A/n- Shout out to Shevy B and BookGirlMusicNerd for giving me such positive reviews! An extra long chapter for you, MusicNerd! Your reviews made my normal day into a grand one.

Disclaimer: Veronica Roth owns the awesome story known as Divergent.

Caleb's POV

The Aptitude Test

Today is the big day. My head gets a killer headache whenever I think about the Aptitude Test. I wasn't this nervous even in my final exams. They went well and I had scored good marks, marks better than Beatrice. It has been drilled into my head that we have a right to choose whatever faction we want to but the Aptitude Test is a way to show us in which faction we will be able to fit in the most. These Tests also show us whether we would be able to survive the initiation of a particular faction.

At the dining table, only mom stands there. I ask her,

"Were you afraid of the Aptitude Test?"

"I was terrified", she replies with a smile.

"Which faction did you have an aptitude for? Did the Test influence your decision to choose the faction in which you are in?" I blather like a toddler who can't keep his mouth shut. I mentally slap myself and look at mom with a blank and helpless expression.

"You will understand it all when you go through it. I am not supposed to share my experiences." Mom says with a kind smile.

Beatrice comes in with her school bag. This may be our penultimate day together or the beginning of a whole life together in Abnegation. Again, the question of living in this faction comes to my mind. It is a dilemma as I don't want to leave mom and dad but I do not want to stay in this faction. It is a matter of choosing which is better for me.

Why does my mind keep wandering to the selfish side of most things? I go and give Beatrice a big hug and a smile.

"What was that for?" says my dear sister with a half-smile.

"Nothing, just wanted to hug you"

I go and give mom a big hug. She reciprocates immediately. Dad sits beside the window, reading the newspaper. I go and give him a hug too. Dad reciprocates with a smile.

"Thank you son, do not worry about the Aptitude Test, I'm sure your mind will get cleared after you give the test."

The events in my home can get pretty un-Abnegation. I was the cause of it this time. Mom takes me and Beatrice into the kitchen and says,

"No matter what you choose, you both will still be my dear and cherished children."

Was she expecting someone to leave? Beatrice must have thought this to be a strategy designed to keep us in Abnegation. I interpreted mom's somewhat cryptic message a bit differently. It was like she almost expecting us to leave and at the same time wasn't. I guess mom knows more about me than I thought before.

We get out of the kitchen. Beatrice and I walk outside the door and into the cracked, patchy road with some broken streetlights. Why does the Abnegation refuse development in the name of selflessness? I had seen the offices where they keep their records and the computers there were millennia old. Should we entrust so much information about the city, some of it critical, in the hands of such poorly developed record-keeping services?

Susan and Robert didn't come today. I wanted to look at Susan for a last time. Everything seems pretty final today. Anyway, we walk towards the school and part ways. I make my way towards Advanced Math.

A last-day craze has gripped the entire Upper Levels building. There are people acting crazy, people acting confused, others acting helpful, helping the ones caught in the last day exhilaration. The key word here is acting. Everyone acts, and is acting to hide the real people they are. Even me, I have been acting for so many years to hide the real me. For so many years I pretended to be the perfect Abnegation citizen I wasn't. After sixteen years, it seems like such a chore, a chore I would not be able to do for the rest of my life.

The periods today are divided in half. The rest of the day will be used to conduct the Aptitude Test. The last period, Faction history ends and I go to the cafeteria. I sit there and read an action-packed novel, featuring an alliance between the Dauntless and the Erudite. The administrator calls out ten names and each room has a member of a particular faction in it. The rules are that no faction dependent can be tested by a member of the same faction as the given candidate.

I observe all the faction dependents around me. The Erudite are buried in their books as always, making a show of reading their books. The Amity, kind as ever are joking, laughing, playing a weird hand-holding game and passing around food. The Candor are dressed in black and white, engaged in a lively but not-so-serious debate. I can catch a few glimpses of smiles and suppressed laughs. The Dauntless are reckless, filled with a wild and a symbolic fire-like energy that cannot be contained. They are climbing onto tables, throwing food around. Finally, I look around at the members of my own faction sitting passively in a sea of grey. They just sit around and do nothing until their inner selfless-meter beeps. They engage in polite small talk and nothing else. I patiently wait for my turn but nobody knows that I am observing everyone around me unlike the ignorant Abnegation.

Wait, did I call the members of my faction ignorant? I really need to put a filter on my thoughts. My train of thought is jerked apart from the tracks when an administrator calls out-

"Caleb Prior, Abnegation dependent"

I gather my courage and walk into room number two. An Erudite lady is conducting my test. I look around inside the small room. The walls of the room are made with mirrors. There is a hard plastic chair in the centre of the room and the right wall has a computer, a keyboard with a lot of knobs and buttons on it and there are a couple of pairs of electrodes attached to the computer. The computer is kept on a portable trolley stand.

