I stand in front of him. I barely feel the needle go in; I’ve never had a problem with shots, though some of the other initiates got teary-eyed before the injection. I walk into the next room and face the window, which looks like a mirror on this side. In the moment before the simulation takes effect, I can see myself the way the others must have seen me, slouched and buried in fabric, tall and bony and bleeding. I try to straighten up, and I’m surprised by the difference it makes, surprised by the shadow of strength I see in myself right before the room disappears.
Images fill the space in pieces, the skyline of our city, the hole in the pavement seven stories below me, the line of the ledge beneath my feet. Wind rushes up the side of the building, stronger than it was when I was here in real life, whipping my clothes so hard they snap, and pushing against me from all angles. Then the building grows with me on top of it, moving me far away from the ground. The hole seals up, and hard pavement covers it.
I cringe away from the edge, but the wind won’t let me move backward. My heart pounds harder and faster as I confront the reality of what I have to do; I have to jump again, this time not trusting that there won’t be pain when I slam into the ground.
A Stiff pancake.
I shake out my hands, squeeze my eyes shut, and scream into my teeth. Then I follow the push of the wind and I drop, fast. I hit the ground.
Searing, white-hot pain rushes through me, just for a second.
I stand up, wiping dust from my cheek, and wait for the next obstacle. I have no idea what it will be. I haven’t taken much time to consider my fears, or even what it would mean to be free from fear, to conquer it. It occurs to me that without fear, I might be strong, powerful, unstoppable. The idea seduces me for just a second before something hits my back, hard.
Then something hits my left side, and my right side, and I’m enclosed in a box large enough only for my body. Shock protects me from panic, at first, and then I breathe the close air and stare into the empty darkness, and my insides squeeze tighter and tighter. I can’t breathe anymore. I can’t breathe.
I bite down on my lip to keep from sobbing—I don’t want Amar to see me cry, don’t want him to tell the Dauntless that I’m a coward. I have to think, can’t think, through the suffocation of this box. The wall against my back here is the same as the one in my memory, from when I was young, shut in the darkness in the upstairs hallway as punishment. I was never sure when it would end, how many hours I would be stuck there with imaginary monsters creeping up on me in the dark, with the sound of my mother’s sobs leaking through the walls.
I slam my hands against the wall in front of me, again and again, then claw at it, though the splinters stab the skin under my fingernails. I put up my forearms and hit the box with the full weight of my body, again and again, closing my eyes so I can pretend I’m not in here, I’m not in here. Let me out let me out let me out let me out.
“Think it through, Stiff!” a voice shouts, and I go still. I remember that this is a simulation.
Think it through. What do I need to get out of this box? I need a tool, something stronger than I am. I nudge something with my toes and reach down to pick it up. But when I reach down, the top of the box moves with me, and I can’t straighten again. I swallow a scream and find the pointy end of a crowbar with my fingers. I wedge it between the boards that form the left corner of the box and push as hard as I can.
All the boards spring apart at once and fall on the ground around me. I breathe the fresh air, relieved.
Then a woman appears in front of me. I don’t recognize her face, and her clothes are white, not belonging to any faction. I move toward her, and a table springs up in front of me, with a gun and a bullet on it. I frown at it.
Is this a fear?
“Who are you?” I ask her, and she doesn’t answer.
It’s clear what I’m supposed to do—load the gun, fire the bullet. Dread builds inside of me, as powerful as any fear. My mouth goes dry, and I fumble for the bullet and the gun. I’ve never held a gun before, so it takes me a few seconds to figure out how to open the chamber of the pistol. In those seconds I think of the light leaving her eyes, this woman I don’t know, don’t know enough to care about her.
I am afraid—I am afraid of what I will be asked to do in Dauntless, of what I will want to do.
Afraid of some kind of hidden violence inside of me, wrought by my father and by the years of silence my faction forced on me.
I slide the bullet into the chamber, then hold the gun in both hands, the cut in my palm throbbing. I look at the woman’s face. Her lower lip wobbles, and her eyes fill with tears.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I pull the trigger.
I see the dark hole the bullet creates in her body, and she falls to the floor, evaporating into a cloud of dust on contact.
But the dread doesn’t go away. I know that something’s coming; I can feel it building inside me. Marcus has not appeared yet, and he will, I know it as surely as I know my own name. Our name.
A circle of light envelops me, and at its edge, I see worn gray shoes pacing. Marcus Eaton steps into the edge of the light, but not the Marcus Eaton I know. This one has pits for eyes and a gaping black maw instead of a mouth.
Another Marcus Eaton stands beside him, and slowly, all around the circle, more and more monstrous versions of my father step forward to surround me, their yawning, toothless mouths open wide, their heads tilting at odd angles. I squeeze my hands into fists. It’s not real. It’s obviously not real.
The first Marcus undoes his belt and then slides it out from around his waist, loop by loop, and as he does, so do the other Marcuses. As they do, the belts turn into ropes made of metal, barbed at the ends. They drag their belts in lines across the floor, their oily black tongues sliding over the edges of their dark mouths. At once they draw back the metal ropes, and I scream at the top of my lungs, wrapping my arms around my head.
