Page 7 of The Sixth Fraction

She steps out of the room and closes the door behind her. I’m alone with the dentist’s chair, the stool, the metal box full of syringes. I’m alone with my own fears. What if I did the test wrong? What if I get in trouble for it? I shudder as I imagine Tori coming back in here to tell me I can’t go to my Choosing Ceremony because I failed the aptitude test and now I have to be factionless. I think of the unsteady hands of the factionless woman who snatched a sweater out of my grasp the other day. Give it here, Stiff.

By the time Tori comes back, I’m trembling again. She closes the door behind her and then leans against it, her hands trapped behind her back.

“Sorry about that,” she says. “I had to report an error and enter your result manually.”

“What—” My voice comes out choked and small. “What was my result?”

Tori frowns. “Well . . . it’s hard to say, actually.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some of the things you did in that test aren’t supposed to be possible,” she says, her voice quiet. “Scaling the wall, for example. Walking along the top of it. Those suggest . . . a certain level of awareness that you’re not supposed to have.”

I blink at her.

“You’re not supposed to know that what you’re experiencing in that test isn’t real,” she says, her eyes insistent on mine.

“What do you—how could I not? I was in here and then I was in a labyrinth. There was nothing real about that place; it wouldn’t make any sense—”

“That’s what I’m telling you. Most people, when they take the aptitude test, don’t remember what came before it, and they accept their surroundings because the test suppresses the part of your brain that asks questions like, Hey, where did these walls come from? and Why is there a smoke monster chasing me through this giant maze? and Who the hell is that screaming kid? But your brain just shrugged off that part of the program. Figuratively speaking.”

“You’re saying my brain is . . . broken?” My hands are sweating. I wipe them on the hem of my shirt. This is exactly what I was afraid of—that I did it wrong, that I don’t fit, that I’m going to get kicked out of the entire faction system before I even get a chance to make a choice—

“No. I’m saying you’re a Divergent,” she says. “It’s what we call it when someone’s mind is especially resistant to the faction computers. And it’s—”

“So what am I supposed to do?” The question bursts out of me. I want to shake her. It’s as if she’s telling me as little as possible on purpose. “I’m supposed to make a choice, and the test was supposed to tell me where to go, what to do—”

“Solving the maze that quickly was very Erudite. But you never froze up, which means you acted like a Dauntless,” she says. “But you also saved the girl, which suggests Abnegation. So if I had to guess—”

Abnegation? I think. I can’t have aptitude for Abnegation. If I did, I wouldn’t feel so wrong all the time . . . would I?

“I’d say you should pick from one of those three. Surely you already have an idea of where you’d like to end up.” Tori’s eyes soften. “There’s something you should know. I logged your result as ‘Abnegation,’ and you should pretend that’s the case. With your classmates, your friends, and especially with your family. Okay?”

My thoughts are racing so fast I hardly register the look in her eyes, the urgency in her voice. But then I do.

“Why?” I say.

“Being the way you are, it destabilizes things,” she says. “There are some people—powerful people—who find it . . . disconcerting. And when powerful people find something disconcerting . . .” She trails off and then gives me a look, like I’m supposed to understand what she means. Only I don’t. I don’t understand any of this.

She’s more insistent this time: “It’s dangerous. For you, and for every person you tell. But all you have to do is make your choice and forget the aptitude test ever happened, and you’ll be fine. Okay?”

“Dangerous how?” I demand.

In answer Tori opens the door and steps to the side so I can walk out.

“Dangerous how?” I ask again, quieter this time.

A Dauntless boy—my age, he’s in my math class—is walking past the open doorway. His black T-shirt is spotted with bleach— on purpose, I think—and he has electric orange laces in his boots.

She looks relieved to see him. “Uriah! Can you make sure Beatrice gets home? The test made her sick, so she has to leave early today.”

I stare at her. Is she really going to shoo me from this room without giving me a real explanation? Judging by how fixed her gaze is on Uriah—whose smile is fading by the second—she really is. And I’m not going to say the word “Divergent” in front of him after she just told me it’s dangerous.

So there’s nothing left to do but walk out.

Chapter 5

Beatrice