Alright Divergenters...I got 20+ reviews and I'm really happy. Guys, please please PLEASE review. I'm not saying that I won't update, but it will make me really happy!

By the way, I am slowly revising both of my stories so you should reread both of them when I put the words, "Reread the whole story because it has been revised" within the next chapters.

Sorry for not updating for awhile by the way, I have a triathlon that I have to be all Dauntless on!

IMPORTANT: The sequels WILL be written under Switched, so it will be under this story.

Happy Independence day for those US! #Murica!

So I present to you...The Beginning of the End.

Chapter XXII. The Beginning of the End

TRIS

I wake to squeaking mattresses and shuffling feet. I can barely see in the dark, but as my eyes adjust, I see Christina tying her shoelaces. I open my mouth to ask her what she's doing, but then I look around, and across from me is Will putting on a shirt. Everyone is awake, yet seem to be in a silent trance.

"Christina," I hiss. She keeps her head down and avoids eye contact. I shake her shoulders. "Chris!"

But she does nothing but tie her combat boot laces. My stomach squeezes when I see her face.

Eyes blank, facial muscles slack. Her movements almost seem…unreal. Her expression is not awake but seeming awake.

And everyone else looks just like her.

I cross the room. "Will?" All the initiates fall into a line once finished dressing. They start to file out of the dormitory in a march. I grab Will's arm to keep him from leaving, but he moves forward with irrepressible force. I hold him back but he elbows me in the throat and continues walking.

I hold my throat when I realize something.

The war.

They are sleepwalkers.

I fumble for my black leather combat boots.

I can't stay here alone.

I tie my shoes quickly, pull on a jacket, and run out of the room, catching up behind my fellow initiates and quickly acting in a trance like them. I mimic them best as I can, but the rhythm feels weird to me; how perfectly they walk in unison is almost creepy.

And it is.

We march toward the Pit, but when we reach the entrance, the line turns left. I look over the shoulder in front of me and instantly look away.

Max stands in the hallway, watching us carefully, inspecting each and every one of our blank faces. There is a hammering sensation ringing throughout my body and I stare as vacantly as possible ahead of me.

I tense slightly as I pass him. He'll notice that I'm not brain-dead.

I'm not brain-dead like the rest of them and something bad will happen to me, I just know it.

Max's dark brown eyes pass right over me.

We climb a flight of stairs and down four corridors. The hallway opens up and it reveals a cavern filled with black; brain-dead Dauntless.

Several rows of tables have mounds of glinting silver chrome. I can't identify what the piles are until I am a foot away from them.

Guns.

Of course.

Eric said every Dauntless was injected yesterday. So now the entire faction of Dauntless are perfect soldiers; brain-dead, obedient, and trained to kill.

I pick up a gun, holster, and belt, copying Will in front of me.

I pray that no one will pay extra close attention to me; how much I am fumbling by trying to copy Will's unpredictable moves is not helped and quite nerving.

Once I'm armed, I follow the other initiates toward the exit.

I can't wage war against Abnegation.

As much as I would like to kill the one who abused me for my life and still haunts me.

But I can't help Erudite murder innocent people.

We pass through a dark hallway, and I can't see anything except silver guns shining.

My steps falter and I pray that it is too dark for anyone to notice.

When the staircase turns, light brings my vision back.

I regain rhythm to Will's as we reach the top of the stairs, passing Jason.

Now I know that the Dauntless leaders are the only people awake.

Not the only people really. I'm awake because I'm Divergent.

That means Tobias must be too, unless I am wrong about him.

I have to find him.

I stand next to the train tracks in a group of Dauntless that stretches as far as I can see with my vision. One by one, my fellow initiates climb into the open train car in front of us.

I can't turn my head to look for Tobias, but my eyes move to the side.

The faces on my left are unfamiliar, but I see a tall boy with shirt hair a few yards on my right.

It might be him, and I can't be sure, but it might just be.

The only problem is that I can't get to him without attracting attention to myself.

Once the car in front of us fills up, Will turns toward the next one.

I follow him, but instead of stopping where he stops, I slip a few feet to the right. Luckily the people surrounding me are taller than me; the will shield me.

I slowly make my way over to the boy who I thought was Tobias.

I clench my teeth as I take another step to the right.

