Quick A/N! Entire story has been rewritten!
The City, 2152
-Erudite Skyscrapers
The usual night silence was broken by shouts coming from the city center, around the Hub. The lights could be seen from afar, and it was possible to hear gun shots, followed by shouts and screams. Being on top of one of the tallest building in the city had its advantages. One, for example, was to be able to see fully what was happening. In this case, a large group of multi-colored individuals attacking one of the decaying buildings, looking for food and weapons.
Factionless. The bane of the city, she thought. It was the Dauntless's job to keep them contained, or better yet, dead. Since the Erudite were chosen to replace Abnegation as the city leaders, the dauntless weren't as lenient with troublemakers. Plus, it was a wise choice. Abnegation had been stagnating progress since they decided helping the factionless was the main priority. Now that they don't have our factions' help, they've been more and more insistent on their raids. But they'll be stopped. They always are.
Just as it started, it ended. Overwhelmed by a Dauntless patrol, the Factionless that weren't knocked out by the high-voltage, plasma-enhanced bullets, simply fled back into their zone, on the middle of the factories and some burnt buildings. The dauntless picked up the barely alive bodies, and dragged them into two blinded cars, to the candor sector, to be tried.
Mylah was standing still, on the flat roof of the building, while watching the lights of the city flicker below in the cold night, and the wind blowing her curly hair away from her face. Beautiful, some people call it. I call it annoying. Having straight hair is way easier. And doesn't tangle nearly as much, also. Besides...
"You shouldn't stay so close to the edge." A voice advised behind her back, startling her "You might fall."
As if.
Mylah quickly turned her head around, to see Anna, one of her friends. Who am I kidding, she's the best. And the one with the biggest IQ in their year, just a few meters from the place where she was standing, near the exit glass door. She was hard to miss, considering that she was taller than her, even though that wasn't hard. Also, Anna's brown, slightly wavy hair, that normally was kept tied up, was flying around due to the strong air currents on the rooftop.
"Don't scare me like that Anna!" She said playfully "Besides, I can't help it, blame my Dauntless cells!"
"Yeah, yeah." Anna said, sarcastically, rolling her grey eyes (with just barely a tinge of blue) "It doesn't work that way silly, you should really brush up in science class."
Now was Mylah's turn to roll her eyes, mumbling "It's not my fault.. It IS boring, after all."
She shrugged, and both looked to the sky for a couple minutes, the silence of the night unbroken again. For a few minutes at least. When they started chatting, half an hour flew by, both so engrossed in the conversation.
"So, are you really going to change factions?" Anna questioned, out of the blue. "You'll be always welcome here, you know."
"We still have some time to think about it, but it´ll be very difficult to choose between Erudite and Dauntless..." Mylah shrugged.
150 years ago, Or something, I'm not good at history. ,having equal aptitudes to more than one faction was very dangerous. Divergence, they called it. Now, it's common. And a normal part of our lives. To accommodate this change, the faction leaders now allow visiting and spending some time with the other factions before making the final choice. Even after, it is allowed to keep in touch with the other factions, visit their zone and such. With some exceptions, of course. Abnegation cannot enter Erudite´s compound, and Dauntless members aren't allowed into Amity, with some rare exceptions. Thankfully, or it would all descend into chaos. And civilization would collapse.
Maybe not.
Lost in thought, Mylah was abruptly brought back to reality by her friend's voice.
"Hey!" Anna says while waving a hand in front of her face "You zoned out for a moment."
"Hmm? Oh, sorry. I was just thinking."
"That's an Erudite trait Mylah, you know?"
"Yes, yes, thanks for reminding me" Mylah said, chuckling "Well, let's head downstairs. I want to eat something before going to sleep."
Also, we're late.
"Okay, let's go. But don't even think of running down the stairs! I don't care if it is your Dauntless cells of whatever, just don't do it! And it's unfair, you fly down the stairs, while us poor mortals need to walk. Not fun."
Mylah scoffed before asking:
"And you? Will you stay an Erudite?"
"Of course." Anna answered as it was the most stupid thing she had ever heard. Probably was. "Anyways, your mother asked me to tell you that dinner is ready. So, see you downstairs?"
"Yeah, tell her I'll be there in a minute." Or two. Maybe not. I'm hungry.
Anna leaves, closing the door quietly, and Mylah turned back to the city below. Except for a few people shouting, the city was silent. Except for the Dauntless zone, but that was already routine. Lucky hellions, they get to test high level explosive gadgets. All day.
