Disclaimer: I don't own Divergent.
The door to the transfer dorm closes behind me, and I slip out into one of the hallways that lead to the Pit. As per city ordinances, all the lights in the Dauntless compound are off. No one's gonna find out about my activities in the Pit tonight.
I walk just a bit faster, my eyes on the lookout for one man. I never paid that much attention to him before. Now he's the only person I want to see.
About five feet, nine inches tall, with gray patches in his curly black hair, and a mustache and beard that he hardly ever trims. I know he works the night shift, when there are no initiates around that could possibly bother him. I wonder how well he sees in the dark.
My bare feet briefly kissing the cold floor every second, I cross into the area that contains the chasm. Although it's still dark, I can sense the rage-filled might of the river.
It draws me in, attracts me like bright light attracts moths. I roam closer to the metal railing. One of my hands reaches out and touches it, feeling the coldness of the spray. And then, all of a sudden, I realize I'm already next to him.
He's the factionless man I'd see in the Pit after hours, cleaning up after all of us initiates. If the factionless woman I met earlier truly is a leader in the revolution she's planning, she must be connected to many others. Including this man right here. It's worth a try.
"Well, look who's breaking curfew," the man chuckles. I can just barely hear him over the din of the river. He lets go of the broom in his hand, lets it lean against the metal railing. Then he's squinting, trying his hardest to make out my features in the pitch blackness. "Are you one of those transfers? What, you miss my charming company? Forgot to say hi to me earlier?"
"Uh, you could say that." I think of the factionless woman's accusations. I reach into the pocket of my jeans and pull out the folded sheet of paper inside. "I'm here to pass on a note. To a person you might know."
I'm going to tell the man the specifics, but then he beats me to it. He reveals that yes, he's in on the woman's revolutionary plans, and yes, he knows her name. Her name is Ysabelle. "Isabelle but with a Y," he says. He tells me that yes, he'll give Ysabelle the note.
I'm so relieved to have made it this far. "You can read what I wrote, I don't care," I say. "And thanks."
I turn back toward the dormitory, but before I take my attention away from the man completely, I watch as he opens up the note to read what it says.
To the one who gave me the book -
You were right. I WILL return.
-T. E.
P.S. Thanks for letting me know what I was missing.
I get a response from Ysabelle the very next morning.
She was sure she could recruit me before, but now things aren't as certain. There's been some conflict brewing between the biggest names in the movement, including "E", the person recognized by most of the factionless as their de facto leader. "E" wants me to join. Many of the other factionless do not, and Ysabelle's reluctant to tell me why.
She writes that "E" herself will respond soon. I can only wait, and hope, and wonder who this mysterious leader might be.
I'm crushed.
"E" wrote back to say that she can't guarantee my safety in the factionless sector. If I go there again, I'll have a target on my back, and most of those factionless who're willing to kill me are stronger and in better health than Ysabelle. The reason they hate me so much? They all know who I'm related to.
"Your face is a familiar one to them," the factionless leader wrote. "It's for this reason that you should stay out of sight. For our sake as much as yours."
Disappointment flooding through me, I fold the letter back up. I don't want to look at it again. I place it where it was originally, in a spot across from where I hid the Ceramics-final sculpture.
At first, what I feel is anger. I was just about to turn my life around, join the revolution and make up for all my past wrongs against the factionless, and now they reject my efforts? All because of one man I happen to be related to? And I hate him just as much as they do. It's not really fair.
I spend the next few minutes thinking on it. I soon realize, regretfully, that I'm wrong. I don't really have a right to be angry at the factionless. It's their revolution, their movement and their fight. I can't get mad at them for their very rational fears surrounding Marcus Eaton and his family.
Instead, I write another note to their leader, thanking her for trying, wishing her good luck in her fight for freedom. If it's not too much to ask, I write, can she please send me something in return? I'll find a way to pay her back at some point, I promise.
I ask for more books, specifically books written by and about prominent Black leaders from U.S. history. I ask for some that were written in the twenty-first century. I request a few photos of Chicago in the 1960s, and some of the neighborhood of Lawndale, where King stayed during his work with Operation Breadbasket. I close out the letter with yet another thank-you. It seems like a small ask, but for a factionless person, it'll be a big one.
When I leave the transfer dorm, I see Bernard, the factionless man I approached earlier.
He agrees to pass my note to "E". I can't thank him enough. When I'm sure none of the cameras will catch it, I slip him some of my monthly credits via my Dauntless-issued card. Even if he'd said no, I still would've done it. He said he considers me a friend now.
Now I need to find something worthy to give to "E". She's the best friend I have in this fight.
The Dauntless will tell you, from day one, that your career options in their faction are limited. That you can choose to fight, showboat, or protect. Those are the three main avenues to a successful Dauntless life.
