II

The tests began as soon as the first bell rang. Every person in our grade was filed into the cafeteria, and the test administrators called ten names at a time, one for each testing room. Until then, we waited in our factions.

Unlike the halls, the circular cafeteria was segregated five ways—a pie slice for Abnegation, and a pie slice for Candor, and Erudite, and Dauntless, and Amity. The only reason the cafeteria wasn’t five separate rooms entirely was because the school administration believed it was healthy for young students to mingle with different factions. I think they thought that one day we would all start holding hands and making crazy self-discoveries that some of us would be better off changing factions on our Choosing Day. But children liked to stay in their own pie slices just like adults did, which was why we needed to take the aptitude tests, so those of us who were afraid of the unknown would know if we were actually born to travel it.

I sat with a few other sixteen-year-old girls in the Abnegation pie slice. I called them friends, but I couldn’t help but wonder if that was too generous. They were the same girls every day. They always dressed in the same grey dresses and aprons. I saw them at the same service retreats every weekend. Somehow, their names always escaped me, in part because they did not speak to me.

The only one I really knew was Susan, my next-door neighbor. Her father traveled to the city for his job, so he had a car and drove her to and from school every day. He always offered to drive us, but as Caleb said, we preferred to leave later and would not want to inconvenience him.

Of course not.

The test proctors were mostly Abnegation volunteers, although there were two Candor to test those of us from Abnegation, because the rules stated that we couldn’t be tested by someone from our own faction. The rules also said we couldn’t prepare for the test in any way, so I had no clue what to expect.

My gaze drifted from Susan to the black pie slice, the Dauntless tables across the room. They were laughing and shouting and playing cards; a tiny girl was arm wrestling a hulking brute of a boy. She was winning. At the blue pie slice, the Erudite chattered over stacks of books and papers, unable to escape from the extracurricular tests and exams that their faction administered on top of standard schooling. One deviant group was playing a game involving a marker board, little figurines, and dice in a dozen different shapes.

A group of Amity kids in yellow and red sat around a boy playing a guitar, singing together. Every few minutes, the song shifted, flowing effortlessly between bawdy rhymes to solemn sighs to soaring anthems, and only stopping for occasional choruses of laughter when a harmony didn’t work. In the pie slice next to them, a silent Candor boy made rapid, intricate gestures with his hands, I supposed some form of sign language, while a few girls signed back and spoke at the same time. They appeared to be arguing about something, despite the hearing barrier, but it must not have been serious because they and their audience were all smiling.

At the Abnegation tables, we sat quietly and waited. For hours. Faction customs dictated even idle behavior and superseded individual preference. I doubted all the Erudite wanted to study all the time, or that every Candor enjoyed a lively debate, but if they wanted to succeed in their factions, they couldn’t defy the norms any more than I.

Still, I couldn’t help but bounce my leg under my skirt. Once, I faked a bathroom emergency just so I could slip away from the dreadful silence.

A little before noon, Caleb’s name was called. He moved confidently toward the exit with the next group. I didn’t know why I had been worried for him. He knew where he belonged, and as far as I knew, he always had. My earliest memory of him was from when we were four years old. He had scolded me for not giving my jump rope to a little girl on the playground who didn’t have anything to play with. He didn’t lecture me as often anymore, but I had his look of disapproval memorized.

I had tried to explain that I was not like him—it didn’t even cross my mind to give my seat to the Candor man on the bus—but he never got it. “Just do what you’re supposed to,” he always said. It was easy for him. Just doing what he was supposed to.

My stomach curled up, like a fist around glass. I closed my eyes and kept them closed until, thirty minutes later, I heard a door open. Caleb’s group returned and I picked him out of the group at once.

He was plaster pale. He pushed his palms along his legs like I did when I wiped off sweat, and as he put them into his pockets, his fingers shook too much to do it right. I almost got up, but Susan shot me a look. I was not allowed to ask Caleb about his results, and he was not allowed to tell me.

An Abnegation volunteer spoke the next round of names. Two from Dauntless, two from Erudite, two from Amity, two from Candor, and then: “From Abnegation: Susan Black and Beatrice Prior.”

Now I stood. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have moved for the rest of time. There was a bubble in my chest that expanded more by the second, pushing against my chest, shortening my breath, but I couldn’t show it because nobody else was. So I just followed Susan. One girl in grey after another.