“This is for your own good,” the Marcuses say in metallic, united voices, like a choir.
I feel pain, tearing, ripping, shredding. I fall to my knees and squeeze my arms against my ears like they can protect me, but nothing can protect me, nothing. I scream again and again but the pain continues, and so does his voice. “I will not have self-indulgent behavior in my house!” “I did not raise my son to be a liar!”
I can’t hear, I won’t hear.
An image of the sculpture my mother gave me rises into my mind, unbidden. I see it where I placed it on my desk, and the pain starts to recede. I focus all my thoughts on it and the other objects scattered around my room, broken, the top of the trunk loose from its hinges. I remember my mother’s hands, with their slim fingers, closing the trunk and locking it and handing me the key.
One by one, the voices disappear, until there are none left.
I let my arms fall to the ground, waiting for the next obstacle. My knuckles brush the stone floor, which is cold and grainy with dirt. I hear footsteps and brace myself for what’s coming, but then I hear Amar’s voice:
“That’s it?” he says. “That’s all there is? God, Stiff.”
He stops next to me and offers me his hand. I take it and let him pull me to my feet. I don’t look at him. I don’t want to see his expression. I don’t want him to know what he knows, don’t want to become the pathetic initiate with the messed-up childhood.
“We should come up with another name for you,” he says casually. “Something tougher than ‘Stiff.’ Like ‘Blade’ or ‘Killer’ or something.”
At that I do look at him. He’s smiling a little. I do see some pity in that smile, but not as much as I thought I would.
“I wouldn’t want to tell people my name either,” he says. “Come on, let’s get some food.”
Amar walks me over to the initiates’ table once we’re in the dining hall. There are a few Dauntless already sitting at the surrounding tables, eyeing the other side of the room, where pierced and tattooed cooks are still setting out the food. The dining hall is a
cavern lit from beneath by blue-white lamps, giving everything an eerie glow.
I sit down in one of the empty chairs.
“Jeez, Stiff. You look like you’re about to faint,” Eric says, and one of the Candor boys grins.
“You all made it out alive,” Amar says. “Congratulations. You made it through the first day of initiation, with varying degrees of success.” He looks at Eric. “None of you did as well as Four over here, though.”
He points at me as he speaks. I frown—four? Is he talking about my fears?
“Hey, Tori,” Amar calls over his shoulder. “You ever hear of anyone having only four fears in their fear landscape?”
“Last I heard, the record was seven or eight. Why?” Tori calls back.
“I’ve got a transfer over here with only four fears.”
Tori points at me, and Amar nods.
“That’s gotta be a new record,” Tori says.
“Well done,” Amar says to me. Then he turns and walks toward Tori’s table.
All the other initiates stare at me, wide-eyed and quiet. Before the fear landscape, I was just someone they could step on, on their way to Dauntless membership. Now I’m like Eric—someone worth watching out for, maybe even someone worth being afraid of.
Amar gave me more than a new name. He gave me power.
“What’s your real name, again? Starts with an E . . . ?” Eric asks me, narrowing his eyes. Like he knows something but isn’t sure that now is the time to share it.
The others might remember my name too, vaguely, from the Choosing Ceremony, the way I remember theirs—just letters in an alphabet, buried under a nervous haze as I anticipated my own choice. If I strike at their memories now, as hard as I can, become as memorable as my Dauntless self as possible, I can maybe save myself.
I hesitate for a moment, then put my elbows on the table and raise an eyebrow at him.
“My name is Four,” I say. “Call me ‘Stiff’ again and you and I will have a problem.”
He rolls his eyes, but I know I’ve made myself clear. I have a new name, which means I can be a new person. Someone who doesn’t put up with cutting comments from Erudite know-it-alls. Someone who can cut back.
Someone who’s finally ready to fight.
Four.
Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
FOUR: THE TRANSFER: A DIVERGENT STORY. Copyright © 2013 by Veronica Roth. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition August 2013 ISBN 9780062285638
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FIRST EDITION
Four: The Initiate: A Divergent Story
THE TRAINING ROOM smells like effort, like sweat and dust and shoes. Every time my fist hits the punching bag it stings my knuckles, which are split open from a week of Dauntless fights.
“So I guess you saw the boards,” Amar says, leaning against the door frame. He crosses his arms. “And realized that you’re up against Eric tomorrow. Or else you would be in the fear landscape room instead of in here.”
“I come in here, too,” I say, and I back away from the bag, shaking out my hands. Sometimes I clench my hands so hard I start to lose feeling in my fingertips.
I almost lost my first fight, against the Amity girl, Mia. I didn’t know how to beat her without hitting her, and I couldn’t hit her—at least, not until she had me in a choke hold and my vision was starting to go black at the edges. My instincts took over, and just one hard elbow to her jaw knocked her down. I still feel guilt curling up inside me when I think about it.
I almost lost the second fight, too, against the bigger Candor boy Sean. I wore him out, crawling to my feet every time he thought I was finished. He didn’t know that pushing through pain is one of my oldest habits, learned young, like chewing on my thumbnail, or holding my fork in my left hand instead of my right. Now my face is patchworked with bruises and cuts, but I proved myself.
