Page 18 of The Sixth Fraction

Caleb says a word he’s only ever heard at school, never wrapped his mouth around before. Vulgarity is not permitted in Abnegation, where self-control is paramount. It’s probably not permitted in Erudite, either, where calm minds prevail.

He glances at the Erudite boy, whose chest is heaving. Yes, that’s right—Caleb has to calm down.

He does know a technique for that, but he’s not confident in it. He walks up to the stone plinth and kneels. The kneeling isn’t necessary, but it’s familiar, so he lets himself capitulate to a desire for comfort, just this once. He presses his palms to the stone, just to have something to focus on, and closes his eyes.

Breathe in, he tells himself, and he hears his father’s voice instead of his own, which would be a distraction if it wasn’t so reassuring in this moment of crisis. He focuses on the rough stone, cold beneath his fingers. Granite, perhaps; granite is the most common stone in this area, igneous rock, which means, what? Formed by the cooling of magma. Breathe out. He can’t think about the rock, for God’s sake, he has to think about the riddle. No, he corrects himself, he has to think about nothing. Nothing at all.

He hears the shuddering breaths of the boy behind him. Breathe in. He feels the air passing through his nostrils and in his mind, he follows its path from sinus to trachea to his lungs, forcing his diaphragm down. Deep breathing reduces the body’s stress response. Breathe out. He follows the breath on its reverse path, from lungs to trachea to sinus to nose.

He opens his eyes, and reads the riddle again. This time, thinking of the path of his exhale, he reads it backward. The only way to be rid of it is to recognize it. Those who do have it aren’t aware of it. Those who don’t have it don’t want it. It is what separates us from each other.

The answer unfurls in his mind like the petals of a new flower. He scrambles to his feet and rushes toward the stone lion.

“Ignorance!” he tells it. “The answer is ‘ignorance.’ ”

He leaves the Erudite boy behind him.

The others—there are nineteen of them, apart from Caleb—have been talking about him. He can tell from the moment he sits down. Well, let them talk; he made it through the first test of Erudite initiation, so he doesn’t care what they have to say. Only one of the Erudite boys smiles at him—Fernando, he calls himself, offering Caleb his hand. Caleb, not practiced at shaking hands, feels awkward at the gesture. But he’s relieved to know at least one new person’s name.

“I understand that it’s just how they work,” one of the other Erudite-born initiates—a girl with her hair in a messy bun—is saying. “But I can’t help but feel stupid every time I come out of a simulation. Why did I think my faction had planted a maze of trees that somehow escaped everyone’s notice?”

Erudite’s primary dining room—the Exchange, someone called it—is bright and airy. Despite the faction’s color being blue, their decorative sensibilities don’t seem to be beholden to that color. The ceiling is all glass, and some of the panes are blue, but others are green, orange, yellow, pink. It’s the spectrum of white light, Felicity said, when Caleb first sat down beside her at the initiates’ table. Their table is surrounded on all sides by faction members, with the oldest on one side of the room and the youngest on the other. The group next to theirs is last year’s initiate class, laughing and talking, all in blue.

“It’s like in dreams,” Fernando says to the Erudite-born girl. “The mind finds little threads to tie together disparate images. We’re wired to tell ourselves stories.”

“We’re wired to seek out logic,” the girl argues, rolling her eyes. Caleb remembers her name from the round of introductions they did before entering the labyrinth: Anna. “Stories don’t always have to be logical.”

“Neither do dreams,” Fernando replies.

Caleb feels like he’s awake for the first time. He’s used to quiet meals guided by rules of consideration. He’s used to examining every contribution he wants to make to a conversation before he offers it to determine if it meets Abnegation’s standards. He’s not used to sharp exchanges pressuring each other for the betterment of an idea. Fernando and Anna are discussing the history of storytelling and its communal benefits. Something about oral tradition preserving knowledge that Caleb only partly understands the root of. He watches them both, fascinated, until their instructor, a blond woman who reminds him of both his sister and Jeanine Matthews, somehow, stands at the end of the table. Cara. Cara is her name.

“We’ve lost one of your number already,” Cara says, without preamble. “He hasn’t realized it yet, but years of initiation data suggest that if he hasn’t been able to solve the riddle yet, he won’t be able to. We’ll be continuing without him.”

Caleb exchanges a look with Felicity, eyes wide. The Erudite boy—a born Erudite—is just . . . gone? Initiation over? Doomed to factionlessness?

“In Erudite privileges are earned,” Cara goes on. “Tonight, you’ve earned the privilege of a hot meal and a roof over your head. Tomorrow, you’ll be tested again, to earn the privilege of a place in the dormitory and entry into the common areas of our headquarters. Don’t become complacent. Your place here is not guaranteed.” She pauses. “But congratulations on making it this far.”

It’s as much of a welcome speech as they seem likely to receive. Caleb suspects the real welcome will come when they pass all their initiation tests, and not a moment sooner.

Silence falls over the room, and he raises his head to see the source of it: Jeanine Matthews has just walked into the Exchange, her hands clasped in front of her. She smiles and nods to a few people, then makes her way over to their side of the dining room.

As the son of a council member, Caleb has met Jeanine Matthews before, but it was brief and unremarkable, each time. She hardly looked at him. She’s the same age as his parents, her hair blond and her eyes gray. She wears plain, tailored clothing. Her hair is never frizzy or in disarray.

“Representative Matthews,” Cara says to her, as she approaches. “To what do I owe this honor?”

Jeanine’s smile is a polite one, lacking true warmth.

“I simply wanted to check in on our new class of initiates,” she says. “Who was the first one to solve the riddle?”

Fernando raises his hand. He’s not hesitant to take the credit, and his brazenness is momentarily off-putting to Caleb before he remembers that’s an Abnegation impulse, a relic of the life he’s turned away from. In Erudite an accomplishment is a fact, and there’s no point in being bashful about a fact.

“Well done,” Jeanine says warmly. “And who was the last one, apart from the unfortunate failure?”

Caleb’s stomach lurches. But he doesn’t want to appear ashamed, so he raises his hand.

Jeanine hums in response, her eyes skimming over his gray jacket with obvious disdain.

“Well, perhaps that’s not surprising, when your faction of origin is known for its rigid thinking,” she says. “Let’s hope you can improve tomorrow, Mr. Prior.”