This is a rewrite of a Eric/Tris fanfiction that I had published in June 2014. 27 chapters of the 50+ chapters that I had published are on this Google Drive: drive/folders/14eJyXEPoL9Br0A4ZFYMqUGDL6Rp8EeMU?usp=sharing

An Abnegation volunteer speaks the next round of names. Two from Dauntless, two from Erudite, two from Amity, two from Candor, and then: "From Abnegation: Susan Black and Beatrice Prior."

I get up because I'm supposed to, but if it were up to me, I would stay in my seat for the rest of time. I feel like there is a bubble in my chest that expands more by the second, threatening to break me apart from the inside. I follow Susan to the exit. The people I pass probably can't tell us apart. We wear the same clothes and we wear our blond hair the same way. The only difference is that Susan might not feel like she's going to throw up, and from what I can tell, her hands aren't shaking so hard she has to clutch the hem of her shirt to steady them.

Waiting for us outside the cafeteria is a row of ten rooms. They are used only for the aptitude tests, so I have never been in one before. Unlike the other rooms in the school, they are separated, not by glass, but by mirrors. I watch myself, pale and terrified, walking toward one of the doors. Susan grins nervously at me as she walks into room 5, and I walk into room 6.

Mirrors cover the inner walls of the room. I can see my reflection from all angles: the gray fabric obscuring the shape of my back, my long neck, my knobby-knuckled hands, red with a blood blush. The ceiling glows white with light.

"What is it with Abnegation and mirrors?"

The unpleasant question propels me to see a Erudite woman – a few years older than I am – not gazing at me as her spectacled eyes are glued to her monitor. The Erudite always wear glasses whether they need them or not.

"We reject vanity," I answer simply.

"That is what they say alright," she sighs, as if skeptical of my answer. Even from where I'm standing, she appears to be swallowing a lemon. "Have a seat."

I sigh. Clenching my skirt as I make my way to the metal reclining chair. Of course, it would be my luck that I get an Erudite who seems set to despise me to administer my test.

As I sit down, the Erudite woman gets to work. Adjusting the chair and gathering up the wires. "I'm Cara. I'll be administering your test. You'll be offered a series of choices...," She attaches an electrode to my forehead "… to test your aptitude for each faction..." she presses another electrode to my forehead, "…until you get one result. Ninety-five percent get the faction of their origin and from the looks of you..."

By this time, she's already attached one of the electrodes to her own forehead. The way she goes about this, she seems to have done these many times. As if she had administered aptitude tests a few years before. "You done this many times," I couldn't help but blurt out.

"Of course," she answers, as if it was a stupid question to ask of her. "The aptitude test is one where only the most qualified must perform. I can't fathom why your faction sees themselves as qualified to be in charge of them while my faction does all the computer work for it."

At this point. She hands me a vial filled with a clear liquid.

"What is it?" My throat feels swollen. I swallow hard. "What's going to happen?"

"Can't tell you that," she answers. "You'll just have to see."

I press air from my lungs and tip the contents of the vial into my mouth. My eyes close.

When they open, an instant has passed, but I am somewhere else. I stand in the school cafeteria again, but all the long tables are empty, and I see through the glass walls that it's snowing. On the table in front of me are three baskets. In one is a hunk of cheese, in the other a knife with a painfully long blade, and in the third one, a slab of raw meat.

Behind me, a woman's voice says, "Choose."

"Why?" I ask.

"Choose," she repeats.

I look over my shoulder, but no one is there. I turn back to the baskets. "What will I do with them?"

"Choose!" she yells.

When she screams at me, my fear disappears and stubbornness replaces it. I scowl and cross my arms.

"Have it your way," she says.

The baskets disappear. I hear a door squeak and turn to see who it is. I see not a "who" but a "what": A dog with a pointed nose stands a few yards away from me. It crouches low and creeps toward me, its lips peeling back from its white teeth. A growl gurgles from deep in its throat, and I see why the meat or the cheese would have come in handy. Or the knife. But it's too late now.

I think about running, but the dog will be faster than me. I can't wrestle it to the ground. My head pounds. I have to make a decision. If I can jump over one of the tables and use it as a shield—no, I am not strong enough to tip one over.

The dog snarls, and I can almost feel the sound vibrating in my skull.

My biology textbook said that dogs can smell fear because of a chemical secreted by human glands in a state of duress, the same chemical a dog's prey secretes. Smelling fear leads them to attack. The dog inches toward me, its nails scraping the floor.

I can't run. I can't fight. Instead I breathe in the smell of the dog's foul breath and try not to think about what it just ate. There are no whites in its eyes, just a black gleam.

