When the woman administering my test, Tori, holds up the syringe, I can't help but flinch.
"It's fine," she says, "It won't hurt."
I make a noise in the back of my throat that sounds like a stifled laugh. "It's a needle. Of course it'll hurt, even if just a small amount. You can die from putting a syringe without anything in it in a vein and pushing. It carries oxygen to your brain." I say.
"Well I guess it's a good thing there's something inside." Tori says while holding the syringe full of orange liquid. "Simulation Serum. It can't hurt you. You're Erudite. I assume you know what simulation means."
She injects it in my neck and I am standing in a room very similar. Only there's no chair. No Tori. No anything. Just mirrored walls showing a hundred other Catherines staring back at me.
I turn around and see a knife and a piece of bread.
"Choose," says a voice from nowhere. Female. And very familiar.
I look around, trying to find where it came from.
When the voice speaks again, she sounds exasperated.
"Choose," I know that voice.
Jeanine Matthews. Leader of Erudite.
Someone like Jeanine Matthews must certainly know that it's hard to choose when you haven't any idea what's coming.
So I choose both.
I take them at the same time; the bread and the knife, for they can both be very useful.
And that's when the dog comes. My eyes widen.
Where did the dog come from? I think.
And now it's coming straight towards me. It's clear where it's headed. I sidestep it and it turns to see me again. I kneel down and hold out the bread. Dogs can have bread, right?
I stops, and looks as if it's contemplating the bread; and me.
It takes it. It chows down on that bread, and the creature that once looked ferocious, is now an adorable puppy, gnawing on the bread I gave it.
And now there's a girl. A young girl.
"Puppy!" she shrieks, running towards it. The dog turns to look at her, now a ferocious beast once more.
"P-puppy?" she barely whispers, backing away slowly.
It runs at her, baring it's teeth. It hadn't seemed right to kill the dog before, not an innocent. But this dog was not innocent, this dog had tried to kill me; and now this girl. She's the innocent.
I look at the knife in my hands, and then at my reflection. The intent in my eyes is almost frightening. I will not let this girl get hurt.
It's like a mantra I repeat over and over again in my head. I will not let this girl get hurt.
I do it. I kill the dog, ten feet from this girl. Her big eyes send me thanks.
Time seems to slow. I blink, slowly, and I'm once again in the chair. With Tori.
Her eyes are wide and she seems shocked.
"How many in one year?!" she says, yet I have no idea what that means.
"What? What's wrong? What was my result?"
"Inconclusive," she says as my eyes widen. I know what this means. And she says it the moment I think it.
"You're Divergent."