Chapter 3
Happy Birthday, JillianKeegan!
Tobias P.O.V.
We are in Dauntless beginning our mini-initiation, and I still haven't seen Tris throughout the tour of the compound.
"My name is Max. I am one of the leaders here in Dauntless. Before we begin, I will read our manifesto:
We believe that cowardice is to blame for the world's injustices.
We believe that peace is hard-won, that sometimes it is necessary to fight for peace. But more than that: We believe that justice is more important than peace.
We believe in freedom from fear, in denying fear the power to influence our decisions. We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
We believe in acknowledging fear and the extent to which it rules us. We believe in facing that fear no matter what the cost to our comfort, our happiness, or even our sanity.
We believe in shouting for those who can only whisper, in defending those who cannot defend themselves.
We believe, not just in bold words but in bold deeds to match them. We believe that pain and death are better than cowardice and inaction because we believe in action.
We do not believe in living comfortable lives. We do not believe that silence is useful.
We do not believe in good manners.
We do not believe in empty heads, empty mouths, or empty hands.
We do not believe that learning to master violence encourages unnecessary violence.
We do not believe that we should be allowed to stand idly by. We do not believe that any other virtue is more important than bravery.
"Now that, that is said and done, we will begin. This will only take about three days. Today, we will be doing knife throwing and guns. Grab some knives and begin. I will do one demonstration, so watch carefully." He goes and does his stance, which I already have mastered, and throws it dead center.
"Begin."
We do as told and I hit dead center, just like Max. I continue doing this until I run out of knives. Without saying a word, I go and retrieve my knives while everyone stops throwing. Everybody stares.
"Did I tell you to stop?" Max says. Everybody picks up where they left off. I walk back to my spot and feel a hand touch my shoulder.
Please be Tris.
Max. "I like you, you got guts, kid."
"Thanks," I say disappointedly. I have got to stop getting my hopes up.
We continue and move onto guns, all of us were good at knives. I shoot one straight hole, dead center and reload, doing it over and over until we stop. Everyone was pretty good at guns, too. He tells us to clean up, so we do.
He is about to walk away, but I say, "Hey, Max?"
"Yeah?" he takes a step closer from where he was walking.
"There's a girl named Six Wright here, right?"
He gives a confused look. "No, I don't believe so."
No, no, no, no, no, no. "Sir, are you completely sure? Have you heard of her at all?"
"Um, she's new to here, right? The city, I mean."
"Yeah."
"How old is she?"
"Seventeen."
"Then she might be in another faction, she could transfer."
"Okay," I whisper.
I go back to the training room where the punching bags are. I hit, and hit, and hit for hours.
"Four! We've been looking all over for you!" Zeke says with everyone behind him.
"Yeah, well I was looking for Tris, but she isn't here either." I continue punching.
"What?!" Chrissy exclaims. "What do you mean she's not here?"
I stop punching. "I talked to Max earlier and he said she's not here, probably in another faction. She'll probably transfer since she's not eighteen yet. Which means I'm not going to see her for another month," I say and punch the bag one last time, knocking it off the chain.
"What do we do now?" Mar asks.
"We wait."
-Page break-
"This is your last day in mini-initiation. You will face all of your worst fears. Most of you will have 10-15. Four, you're up first."
He leads me into a room and I sit on a reclined chair. He injects me with some kind of liquid. My eyes become droopy, and then I go under.
I'm up on a tall building, I have to jump. So that's exactly what I do.
Next, confinement. I feel something slam against me, presumably a wall. I crouch down. To get through it, I need to make the space smaller. I calm my heart rate by thinking about Tris, if she was in here with me.
The walls vanish and I'm in a room. I see a gun lying on a table with one loaded bullet, and one woman sitting in front of me.
"It's okay, Four, I understand, do it." I shakily pick up the gun and point it at her. I already know, every time I do this, I have to look away. I squeeze the trigger and now I'm in my house.
I hear a, "shirt."
I obey. I always obey. After one hit, I'm fed up. I stand up.
"What are you doing, boy?" The Marcuses… they multiply. "Tobias—"
"You have no right to my name anymore, you son of a bitch," I say and punch him in the face. They all have the same reaction, just like a mirror.
I awake. "What?" Max taps the screen. "There's no way you only have four fears."
I shrug. "Is that wear you got the nickname, Four? Or should I say Tobias?"