An Erudite lady waits for me inside the room. She has a kind look on her face which is unlike the condescending look on most of the Erudite people. She wears a blue shirt and a pair of white well-tailored trousers. Her warm brown eyes radiate kindness and good humour which is again unlike Erudite cold eyes. She greets me and says,

"Hello Caleb, I am Aster McKenzie and I am going to conduct your Aptitude Test. Let me tell you how this system works. The electrodes here will be attached to your brain and they will stimulate parts of your frontal lobe which is involved in planning and reasoning. They will also stimulate your parietal lobe which collects visual information and helps in making decisions. The serum that is administered contains wireless neurotransmitters and these will send the data received from your brain into the computer."

I stand there, absorbing every bit of information the lady provides. She hooks up the electrodes into the computer and connects those to my forehead. She gives me a vial of clear serum and tells me to drink it. I drink the serum without question but I can't help but wonder how it works. She instructs me to sit on the chair and take a deep breath. I direct my eyes towards the computer. A long programme is written on it and I can't make out what's written. The computer screen is the last thing I see before the simulation pulls me under.

I stand in the school cafeteria but the tables are empty. I evaluate my surroundings and see that the room is made with glass walls. On the table in front of me are two choices and they are... a piece of cheese and a knife? A familiar but faceless voice says, "Choose"

Make sense of the situation, Caleb. What have you got to lose? I walk forward and say loudly,

"Hey there, faceless and nameless voice, I refuse to choose!"

"Okay smart aleck, face the next level." The voice says.

I hear the cafeteria door squeak; a man clothed in black comes in from behind and clutches my neck, almost strangling me. He drags me near a table and says,

"This is your last day; you won't live another one to choose a faction."

I force my mind to think. The man is definitely stronger than me. I look around myself and find a bottle of mustard kept on the cafe table. I reach my hand out slowly and grab the bottle discreetly. I wait for a moment and squirt the mustard in his eyes. Mustard burns and it burns hard. The man's hands leave my throat and he shouts,

"You will pay for this, Caleb Prior!"

Okay, Caleb Prior: one, Mystery man: zero. The programme drags me to the next simulation.

The next simulation features me standing in a school corridor. I stay there and witness a quarrel between a Candor and an Erudite. The Erudite begins with a loquacious argument and I only catch the last part of it.

"...and this is why I accuse the Candor person of plagiarism."

The Candor says in defence of his argument-"I didn't copy your 'magnum opus'. I can assure you that my work is genuine."

I do not try to break up the argument. I didn't hear the whole of it and I might support the wrong side by only listening to half of the story. I know that the Candor speak the truth but it is not wise to judge on the basis of half-said stories. Finally both of them part ways and shoot angry looks at each other. The argument remains unresolved.

I am standing in the public bus. All the seats are occupied. I stand inside the bus like all the other Abnegation. A man reading a newspaper glances over to me. The newspaper has the following headline: 'Brutal Murderer Finally Apprehended!' I don't pay much attention to the headline. It is the man's face that catches my attention. He has a big scar on his cheek and his hands are scarred and burnt. He asks me,

"Do you know this guy?" he points to the picture on the newspaper.

I don't know why but the picture seems really familiar to me. The paper has a picture of a man with plain features and a beard. It must be the simulation playing tricks on my mind. The man's cruel face tells me that if I answer his questions affirmatively, I would be in a lot of trouble. So I decide to fall for this trick.

"I do not know what this picture means." I say with feigned conviction.

"You are telling lies. I know that you know about this man. You could save my life!" The man says the last sentence with a touch of anger and desperation.

"I still do not know what you are talking about." I say this with a smirk and confidence I didn't have earlier.

The simulation ends. I open my eyes, sit up and look for finger-shaped bruises on my neck. I don't find any. Those choices I had to make were really traumatising. Now I can understand why mom was terrified and didn't want to share her experiences.

Aster looks at me with a congratulatory expression. She says,

"Well done, Caleb. Your test results are Erudite." She proceeds to explain how I got an Erudite result.

"The test proceeds in a way as to eliminate unsuitable factions and indicate the most suitable for the given candidate. In your case, the test began with a choice between cheese and a knife. If you chose the cheese, the sim would have led you to an Amity situation. If you chose vice versa, the sim would have led you to a Dauntless situation. You chose neither, so the sim led you to the situations of the other three factions. The second scene was the man grabbing your throat. You made sense of your surroundings and squirted mustard into his eyes. The third scene was the quarrel. Your way of thinking is Erudite as they have a tendency to gather facts and then give their opinion. You didn't try to end the quarrel as you tried to collect the facts. The fourth scene tested your honesty but you thought of the man as a threat and denied his claims. Don't worry Caleb, only the Candor tell the truth in that situation."

Aster takes in a deep breath after giving such a long speech. Erudite? How could I get an Erudite result? The result is the curviest curve ball ever thrown at me. Why am I not having a panic attack right now? Well, my Erudite aptitude cannot be changed right now. I think about all the work that I use to do in secret. All those extra credit classes I take in the name of volunteering. All those books I borrow from the library, again in the name of volunteering. Sneaking into the laboratories for 'cleaning the equipment'. I never had an Abnegation bone in myself. I acted selfless to fool others around me. There is nothing wrong there, is it?