What else do I know about dogs? I shouldn't look it in the eye. That's a sign of aggression. I remember asking my father for a pet dog when I was young, and now, staring at the ground in front of the dog's paws, I can't remember why. It comes closer, still growling. If staring into its eyes is a sign of aggression, what's a sign of submission?

My breaths are loud but steady. I sink to my knees. The last thing I want to do is lie down on the ground in front of the dog—making its teeth level with my face—but it's the best option I have. I stretch my legs out behind me and lean on my elbows. The dog creeps closer, and closer, until I feel its warm breath on my face. My arms are shaking.

It barks in my ear, and I clench my teeth to keep from screaming.

Something rough and wet touches my cheek. The dog's growling stops, and when I lift my head to look at it again, it is panting. It licked my face. I frown and sit on my heels. The dog props its paws up on my knees and licks my chin. I cringe, wiping the drool from my skin, and laugh.

"You're not such a vicious beast, huh?"

I get up slowly so I don't startle it, but it seems like a different animal than the one that faced me a few seconds ago. I stretch out a hand, carefully, so I can draw it back if I need to. The dog nudges my hand with its head. I am suddenly glad I didn't pick up the knife.

I blink, and when my eyes open, a child stands across the room wearing a gray dress. She stretches out both hands and squeals, "Puppy!"

As she runs toward the dog at my side, I open my mouth to warn her, but I am too late. The dog turns. Instead of growling, it barks and snarls and snaps, and its muscles bunch up like coiled wire. About to pounce. I don't think, I just jump; I hurl my body on top of the dog, wrapping my arms around its thick neck.

My head hits the ground. The dog is gone, and so is the little girl. Instead I am alone—in the testing room, now empty. I turn in a slow circle and can't see myself in any of the mirrors. I push the door open and walk into the hallway, but it isn't a hallway; it's a bus, and all the seats are taken.

I stand in the aisle and hold on to a pole. Sitting near me is a man with a newspaper. I can't see his face over the top of the paper, but I can see his hands. They are scarred, like he was burned, and they clench around the paper like he wants to crumple it.

"Do you know this guy?" he asks. He taps the picture on the front page of the newspaper. The headline reads: "Brutal Murderer Finally Apprehended!" I stare at the word "murderer." It has been a long time since I last read that word, but even its shape fills me with dread.

In the picture beneath the headline is a young man with a plain face and a beard. I feel like I do know him, though I don't remember how. And at the same time, I feel like it would be a bad idea to tell the man that.

"Well?" I hear anger in his voice. "Do you?"

A bad idea—no, a very bad idea. My heart pounds and I clutch the pole to keep my hands from shaking, from giving me away. If I tell him I know the man from the article, something awful will happen to me. But I can convince him that I don't. I can clear my throat and shrug my shoulders—but that would be a lie.

I clear my throat.

"Do you?" he repeats.

I shrug my shoulders.

"Well?"

A shudder goes through me. My fear is irrational; this is just a test, it isn't real. "Nope," I say, my voice casual. "No idea who he is."

He stands, and finally I see his face. He wears dark sunglasses and his mouth is bent into a snarl. His cheek is rippled with scars, like his hands. He leans close to my face. His breath smells like cigarettes. Not real, I remind myself. Not real.

"You're lying," he says. "You're lying!"

"I am not."

"I can see it in your eyes."

I pull myself up straighter. "You can't."

"If you know him," he says in a low voice, "you could save me. You could save me!"

I narrow my eyes. "Well," I say. I set my jaw. "I don't."

I wake to sweaty palms and a pang of guilt in my chest. I am lying in the chair in the mirrored room. When I tilt my head back, I see Cara behind me. She's frowning as she removes the electrodes from herself and me. Then, without so much a word to me, she pulls the door open and slams it behind her.

I bring my knees to my chest and bury my face in them. I wish I felt like crying, because the tears might bring me a sense of release, but I don't. I must have done something wrong. Of course, she would think I have done something wrong. The Abnegation and the Erudite aren't known for being civil.

Haven't been for years.

As the moments pass, I get more nervous. I have to wipe off my hands every few seconds as the sweat collects—or maybe I just do it because it helps me feel calmer. What if they tell me that I'm not cut out for any faction? I would have to live on the streets, with the factionless. I can't do that. To live factionless is not just to live in poverty and discomfort; it is to live divorced from society, separated from the most important thing in life: community.

My mother told me once that we can't survive alone, but even if we could, we wouldn't want to. Without a faction, we have no purpose and no reason to live.