Looking down one last time, Mylah turned around and walked towards the exit door. Opening the door from the outside wasn't easy, because of the security measures. Nowadays, the Dauntless were able to climb most of the city buildings, due to the need of using messengers to transport crucial information. And it looks cool too. That, and their new-found ability to hack into the Erudite security system.
It took Mylah less than ten minutes to get home, plus five minutes trying to open the door, or rather, trying to find the right key.
"Hey Mom!" Mylah shouted "I'm home!"
"It was about time!" she said "Anna's here to have dinner with us. Her parents are out, helping some Initiates making base serum."
"Now, sit at the table. We should talk later about your trips to the roof."
The Erudite usually don't talk much at the table, unlike Amity does, But we also don't stay silent like the Stiffs. If they're not talking about something related to science, books and technology or watching some documentary, they're talking about the politics, or simply chit-chatting, but always trying to keep the topic interesting. At least from a scientific point of view.
"Mom, have you seen the Messengers?" Mylah asked "We saw one today, when we were coming from school. They're really cool, running and climbing the buildings as if it was a playground."
"Do you know what they're needed for, Mylah?" her father asks, and she nods "Currently, they're the only really secure way we have to transport most of the paperwork and prototypes to our laboratories without them being hijacked by factionless." Last time it happened, It wasn't pretty.
"They're really well-trained individuals, and there's only maybe twenty of them on the entire City." Mylah mom adds "All of them are from Dauntless." Very few for our one million has grown a lot since Abnegation was taken out of the government. A big part of the city's still empty and decaying though.
"Have you heard of the Raid, today?" Anna questioned Mylah parents'. "They attacked a shop on the middle of the central plaza. Me and Mylah saw them"
After seeing the baffled expressions of her parents, Mylah quickly added:
"From the rooftop, she meant. We weren't there, of course!"
"Hmm, I really hope not." Mylah's father says with a stern face, only to stifle a laugh after. He's a bit of a softie on the inside.
The rest of the dinner is uneventful, aside from one or two interesting topics that Mylah's dad brings up, fresh intel from the labs he manages. Soon, both Anna and Mylah are excused from the table.
"So, do you want to watch a movie?" Anna asked Mylah, who was busy looking out of the window.
"Yeah, that's a good idea. Which one?" Mylah replied, somewhat absently minded. I'm kinda tired though. School's tough.
As a good Erudite, Anna chose a documentary, about the story of the city. How an internal war almost killed us all, when Dauntless attacked the Abnegation. Of course, this was a long time ago, and now, besides the Wall, there´s a massive plasma shield around the city. There's no record where it came from, though. But still a good ten kilometers away from the edge of Amity farms, that can be faintly seen if you look up. It isn't more than a bluish glow on the sky, but if you approach it, you can see that it's made of thousands of plasma hexagons linked together by electricity. It is capable of burning a man alive if he gets too close. Interesting stuff.
The movie flashes on the holographic screen, and albeit being interesting, Mylah slowly drifts to sleep, between the blue, soft pillows of the coach.
There's a faint light coming from the large window on the wall, and the sun is starting to appear on the horizon, signaling the dawn of a new day. The clock on the wall marks 5:50 A.M. and even though school only starts at 8:30, Mylah is already awake. My internal clock is nuts. Fitting. She's reading a book about the prototype and expensive human modifications. Not the piercing type, no. It's more like new bones and muscles, or brain cells. And entire skeletons.
Those kind of "Mods", as the city population calls them, are currently only available to Dauntless and Erudite, and even so, only to a few lucky (Rich.) ones. Their main purpose is to avoid turning more people into factionless, because both erudite and dauntless kick their members when their body is starting to show some signs of age. There are exceptions though.
Mylah, already tired of reading, tossed the book aside, and turned to face the window. Her parents apartment was on one of the tall Erudite skyscrapers, which were almost entirely made of glass and a white material that looked like plastic, but had a metallic texture and was very hard. I bet it could take on a small missile and come out unscratched.
As such, she had a large view of the city, not all, because it's massive, but enough to see a bit of every sector. The factionless zone was the current object of Mylah observation. The smoke leaking from it was visible from every corner on the city, but it was darker than usual.
They're probably melting iron...Again. She thought. As if we didn't have enough, now their miners just don't stop working, day and night. I bet they're plotting something, and it's not good.
And how right she was. At that precise moment, a factionless group of "Raiders", how the dauntless called them, armed with old metal-shooting guns was sneaking through the dark alleys of the partially destroyed Abnegation zone, that no-one repaired after the biggest Factionless attack ever, a few decades ago.
