Hi my lovely readers, this is my first fanfic so if there are any problems with this story please PM me and here goes the first chapter.
In the world of factions Beatrice isn't sure where to go.(Abnegation)vampire,(Candor-Telepathy),(Erudite-)wizard,(Dauntless-)werewolves,and(candor) animal(soul)shifter.(first fanfic plz read).
There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair. I sit on the stool and my mother stands behind me with the blade, cutting some hair in the back and trimming the rest. The strands fall on the floor in a dull,loose, blond lock. When she finishes, she pulls my hair away from my face and twists it into a knot. I note how calm and peaceful she is without showing any proper emotion-she looks focused. She is practiced in the art of losing herself. I can say the same of myself. I try to sneak a look at my reflection when she isn't paying attention—not for vanity, but out of curiosity. A lot can happen to a person's appearance in three months. In my reflection, I see a pale narrow face, wide, grey-blue eyes like my father, and a long, thin nose—I still look like a 12 year old girl, even though a few months I turned sixteen. The other factions celebrate birthdays, but we don't. It would be self-indulgent. "There," she says when she pins the knot in place. "So today is the day," she says. "Yes," I reply. "Are you nervous?" I stare into my own eyes for a moment. Today is the day of the aptitude test that will show me which of the five factions I belong in. And tomorrow, at the Choosing Ceremony, I will decide on a faction; I will decide the rest of my life; I will decide to stay with my family or abandon them. "No," I say. "The tests don't have to change our choices." "Right." She smiles."Thank you. For cutting my hair." She kisses my cold cheek and slides the panel over the mirror. We walk together to the kitchen. On these normal mornings when my brother reads, and my father's hand skims my hair as he reads the newspaper, and my mother hums as she clears the table— it is on these mornings that I feel guiltiest for wanting to leave them. The bus stinks of exhaust. Every time it hits a patch of uneven pavement, it jostles me from side to side, even though I'm gripping the seat to keep myself still. My older brother, Caleb, stands in the aisle, holding a railing above his head to keep himself steady. We don't look alike. He has my father's dark hair and hooked nose and my mother's green eyes and dimpled cheeks. When he was younger, that collection of features looked strange, but now it suits him. If he wasn't Abnegation, I'm sure the girls at school would stare at him. He also inherited my mother's talent for selflessness. When I sit down Caleb stands up to give his seat to a we get out of the bus, the Werewolves run causing everyone to backup as they howl all the way to the testing rooms.
The tests begin after our third class . We sit at the long tables in the cafeteria, and the test administrators call ten names at a time, one for each testing room. I sit next to Caleb and across from our neighbor Susan. Susan's father travels throughout the city for his job, so he has a car and drives her to and from school every day. He offered to drive us, too, but as Caleb says, we prefer to leave later and would not want to inconvenience him. Of course not. The test administrators are mostly Vampire volunteers, although there is an Wizard in one of the testing rooms and a Werewolf in another to test those of us from Vampire, because the rules state that we can't be tested by someone from our own faction. My gaze drifts from Susan to the Werewolf tables across the room. They are laughing,howling and play fighting. At another set of tables, the wizards chatter over books and spells, in constant pursuit of knowledge. A group of Soul shifter girls in yellow and red sit in a circle on the cafeteria floor, playing some kind of hand-slapping game involving animals responding to the songs. Every few minutes I hear a chorus of laughter from them as someone is eliminated and has to sit in the center of the circle. At the table next to them, Telepathy boys make wide gestures with their hands. They appear to be debating about something, but it must not be serious, because some of them are still smiling. At the Vampire table, we sit quietly and wait. Faction customs dictate even idle behavior and supersede individual preference. I doubt all the Wizards want to study all the time, or that every Telepathy enjoys a lively debate, but they can't defy the norms of their factions any more than I can. Caleb's name is called in the next group. He moves confidently toward the exit. I don't need to wish him luck or assure him that he shouldn't be nervous. He knows where he belongs, and as far as I know, he always has. "Just do what you're supposed to," he always says. It is that easy for him. It should be that easy for me. I close my eyes and keep them closed until ten minutes later, when Caleb sits down again. He is wide eyed. He pushes his palms along his legs like I do when I wipe off imaginary sweat, and when he brings them back, his fingers shake. I open my mouth to ask him something, but the words don't come. I am not allowed to ask him about his results, and he is not allowed to tell me.