Not surprising that I thought about trading it all for a spot in the factionless revolution. But now that's been ruled out. I'll be staying in my chosen faction, for better or for worse.
Doesn't mean I'll let myself adopt the toxic traits many of the other Dauntless have. Like I said before, I've grown wiser. I've learned I don't need to lose what made me Abnegation, in order to be truly Dauntless. And I won't. So I'll choose another career path.
I'll strive for much more than before. I'll aim to beat Eric and become a Dauntless leader before he does.
And once I'm in that position of power, I'll remember what King said about the responsibilities we have to the poor, to the downtrodden, to the disenfranchised. I'll keep the promises I made to the factionless in this city.
I won't be changed by the corrupt Dauntless leadership. I won't let anyone brainwash me again, won't let them steer me in the wrong direction.
Even if "anyone" includes my own best friend.
The simulation stage has resumed. Every day, Amar subjects them to a new fear. It could be anything lurking in their subconscious. Fear of drowning, of dying alone, of getting strangled, or even something like having to speak in public. "But don't worry," Amar says to them. "I'm the only one who can see your fears."
How much good would that do? Eric wonders. One person knowing all his fears is one person too many.
Not like Amar would listen if he brought that up. Eric just keeps his mouth shut as his instructor talks, then he sees one person raise his hand nervously.
"What happens if we get… post-traumatic stress?" the kid asks.
"You deal with it on your own," Amar replies without missing a beat. "This isn't elementary school, and I'm not your nurse." He crosses his arms in front of him, making himself look more intimidating. "We'll monitor your progress by keeping track of your times. The faster you can exit the simulation, the better."
Nobody mentions the initiates' mental health after that. Eric thinks maybe that's a blessing in disguise. Now there won't be anything to sidetrack them, nothing they can use to excuse their failed simulation attempts. It'll just be them, the fears they're trying so hard to defeat, and their own will to survive and thrive.
My day was made today, and then the rug was pulled out from under me. It's like I can't even be happy anymore, knowing all the things I know.
Early this morning, Bernard came to get me. He said he had a package for me. Inside it was everything I requested from "E", the leader of the factionless. Literally everything I asked for was there, and more. I could've cried tears of joy right there in the transfer dorm.
First of all, the books. The books! Not only do the factionless have what I was looking for, they're more than willing to give it all away. I haven't started on any of the old paperbacks yet, but I scanned through some of the titles and was endlessly fascinated by what I saw. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings were just a couple of the ones that stood out to my curious eyes. Yes, it's screwed up that my own people's history was buried for so long, but the factionless have miraculously uncovered it.
The historical photos, too. Where did the factionless leader find them? She managed to procure for me five pictures taken in Lawndale in the mid-1960s, and several more taken elsewhere in Chicago at around the same time. In a separate folder was an even larger collection of photos, some of them older, others taken a bit more recently. It didn't matter that much to me, all of them are linked to my family's, to my people's, history.
I'm still thinking about the images I looked at. Some of them are gonna stick in my memory for all time. An image of a Black teen girl with short, curly hair and glasses, walking forward stoically as several white women follow close behind, hostile expressions on their faces. A photo with two Black men looking solemnly downward as both of them raise their fists in the air, most likely in a show of protest. An old photograph depicting Martin Luther King, Jr. next to another Black man, a man whose name I don't yet know, who wears glasses and a wide smile.
There were some high-definition, color photos in the set, and I know I'll be looking hard at those later on. They're from after 1968, but before the time we're living in right now. What I want to know is, how did that part of history contribute to the collapse of U.S. society, and Chicago emerging as the lone survivor?
I didn't get to investigate. Shortly after, Amar took all of us transfers down to the simulation room.
He made me go in first, and I could not have been prepared for what I saw in the day's sim.
I saw Lawndale. Lawndale, Chicago, sometime in the late 1960s. Exactly how it was depicted in the pictures that "E" sent me. I looked down at my own hands, just to make sure I was still me. And I was, but my hands were much smaller. That was when I realized, I was no longer sixteen. I was eight or nine or ten years old again, just another little boy growing up in the United States of America.
One thing I knew. Marcus was at his construction job, leaving me to pass the time in the neighborhood alone. A memory surfaced of me meeting Eric for the first time. I remembered him saying he and his family just moved to Chicago from San Francisco. In the simulation, his mom just recently came over from Thailand, and his dad was an Army officer who served in Vietnam.
I also remembered him letting me borrow his soccer ball. I was kicking it around in the street at the moment the simulation began. I was having fun, I just wished Eric himself could be there. But he had some after-school activity so he was gonna be busy till evening.