I shake my head. I can't think like this. I have to stay calm.

Finally the door opens, and Cara walks back in. I grip the arms of the chair.

"I apologize for the inconvenience," she says, and though she's trying to keep a level head, her voice slightly shakes. Even wiping her hands on her blue skirt.

"Beatrice, your results were inconclusive," she starts. "The way the simulation is set up, each stage should cancel out a faction as you progress, however, only two were ruled out."

I stare at her. "Two?" I ask. My throat is so tight it's hard to talk.

"The aptitude test is designed to progress in a linear fashion," Cara starts. "One choice is supposed to eliminate a faction before it proceeds onto the next one until you get your result. Those who choose the cheese usually have their aptitudes narrowed to Abnegation and Amity," At this point, Cara begins to pace. "The meat would narrow it down to Erudite and Candor, and the knife would narrow it down to Dauntless and Erudite. You didn't choose any of the three, which ruled out Amity. After you threw yourself at the dog, I had to place you on the bus to rule out Candor, which was ruled out due to your insistence of dishonesty. Of course, it's something that only the Candor would tell the truth about."

One of the knots in my chest loosens. Maybe I'm not an awful person.

"Thing is, one would look at your test and say it's because your refusal to choose either of the three that led to only two being ruled out." Cara scratches her head. "However, that assumption might not be accurate in itself. Your submission to the dog was an Erudite response, refusing to run from the dog beforehand would be a Dauntless response. Putting yourself in front of the dog would be considered an Abnegation response, however, even if lying on the bus ruled out Candor, another unbiased test administrator would say it wasn't such an Abnegation oriented response."

"So you have no idea what my aptitude is?"

"When you came out of the test, only Amity and Candor were greyed out on the monitor," she answers. "You have equal aptitude for Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite. People who get more then one faction…" She looks over her shoulder like she expects someone to appear behind her, "…they are called…Divergent."

She says the last word so quietly that I almost don't hear it, and her tense, worried look returns. She walks around the side of the chair and leans in close to me.

"Now, you listen to me," she hisses. "Under no circumstances, should you share that information with anyone, not when years have passed. Divergence is dangerous, mainly because there are people who see you being unable to categorize yourself in one area as a threat to the system. Tomorrow, I strongly suggest that you choose to remain in Abnegation. That's what I entered in as your result after I left. Do not, I beg you, do not choose Dauntless or Erudite, ever."

"Why?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Both factions have their ways of sniffing out certain signs of it," she said. "In Erudite, the instructors are coached to look for anything suspicious. Even if you go through the entirety of initiation, they'll still try to find ways to get you to slip up in your behavior. Any nonconformities that they can exploit. In fact, I'm supposed to inform leadership right away about any abnormalities with your aptitude test. In Dauntless, everything might be alright until you reach stage two of their initiation. A couple years ago, Erudite used to go in the data network to see if anything was amiss with the Dauntless simulations. Now they have someone over there that can look at the data for them in addition to scope out other factors, and therefore inform our leadership of his suspicions. It's not often they find people like you, but when they do, often times they turn up missing. Sometimes, they'll make it look like you fell to your death or something when it's clear that something shady took place."

My throat dries at her words, as I try to process what they mean. Though one sentence stands out to me the most than the others: the implication that Erudite had planted someone to help them look for people like me in Dauntless.

"So, you're saying that if I choose to remain in Abnegation, I'd be safe," I say.

"Yes," she said. "As ridiculous, as it is, that is the only safe option. There you won't be able to draw attention to yourself. There is no one there actively seeking out people like you there."

The only safe option. A more comfortable option, it would be. Because that's what I'm used to. Even if I don't feel selfless enough to stay.

"Okay." I peel my hands from the arms of the chair and stand. I feel unsteady.

"It's best if you go home now," Cara says. "You need a clear mind for the thinking you have to do and waiting for the others to finish will not give you that."

"I have to tell my brother where I'm going."

"I'll let him know."

I touch my forehead and stare at the floor as I walk out of the room. I can't bear to look her in the eye. I can't bear to think about the Choosing Ceremony tomorrow.

At least not right now.

I decide not to take the bus. If I get home early, my father will notice when he checks the house log at the end of the day, and I'll have to explain what happened. Instead I walk. I'll have to intercept Caleb before he mentions anything to our parents, but Caleb can keep a secret.

I walk in the middle of the road. The buses tend to hug the curb, so it's safer here. Sometimes, on the streets near my house, I can see places where the yellow lines used to be. We have no use for them now that everyone does not have a car. We don't need stoplights, either, but in some places they dangle precariously over the road like they might crash down any minute.