An Vampire volunteer speaks the next round of names. Two from Werewolves, two from Wizards, two from Soul shifters, two from telepathy, and then: "From Vampire: Susan Black and Beatrice Prior." I get up because I'm supposed to, but if it were up to me, I would LOVE to stay in my seat for the rest of time. I feel like there is a bubble in my chest that expands more by the second, threatening to break me apart from the inside. I follow Susan to the exit. The people I pass probably can't tell us apart. We wear the same clothes and we wear our blond hair the same way. The only difference is that Susan might not feel like she's going to throw up, and from what I can tell, her hands aren't shaking so hard she has to clutch the hem of her shirt to steady them. Waiting for us outside the cafeteria is a row of ten rooms. They are used only for the aptitude tests, so I have never been in one before. Unlike the other rooms in the school, they are separated, not by glass, but by mirrors. I watch myself, pale and terrified, walking toward one of the doors. Susan grins nervously at me as she walks into room 5, and I walk into room 6, where a Werewolf woman waits for me. She is not as wild-looking as the other young Dauntless I have seen. She has small, dark, angular eyes and wears a black jacket and jeans. It is only when she turns to close the door that I see a tattoo on the back of her neck, a black-and-white hawk with a red eye. I would ask her what it signifies if my throat wasn't so tight;it must signify something. Mirrors cover the inner walls of the room. I can see my reflection from all angles: the gray fabric obscuring the shape of my back, my long neck, my knobby-knuckled hands, pale and cold like normal. The ceiling glows white with light. In the center of the room is a reclined chair, like a dentist's, with a machine next to it. It looks like a place where terrible things happen. "Don't worry," the woman says, "it doesn't hurt." Her hair is black and straight, but in the light I see that it is streaked with gray. "Have a seat ," she says. "My name is Tori." Clumsily I sit in the chair and recline, putting my head on the headrest. The lights hurt my eyes. Tori busies herself with the machine on my right. I try to focus on her and not on the wires in her hands. "Why the hawk?" I blurt out as she attaches an electrode to my forehead. "Never met a curious Vampire before," she says, raising her eyebrows at me. I shiver, and goose bumps appear on my arms. My curiosity is a mistake, a betrayal of Vampire values. She presses another electrode to my forehead and explains, "In some parts of the ancient world like abut 4,000 years go(Authors Note-its about year 4,016), the hawk symbolized the sun. Back when I got this, I figured if I always had the sun on me, I wouldn't be afraid of the dark." I try to stop myself from asking another question, but I can't help it. "You're afraid of the dark?" "I was afraid of the dark," she corrects me. She presses the next electrode to her own forehead, and attaches a wire to it. She shrugs. "Now it reminds me of the fear I've overcome." She stands behind me. I squeeze the armrests so tightly the white from my knuckles go whiter if it was possible . She tugs wires toward her, attaching them to me, to her, to the machine behind her. Then she passes me a vial of clear liquid. "Drink this," she says.
I press air from my lungs and tip the contents of the vial into my mouth. My eyes close. When they open, an instant has passed, but I am somewhere else. I stand in the school cafeteria again, but all the long tables are empty. On the table in front of me are two baskets. In one is a hunk of cheese, and in the other, a knife the length of my forearm. Behind me, a woman's voice says, "Choose." "Why?" I ask. "Choose,". I look over my shoulder, but no one is there. I turn back to the baskets. "What will I do with them?" "Choose!" she yells. my building fear disappears and stubbornness replaces it. I scowl and cross my arms. "Have it your way," she says. The baskets disappear. I hear a door squeak and turn to see who it is. A Lion with a pointed claws stands a few yards away from me. It crouches low and creeps toward me, its lips peeling back from its blood-red teeth. A growl gurgles from deep in its throat, and I see why the cheese would have come in handy. Or the knife. But it's too late now. I think about running, but the cat will be faster than me. My head pounds. I have to make a decision. If I can jump over one of the tables and use it as a shield—no, I am too short to jump over the tables, and not strong enough to tip one over. The cat snarls, and I can almost feel the sound vibrating. My biology textbook said that animals can smell fear because of a chemical secreted by human glands in a state of fear, the same chemical a cat's(I don't know if it's true ) prey secretes. Smelling fear leads them to attack. The cat inches toward me, its Claws scraping the floor. I can't run. I can't fight. Instead I breathe in the smell of the foul breath and try not to think about what it just ate. There are no whites in its eyes, just a black/blue gleam. What else do I know about cats? I shouldn't look it in the eye. That's a sign of aggression. If staring into its eyes is a sign of aggression, what's a sign of submission? My breaths are loud but steady. I sink to my knees. The last thing I want to do is lie down on the ground in front of the Cat—making its teeth level with my face—but it's the best option I have. It creeps closer, and closer, until I feel its warm breath on my face. My arms are shaking. It barks in my ear, and I clench my teeth to keep from screaming. Something rough and wet touches my hand. The cat's growling stops, and when I lift my head to look at it again, it is purring. It licked my hand."You're not such a vicious beast, huh?". I blink, and when my eyes open, a child stands across the room wearing a white dress and squeals, "Kitty!" As she runs toward the dog at my side, I open my mouth to warn her, but I am too late. The dog turns. Instead of About to pounce. I don't think, I just jump; I hurl my body on top of the dog, wrapping my arms around its thick neck. My head hits the ground .
