*The Transfer*

Katherine found out quite quickly that Dauntless had not been the wisest of choices.

'Anything is better than Amity…' was what she kept telling herself when she was now jostled along with all the runners trying to get on the train as it bulleted past them. She tried to keep up but caught her feet in the seam of her dress and stumbled. She got pushed to the ground, scraping the palms of her hands and her knees bloody in the sharp-edged gravel. One initiate stepped on her ankle while she was struggling to get back up. The pain was blinding but the numbing sensation set in almost immediately since all she could do was get back up and continue to run. Another initiate, Candor by the looks of his clothing, hooked one arm under hers and pulled her up, dragged her on, along with him. And then she had felt the cold hard rail in her bloody palm and pulled hard to yank herself up and into the moving train. It was only the matter of a split second but she realized that the rail she had grabbed to get onto the train had been the last. She almost hadn't made it.

The boy – tousled brown hair, wide set brown eyes, freckles, thin lips – sat on his haunches in front of her, catching his breath as well. He smiled, an honest, caring smile.

"Are you alright?" he asked. "You hurt your leg…" he added with another smile when Katherine just stared at him blankly. It took another second or two until she reacted, but the boy waited patiently.

She must have looked shocked when she discovered that her ankle had swollen to the size of a small pumpkin because Candor inched closer and gave it a short inspection with deft fingers.

"It's not broken." He said matter-of-factly, then gave her another smile, this time a sad one. "You better take care…" He scrambled to his feet and disappeared into the crowd. Katherine didn't have the willpower to get up too and follow him, so she just stayed where she was, in her spot on the floor.

Drained as she was – blame it on the running, but she felt that the decision taking hadn't been easy after all – and trying to ignore the biting pain from her ankle that surfaced little by little and radiated through her whole body, she huddled up a corner to catch her breath, back against the steel wall, knees pulled up under her chin, arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Putting one hand to her ankle, she felt the bruising and the quite impressive swelling but was relatively sure that Candor had been right - nothing seemed to be fractured. Carefully, she eyed the people around her, most of the faces proud with a wide smile and daring eyes. Only a few looked around nervously and thus betrayed their calm. Katherine wasn't nervous, not at all, she felt like she was completely void of emotions. It was as if she didn't care anymore what would become of her. She would just go with the flow for as long as she could and then…well, then. What then?

She saw her reflection in the glass of the opposite door and even in her disheveled state, she actually liked what she saw. Her brightly colored dress was stained with blood and dust, and ripped at the bottom seam, across her knees and her elbows. Her thick and long brown hair was messy where it would usually be kempt slick against her head, framing her face. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were wild, even though the fear and fatigue were clearly edged on her face.

A sudden commotion made her snap out of her thoughts. Everyone crowded around the open doors. Katherine pushed herself up and looked out of the window. People from the first cars were jumping off the train onto the rooftop of a building. It apparently never got boring around here. The fleeting thought of 'are they trying to kill off the majority of transfers on the first day?' passed through her mind but she had no time to pursue that thought. She had been one of the last to climb on the train, and now she was one of the last to jump off it. Watching everybody else more or less recklessly jumping across the quite wide gap between the rails and the building, she tried to figure out the best way to jump with her injured foot but in the end, with the ledge coming up dangerously quickly, she just threw herself across and hoped for the best. Thinking was overrated, right?

She hit the gravel shoulder-first as she didn't dare to land on her feet to not risk a more serious injury but rolled over on her back as she skidded forward due to the impulse from the train. It hurt like hell, the gravel seemed to be made out of shreds of glass and spikes. Once the tumbling stopped and she felt strong enough to not cry out when getting up, she scrambled to her feet.

The others were moving forward – and she followed, or better, was shoved – towards a single man, tall, broad shouldered, long dark hair hair slick with grease. There were piercings in his lips and eyebrows. He looked cruel and callous and the smile that played around his thin mouth was vile. It made him look wicked, like it had been cut into his face with knife. His eyes were dreadful, too. On the inside, Katherine recoiled from him but the crowd had a movement of its own and she ended up standing right in front of him. He didn't seem to see her though. He didn't really seem to see anyone. He didn't seem to care what they had just been through, that whole ordeal of choosing and jumping off a moving train. He just stood there, all self-righteous, on a low brick wall.

