Divergent in Candor
My name is Stephanie Murray, and I am Divergent. I've known since I was eight, when they put me under truth serum and it didn't work. Everyone takes truth serum at one point or another when you're in Candor, but people have told me you don't know what you said until it's over, and that's not what happened. The serum had to battle my mind. Though I didn't have any secrets, I've never been completely accepting of my faction's version of honesty, where you have to tell everyone everything. I resisted. And it was hard, but I won.
Since then, I have tried to find out everything I can about the Divergent without revealing what I am. I have discovered that the Divergent can resist simulations, and sometimes, though it is rarer, serums. Even for a Divergent, I am different. I am stronger, but that will just make me easier to detect, and living in a compound full of people trained to detect lies doesn't help. Now, I am 13, and it is even more dangerous. Erudite attacked Abnegation. Half of the Dauntless are now allied with them. And I have heard that they are targeting the Divergent.
Today, I am going to solve the biggest mystery of my life: me. I found a Divergent woman who administered the aptitude tests, and still has some of the serum. Today, I will find out where I belong. I make my way through my faction's headquarters to a hallway nobody uses. I go into one of the rooms and find Molly, the woman I came to meet. She is in her early thirties, with blondish-brown hair and a bright smile, but when I enter, she relaxes, her smile disappearing and her body language betraying the lie she has had to live for her whole life. I think about how hard it must have been for her. She told me that she had a very weak Divergence, that hers was overlooked in the aptitude test and she didn't find out about it until she had already chosen Candor, her faction of origin and possibly one of the most dangerous choices for a Divergent. I don't want to leave my family, but I know that when the time comes, I will have to transfer to be safe. So I want to know where else I belong, at least partly. It is against the rules to prepare for the aptitude test in any way, so I'm definitely not supposed to be doing this, but I need to know how to not act Divergent when the time comes for my official test, and I want to know who I am. I sit down.
"Ready?" Molly asks as she attaches the electrodes to me.
"Ready as I'll ever be," I say, swallowing the vial of clear liquid. I close my eyes. When I open them, I am in a large room. A table in front of me has two baskets, one with a knife and one with cheese.
"Choose," says a voice from behind me.
I need to be prepared for anything. I pick up the knife, gripping it tightly in my hand. A door squeaks open behind me and when I turn I am faced with a large dog, teeth bared, growling at me. I look at the knife in my hand and I know what I am supposed to do, but my mind fills with images of my dog, and I can't. I remember something I read in my textbook at school. If dogs smell fear, or if you look them in the eyes, they will attack. I look down and close my eyes, taking deep breaths, willing myself to stay calm. The growling stops, and I tentatively open one eye a bit. The dog is wagging its tail and running towards me. It brushes against my leg, and I tense for a moment, but it's okay.
Then, a little girl, maybe five years old, comes into the room. She sees the dog and screams, "Puppy!" The dog growls and lunges at her. It is almost on top of her when I run up and stab it in the stomach. I look down at my hand, still clutching the knife. I can't believe what I just did. I don't have time to reflect. The room around me whirls away, the knife disappearing from my hand. I blink, and I am on a bus. Sitting beside me is a man reading a newspaper. I can't see his face, but there are burns on his hands.
"Do you know this guy?" he asks, tapping the the picture on the front page, which reads, "Brutal Murderer Finally Apprehended!" The picture shows a young man with a beard, and I have a strange feeling that I know him, but I don't think I should tell.
"No," I say.
"You're lying," he accuses me.
"No I'm not."
"If you know him, you could save me. You could save me!" he says in a low voice.
"I don't," I say firmly, and then I wake up, a deep guilt in my chest.
Molly pulls the wires off of me, and my original nervousness returns.
"What were the results?" I ask her.
"You're definitely Divergent, and one of the strongest I've ever seen," she says. I see hesitation in her eyes.
"Molly," I ask, "what were the results?" She takes a deep breath.
"Dauntless," she says, "and Erudite."
Disclaimer: I do not own Divergent, unfortunately.