Tomorrow my opponent is Eric. Beating him will take more than a clever move, or persistence. It will take skill I don’t have, strength I haven’t earned.
“Yeah, I know.” Amar laughs. “See, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what your deal is, so I’ve been asking around. Turns out you’re in here every morning and in the fear landscape room every night. You never spend any time with the other initiates. You’re always exhausted and you sleep like a corpse.”
A drop of sweat rolls down the back of my ear. I wipe it away with my taped-up fingers, then drag my arm across my forehead.
“Joining a faction is about more than getting through initiation, you know,” Amar says, and he hooks his fingers in the chain that the punching bag dangles from, testing its strength. “For most of the Dauntless, they meet their best friends during initiation, their girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever. Enemies, too. But you seem determined not to have any of those things.”
I’ve seen the other initiates together, getting pierced together and showing up to training with red, studded noses and ears and lips, or building towers out of food scraps at the breakfast table. It never even occurred to me that I could be one of them, or that I should try to be.
I shrug. “I’m used to being alone.”
“Well, I feel like you’re about to snap, and I don’t really want to be there when it happens,” he says. “Come on. A bunch of us are going to play a game tonight. A Dauntless game.”
I pick at the tape covering one of my knuckles. I shouldn’t go out and play games. I should stay here and work, and then sleep, so I’m ready to fight tomorrow.
But that voice, the one that says “should,” now sounds to me like my father’s voice, requiring me to behave, to isolate myself. And I came here because I was ready to stop listening to that voice.
“I’m offering you some Dauntless status for no particular reason other than that I feel bad for you,” he says. “Don’t be stupid and miss this opportunity.”
“Fine,” I say. “What’s the game?”
Amar just smiles.
“The game is Dare.” A Dauntless girl, Lauren, is holding on to the handle on the side of the train car, but she keeps swaying so she almost falls out, then giggling and pulling herself back in, like the train isn’t suspended two stories above the street, like she wouldn’t break her neck if she fell out.
In her free hand is a silver flask. It explains a lot.
She tilts her head. “First person picks someone and dares them to do something. Then that person has a drink, does the dare, and gets a chance to dare someone else to do something. And when everyone has done their dare—or died trying—we get a little drunk and stumble home.”
“How do you win?” one of the Dauntless calls out from the other side of the train car. A boy who sits slouched against Amar like they’re old friends, or brothers.
I’m not the only initiate in the train car. Sitting across from me is Zeke, the first jumper, and a girl with brown hair and bangs cut straight across her forehead, and a pierced lip. The others are older, Dauntless members all. They have a kind of ease with one another, leaning into one another, punching one another’s arms, tousling one another’s hair. It’s camaraderie and friendship and flirtation, and none of it is familiar to me. I try to relax, bending my arms around my knees.
I really am a Stiff.
“You win by not being a little pansycake,” Lauren says. “And, hey, new rule, you also win by not asking dumb questions.
“I’m gonna go first, as the keeper of the alco
hol,” she adds. “Amar, I dare you to go into the Erudite library while all the Noses are studying and scream something obscene.”
She screws the cap on the flask and tosses it to him. Everyone cheers as Amar takes the cap off and takes a swallow of whatever liquor is inside.
“Just tell me when we get to the right stop!” he shouts over the cheering.
Zeke waves a hand at me. “Hey, you’re a transfer, right? Four?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Nice first jump.”
I realize, too late, that it might be a sore spot for him—his moment of triumph, stolen by a misstep and loss of balance. But he just laughs.
“Yeah, not my finest moment,” he says.
“Not like anyone else stepped up,” the girl at his side says. “I’m Shauna, by the way. Is it true you only had four fears?”
“Hence the name,” I say.
“Wow.” She nods. She looks impressed, which makes me sit up straighter. “Guess you were born Dauntless.”
I shrug, like what she says might be true, even though I’m sure it’s not. She doesn’t know that I came here to escape the life I was meant for, that I’m fighting so hard to get through initiation so I don’t have to admit that I’m an imposter. Abnegation-born, Abnegation result, in a Dauntless haven.
The corners of her mouth turn down, like she’s sad about something, but I don’t ask what it is.
“How are your fights going?” Zeke asks me.
“All right,” I say. I wave a hand over my bruised face. “As you can clearly tell.”
“Check it out.” Zeke turns his head, showing me a large bruise on the underside of his jaw. “That’s thanks to this girl over here.”
He indicates Shauna with his thumb.
“He beat me,” Shauna says. “But I got a good shot in, for once. I keep losing.”
“It doesn’t bother you that he hit you?” I say.
“Why would it?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Because . . . you’re a girl?”
She raises her eyebrows. “What, you think I can’t take it just like every other initiate, just because I have girl parts?” She gestures to her chest, and I catch myself staring, just for a second, before I remember to look away, my face flushing.
Four Divergent Stories: The Transfer, The Initiate, The Son, and The Traitor (Divergent Series) Page 4