I wake up early, run the sleep out of my eyes and then stretch out my arms I then sit up on my bed and lean my head to the right so I can check the time on the grandfather clock: it's five am. I have to been at school for the tests at seven am, so I still have two hours.
I climb down from bed and open up my warder to bring out a baggy grey t-shirt and long baggy grey tracksuit bottoms. I then bring out one of my two pairs of shoes, both pairs identical grey pairs of cheap trainers. I run my brush through my hair, attempting to tame my wild hair and then grab my grey hair bobble and tie my hair up in a makeshift ponytail that is almost impossible to do as there is no mirror.
We don't have any mirrors in our whole house as it is considered vain to own a lot of mirrors. All Abnegation families are permitted to own one mirror, as they can be very useful, but my father broke ours one night when he was drunk and then both he and mother told as that we don't need any mirrors as it is a 'waste of money'. So now we have none.
"Zelma," I whisper, gently shaking her shoulders, "wake up."
"What is it, Ponine?" she asks groggily, sitting up.
"It's morning, you idiot," I reply, rolling my eyes sarcastically at her.
"I'm not an idiot!" she protests, sitting up and for a moment showing the Azelma that I used to know.
"If you say so," I grin, "but get up and then let's leave, we don't want to get in our parent's way."
Azelma would usually argue with me about that statement, but is tired so she simply nods and gets out of bed. "I'm going to be downstairs," I announce, leaving the room.
Azelma and I enter the school building, holding hands because of our nerves. "You okay?" she asks me, she's the perfect Abnegation so I can tell that she is genuinely concerned about how I am.
"I'm fine, no thanks to Vroche," I reply, smirking slightly, then I remember myself and ask, "what about you?"
"I'm obviously fine," she replies, dropping my hand and walking into the assembly hall while I jog after her. I don't go over to her once I get into the school as I know that she wouldn't want me to, so I find a table with a spare seat and sit down, the noise in the room somewhat distracting me from my nerves. People from all of the factions are here, but that hardly makes any difference at all due to the fact that we are as separated as always.
We arrived quite late, so I ended up taking one of the last seats left with the Abnegation. There is a woman announcing who is next for the test through a speakerphone. Five tests can go at once.
My name is called reasonably quickly and she says "Eponine Thenardier" after only about ten minutes of waiting. I walk over to the testing room, trying to appear calm.
I enter the room and I see a glossy black chair in the middle of the small room and computers everywhere. There is also a man dressed in black. Dauntless.
"Hello Eponine Thenardier," he says, "I'm Feuilly and I will be your tester or whatever you want to call it." There's a pause. "Could you lie down so we can begin?" he asks, motioning towards the now lowered chair. It sit on the chair. "Good, now I'll need to inject you with this," he says, bringing out a giant needle.
"Hell no!" I exclaim and Feuilly chuckles.
"It's fine, I promise it won't hurt, once the simulation is finished I will explain what you just experienced and will tell you your results," he says before injecting me with the needle.
I'm suddenly in the school cafeteria, but there's no one there but me.
"Hello?" I call, I'm not sure why I care so much that I'm the only one here, I just do.
One of the school cooks suddenly appears out of thin air, she's holding a large knife and a slab of cheese. "Choose one," she commands. Her voice sounds creepily real, but has an icy cold tone to it, like the voice of a villain.
"Why?" I ask, staring at her inquisitively.
"Choose!" she roars.
Knives are always useful, especially a big one like that. Cheese can be useful too… in a way. I quickly grab them both.
"One!" I hear her screech, but then fades away.
I eat the cheese as I never did get time to have any breakfast. A boxer dog enters out of nowhere and runs over to me, licking my hand. I immediately like this dog.
Then, a little girl comes and the boxer immediately tries to attack her. I like this dog, but the girl looks about five.
"No!" I scream, dropping the knife in my urgency and diving at the dog. The dumb dog bites me on the arm. I grab the little girl's hand and run, trying to get as far away from the dog as possible. Then, the girl disappears and shortly after everything goes black.
I'm in a dark tunnel with an old lady who looks about eighty, a pregnant woman and a girl who looks about eleven. There's a knife in my hand, the knife from before. A voice tell me that I have to kill one of them to go through and I have to choose wisely as it will greatly affect my journey.
I don't want to kill anybody, but I repeat to myself that it is just a simulation and it's not real. So I try to think about it logically.
The pregnant woman is two lives, one of them is an unborn baby. But that if she slows us down…? And what if she went into labour here? It's possible that they could both die if that happened as I'm assuming that none of us are doctors and we won't just see one while we're travelling.
The little girl is only young and has hardly lived at all. How could I kill her?
The old lady has lived most of her life and would surely die soon anyway. She seems to be the obvious choice, but she looks kind and reminds me of my grandmother. How could I kill someone who reminds me of my grandmother?
None are ideal travelling partners and all three of them would probably do me more harm than help, yet I can't bring myself to kill any of them.
"What if I don't kill any of them?" I ask the voice.
There's no answer.
"That's what I thought," I state, "so I won't kill any of them."
"Kill!" the voice screeches repeatedly.
I shut my eyes tightly and ignore the murderous voice.
Eventually, I transport onto a bus. I'm sitting on a seat and a ragged looking man comes over to me, yelling something at me that at first I can't understand but I then recognise it as, "Eponine, please help me! Do you know this man?" he asks, holding up a picture of a man.
I know that I recognise the man, but I don't know where from and I have this weird feeling that if I tell him then something awful will happen to me.
"Yes," I reply, "we're very good friends."
The man looks confused and then asks me where the man lives. I burst out laughing for no particular reason and then give him a fake address.
The man hesitantly thanks me, then I'm back in the testing room.
"Your test was remarkable," Feuilly gapes, "but the results were very dangerous. You must not tell anybody your results," he sighs. "You don't only belong in one faction like most people, you belong in three: Abnegation, Dauntless and Erudite. People like you are called Divergent, although most Divergent only belong in two factions."
"What? Why is it dangerous? Am I dangerous?" I ask, my heart thumping in my chest.
"I will explain it carefully, as much as I can," he says slowly. "We usually determine your faction by ruling out all faction but one, but your results didn't allow us to do that. First, the decision: cheese or knife. Choosing knife would have been primarily Dauntless and choosing cheese would be primarily Amity. You chose both," he chuckles.
"By choosing both, that out rules Amity, as you took both when you were only offered one. I couldn't out rule Candor, as you never promised that you would only choose one. Then, you showed kindness to the dog but betrayed it when you saw it attack the little girl and risked getting injured by jumping on top of it. That was an Abnegation decision, but taking both cheese and the knife wasn't Abnegation. Next was the killing choice: you didn't kill any of them so that whole test was mainly inconclusive, so we couldn't out rule any faction by doing that."
He smiles at me in a way that I suppose he must think is reassuring. It's not.
"The last test ruled out Candor as you told the man that the man he was looking for was a close friend of yours and you then gave him a fake address. No more could be ruled out so you are Abnegation, Dauntless and Erudite."
My breath hitches in my throat as I ask the question "but why is it dangerous?
"I can't tell you that now. Just go, quickly and don't tell anyone. No matter what," he commands.
"But—" I begin.
"Go!" he commands angrily.
I run off, out of the room and out of the school.
A/N
So… what did you think? I was really unsure about how to write this chapter, which is why it took so long (sorry!) and thank you so much for the wonderful response to the last chapter, it was amazing! So please review and if you haven't already, please follow or favourite this story if you have enjoyed it. Anyway, I'll stop boring you all now. Bye!