A blank-faced Dauntless in the next car offers a hand to the boy in front of me, and he takes it, his movements robotic. I take the next hand without looking at it, and try to climb into the car as gracefully as I can.

I stand in the car facing the person who helped me.

I look up slightly to see his face.

Tobias, as blank-faced as the rest of the Dauntless.

Was I wrong?

Is he not Divergent?

The tears that sparked behind my eyes disappear and I refrain a smile when he looks down slightly and winks. But that could've just been an illusion made up in my head. I frown slightly.

More people crowd into the car around me, so we stand in four rows, shoulder-to-shoulder.

Then fingers lace with mine, and a palm presses to my palm, Tobias, holding my hand.

My body is alive with energy. I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back.

He is awake.

I was right.

I force myself to stand still and keep my eyes trained forward as the train starts moving.

His thumb moves in a small circle over the back of my hand. It's supposed to comfort me, but it frustrates me instead.

I want to talk to him.

I need to look at him.

I want all of this just to stop.

But it can't.

I stare at the girl's head in front of me, when I realize that the brown hair is very familiar.

Zalia.

My heart drops.

I don't know how long I've been standing there, but it must've been a long time.

The train screeches to a stop, and my heart pounds so hard it's difficult to breathe; I have to revisit the faction where I was abused, where my childhood was ruined, where I might have to face my abuser again.

Right before we jump down from the train car, I turn my head and Tobias glances back at me. "Run." I whisper.

"My family." He replies silently, and in his eyes I see pain.

If I thought I would have a hard time with this, I'd have to think twice. Tobias has to destroy the faction he loves, or the family he loves for that matter.

I get back into my blank-faced character and jump down from the car when it's my turn.

I walk in front of Tobias. I focus mainly on Zalia's head in front of me because of the familiar streets, the familiar landscape, the familiar memories.

I gulp, forcing down those memories and focusing on the task at hand.

I pass by the place where my mother and I used to get new clothes every six months.

But that was way before my father hated the two of us.

Focus!

We all march in the same rhythm except the officers, who stand every few hundred yards, watching us walk by, or in groups discussing things.

No one seems to be doing anything.

Are we really here for war?

A part of me hopes so to destroy Marcus.

But the other part makes me hope not to harm innocent people.

I walk a half mile before I find out the answer to that question.

I hear familiar popping sounds.

The farther I walk the louder and sharper they get, until I recognize them as gunshots.

A memory with my drunk father with a pistol resurfaces.

I clench my jaw to shake the memory off.

Far ahead of us, I see a Dauntless soldier push a gray-clothed man to his knees. I recognize the man, he is a council member who worked with Marcus.

The soldier takes her gun out of her holster and fires a bullet into the back of the man's skull, with sightless eyes.

The soldier turns their head, her gray streak in her midnight black hair over her shoulders.

Tori.

My steps almost falter.

Keep walking, keep walking.

We keep marching forward, then the soldiers in front of me stop walking, and so do I.

I stand as still as I can, but all I want to do is find Jeanine and Eric and Max and shoot them all.

As much as I'd want to put a bullet in Marcus's skull, the rest of Abnegation would hunt me down for shooting their leader.

If Abnegation even survives after this whole thing.

Another gunshot.

From the corner of my left eye, another gray blur collapses to the pavement.

All of Abnegation will die if this continues.

The Dauntless soldiers perform unspoken orders without hesitation and with no question.

Some adult Abnegation members are herded toward one of the nearby buildings, and my heart drops when the Abnegation children are crying and being held at gunpoint.

The only people I do not see are the Abnegation leaders.

Maybe they are already dead.

Maybe he's already dead.

And just a little part of me is hoping that he is.

One by one, the soldiers in front of me step away to perform tasks.

Zalia steps aside and joins a group of blank-faced soldiers herding some Abnegation.

I notice a boy with a snake tattoo acting not as robotic as the others.

I gulp, praying that Uriah has caught on.

And thankfully, Uriah begins to copy the movements of Zalia.

Soon the leaders will notice that the signals everyone else is getting, I'm not getting them.

And I don't know what to do when that happens.

"This is insane," coos a male voice on my right. I see buzz-cut blonde hair and a silver earring in my peripheral vision.