I try to push all of these confusing thoughts out of my head but I can't. I cannot see Beatrice anywhere. She walked into room number 6 at the same time. I glance around the hall. Almost all of the dependents are done with their tests. She must be outside the main gate.

I search for Beatrice and don't see her anywhere. She must have gone home. Though I thought that she would wait for me. Susan and Robert greet with a head-down bow.

"How did your Aptitude Tests go?" I ask Susan and Robert.

"They went fine." Susan says.

"They went fine but I am not allowed to talk about my test or my results." says Robert.

I make a guess at their results. I am not sure about Robert but I am sure that Susan would have gotten a textbook Abnegation result.

"Have you seen Beatrice around?"

"No, I didn't, why do you ask?" replies Susan.

"Even I didn't see her around." replies Robert.

"She must have gotten home already."

We walk outside the gates and into the main road. The bus arrives in time. I stand inside the bus, not caring to make a show of giving up my seat to someone. I get paranoid and look around to check that no man with a scarred face has got inside the bus. Slowly the people trickle out of the bus and the Abnegation are left in it. We get down at the Abnegation bus stop and joke around a little. Beatrice isn't here to lighten the 'test mood' with some of her sarcasm. I would have appreciated that today, instead of disapproving of her behaviour. I walk the short way home with Susan and Robert. At home I see Beatrice standing at the door. It was very uncharacteristic of her to not wait for us.

"Beatrice! What happened? Are you alright?" I ask her.

"I'm fine. When the test got over, I got sick. Must have been that liquid they gave us."

She says all of this while biting the inside of her cheek. It is a tell of hers. I narrow my eyes and look at her, suspecting that something has gone awry.

"We should let you go. All of us have some serious thinking to do." I say. This statement couldn't be truer for me.

"You're welcome to come over later if you like." I say nervously. It is necessary to mention the 'if' condition for Susan. If I do not, then she would feel like as if coming over to my house is a duty. I wouldn't like our friendship to be a duty.

"Thank you." She replies with a slight smile but she doesn't give a definite reply. I stand there in a nervous daze. Beatrice grabs my arm and wakes me up. She pulls me inside the house.

"Will you tell me the truth now?" I ask.

"You are not supposed to ask the truth about my test." She replies.

"All the rules you bend and you can't bend this one?" I say in a somewhat accusatory tone but I want the answer so I don't get defensive as to make her shrink away. She answers my question with a counter-question.

"What happened in your test, Caleb?" She prods me for a reply.

My test results cannot be revealed. That is highly classified information. I suppress my need to get answers. I would get them tomorrow morning. My eyes soften in understanding and so do hers.

"Just... don't tell our parents what happened, okay?"

Dinner-time comes and I help Beatrice make the dinner. We work together like a well-oiled machine, no need to exchange words because we done this thousands of times before.

My parents come home and the table is set. Dad comes in and kisses Beatrice's forehead. He comes in and gives me a hug. Dad and I always had a close relationship over the algebra we did together and the newspaper reports we discussed together.

"How did the tests go?" Dad asks.

"Fine" we say at the same time.

"I heard that there were some problems in the Aptitude tests. I didn't catch all of it but apparently a student got sick and was sent home. Did you hear any of it?" mom says.

"No, mom" I reply with a smile. I decide to save Beatrice just for once. She owes me.

Dinner begins and dad passes the food to the right after serving himself. No one eats until everyone is served.

"So," mom says, "tell me what's wrong."

"I had a difficult day. Actually Marcus had one but it influenced all of us."

"Is this about the reports that Jeanine Matthews released?" mom says.

My family seems to have a grudge against her. I see nothing wrong in releasing a report. The Abnegation need to learn to accept criticism. Beatrice asks,

"What report, dad?" Mom and I shoot her reprimanding looks at the same time, although mom's look is kinder but it reaches out to you like a baton wrapped in silk. She needs to keep her mouth shut. It's better to keep your thoughts inside your head where nobody can see them.

"Jeanine released a report about Marcus. It mentioned the cruelty of Marcus towards his son Tobias and his deceased wife Evelyn. It also said that Tobias chose Dauntless to escape his father's 'brutality'." He says 'brutality' with added inflection.

"Cruel? Marcus? As if somebody was pouring acid over his wounds" Mom says.

I had never met Tobias. His and my volunteering schedules never overlapped. He never attended any social function. He must have stayed completely invisible and off the radar.

The dinner ends. It is Beatrice's turn to wash the dishes but I help her like always. Mom and dad depart to their bedroom. I decide to give her some valuable advice.

"We should think of our family but we should also think of ourselves."

This is true. Whatever she chooses tomorrow, everyone will get over it except her. If I am seeing her for the last time today, I want these to be the final words exchanged between us.

"The tests don't have to change our choices."

"Don't they, though?" I reply and squeeze her shoulder. My heart is filled with too much sadness; I won't be able to give her a hug. I leave her to make her choice while I go up in my room to make mine. I lie down on my bed and stare at my books. I switch off the light and try to sleep but it evades me.