When I look at the Abnegation lifestyle as an outsider, I think it's beautiful. When I watch my family move in harmony; when we go to dinner parties and everyone cleans together afterward without having to be asked; when I see Caleb help strangers carry their groceries, I fall in love with this life all over again. It's only when I try to live it myself that I have trouble. It never feels genuine.

But choosing a different faction means I forsake my family. Permanently. Cara says to stay in Abnegation. That it will be safer for me than Dauntless or Erudite. I don't want to leave anyway, even if I feel like I won't fit.

Just past the Abnegation sector of the city is the stretch of building skeletons and broken sidewalks that I now walk through. There are places where the road has completely collapsed, revealing sewer systems and empty subways that I have to be careful to avoid, and places that stink so powerfully of sewage and trash that I have to plug my nose.

This is where the factionless live. Because they failed to complete initiation into whatever faction they chose, they live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses. In return for their work they get food and clothing, but, as my mother says, not enough of either.

I see Dauntless patrolling here too. A few years ago, my father drafted the bill to remove them from the Factionless sector. Arguing that they needed help, not policing. However, eight of the ten Abnegation councilmen who voted in favor of the bill were overruled by forty-two councilmen who voted against it. As most of the city council is comprised of those outside of Abnegation, father said their ignorance of the situation drove them to vote against it.

I see a factionless man standing on the corner up ahead. He wears ragged brown clothing and skin sags from his jaw. He stares at me, and I stare back at him, unable to look away.

"Excuse me," he says. His voice is raspy. "Do you have something I can eat?"

I feel a lump in my throat. A stern voice in my head says, Duck your head and keep walking.

No. I shake my head. I should not be afraid of this man. He needs help and I am supposed to help him. The Dauntless around us are paying no mind. Nearby, four of them are talking. By the looks of it, three of them seem to be giving the fourth person a report of something.

"Um…yes," I say. I reach into my bag. My father tells me to keep food in my bag at all times for exactly this reason. I offer the man a small bag of dried apple slices.

He reaches for them, but instead of taking the bag, his hand closes around my wrist. He smiles at me. He has a gap between his front teeth.

"My, don't you have pretty eyes," he says.

My heart pounds. I tug my hand back, but his grip tightens. I smell something acrid and unpleasant on his breath.

It's like he wants to say something when two Dauntless soldiers come rushing towards us. "Hey, get your hands off her!" one of them shouts, a girl who could only be a couple years older than me.

"Is there a problem here?" asks her companion, narrowing his eyes at the factionless man.

"No," he answers levelly as he lets go of me. But not before taking the bag of dried apple slices from my hand.

"Are you okay?" the Dauntless girl asks me, placing her hand on my shoulder. Almost like a sibling would. Perhaps she's someone's older sister.

"Yes," I answer. "Thank you."

I wish I could have been able to get away by myself, even if I appreciate the Dauntless intervention. Part of me feels weak, and I hate that feeling.

"What happened here?" asks a third voice. Almost as if someone wanted to investigate the incident. I close my eyes and groan. I just want to go home.

"One of the factionless antagonized her while she was trying to give him food," the Dauntless man answers.

"We got it under control, Eric," answers the girl, and looking at her, just with her eyes she does not seem to like the third Dauntless that just came by.

"Even if so, I'd like a written report of it. Now, what are you doing here instead of at school?"

The second sentence is directed at me, and when I look at him directly in response, I get a good look at this man the Dauntless girl had called Eric. He appears to be a few years older. It's hard to tell with the Dauntless, as some of them appear older than they are. His blond hair is shaved on the sides of his head save for the top. Sporting dermals above one of his brows and a couple lip rings. His gray eyes have such an intensity that he could look deep into my soul if he wanted to.

I swallow. Grasping my skirt with my sweaty hands. "I had my aptitude test today," I answer. "I left early."

"I see, and you chose to walk through the factionless sector instead of taking the bus home," he chides.

"I did not feel like taking the bus," I answer. Just drop it and let me leave.

Eric's eyes pin me down. Almost as if he didn't buy my explanation. Like he can tell that I'm not being truthful. Then he nods. "Alright," he says. "You can go, but I don't want to see you here alone again after this. You may be one day shy of your Choosing, but it would still be a stupid move to traverse here alone. Understand me, Stiff?"

"Yes," I answer with a nod before scurrying away from them. Wanting to put as much distance between him and me as soon as possible. It does not help that I feel his eyes on me for a few minutes.