Waiting for us outside the cafeteria was a hallway of ten rooms. They were locked every day except today, used only for the aptitude tests, so when I stepped into the corridor I almost startled. The walls and doors to each room were all finely polished mirrors. I watched myself, a dark little girl in a grey hood, ghosting towards one of the doors. Susan grinned nervously at me as she walked into room 9, and after a disorganized little prayer, I pushed the mirror open into room 10. A Candor woman waited for me.

Even though she didn’t move, she took me by surprise. She had dark brown skin and straightened black hair to her shoulders, but I couldn’t see her eyes; they were hidden behind round black glasses. And unlike most of the Candor I had seen, her suit, shoes, and tie were all snow white. She held a silver cane in one hand—she was blind. I knew about the deaf Candor boy, but if my heart wasn’t beating in my throat, I might have thought to ask if Candor had a particular philosophy about people with disabilities. It was rare to see one in Abnegation and I had never wondered why.

Like the hall, mirrors covered the inner walls of the room. I could see my reflection from all angles: the grey fabric obscuring the shape of the bun on my head, my too-long sleeves, my spindly freckled hands and ashen palms. Everything was bathed in cold light. In the center of the room was a reclined chair, like a dentist’s. A silver machine stood sentry to the right of it, full of hooks with coiled wires.

“Beatrice Prior?” said the woman.

“Yes,” I replied. My voice barely came out as a whisper.

“As of today, are you sixteen years old?”

“Yes.”

“Have you taken your required literacy and mathematics tests?”

“Yes.” I could not say I did well, but I had taken them.

“Are your parents Andrew and Natalie Prior of Abnegation?”

“Yes.”

“Have a seat, please,” she said. “Call me Irene.”

Clumsily I sat in the chair and reclined, lowering my head to the headrest. The grey lights beckoned out a headache I didn’t know I had. Irene set down her cane, slipped a headset over her ears, and busied herself with the screens on the machine. I tried to focus on her and not on the threatening wires—hard at first, but there was something truly fascinating in how fast she could manipulate the screens without seeing them. She had the keyboard memorized.

When she attached the first electrode to my forehead, I blurted, “Why the white suit?”

Over the glasses, Irene raised her eyebrows. “A curious Abnegation, hmm.”

My curiosity had always been a bad habit, a betrayal of Abnegation values. My cheeks flushed with heat. But then Irene said, “That’s what we like to see, Miss Prior.”

She returned to typing on the machine’s keyboard. My mouth formed the beginning of a question, but I stopped myself, then realized that I wanted to ask it after all, but by then I was too awkward to say it at all.

“The only thing I am allowed to say about the test,” said Irene, “is that you will know what to do. You may be worried that you will be going into it with bias. But I assure you, this is unlike any other test you may have taken. You will know what to do.”

“What if I do something wrong?” I asked.

“You can’t,” she replied. “Just trust me.”

Right. That’s what I was told. The test was special. I would react with what my gut told me. My gut told me I didn’t want to do this.

Irene pressed the second electrode to my forehead. “Did you still want to know about the white suit?”

The question was neutral, but I almost wanted to avoid it. At the same time, though, I realized Irene likely got that question a lot, and I would never see her again after today, so why not.

“Yes,” I said.

She circled around behind the chair. “My very first day as a Candor law student, I wore one black sock and one white sock to class. I managed to clash in a dress code that only allows two colors.”

I was suddenly struck by how committed to honesty these people must be. “Oh,” I said.

“Yes.” I saw Irene nod in the mirror, then turn away. She tugged wires toward her, attaching them to my hands, to her hands, to the machine behind her. Then she passed me a cold vial that held a clear liquid. “Drink this.”

“What is it?” My throat felt too swollen to drink anything. “What’s going to happen?”

“Just trust me, Miss Prior.”

I didn’t have a choice. I pressed air from my lungs and tipped the contents of the vial into my mouth.

+ + +

When I opened my eyes, I was standing on a shore.

There were small round stones beneath my bare feet, and icy white water lapped at my toes. The air around me was dark and blustery, and through the red curls whipping around my face, I could see thunderheads on the stretched horizon, melding with the grey sea. Behind me was a field of more stones and then water again. I was on an island, on a beach. I had never been to a beach. I wasn’t sure how I knew the word.