Eric.

He pokes my cheek with his index finger, and I struggle against the impulse to slap his hand away.

I bite my inner left cheek to help.

"They really can't see us? Or hear us?" a female voice asks. I see the woman who watched the final fear landscapes.

"Oh, they can see and hear. They just aren't processing what they see and hear in the same way," Eric replies matter-of-factly. "They receive commands from our computers in the transmitters we injected them with…" he presses his fingers to the back of my neck; the injection site to show the woman where it is.

I will myself to freeze my entire body. Stay still, I tell myself. Stay still.

"…and carry them out seamlessly." He ends.

Eric shifts a step backwards and leans close to Tobias's, grinning.

"Now, this is a happy sight," he says. "The not as legendary Six, isn't that right, Tobias? No one's going to ask me, 'What was it like to train with the guy who only has sixfears?'" He draws his gun from his holster and points it at Tobias's right temple. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my skull.

He can't pull the trigger; he wouldn't.

Eric tilts his head. "Think anyone would notice if he accidentally…got shot?"

"Go ahead," The woman tells him. "He's nothing now." She must have a higher governmental rank than Eric to be able to say that as blank-faced as the entirety of Dauntless and watch the fear landscapes.

"Too bad you didn't just take Max up on his offer, Tobias. Well, too bad for you anyway," Eric says quietly. I hear the bullet click in to place, and I swallow the bulge in my throat.

"Say goodbye, asshole."

My fists clench.

In one quick motion, I take my gun from my holster, put a bullet into place, and press it against the back of Eric's head.

"Goodbye, asshole."

"You won't shoot me," Eric says with a smirk, as if knowing that I won't.

"Interesting theory," I reply.

I aim downwards slightly and pull the trigger, and Eric screams. He grabs his foot, dropping his gun. Tobias acts quickly and draws his gun and shoots the woman in the leg. She falls down and I grab his arm. We run through the streets, looking for shelter. I take his hand and start to lead him to an old shed that I used to hide from Marcus in.

Suddenly, a shot is fired from behind us, and Tobias falls down. I instantly am down beside him, making sure he is still alive. Tears prick at my eyes.

"Run!" he yells. "Go on without me!"

"No," I tell him firmly. I help him up, but by the time I do, we are surrounded by Dauntless.

"Divergent rebels," Eric says with a smirk, trying to balance on one foot. "Surrender your weapons."

We are lead to Abnegation headquarters. I support Tobias and he winces at each step he takes. I can tell the bullet wound is really hurting him; I know what real pain feels like.

A guard opens a door to an office, and we are pushed inside. Jeanine spins around in a chair behind a desk. She hangs up the phone and faces us. I growl.

"Divergent rebels," our guard explains. My heart sinks when I finally take a good look at his face.

Joey.

But I have to remember that the simulation is making my friend do this. He's not doing it willingly.

He's not.

"Yes, I can see that," she says, and takes off her hideous glasses.

"You," she says, pointing at Tobias, "I expected. All the trouble with your aptitude test results made me suspicious from the beginning, years ago. But you," she says, facing me. She shakes her head, almost like she is disappointed. "You, Beatrice, or should I call you Four?" I frown. "Managed to elude me. Everything about you checked out: test results, initiation simulations, everything. But here you are, nonetheless. Perhaps you can explain to me how that is?"

"You're the genius," I say with a straight face, even if my heart is pounding. "Why don't you tell me?"

Her mouths curls into a smile. It makes me sick. "My theory is that you really do belong in Abnegation, that your Divergence is weaker." Ha. She has no idea. She smiles even bigger.

"Your powers of deductive reasoning are stunning," I hiss. "Consider me awed." I know that she is only prolonging our sentence.

"Now that your intelligence has been verified, you might want to get on with killing us," I tell her, and close my eyes. As much as I'm not ready to die, I can accept it; I would rather die than watch my friends, and Tobias, be tortured. There has been countless moments where I have wished I was dead anyway.

"You have a lot of Abnegation leaders left to murder, after all," I spit. Maybe even Marcus.

Jeanine doesn't react. She just stands there, smiling. I feel Tobias lean a little more on me, so I wrap my arm around him for support.