So, said Raiders were moving to one of the oldest buildings on the city: A small stone structure, resembling a fort that used to be a paintball field for the dauntless that now was abandoned, just like the area around it, covered in paint and some moss.
They entered the building, kicking down the door, and barging in. The inside was just like what you should expect of a building abandoned for decades, making it the perfect place for the Factionless to carry out with their plan.
"Clear!" One of them shouted into a worn and old- looking walkie-talkie.
Ten minutes later, there was another group of factionless arriving, this one smaller, and without any weapons, excepting for a large, all-muscle man with a few knifes tied to a black military belt, hanging from one shoulder.
"Dis place's perfect!" He shouted, with a gruff voice "Don't 'cha agree, chief?"
He turned his head to the woman next to him, her face partially covered with black paint, the right eye blank, and cobalt blue hair spiking in gravity-defying angles.
"Indeed." She agreed, nodding her head "Skor, who found this place?"
Skor, who appeared to be the one with the knives pointed to a tiny boy with no more than 16 years in front of him. He was black haired and kind of grey skinned. Probably second generation factionless. All that smoke was no good to the skin,no.
"It was this fella, the small ´un over there."
"You did us a great service kid." The woman said, gently "I'm going to reward you. I want you to be here tomorrow, at 11 P.M. I'll make sure you will get a reward."
The boy was visibly impatient, wanting his reward right there. But for now, he had to wait for the next day.
The next day, Anna and Mylah were walking down the road, towards the school where they were both in. It was a large, white building, and although being in the erudite sector, it had kids from mixed factions.
Nearing it, they saw something unusual in front of the school. There was a bulky factionless kid in front of an amity half sitting, half sprawled on the concrete, who was crying, and by the look of it, the factionless was the cause of it.
"Leave him alone, you coward!" Anna shouted at him "Didn't anyone teach you that you shouldn't pick on weaker people than you?!"
Turning her head to the side, she whispered "I could use a hand here..." before realizing that Mylah was nowhere to be seen.
Where are you? Anna thought, worriedly.
Anna saw a shadow standing ten meters away from her, before realizing it was Mylah... And that she was holding a heavy-looking stone.
"Hey!" Mylah shouted, attracting the attention of the bully that turned his head in her direction.
She threw the stone with as much strength she had (Not much), just to have it missing its target by a couple meters, and land on the soft grass covering the ground.
Just as she saw that the stone wasn't going to hit the target by its trajectory, she readied another one, and because the bully was still dumbstruck that an Erudite tried to hit him with a stone, Mylah didn't waste any more time, and let the second, smaller stone fly out of her hand.
A loud crunch was heard by everyone watching the scene, and the bully fell back, unconscious. He was way weaker than he looked like. Not a bright soul too, probably.
In that precise moment, a Dauntless patrol appeared.
"Who did this?" One of them asked, glancing around the place.
"I did." Mylah answered, and although she looked calm, she was pretty nervous. It wasn't her intention to hit him in the forehead, where she knew the stone would have probably caused serious damage, if she didn't have such weak arms.
"You did well,uh... Erudite girl? "The patrol said astonished, clearly "You'd be welcome to Dauntless, we need people like you, and less
Mylah just stood on her place, saying nothing. Her brain collapsed momentarily from the adrenaline surge.
"Well, what are you all looking at?" The Dauntless woman said "There´s nothing to see here, move along!"
Anna walked to Mylah, and both resumed the walking to the school doors.
"That was amazing!" Anna exclaimed "Although you could have gotten hurt, the way you stood for that kid was impressive."
"I wasn't doing it for the kid" Mylah mumbled "I just...I don't know, I didn't think. Just didn't think it was fair."
After seeing Anna´s face, she quickly added:
"The stronger taking that much of an advantage of the weak. A bit is normal, but hurting people just because, that is not okay." This much moral thinking is annoying. I need a sleep.
The bell, with its ever-perfect timing, chose that moment to ring, signaling the start of the classes for the day.
"Will have lunch with me?" Anna asked, as she walked off to her classroom.
"Sure! See ya!"
Being an Erudite meant harder classes, and even Anna had some struggles with it. After all, classes weren't supposed to be easy, and Erudites had the highest standards of the five factions.
A sudden ringing noise, that was the bell signaling the end of the classes for the day, woke up half the class from its slumber, who, in a hurry, stuffed their books and materials on the bags, ready to dart out of the room as soon as the teacher allowed it.
"Alright class!" He said, slower than most wanted."We're done for today. Don't forget, your choosing ceremony is in one month from today." Thanks. Totally wasn't obsessing about that for the last year.