I furrowed my brow. I wasn’t sure how I knew anything. For a long, deep moment, I couldn’t recall who I was, where I had come from, or why I was here.

There was a lethargic fuzz, a vague little voice in my head that made me think, That’s not important. But I couldn’t stop wondering if it was. That’s not important. I looked down. I was wearing nothing but a short brown dress and I was shivering. That’s not important. I lifted my hands, stained with a million dark brown freckles. That’s not important. I pushed my red hair out of my eyes. That’s not important.

My name was Beatrice Prior, and this was my aptitude test.

The voice disappeared.

I looked out to the sea again. Floating in the water were two objects, a beautiful yellow lily and a black knife. The wave pushed in and left them at my feet.

Choose, said the voice in my head.

“Why?” I asked.

Choose, it insisted.

I didn’t want to. The knife was useful, but the scent of the flower filled me with peace. I knew this was the test. I knew that I had to follow my gut to choose one or the other. But my gut didn’t want to choose one. So I knelt and reached for both.

Have it your way, said the voice.

Before I could touch either, the waves rushed around my ankles, lifting the knife and the flower and pulling them away. They floated further apart from each other, further away from me, and instinct drove me to run after one or the other, but I couldn’t get to both in time. So I just stood and watched them leave until a larger wave crumbled over, drowning both.

And then I blinked and I was in a large dark room, filled with men in suits, all of them arguing with one another. I tried to look at their faces, but I couldn’t catch them somehow; they were all so much taller and I was just so small. In the center of the room was a bare white pedestal.

I couldn’t quite tell what the men were arguing about. Initially, I tried to speak up, but nobody listened. There were too many voices. But I knew what I was supposed to do. If I had chosen the flower, I could have walked forward and placed it upon the pedestal. What that would have done, I had no idea.

But now I had nothing to offer except me.

I ghosted through the crowds. Nobody moved out of my way. I approached the pedestal. Nobody noticed. I placed my hand down. Nobody turned.

I opened my mouth and began to sing. I chose the first thing that came to mind. An old hymn my mother used to sing to me as a lullaby, before I even knew how to sing along.

When peace like a river attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll

Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say

It is well, it is well, with my soul

It is well

With my soul

It is well, it is well with my soul

I wasn’t a strong singer. I couldn’t get very loud. But the room had fallen silent. By the time I finished, all of the featureless eyes were on me, and the room was brightening slowly, the yellow lights turning on one by one.

And then the floor dropped out from under me.

I tumbled onto hard rock and rolled to a stop on my stomach, groaning. When I pushed myself up to my feet, I was in a clearing in a dark forest. I stood upon a stage-like slab of rock, under a thin crescent moon.

Behind me, something scratched against the rock. I turned—and suddenly I was face to face with a huge black dog, crouched a few yards away from me, its lips peeled back from dripping white teeth. A growl gurgled from deep in its throat, and I saw why the knife would have come in handy. But it was too late now.

With no weapon, I thought about running, but the dog would be faster than me. I couldn’t wrestle it to the ground. My head pounded.

The dog snarled and the sound vibrated in my skull.

My biology textbook said that dogs could smell fear because many animals secrete a certain chemical when under stress, rabbits and humans alike. Smelling the chemical triggers the dog to attack. I didn’t think I was secreting anything, but my mouth was dry as paper and the dog was still inching towards me, its nails scraping the stone. This encounter could end only one way.

Unless…

There were no whites in its eyes, just twin black gleams. I looked down. That was something else I knew about dogs. I shouldn’t meet its eye; the dog would see it as a sign of aggression. Still, its giant paws stalked forward. I could smell its hot, foul breath. If eye contact was a sign of aggression, what was a sign of submission?

Keeping my breath slow and steady was like pulling a heavy wagon up a hill, a constant battle to keep it in my control, but I managed. I sank to my knees. The last thing I wanted to do was lie down on the ground in front of the dog—making its teeth level with my face—but it was my only option. I got on my stomach and stretched my legs behind me and my shaking arms flat at my sides. My forehead rested against the cold stone.

The dog sniffed the top of my head. It barked in my ear, and I clenched my teeth to keep from screaming.

Then the dog’s growling stopped. I tentatively lifted my head. It was sitting back on its haunches, panting, before it lowered itself to its front paws and licked my face.

Relief crashed over me and I couldn’t help but laugh. When I sat up, the dog just gave a playful bark. I let it sniff my hand before rubbing it behind the ears.

