*The Test*

Nobody would ever really ask – or even dare to question - why the faction system needed the young to choose. It was a given, a fact that all factions respected. Each year, all 16 year olds were required to take the Aptitude Test. The purpose of the test was to discover a disposition towards the five factions by showing an inclination to one of the five traits. Apparently, that provided a good indication of what faction a person should choose, based on that one predominant characteristic. But did everybody "define" by just one trait? Katie had always wondered. What if people wanted to be more? The factions were so one-dimensional, so restricting, so ill-designed. But the general belief was that in dividing people according to personality and attitude they created a society in which each faction plays a critical role in maintaining the social order and everybody would just blindly follow whatever rules were there to follow.

This year, it was Katherine's time to take her Aptitude Test. Deep down, she was actually looking forward to what came after, to the Choosing Ceremony, as all she was thinking about was to get away from Amity. She knew that Amity would probably be the faction that she would best fit on if it all came down to maintaining peace above all, even if it meant to lie to keep it. And Katherine had made an art of it. Against everybody's belief that Amity was the faction of love and peace, in truth things were far from that. Always peaceful, always safe, that was their slogan. Blame aggression for the problems in the world. Be kind, be loving, be free. Screw that! At least in her life there was nothing kind, nothing loving, and least of all, nothing that resembled freedom.

Amity was one of the five factions that made up society. Members of that faction were dedicated to peacefulness, kindness, forgiveness, trust, self-sufficiency, and neutrality, as it was created by those who blamed war and fighting for the faults in human nature. Amity was the faction that disliked war and it was designed in order to have a peaceful society free from conflict and sadness caused by wars and instigation. To the outside world, Amity were all about kindness and harmony, always happy. Katherine's life was not happy at all. Since her mother had passed, her life had been all but happy and she was sure that she hadn't snapped already only due to the peace serum in their daily bread. Yet, peace did not mean honesty, as certain truths – albeit being known by many and not appreciated by only a few – were simply quieted down and never spoken of again if it helped to keep the peace, since peace was what they valued most.

Katherine's name meant purity, clarity, to be smart with life. But she hated her name as she didn't feel pure or smart and she definitely couldn't see or think clearly anymore. She hated it as much as she hated her faction. She hated everyone, but none as much as she hated herself. And that was where the problem was. Why did she have to hate herself? It hadn't all been her fault, that she knew. Yet, everybody who knew about it blamed her, and so she blamed herself, too. It was much easier to hate oneself than to hate someone else.

She was nervous when she entered the room. Sparsely decorated, it was cold and sterile. The walls were mirrored and the bright light was harsh. There was a reclining chair in the middle, like a dentist's chair, and a computer setup with a chair in front of it close by. A dark-haired woman sat on the chair, impatiently waving a hand to make the new candidate hurry up. How could she not know or see how important this test must be for everybody taking it, or how could she be so bored that she just didn't care anymore? This test would decide about who you were, who Katherine would be.

Katherine did as silently indicated. Sit down, be quiet, get it over with. The woman who now loomed over her with the vial in hand smiled reassuringly while connecting electrodes to her head, but it was more than obvious that she was bored out of her mind. All day long the same thing, making people drink the liquid that would put the person under the simulation, watching their minds being torn wide open and trampled upon on screens, deciding which one faction-feature was predominant, most likely suffering from small talk if the candidates were in a chatty mood. Katherine kept quiet, she only tightened her lips into a thin line waiting for the serum to work. The woman put one hand on her shoulder to make Katherine look at her. "You will be offered with a variety of choices to test your aptitude for each faction until you get one result. Always think about what you would do!"

And then the world fell away.

To her, it felt as if she had closed her eyes only for a moment, but when she opened them again, she was standing in the middle of a mirror maze. It took her a moment to get her bearings, orientation had never been much of a strength. Behind her – or at least she thought it was behind her, the many mirrors to all sides and her own endless reflection made it difficult to know which was her – was a wooden pedestal with a white plate on it. There was a slice of cheese and a knife. Katherine almost jumped out of her skin when a female voice boomed through the room, making the glass shudder. "Choose!"