As the teacher turned to erase the board, Mylah walked out of the classroom to find Anna.
"So?" Mylah asked excitedly "How did the test go?"
"It was awful!" Anna huffed angrily "I forgot to mention one small thing I should have, and now I'm going to fail!" Aw, you worry too much. Don't change.
"Anna, you're not going to fail, that isn't possible." Nature laws wouldn't permit it, probably.
"Fine, but I won't have an A++! That's disastrous!"
Mylah simply rolled her eyes, and they both headed to the school entrance, crowded with kids trying to get out of the prison that adults called "School".
Both girls were walking down the road, chatting animatedly about some new book, when suddenly a Dauntless girl bumped into Mylah.
"Watch where you´re going, girl." The black-dressed girl said, arrogance plain on her tone "I knew you erudites were supposed to wear glasses, and now I know why."
Ooh I know what you're thinking. Well, guess what. The lil'erudite doesn't wanna be pushed around like a plushie.
"And I thought you hellions were supposed to be able to run around the place without actually running into anything." Mylah retorted, smirking.
The Dauntless turned around, astonishment plain on her face. Never before anyone defied her, let alone an Erudite. What more was going to talk back?! A Stiff, perhaps? I'd pay to see that.
"If I were you, I'd be more careful with... Wait, do I know you?"
"Hmmm,no? If I'd ever met before such an arrogant girl, sure I'd remember her, don't you think?"
It looked like the dauntless hadn't heard anything Mylah said, or she didn't care, because she shot back another question. Yea, ignore the questions.
"Were you the one that knocked out the factionless earlier, in front of the school? With a stone?" Ooh, why do you think that information is going to be handed out to you for free?
"I may or may not be that person, depends on why you're asking..." Mylah said, mock evident on her tone.
It looked like the dauntless hadn't liked the joke even one bit, because she shoved Mylah into the nearest solid object, which appeared to be a train track support, and pinned her into it.
Oops. This lady is crazy. Nice hair though, pretty sunburnt blonde-ish. Spiky too. And green eyes! Where do this girl's genes come from?
"Hey!" Anna, who stood aside watching the whole exchange, shouted "Leave her alone!"
The dauntless girl ignored her, and stared into Mylah eyes, who stared back defiantly.
"So? Was it you or not?" The girl almost shouted.
"It may or may not..." Mylah trailed off, seeing the glare that the girl sent her way. Better not to make my life hard. Er."Fine, it was me, yes." She was painfully aware of the height difference. It was definitely not in her favor.
The dauntless smirked, and let go of Mylah.
Unexpected. Not bad though.
"I'm impressed with you, kid.(We're the same age!) Not everyone would have had the guts to do what you did."
The girl started walking away, leaving behind Mylah confused and Anna glued to the ground.
"By the way, name's Kaith." Not that ugly, actually.
With that, she ran into the train pole and climbed it, just as a train approached. She sprinted alongside it for some meters before jumping in. Gracefully. Lucky.
"I hope we get the chance to meet again!" Kaith shouted, her voice echoing on the near buildings and fading into the background before the silence came back.
On the newly-found Factionless Base
10 P.M.
"So, how is our inventory?" The Factionless leader questioned.
"We don't have enough firearms to defend this fort properly,, Ma´am. "Skor answered "The dauntless patrol destroyed one of our bigger warehouses a week ago, and we're starting to lose some of our best Raiders. However, we have enough supplies to feed an army for years. And lots and lots of recruits."
"For now, our main priority is to clean this fort, and move all our main personnel to here. I heard that the underground floors have enough space to house at least half our population, not counting the ones that haven't joined us yet."
"Yes" Pause "I've already sent two cleaning groups to the first floor, and by the end of tomorrow I hope to have it finished, so we can start unpacking the crossbows."
"Crossbows?"The blue haired girl frowned. "Why are we using medieval weapons to protect our lives? Is there something I'm missing?" Her tone was less than friendly.
"Well, you see, not regular crossbows, of course, that would be complete suicide. But plasma-powered ones, the kind that the Erudite developed ten years ago, and were ruled out by the Abnegation" He spat the last word as if it was venom, showing a clear disdain for the faction.
Recognition flashed through the leader eyes, and she seemed content with that choice of weaponry.
The fort cleaning was going smoothly, the first floor already clear of dirt and cobwebs. And as an added bonus, they found a box full of ammunition, that was surprisingly dry, the complete opposite of the outside of the box.