Then the sound of footsteps distracted me. I looked up from the soccer ball and saw a short white girl walking by, watching me as she passed. She had brown hair and bangs cut straight across her forehead. She smiled at me, and her whole face seemed to glow. Gosh, she's pretty, I remember thinking.
I started to say hello to her. But just then, a fat blonde lady walked up next to her, took her hand, and pulled her away. It must've been her mother. She whispered something in the girl's ear, and even though it was quiet, I still heard everything she said. "Get out of that street," the woman hissed. "You don't want to be associated too closely with those people."
The brown-haired girl never looked my way again. I was surprised by how much that hurt.
When I first heard the mother say what she said, I felt an imagined sharp point puncture my heart. My chest grew tight as the seconds passed, and my breaths hitched in my throat. The more I stared at the woman's face, seeing that look she wore, the deeper the point in my heart rooted itself, and the more painfully it twisted.
I didn't want to play outside any longer. I went back to the house I knew was mine.
There I stayed until Marcus arrived from work. When he came in, I knew immediately he'd had a very bad day. There seemed to be a dark cloud hanging over his head. He kept muttering something under his breath about "those two-faced white Northerners". But he didn't disclose what happened at his job, or who exactly got him so mad.
Later, I was working to finish an art project, and I was in the same room as Marcus. I accidentally spilled some drops of paint on the top of his shoe. The look he gave me made me think I just committed manslaughter. I said I was sorry, and then I quickly looked away, afraid of his anger. But me looking away seemingly just made him even madder.
He started on this long rant about why can't I behave myself and why don't I show respect to my elders, this is why the white people look at me like I'm just another kid from the ghetto. I was in the middle of apologizing when he suddenly exploded at me.
One second he was still in his chair, the next second he was holding his belt over his head, about to bring it down on my back. And then I was screaming in pain and crying sudden tears, tears I didn't know could surface so fast, tears I wished I weren't crying, because I feel weak every time I cry.
I couldn't stop it, though. The tears overwhelmed me until I felt sick from crying, but even that didn't last as long as the dread that sat like a viper in my stomach.
That feeling came because I knew that what I experienced wasn't fake.
No, it certainly had happened for real, just during a time when I wasn't around to see it.
And if not in my own family, then whose? Zeke's? Amar's? Shauna's? All I know is that it did happen. King said it loud and clear in the book, describing this new version of Marcus perfectly. "His rage and torment were frequently turned inward, because if they gained outward expression their consequences could be fatal."
And now, two hundred years later? I'm in a community where my friends and I have this exact problem. We've all witnessed injustice and cruelty and sadism, but none of us can express it to anyone who's important, for fear of getting barred from society altogether. Only thing we can do is bottle up our despair and hatred. Keep it locked away inside. Try to chase it out of our bodies with too much alcohol, whatever works.
Two hundred years have passed, and the old country still hasn't paid its debts, no one's learned anything from our past, and the exact same demons are plaguing us.
I simply don't know where I can start, to get rid of them. This thought turned the trickle of tears into a waterfall, a hot and destructive one, one that almost drowned me.
I'm back in my dorm now. I'm waiting for Shauna to finish up so we can go on that date we planned. But I'm still shaking in my boots, still trying to forget what happened to me in the sim.
The Candor got things half right, I think. The truth may set you free, but it'll wound you so badly in the process, you'll almost wish you stayed ignorant.
AN: Hope you enjoyed. The beginning with the note from Ysabelle was something I had to shoehorn in, since I needed to justify Tobias not joining the factionless revolution right away. Reading the second half of the novel it annoyed me to see Tobias' lack of initiative, since it seemed completely OOC to me. Tobias has both Abnegation and Dauntless traits, he's selfless and willing to jump into action to help those who are weaker, so why was he calmly contemplating how Dauntless might be an okay place for him to stay and watch as political tensions rise all around him? Why was he so willing to step back and let Eric take over, when he already knows that the latter is a dangerous individual? I thought that was so OOC of him. That was when I decided to have outside forces get involved and deter him from going all out and ditching the corrupt Dauntless completely.
The factionless woman's name was partly inspired by the actress who played the horror movie monster that I based the character off of, appearance wise.
The photos Tobias described are all actual photographs from American history. If you're not American, the first one he described depicts Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, walking to school while being harassed by a crowd of whites against integration. The second depicts Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists in a Black Power salute during their medal ceremony. The third depicts Martin Luther King, Jr. with Malcolm X during their only meeting together.
Tobias spilling paint on Marcus' shoe is a reference to the ending of August Wilson's play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which is set in Chicago in the 1920s.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? is the property of Beacon Press and Martin Luther King, Jr. I do not own any content in this chapter that references this work.