Unless, of course, you like it that way."
His large, clammy hands pin either of my wrists above my head and his knees are on either side of me as I wriggle beneath his grip, trying to escape. I turn my head toward to the side and attempt to lock my teeth down onto his arm, but instead his other hand meets my face with a slap.
I blink back the tears that form in my eyes as he manages to pin both of my arms down with one of his hands.
"I got a fighter, huh?" he asks me with a wicked smile. "Didn't know you Stiffs had it in you."
"Caleb!" I scream for my brother so piercingly that my voice cracks in combination with the tears. "Caleb!"
Where are you when I need you most Caleb?
"Shut up," he warns. "Your brother ain't here."
Bile rises in my throat as the man gropes me through my large shirt.
"No..." I choke out in between attempts to pull my arms free of his dominating grasp. "Let...Go!"
I finally manage to wriggle free my right leg, bending it and kneeing towards his groin. A struggled breath escapes the man's lips at the contact, but his grip on me does not seem to falter.
He manages to pin both of my legs down with his knees, and I realize that I'm conquered—he's twice my weight and a good foot taller than I am. A dirty factionless man who could be carrying God knows how many types of diseases is going to rape me right here on the street with no one to help me, I realize.
"Please," I plead with him, hot tears beginning to trickle down my cheeks. "Please let me go."
Grunting, the man uses his free hand to grip my face before slamming my head back against the concrete.
"Don't worry," he hisses. "We're just getting started, princess," he promises, sending a chill down my spine.
His free hand has just begun to unsnap the top button on my slacks when all of his weight is lifted completely off of me with a sudden jerk. For a second I think that Caleb has come to rescue me.
But no; instead a dark figure—a tall, muscular boy cloaked in black—throws my attacker up against the wall of a nearby building, his fist connecting with the man's jaw. Dauntless, I think.
The boy is persistent, leaving the man tumbling to the ground and grasping his nose, his face now greasy with blood that shines in the moonlight. After one last kick to the abdomen, the boy pulls the older man to his feet and shoves him away.
The man stumbles forward, clutching to the sides of buildings as he dizzily makes his way back down the alleyway from which he came as quickly as he's capable of doing in his state.
And then a pair of piercing dark blue eyes is looking down at me.
The boy that saved me doesn't look too much older than me, maybe seventeen or eighteen.
I recognize a tattoo that wraps around the side of his neck and the customary black clothing that the Dauntless wear.
I am right, he is –or was- Dauntless.
"Are you okay?" he asks,
I begin to sit up, and he reaches down, offering me his hand.
I don't accept it—close human contact was difficult enough for me even before the attempted rape.
I prop my palms touching the sidewalk, sitting up so hurriedly that light-headedness hits me.
"Easy there," the boy tells me, bracing my shoulders to keep me from tipping over. "You could have a concussion. I saw him throw you down pretty roughly."
I quickly shrug free form his grasp.
It's too soon for a stranger to have his hands on me like that.
I can still feel the factionless man's clammy hand inching up towards my trousers, and I shudder at the thought of anything happening more. "Hey," he says slowly to me. "I'm not going to hurt you, you know?"
I do know.
And if this boy—this complete stranger—would've happened upon me a few moments later, he wouldn't be dealing with just a concussed, badly shaken girl, he'd be dealing with a rape victim.
With that thought, I erupt into tears.
He stares at me, a bit in astonishment. He actually seems very surprised that something like this would be upsetting to me. Like I was just supposed to get up off the ground and be on my way. But this is the way the Dauntless operate, I suppose.
They don't allow anyone or anything to slow them down for too long.
Or he does not know how to deal with me. He knows I am Abnegation, and the personal contact is inappropriate as well as with his previous attempts to help me.
He places his hand on my knee, and I let him. It's a calming gesture I suppose.
"What's going on here?" Caleb's voice asks from down the street and he quickens his pace a bit to meet up with us.
"Beatrice, what happened to you?" he asks me, his dark brows drawing together. He looks at the boy kneeling at my side.
"She was attacked," the dauntless boy tells him. "A factionless man had her pinned, he was going to..."
Clearing his throat, the boy's eyes meet my brother's with the insinuation of what almost happened.
No one wants to say it.
I don't even want to think it.
"Beatrice, are you okay?" he asks me with wide eyes.
I cross my arms over my chest as a sense of security, nodding.
Tears continue to trickle down my face, which still burns with humiliation over what had just happened me.
I've never felt so weak and vulnerable in my entire life.
I know how and what the factionless feel and think about their security now.
"She hit her head pretty hard," he continues. "You should take her to the hospital in Abnegation. And don't let your little sister wander the factionless sector alone after dusk anymore," he adds. "Anyone can tell you that it's not safe here at night."
He's almost demeaning in his tone, turning on his heel to leave as if he hadn't just saved me.
Caleb and I watch the outline of the boy's figure disappear down the darkened street before exchanging a glance to each other.
"The rest of the bread's down the alleyway," I tell him nervously. "I don't want to go back there."
And I don't want to go back there, but I know that Caleb probably doesn't want perfectly good food that could feed the starving to go to waste. "Just leave it," Caleb surprises me by saying as he directs me back towards the bus stop.
We sit in complete silence for the entire trip back home.
Knowing Caleb, he is not going to do, or mention anything about the attack. He will just put it behind him.
I think about the dauntless boy with the neck tattoo and the blue eyes.
He hadn't had to think twice about jumping into a fight and saving my life when Caleb was nowhere to be found.
The boy shouldn't have felt like he had to be the one to save me; he really didn't have to get involved at all.
Certainly his dauntless parents didn't send him out on a mission to help small Abnegation girls in distress today.
There was no one overseeing that he was doing the right thing, but he did it anyway.
He did it out of selflessness, almost as if he were from Abnegation.