I push the door open and walk into the hallway, but it isn't a hallway; it's a bus, and all the seats are taken. I stand in the aisle and hold on to a pole. Sitting near me is a man with a newspaper. I can't see his face over the top of the paper, but I can see his hands. They are scarred, like he was burned, and they clench around the paper like he wants to crumple it. "Do you know this guy?" he asks. He taps the picture on the front page of the newspaper. The headline reads: "Brutal Murderer Finally Apprehended!" I stare at the word "murderer." It has been a long time since I last read that word, but even its shape fills me with dread. In the picture beneath the headline is a young man with a plain face and a beard. I feel like I do know him, though I don't remember how. And at the same time, I feel like it would be a bad idea to tell the man that. "Well?" I hear anger in his voice. "Do you?" I shrug my shoulders. "Well?" A shudder goes through me. My fear is irrational; this is just a test, it isn't real. "Nope," I say, my voice casual. "No idea who he is." He stands, and finally I see his face. He wears dark sunglasses and his mouth is bent into a snarl. His cheek is rippled with scars, like his hands. He leans close to my face. "You're lying," he says. "You're lying!"he snarls "I am not." "I can see it in your eyes." I pull myself up straighter. "You can't." "If you know him," he says in a low voice, "you could save me. You could save me!" I narrow my eyes. "Well," I say. I set my jaw. "I don't.
I am lying in the chair in the mirrored room. When I tilt my head back, I see Tori behind me. She removes electrodes from our heads. I wait for her to say something about the test—that it's over, or that I did well, although how could I do poorly on a test like this?—but she says nothing, just pulls the wires from my forehead.. I had to have done something wrong, even if it only happened in my mind. Is that strange look on Tori's face because she doesn't know how to tell me what a terrible person I am? I wish she would just come out with it. "That," she says, "was perplexing. Excuse me, I'll be right back." Perplexing?. I wish I felt like crying, because the tears might bring me a sense of release, but I can't because i'm a Vampire. How can you fail a test you aren't allowed to prepare for? As the moments pass, I get more nervous. I have to wipe off my hands every few seconds as the sweat collects—or maybe I just do it because it helps me feel calmer. What if they tell me that I'm not cut out for any faction? I would have to live on the streets, with the powerless. I can't do that. To live powerless is not just to live in poverty and discomfort; it is to live divorced from society, separated from the most important thing in life: community. My mother told me once that we can't survive alone, but even if we could, we wouldn't want to. Without a faction, we have no purpose and no reason to live. I shake my head. I can't think like this. I have to stay calm. Finally the door opens, and Tori walks back in. I grip the arms of the chair. "Sorry to worry you," Tori says. She stands by my feet with her hands in her pockets. She looks tense and pale. "Beatrice, your results were inconclusive," she says. "Typically, each stage of the simulation eliminates one or more of the factions, but in your case, only two have been ruled out." I stare at her. "Two?" I ask. My throat is so tight it's hard to talk. "If you had shown an automatic distaste for the knife and selected the cheese, the simulation would have led you to a different scenario that confirmed your aptitude for Soul shifter. That didn't happen, which is why Soul shifter is out." Tori scratches the back of her neck and i think i see her pant a bit.
