Just a few things to note: I'm aging the characters up to around 24. The only characters that are staying the same age are Tris and her friends (except Four). This aging just works better for what I want to do in the story. As far as timeline you're looking at Divergent-ish, a combo between the book and the movie. I'm going to be taking creative liberties with the timeline, the story, and the characters, although all characters will remain as IC as I can get them. I'm not going to screw with them in that respect. I've read the first two books and seen the first two movies, but nothing after that. You can thank Jai Courtney for this fic. His Eric is firmly in my head.

All known characters, plots, scenes, and settings known to the Divergent series are property of Veronica Roth. Any original characters, settings, plots, or scenes are mine. No infringement is intended.

xXx

I look nothing like Dauntless. That's one thing I won't change until Jeanine hands me over to them. So I sit here in Erudite blue. Blue pencil skirt formed snuggly to my body. White collared shirt tucked in tightly. I'm a slipstream of professionalism that can feed someone their own entrails.

Since the day I chose to stay in Erudite I've been training. Jeanine's orders. Jeanine's own personal soldier. She has her people in Dauntless, but she wanted someone closer, more loyal to Erudite. Someone pledged. That someone was me. For eight years I trained with Erudite transfers from Dauntless. I watched archival footage buried deep in the vaults under the Erudite campus, training videos from the Before. Old military tactics, spy techniques, evasive maneuvers. I've had combat training and survival training, psychological testing that would break even the strongest Dauntless sycophant. Jeanine made sure I was molded to her liking before she dropped me into the wolf pack.

Even before my training started, before the Choosing Ceremony, I knew how to maneuver myself into the best possible positions. How to protect myself in all the best ways. My parents did good there, being so close to Jeanine. But not good enough to fake the test. Not then.

All the Erudite knowledge in the world couldn't hide what I was from my proctor when I was sixteen. Luckily I knew about him fudging his brother's Erudite tests to keep him from going Factionless. My sister told me once, a few years before, about this boy, hardly older than me, helping his below-standard sibling cheat. So we traded favors. I would keep my mouth shut about his brother and he would keep his mouth shut about my test.

About me being Divergent.

I used the needle from the serum gun to give him a little reminder to keep his mouth shut. Just a little one. Just enough to leave a faint scar. I'm far too protective of my own life to leave things like that to chance. My training over the years has kept him even quieter.

Of course I knew what a Divergent was. Jeanine's hell-bent on eradicating them. Me. If she knew. A threat to the system, she said. Lucky for me, all she knew was that I tested Erudite. Solid, strong, dependable Erudite. And I dove head first into it.

She already favored me because of my parents, and it didn't take long for me to prove my allegiance to her. And to prove just how capable I was. She's a planner, that one. And her planning for me started early.

I sit here in front of her desk, staring at her as she talks. I barely hear what she says, something about success of the project, initiation of the plan. I've heard the same damn thing for eight years. The chances of her saying anything different now are slim.

Still I smile whenever her lip twitches up, when her eyes sparkle. She likes to think she's impossible to read. She also likes to underestimate everyone around her, no matter the evidence. She knows my capabilities, yet every time she withholds some information her breath hitches. It's such an insignificant beat not even she notices. But I do.

The day has finally come when I'm to be handed off to Dauntless. A consultant, she calls it. A mole among moles, is more like it. All of Dauntless leadership is in her pocket, but it's all at a distance. I'm meant to bring it all together. Be an extension of her. The gun in her own hand. And I will make her turn it on herself.

We're just waiting for members of the leadership team to arrive, and I have a nervous feeling one of them will be Eric. I haven't seen him since our Choosing Ceremony. His parents, like mine, were close with Jeanine. It was one big inner circle, and we grew up together.

We weren't close, not really. We were more friends of friends. We'd see each other on the opposite sides of our own circles, smile, wave. We talked a few times, but nothing meaningful. There was never that much time. Our parents had us busy. We were all part of the plan.

When Eric chose Dauntless, that was the last I saw of him. And now, as I sit here waiting, my heart flutters and my palms grow clammy. I noticed Eric when we were younger, sure. It was hard not to. But I wasn't one of his many admirers, throwing him glances and giggling when he smiled his straight-toothed smile.

But I noticed. I felt the flutters in my stomach, the heat in my cheeks. I caught him staring a little too long a few times. Staring at me over the head of a girl he happened to be speaking to. But it never went anywhere.

The phone buzzes and I'm jerked out of my reverie by Jeanine's secretary's voice.

"Ms. Matthews, they're here."

"Good, let them in," Jeanine responds as she hits a button on the phone. "Do I need to be worried that the Dauntless will prey on any weaknesses in you, Madeline?"

I give a breathy laugh as I stand up with her, smoothing out my skirt in the process. "They think they will, but they won't have a chance."

Truly, they won't. For eight years I slept with one eye open, not knowing who she'd send after me. I'd been ambushed in the Ruins more times than I can count, from every vantage point possible. Jeanine's a ruthless bitch, but she's thorough. She has a lot riding on my success and she made sure I wouldn't fail.

I won't fail.

"Good." The door opening echoes in the vast space of her office but I don't turn around. Not yet. My face is a mask of indifference but I'm nearly choking on my heart. "Leadership knows, but I advised them to not let that information trickle down to the ranks."

"Naturally everyone knows by now."

She smirks. Even with that devious smile she's a beautiful woman, if a little worn around the edges. Masterminding can take that kind of toll. "Naturally."

"Is this her?" one of the team says.

Max. I've seen him around plenty of times and I know his voice well, even if he doesn't know me as good. I've learned to play the phantom better than the dead.

"In the name of inter-faction alliance, I present you with Madeline Bordonaro, your new Erudite consultant," she says.

Her eyes twitch when she says it, the insinuation of sarcasm ghosting her words in the face of familiarity, of Max and myself. But she reins herself in, holds back on the joke because not everyone is fully in on it.

I turn around, careful on my heels. My make-up is perfect, subtle but present. My hair is neatly styled. I am immaculate. Ever the Erudite on the outside. On the inside I'm raging to destroy the carefully planned world Jeanine's created.

I nod to Max and he nods back. He doesn't know me well, but he's seen me. We've met before over the years. The man behind him is unfamiliar to me, and probably the reason Jeanine controlled her tone when they came in. The bigger her plan, the smaller her inner circle, and this man was not part of that elite bunch.

The man behind that one, though, is a specter from my youth. He was never gawky when we were younger, but he's filled out incredibly nicely. His black uniform sits snugly on his frame, broad shoulders pulling at the fabric. They all wear the same thing on Dauntless business, but his appears crafted to his body.

He's added modifications over the years, like all Dauntless do. Another place where I'll stand out. No longer with smooth skin, black tattoos trace up his neck and hide down the collar of his shirt. Plugs in each ear and a bar in his eyebrow. His hair is slicked back, longer on top and shaved shorter on the sides, chiseling out his features even more.

In all these years my name hasn't changed. As part of leadership he knew it was me that was coming. As part of the inner circle he even knows some of the training I've done. I don't know whether he gave any thought to me or not, but as his eyes widen I see I'm not what he was expecting.

I'm no longer nondescript. I don't blend into the background unless I want to. Plain is not a word people have used to describe me in a long time. At this moment he's wearing his emotions on his face, reconciling the woman before him with the girl he left behind in Erudite.

It only lasts a second before his face shutters and he clasps his hands behind his back.

Eric.