Katherine raised her gaze to the ceiling, searching for a speaker, for anything that would give away where they voice had come from but couldn't find any flaw in the endless reflecting mirrors. It had only been a second, but when she lowered her eyes again, the pedestal with the plate had disappeared. In its place was now a dog, dark brown, shaggy, big, teeth bared, snarling at her. Hesitantly, she took a step backwards. The dog followed, and Katherine could see the fur on its back standing on end. She raised her hands in a peaceful gesture but the dog didn't retreat. She took another step back but bumped against one of the mirrors. The dog jumped at her and she threw herself onto the ground. Nothing happened. It was silent again. She looked up but all she saw was a little girl in a terracotta colored dress standing about 2 meters away from her, smiling. She looked familiar, Katherine thought but couldn't really place her. A moment passed, and something changed around her. The air in the room suddenly tensed up significantly and now it was the hair on her neck that stood on end. Scrambling to her feet, she knew before she saw what was behind the girl. The dog was back, but somehow it had bigger teeth new and a much more aggressive growl and it was charging at the little girl. It was only in that moment that she realized that the girl was actually her younger self but without any further thinking, she threw herself between the furious dog and the child, pulling her up into her arms and lifting her out of harm's way. Katherine could feel the dog's teeth rip through her shirt as it crashed into her back and she stumbled forward, falling into the mirror.

Just when she was about to cry out, her surroundings had changed. She was sitting in a bus. Her brain registered that they were moving but she couldn't make out any landscape out there. In front of her was a person reading a newspaper. They were the only people on that bus and no matter how hard she looked, she couldn't see the driver. The rustling of the newspaper being lowered made her turn around again. Seeing her face came as a shock, as she was badly beaten up. There were cuts and bruises, all sorts of colors and bumps and scars. Something looked out of place, though, some of the bruises seemed much older than they should have been to be still visible. The woman – void of any emotion and facial expression – turned the newspaper around and pointed a finger at the enlarged black-and-white photo of a man.

"Do you know this man?" She asked with a bodiless voice, barely moving her cut and swollen lips. Her eyes seemed to pierce straight through Katherine's consciousness and she knew that the woman opposite of her knew what was going on in her mind. Almost unconsciously, Katherine shook her head, eyes wide, breathing hard.

"He did that to me…" she said. "It would help me if you told me…" Katherine shrank into her seat. It all felt so repulsive that all she could think about was to get away from where she was. "Do you know him?" The battered woman with the creepy voice asked again and somehow she got bigger and more menacing.

As Katherine scrambled out of her seat and moved backwards, she didn't seem to cover any ground. The bus seemed to get longer and longer and the door moved out of reach with every step she took towards it. All the time – and she felt that it was ages – she couldn't take her eyes off the woman with the newspaper. And ever so slowly her face merged into what resembled herself and the picture of the man in the newspaper seemed to look more and more like her father. Senseless and desperate, she clawed at the seats around her to push her towards the exit.

"DO YOU KNOW HIM? DO YOU KNOW WHO THIS MAN IS?" The voice was everywhere and Katherine got more and more frantic. She shook her head violently. Inside, she was screaming but words didn't want to come out of her mouth. "HE DID THAT TO ME! OVER AND OVER AGAIN! DO YOU KNOW HIM?"

Finally, she felt the door behind her and threw herself against it. Of course she knew the man! Of course she knew who he was and what he had done. She pried at the folding door of the bus so hard that she could feel her fingernails and skin break from her fingers. She didn't want them to know the truth, she didn't want anyone to know the truth.

"YOU CAN SAVE ME IF YOU TELL ME!" The tone of voice changed from to scary to needy, almost whiny and when Katherine looked one more time – expecting to see a monstrously disfigured person – she saw the young girl again, herself and at long last felt the doors opening behind her. Before she fell, the words she had been guarding deep inside for such a long time irretrievably shot out of her: "I know him, he is my father!"

With a gasp, Katherine came out of the simulation.