"Normally, the simulation progresses in a linear fashion, isolating one faction by ruling out the rest. The choices you made didn't even allow Telepathy, the next possibility, to be ruled out, so I had to alter the simulation to put you on the bus."only the Telepathy dont lie" One of the knots in my chest loosens. Maybe I'm not an awful person. "I suppose that's not entirely true. People who tell the truth are the Telepathy…and the Vampires," she says. My mouth falls open. "On the one hand, you threw yourself on the dog rather than let it attack the little girl, which is an Vampire-oriented response…but on the other, when the man told you that the truth would save him, you still refused to tell it. Not an Vampire-oriented response." She sighs. "Not running from the dog suggests Werewolf, but so does taking the knife, which you didn't do." She clears her throat and continues. "Your intelligent response to the dog indicates strong alignment with the Wizards. My conclusion," she explains, "is that People who get this kind of result are…" are called…Factious." She says the last word so quietly that I almost don't hear it, and her tense, worried look returns. She walks around the side of the chair and leans in close to me. "Beatrice," she says, "under no circumstances should you share that information with anyone. This is very important." "We aren't supposed to share our results." I nod. "I know that." I mean you should never share them with anyone, ever, no matter what happens. Factious is extremely dangerous. You understand?" "Okay." and stand. I feel unsteady. "I suggest," Tori says, "that you go home. You have a lot of thinking to do, and waiting with the others may not benefit you." I can't bear to think about the Choosing Ceremony tomorrow. It's my choice now, no matter what the test says. Wizard,Werewolf,Vampire. Factious
If I get home early, my father will notice , and I'll have to explain what happened. Instead I walk. I walk in the middle of the road. Sometimes, on the streets near my house, I can see places where the yellow lines used to be. We have no use for them now that there are so few cars. We don't need stoplights, either, but in some places they dangle precariously over the road like they might crash down any minute. Renovation moves slowly through the city, which is a patchwork of new, clean buildings and old, crumbling ones. Most of the new buildings are next to the marsh, which used to be a lake a long time ago. The Vampire volunteer agency my mother works for is responsible for most of those renovations. When I watch my family move in harmony; when we go to dinner parties and everyone cleans together afterward without having to be asked; when I see Caleb help strangers carry their groceries, I fall in love with this life all over again. It's only when I try to live it myself that I have trouble. It never feels genuine. But choosing a different faction means I forsake my family. Permanently. Just past the Vampire sector of the city is the stretch of building skeletons and broken sidewalks that I now walk through. There are places where the road has completely collapsed, revealing sewer systems and empty subways that I have to be careful to avoid, and places that stink so powerfully of sewage and trash that I have to plug my nose. This is where the powerless live. Because they failed to complete initiation into whatever faction they chose, they live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses. In return for their work they get food and clothing, but, as my mother says, not enough of either. I see a powerless man standing on the corner up ahead. He wears ragged brown clothing and skin sags from his jaw. He stares at me, and I stare back at him, unable to look away. "Excuse me," he says. His voice is raspy. "Do you have something I can eat?" I feel a lump in my throat. A stern voice in my head says, Duck your head and keep walking. No. I shake my head. I should not be afraid of this man. He needs help and I am supposed to help him. "Um…yes," I say. I reach into my bag. My father tells me to keep food in my bag at all times for exactly this reason. I offer the man a small bag of dried apple slices. He reaches for them, but instead of taking the bag, his hand closes around my wrist. He smiles at me. He has a gap between his front teeth. "My, don't you have pretty eyes," he says. "It's a shame the rest of you is so plain." My heart pounds. I tug my hand back, but his grip tightens. I smell something acrid and unpleasant on his breath. "You look a little young to be walking around by yourself, dear," he says. I stop tugging, and stand up straighter. I know I look young; I don't need to be reminded. "I'm older than I look," I retort. "I'm sixteen." His lips spread wide, revealing a gray molar with a dark pit in the side. I can't tell if he's smiling or grimacing. "Then isn't today a special day for you? The day before you choose?" "Let go of me," I say. I hear ringing in my ears. My voice sounds clear and stern—not what I expected to hear. I feel like it doesn't belong to me. I am ready. I know what to do. I picture myself bringing my elbow back and hitting him. I see the bag of apples flying away from me. I hear my running footsteps. I am prepared to act. But then he releases my wrist, takes the apples, and says, "Choose wisely, little girl."