On the other side of the city, a group of Raiders were charging at full force against a dauntless patrol, that almost were caught by surprise, and would have been decimated if not for a messenger, that had luckily seen the commotion from some meters above. Hadn't he warned them minutes before the attack, they'd be little more than puddles.
The dauntless were repelling the factionless using shock weapons, but as a dauntless head exploded with a bullet impact coming from the middle of the raiders, the dauntless simply went full-out, firing their lethal weapons, killing every raider that was in the sights. That strategy was only used if the factionless retaliated. To avoid having streets covered in blood. It makes a bad contrast with the white.
Unfortunately, it was occurring more and more often, to the amusement of the dauntless, who were glad to have permission to kill the ones that almost a decade ago activated a EMC bomb on the middle of their headquarters, that deactivated all their defense systems.
As soon as they were offline, the factionless caused a second explosion, only this time using a pure energy bomb, usually blocked by the defense system, that was way more powerful, turning in a few moments the whole dauntless HQ to a smoking crater. That´s why it was renamed of "The Crater". Severe lack of imagination here. Only the gods knew where the factionless got the bomb, and how they knew how to activate it without releasing the elevated amounts of hazardous high-level radiation that would have killed them all in weeks, months at best.
More than two hundreds of factionless were put on trial and executed, their ties with the attack denouncing them. At the time, it was a big amount of people, when the dauntless numbers didn't go above a thousand.
Luckily, the Dauntless rebuilt their base from scratch, covering the crater with titanium sheets and reinforced glass, and put the crater hole to good use, building a totally new complex from nothingness. Also, the force of the explosion caused some magma to flow up to the surface, and the Erudite made good use of that, storing it.
Out of sheer luck, most of the dauntless were out of the base at the time, as it was the biggest paintball match of the year, which almost the entire faction attended, making bets and playing in smaller games. Even though, more than five hundred Dauntless died on the attack.
Some years later, the dauntless got their revenge when they dumped tanks full of lava right on the factionless old base, effectively killing everyone inside. Of course, the cruel act was highly voted against by Abnegation, when they were still in charge of the government, but the dauntless, blind by rage followed with their plan and were helped by the erudite, who despised the factionless almost as the dauntless did... and do.
Their act had huge repercussions, and while the factionless were almost burnt into the ground (Literally. The dauntless love their flamethrowers.), the Abnegation leaders agreed that such an act couldn't be ignored, and casted a vote to punish the dauntless, taking them away from their privileged spot on the city, with the trains and such. Of course, being friends with the Erudites led the blues to stand up for them, and consequently leading to one of the biggest fights of the factions history, which only ended with the Revolution, led by the Erudites with the help of the dauntless, that kicked the Abnegation from the government, replacing them with the Erudite.
All the factions acclaimed this act, as the Abnegation kept directing necessary resources to the factionless, and the Revolution effectively ended that, leading to an era of prosperity and advancement.
Back at the Fort, a boy was making its way through the narrow corridors, to the place that the Leader told him to go.
"Hey" a voice sounded from behind him "There you are, Khris.."
"How... how do you know my name?" The boy questioned nervously.
The Leader simply chuckled, and said:
"I believe we have more important matters to attend to now, don't we?"
The boy nodded. His reward.
"Well, kid, I want you to put this on"
'This´ referred to a strange looking helmet, with some plasma rays buzzing inside glass containers.
The boy was visibly scared, but picked the helmet nonetheless and put it on. The helmet started buzzing, and the boy stood still, the only indication the helmet was messing with his brain was the short, ragged breath. Suddenly, a loud crack sounded, followed by a blue explosion. Some moments a go, where the boy head was, now just stood absolute nothing. The body fell on the floor, the helmet rolling away.
"Dammit" the Leader muttered "I knew it wasn't ready yet to use. I guess we just have to keep trying."
She withdrew back into the darkness, leaving the smoking body behind her.
A/N: So, here's the first chapter. I hope y´all enjoyed to read it almost as much as I enjoyed writing it =). (And now rewriting!)
So, the story is set on a timeline where "Divergent" events happened, but it won't have any impact on the fanfic, as it was in a different city. I'm ignoring all the plot of Allegiant (the genes and stuff)
Also, the science is way more advanced, and most of the devices are now plasma-powered (I imagine it as a blue substance).
Thanks for reading!
PS. I drew most characters that appear up to this moment (Kaith, Mylah, Anna, plus Kat and Thomas that are from other chapters. :) I have a couple different designs for each and some detailed-er stuff! :D If anyone's interested, shoot me a PM and I'll look into scanning it)