"Initiates! Listen up!" His icy voice boomed through the air, ringing in her ears. "My name is Eric. I am one of your leaders! Please step closer, come on!" There was another of those sly smiles playing across his studded lips and Katherine didn't like it at all. "Don't be afraid, I don't bite…" The little smile turned into a wide grin – an evil grin – and it made her wish to not having to be there even stronger. The coldness of his eyes made him look menacing. His face was pierced in so many places that it was hard to count all the rings and studs. When he now smiled, it pulled at the piercings, making the holes appear wider.

Everybody moved closer and now she could see that what Eric was standing on was not a wall at all, it was the railing of a huge opening in the roof of the building. The play of light and shadow made it impossible to see the bottom.

"If you want to enter Dauntless, this is the way in. And if you don't have the guts to jump, then obviously you don't belong in Dauntless." He grinned.

"You want us to jump down there?" That was the Candor boy, his eyes wide open in shock with the sudden realization. Katherine felt the urge to step backwards but the people behind her were like a barricade.

"Jump or get thrown…" Eric said leisurely. "I honestly don't care how you get down. But down you will go. If not, well then I guess you'll just have to find out where you will end up." He looked around expectantly to see the realization dawn on the transfers' faces – if they didn't fulfil the initiation ritual, they would end up being factionless. "Someone's gotta go first. Who's it gonna be?" He sounded almost bored, and his words sounded rehearsed. Katherine was sure that this was his standard welcome-to-Dauntless speech that he had learnt by heart and worked hard to keep in his thick skull.

A few moments passed without the slightest noise but the wind, then a boy with black Dauntless clothes and green hair stepped forward. "I'll go first!" he said in a voice full of male bravado and his friends – equally dressed in black and with intriguingly colorful hair - cheered him on. He climbed up the ledge of the low wall and peered down. His boldness was gone immediately and his face turned ashen. He looked back at Eric for help but only received a malicious snicker and a shove to the chest, sending him flailing backwards down into the seemingly bottomless pit. At least he didn't scream, but Katherine figured that his pride didn't allow it. After all, he was Dauntless-born, he shouldn't be afraid at all.

A few others jumped - with only little hesitation – all Dauntless-born, all without help from Eric. He however pushed a couple of transfers that weren't as willing and ambitious as the Dauntless. When only a handful was left, the Candor boy climbed up on the ledge and looked at her with a smile, almost as if to motivate her to not wait any longer, most likely to remind her that she had been last on the train, too. Sure enough, Eric was growing more and more impatient by the second. She felt as if he was just waiting for a chance to grab them all and fling them into the abyss, and she knew that he would take it out on the last one.

Another Dauntless threw himself down the hole right after the Candor boy and Katherine used the moment of Eric being distracted to crept toward the edge of the building and look down. Her body reacted accordingly to her mind, both went haywire with panic and dread. How could anyone in their right mind want to jump down? There was even more, how could anyone in their right mind want others to jump down?

She glanced back at Eric and realized that he had turned his attention – undivided now, one could say - at her and was closing in. She didn't feel like waiting around for what he might do to her - a kick in the back was the least she thought him capable of doing – so she just bit back rising bile, closed her eyes and pushed herself off the ledge.

It was a terrible feeling, those few seconds of dropping down where all she saw was her life rushing by before her eyes, being almost sure of certain death. The drop was awful, she felt wave after wave of nausea wash over her as she helplessly flailed her arms and legs as if that by any chance would help her.

The drop ended abruptly and with it the thoughts of how much pain she would be feeling upon contact with the concrete, once she reached it. The sharp slap of raw rope-like material against her already bruised skin caused almost more of a shock than the fall itself, as she had already made peace with imminent death. The impact pressed the air out of her lungs but once her fingers tangled through the strands of rope, she couldn't suppress a slightly crazy giggle. Sure, even though Eric seemed to be a total jerk, Dauntless Leadership wouldn't necessarily kill off their transfers on the very first day.

For a moment, she just hung in the net, contemplating that thought, but the peace didn't last long. She felt harsh movement in the net and before she could even blink, the impulse had her rolling to her left and directly into the arms of a dark haired boy.