"Don't be silly," Jeanine finally says. "There is no rush. You are both here for an extremely important purpose. You see, it perplexed me that the Divergent were immune to the serum that I developed, so I have been working to remedy that. I thought I might have, with the last batch, but as you know, I was wrong. Luckily I have another batch to test."

"Why bother?" Tobias spits at her. Jeanine smirks back.

"I have had a question since I began the Dauntless project, and it was this," Jeanine says, running her finger over the desk. "Why are most of the Divergent weak-willed, God-fearing nobodies from Abnegation, of all factions?" As much as I hated my life in Abnegation, it is still my home faction.

And I must defend it.

"Weak-willed," I laugh. "It requires strong will to manipulate a simulation, last time I checked. Weak-willed is mind-controlling an army because it's too hard for you to train one yourself."

"I am not a fool," she says. "A faction of intellectuals is no army. We are tired of being dominated by a bunch of self-righteous idiots who reject wealth and advancement, but we couldn't do this on our own. And your Dauntless leaders were all too happy to oblige me if I guaranteed them a place in our new, improved government."

"Improved all right," My voice drips with sarcasm. For geniuses, these guys sure are stupid. Tobias groans quietly in pain and I frown slightly.

"Yes, improved," Jeanine snaps. "Improved, and working toward a world in which people will live in wealth, comfort, and prosperity."

"At whose expense?" Tobias mumbles. I can tell the blood loss is starting to affect him. "All that wealth…has to come from somewhere."

"Currently, the Factionless are a drain on our resources," Jeanine tells us. "As is Abnegation. I am sure that once the remains of your old faction are absorbed into the Dauntless army, Candor will cooperate and we will finally be able to get on with things."

Her plan…it's horrid. All those people, just forced into killing innocent people. She has no right to decide who is valuable or not. "Get on with things," I repeat bitterly. "Make no mistake," I say, my voice raised. "You will be dead before the day is out, you-"

"Perhaps if you could control your temper," Jeanine cuts me off, "You would not be in this situation to begin with, Beatrice."

"I'm in this situation because you put me here!" I yell at her. "The second you orchestrated an attack against innocent people."

"Innocent people," she says, laughing. "I find that a little funny, coming from you. I would expect Marcus's only child to understand that not all those people are innocent. Can you tell me honestly that you wouldn't be happy to discover that your father was killed in the attack?" I glare daggers at her.

"No," I admit. As much as it hurts me to agree with her on this point, I really wouldn't mind it. "But at least his evil didn't involve the widespread manipulation of an entire faction and the systematic murder of every political leader we have."

This point is hard to Jeanine to reply to. We stare at each other for a few seconds before she clears her throat.

"What I was going to say is that soon, dozens of the Abnegation and their young children will be my responsibility to keep in order, and it does not bode well for me that a large number of them may be Divergent like yourselves, incapable of being controlled by the simulations," she says, pacing in front of us, her blue Erudite heels clicking on the floor. "Therefore, it was necessary that I develop a new form of the simulation to which they are not immune. I have been forced to reassess my own assumptions. That is where you come in. You are correct to say that you are strong-willed. I cannot control your will. But there are a few things I can control." She stops walking and faces Tobias, whose head is now leaning against my shoulder, and me.

"I can control what you see and hear," Jeanine says calmly, "so I created a new serum that will adjust your surroundings to manipulate your will. Those who refuse to accept our leadership must be closely monitored." Even if she may or may not have killed Marcus, I almost forgot how cold and calculating she is.

"You will the first subject, Beatrice," she says, and my stomach churns at the thought of her controlling my mind. "Tobias, however…" she turns and smiles up at Tobias. "You are too injured to be of much use to me, so your execution will occur at the conclusion of this meeting."

And that's when all the anger stored in me explodes.

CLIFFIEEEEE! That was 3,713 words! Goal: 480-500 reviews! I know you guys can do it! I don't care if you only review 480, I will update no matter what!

The whole book of Divergent will end in two chapters.

If Allegiant made you cry, clap your hands *clap clap*

If TFIOS ruined your life, clap your hands *clap clap*

If these books made you sob, then the authors are doing their job,

If these books made you cry, clap your hands *clap clap*

Me: *Hands blistering from clapping too violently*

How do you guys like the songs? xD

~TrissyPoo