The Divergent Library: Divergent; Insurgent; Allegiant; Four: The Transfer, The Initiate, The Son, and The Traitor (Divergent Series) (111 page)

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.

C
OVER ART
TM & © V
ERONICA
R
OTH
2014

C
OVER ART AND DESIGN BY
J
OEL
T
IPPIE

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

Version 06272014

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FIRST EDITION

Four: The Initiate: A Divergent Story

Credits

Copyright

T
HE 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 alcohol,” 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.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just not used to this. Any of it.”

“Sure, I get it,” she says, and she doesn’t sound angry. “But you should know that about Dauntless—girl, guy, whatever, it doesn’t matter here. What matters is what you’ve got in your gut.”

Then Amar gets up, putting his hands on his hips in a dramatic stance, and marches toward the open doorway. The train dips down and Amar doesn’t even hold on to anything, he just shifts and sways with the car’s movement. Everyone gets up, and Amar is the first one to jump, launching himself into the night. The others stream out behind him, and I let the people behind me carry me toward the opening. I’m not afraid of the speed of the train, just the heights, but here the train is close to the ground, so when I jump, I do it without fear. I land on two feet, stumbling for a few steps before I stop.

“Look at you, getting your train legs,” Amar says, elbowing me. “Here, have a sip. You look like you need it.”

He holds out the flask.

I’ve never tasted alcohol. The Abnegation don’t drink it, so it wasn’t even available. But I’ve seen how comfortable it seems to make people, and I desperately want to feel like I’m not wrapped up in skin that’s too tight for me to wear, so I don’t hesitate: I take the flask and drink.

The alcohol burns and tastes like medicine, but it goes down fast, leaving me warm.

“Good job,” Amar says, and he moves on to Zeke, hooking his arm around Zeke’s neck and dragging Zeke’s head against his chest. “I see you’ve met my young friend Ezekiel.”

“Just because my mom calls me that doesn’t mean you have to,” Zeke says, throwing Amar off. He looks at me. “Amar’s grandparents were friends with my parents.”

“Were?”

“Well, my dad’s dead, and so are the grandparents,” Zeke says.