"No," I say sternly. "Four. I got that name because I broke four punching bags in one day."
He raises his eyebrows in surprise, "Wow. Okay, then I guess it's a good thing you have four fears then."
"Yeah. Can I leave now?"
"You're free to go, Four. Send in Zeke."
I go to the door and tell Zeke to go in.
"Was it bad?"
"How many did you have?"
"Is it as bad as he makes it out to be?"
"It was pretty awful, four, and it's worse."
"There's no way you got four fears," Will says.
"Well, I did, so I guess it's a good thing my name is already Four."
"What were they?" Uriah asks.
I tense and give him a stern look. "Like I'll tell you," I say in a deep, instructor voice. Which is probably my normal one now.
-Later-
"I am happy to say that all of you made initiation, but I wanted to do rankings anyway," Max says and shows us the screen.
Four
Uriah
Zeke
Shauna
Will
Marlene
Christina
They all pat me on the back and I shrug it off.
Tris P.O.V.
Today is the day. The day I take my aptitude test, tomorrow I get to choose my faction, which is obviously Dauntless, but I have to take this stupid test.
"Hello, Six," Adam smiles. "Go ahead and take a seat right here," he pats the recliner chair, almost like the dentist ones.
"I'm just going to inject you with this serum, it might sting a little."
He injects me and it doesn't hurt the least bit. I've been through much worse pain.
"Choose," I hear a man's voice say.
"Why?"
"Choose."
"Make me!"
"Fine, have it your way."
"I will!" I throw my hands in the air.
I hear a deep growl. I see a dog and a child. The dog starts running after me. I stay still. Think smart, not hard. It starts licking me face. Then a girl appears and it starts growling and sprints towards her like fresh meat. I break in a sprint and throw myself at the dog and we fall through the floor. Next I'm in front of a man.
"Do you recognize this person?"
They look vaguely familiar… "No," I lie.
I awake.
"Get up. Go out the back door," Adam says and pulls me up.
"But what was my res—"
"C'mon," he drags my arm to the door.
"What happened?" I ask.
"You are going to go home, and tell your father I sent you home because you were sick."
"No, but, what was my result?"
He pauses. "Abnegation… And Erudite… And Dauntless."
"Dauntless?" I mentally cheer.
"Your results were inconclusive."
"That's not normal?"
"No. No, not at all. There are extremely rare cases of it between two factions, but now three… this has never been done."
"But that's impossible. It doesn't make any—"
"No. Not impossible. It's just extremely rare. They call it Divergent."
I stand there in awe for a second. "You can't tell anyone. Do you understand me?"
"Yes. Thank you," I say and walk out. I walk home, confused.
"How did it go?" Andrew asks.
"Fine." I haven't spoken more than five words to him a day since I got here.
"I'll leave you alone so you can think about your choice. I trust you will make the right one."
Yeah. Right, I think.
I go upstairs and start to look through my phone, listening to music along the way. I see the same pictures, over and over, but I don't really care. They are still funny—especially Uriah. I smile at myself.
I wish I had them back.
-Next day-
I wake up happily. I get to escape Andrew! Woohoo! I literally am doing a happy dance. I put on black spandex and a tight grey tank top under my baggy clothes, like I always do. I decide to write a note—one especially dedicated to Andrew.
GO TO HELL!
-Six
I laugh at myself. How did I even end up with an Abnegation result? I shake my head.
I leave my room and find Andrew sitting at the table with his cup of coffee. "Hello."
"Hi!" I say overly cheerful.
"What's gotten into you?" he asks.
"I finally realized what the right decision was," I smile. He has no clue.
"I'm glad you've come to your senses."
"Yes, I think I knew it all along, too." Then I laugh under my breath.
"Well, we better get going." We walk to the bus station and I, of course, have to give my seat to an elderly woman. I would have done it anyway whether or not I was Abnegation; the poor woman looked like she was a rotting banana.
We get off and Andrew says, "This is where we part. I will see you soon."
No ya won't, I think. I smile and walk away where I am supposed to go, the beginning of the line, since my last name is Wright and they go opposite of alphabetical order.
They begin the process and Jack Kang, the leader of Candor, reads all the manifestos, blah blah blah.
The Amity girl beside me, Melody Zander, picks Amity.
"Wright, Six."
I get up and walk over to the bowls. I take a knife and put my hand over the coals. I hear gasps from Abnegation and cheers from Dauntless.