“You’re not such a vicious beast after all, huh?”

It was like it had turned into an entirely different animal. Its ears perked up and it looked to the horizon, then bounded away in a flash of black fur.

When it vanished, I realized I was sitting in a room with black walls, much like the first one with the arguing men, but smaller, and in this one I was alone. Before me stood a blue door with a circular window, a 10-digit keypad, and a timer reading 1:00. As soon as I stood, the timer began to tick down. 0:59. 0:58.

Panic rose in my throat. I didn’t know what would happen when the timer reached zero, but I wasn’t about to wait and find out. I whirled around, searching for anything that might help me, but there was just the door. I tried to look out the circular window and saw only white light. The keypad had blank spaces for three numbers. A period sat between the first space and the second space.

A circle. A decimal. I knew what this was. Before the clock reached 45 seconds, I punched in 3.14, the first three digits of pi.

The door swung open. Easy enough.

The door led to a hallway, which I walked down, which grew darker and darker until I was stumbling blind. My hands brushed firm, cold metal. As I felt around, I managed to find two vertical handles, which I pulled.

I stepped onto a crowded bus, just like the one I rode every day to school. All the seats were full. Like the room with the men, I looked into every one of the passengers’ faces, but for some reason, could never pinpoint features. Just a vague wash of grey.

What happened next occurred in such a short moment that briefly after, I wondered if it was really me that did it. I made my way down the aisle and tried to reach up to hold a bar, but it was too tall. So I found a vertical pole, behind a man holding a grey briefcase. At first, I didn’t pay him much mind. Then I noticed something else. I couldn’t see his face from where I stood, only his hands. They were scarred, like he was burned, and they clenched the briefcase handle like he wanted to break it off.

The bus jolted as it started. The man lost his grip on the briefcase and it cracked open. Out fell a hand-sized silver capsule with a blinking red light.

A bomb. I knew what it was before it could roll any further down the aisle.

“NO!” I screamed. I didn’t think. I threw myself forward, grabbed it, and pulled it under my body.

Even through my squeezed eyelids, I saw a white flash.

For several minutes, I thought I was dead, or maybe the simulation had broken, or both. I just stayed there, floating in space, frozen in time, curled around the hot silver bomb. I can’t pinpoint the moment when I realized that I wasn’t hugging a bomb anymore. I was hugging a crumpled piece of paper. The ground under me was solid again.

Grimacing, I cracked open my eyes and sat up. I had been lying on a stone bench. I was outside on a beautiful spring day, overlooking a plaza. People milled about an elaborate fountain. Everything was strangely dark—I reached up to my face and found that I was wearing sunglasses. A sweatshirt hood was pulled over my head.

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

I looked up again. Two men in suits stood before me, both of them also wearing sunglasses. Guns were strapped to their hips. One of them was holding a piece of paper.

“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he said. He unfolded the paper. “But have you seen this girl?”

I looked.

The picture was me.

“Why are you looking for her?” I croaked.

The second man raised his brow. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” I asked.

“It’s in all of the papers, ma’am. She killed a man.”

The air was warm, but cold rippled down my spine. My stomach knotting, I unfurled the crumpled newspaper in my hands.

My face, in inky black-and-white, decorated the front page. The headline read BRUTAL MURDERER ON THE RUN.

I couldn’t take my eyes away from the word “murderer”. It had been a long time since I had last read it, and even its shape filled me with dread. Before I could read further, the page was trembling like a leaf.

“Ma’am? Are you alright?” asked one of the men. “Does she look familiar?” But I wasn’t listening.

I think it was the first time in the test that even my subconscious forgot that it wasn’t real. I couldn’t remember who I had killed. My stomach churned just considering the thought. But I felt a weight in my pocket and when I reached in, I found a knife, wet with someone’s blood.

What happened to murderers? They were shunned from society. Imprisoned for life. Executed. I felt my feet itch; I wanted to clear my throat and shrug my shoulders and, after the men left, run like hell.

But I had hurt someone. And I had kept the knife. I didn’t know if I would hurt someone again. I needed to be stopped. And there was only one person who could stop me.

I handed back the picture and dropped the newspaper.

“Do you know her?” asked one man.

I pushed back my hood.

“Ma’am?” said the other.

I took off my sunglasses.

“Yes,” I said. “You’re looking for me.”