"Beatrice!" Andrew yells.
I cup my hands over my mouth and yell, "SCREW OFF!" The Dauntless cheer louder and I get some claps on the back.
They continue the ceremony until I hear a, "Smith, Drew." It's Drew. From school. No freaking way. He picks Dauntless.
A while later, I hear, "Hayes, Peter." NO! Oh my god. That means Molly is here too. And Al. And they all are going to Dauntless.
And they all do. Goddammit.
The Dauntless get up and start running. I get wherever they are going without breaking a sweat. Then I hear a train whistle. We are jumping a train to Dauntless. The doors open and people start jumping in.
I make it in without even trying. Others… not so lucky.
"That was quite a performance you put on back there," a girl says while smiling.
"I'm Six," I put out my hand.
"Abnegation shake hands?" she takes it anyway.
"I'm from Candor, I'm Lauren. I couldn't stand that place, but you must hate your old faction more than me," she laughs.
"Incorrect. I think Abnegation is okay, it's my father that I hate."
"Why?" she asks. "I'm sorry I have no filter."
"It's okay, I used to have a friend like that," I think of Chrissy. "Let's just say my dad is a dick."
"I like you," she decides. "Let's stick together."
"Okay," I smirk. "I think they are jumping off, let's go."
"Together?"
"Together." We jump off the train and I land on my feet.
"Listen up! I'm Eric, I am a leader. You see this ledge? Yeah, you're gonna jump. If you don't have the guts, you don't belong here in Dauntless. Any volunteers?"
Everyone is silent. Everyone but me. "I'll go!" I step forward.
I step up on the ledge, the wind snaps my clothes. I take off everything but my spandex and my tank top.
"Yeah, Stiff, take it off!" Peter yells. My boobs have increasingly gotten bigger in the past few months, and I've gotten a few curves, too.
"Damn," I hear a guy mutter. Typical Dauntless-born.
"Seriously though," another Dauntless-born says to him.
I take my hair out of my bun and put the holder on my wrist.
"So long, boys," I do a captain salute and jump off doing a front-flip. I love the feeling of wind in my face.
I land on a net. I laugh. "That was freaking awesome!"
"What?" someone asks. "Are you Dauntless-born or Abnegation?"
"I was Abnegation," I hop down from the net. "But not anymore."
"Then why are you wearing black?" the same girl asks.
"Let's just say I wasn't very loyal to my old faction," I wink.
"What's your name?"
"Six."
"Make the announcement, George!"
"First jumper, Six!"
This feeling couldn't get any better.
Next, Lauren comes down. "Six, that was awesome!" she says while walking over to me.
"I know. I'm an adrenaline junkie," I say.
In the end, we have:
Lauren, Peter, Drew, Al, and Molly-Candor.
Me-Abnegation.
Edward and Myra-Erudite.
Only eight transfers and nine Dauntless-borns. The guys who were hitting on me turns out to be two guys whose names are Bryant and Dustin, they seem nice though, I mean, they are just being like every other teenage boy.
"Listen! My name is George and this is CJ. She and I will be the transfers instructors. Riker and Zeke will be the Dauntless-borns." My head shoots up at the name Zeke. And there he stands. The one and only Zeke Pedrad. There's no way… I have to be hallucinating. He and I look at each other with big eyes.
"Dauntless-borns, I assume you don't need a tour, go to your dorms!" Zeke yells.
When he walks by, he whispers, "Meet me by the chasm before lunch."
If he's here… that means everybody else is. Including Tobias. "Transfers!" CJ yells. She has dark-brown hair with light purple at the tips, I like it. "I'll be giving you the tour then you'll head to lunch. If you'll follow me, you'll see the Pit. This is where most of Dauntless life happens. Next, the chasm. There is a fine line between bravery and idiocy. You need to know where that line ends and begins. A daredevil jump off, you will die. Next, the dorms. Boys and girls will be sharing, so grow a pair and don't be weird about it. Next, I will lead you to the cafeteria. Eat," she demands. But instead, I go to the chasm, where Zeke is awaiting.
I run up and hug him. "Oh my god, I missed you guys so much. I can't believe you came here. You know you can never go back outside, right?" I pull back and he nods.
"Everyone is here. Let me go get Four." He runs off and I put my hands on the railing. I can't believe it. I take deep breaths.
"Tris?" he asks.
I slowly turn and whisper, "Tobias."
