Page 4 of The Sixth Fraction

There’s a flock of black birds roosting nearby, their beaks tucked under their wings. I turn away from them, toward the city. It’s dark at this hour; the curfew for electricity is at eleven o’clock. But I can see little flickers of light here and there where people have lit lanterns or candles. Not in the Abnegation sector, but farther out, where a lot of the factionless live huddled around what little comforts they can find.

I plant my hands on the ledge and lean over to see down to the street. I think of how it felt when words were spilling out of me at the dinner table, my Abnegation mask slipping just for a moment to show the selfish person beneath; the person I can’t help but be. I think of my mother’s hard voice. Penalty of Silence until morning.

Then I press forward, into the open air, so the wind blows my hair back from my face, and I scream at the top of my lungs.

The birds wake and scatter.

Chapter 3

Beatrice

I step closer to Caleb as we enter the factionless sector. I’ve never liked this part of the city, where time is breaking everything. Plants force their way through the cracks in the street and sidewalk. Walls and roofs buckle. Street signs and stoplights topple. Everything is crumbling.

There’s a group of us—me and Caleb, Robert and Susan, and some of the younger Abnegation—all walking to the bus stop to go to school. The oatmeal I forced myself to eat this morning is heavy in my stomach, or maybe that’s the dread of the aptitude test.

Caleb nudges me with his elbow. There’s a factionless woman in the alley near us, unkempt and wrapped in fabrics of all colors, all factions. Robert is collecting apples from everyone’s lunches to give her. I hand mine over without argument. Most of the food that we distribute to the factionless is preserved in cans or jars, even the fruit. Apples cooked down into a sauce, pears preserved in light syrup. So it’s probably been some time since the woman ate something fresh.

Robert carries the apples over to her. I wonder if she’ll share them with anyone. I’ve heard the factionless are loners; that’s why they didn’t fit into factions to begin with. I’ve heard they’re territorial, too, and the Dauntless break up fights in the factionless sector all the time.

“Maybe Mom’s garden should be reserved for the factionless,” Robert is saying to Susan, as we keep walking. “We have more than enough.”

There are no official borders to the factionless sector, but I can feel it when we pass into another part of the city. There are people on the street, gathered around the Amity cart that offers loaves of bread in exchange for either faction chits or trade, clustered around the bus stop, or just standing together, swapping conversation.

The bus arrives, and we wait for everyone else to get on before climbing on ourselves. The driver is an Abnegation volunteer, her hair pinned back just like mine, her loose trousers the same shade of charcoal. She may as well be me.

We’re the only faction with a real uniform; everyone else just wears their faction colors, in every style. There are creased, pressed Erudite blue slacks alongside loose blue jeans with holes at the knee; simple white Candor pants and layered black Candor skirts, like the tiers of cakes I’ve only ever seen in books; a linen shirt on an Amity man next to an Amity woman in a tight maroon dress. The bus is one of a few places in the city where the factions intermingle so freely.

The bus turns on Lake Shore, the road that follows the curve of the marsh. The city’s downtown, with its tall, gleaming glass buildings, is like the center of a wheel, and most faction members travel along its spokes every morning and evening to and from work.

“Do we go straight to the test?” I ask Caleb, though we don’t usually speak on the bus. “Or do we have to go to homeroom first?”

“Straight to the test.” Caleb’s hand tightens around the rail above his head. It’s the first sign of nerves I’ve seen from him this morning.

We bump along for ten minutes, and then the bus stops in front of the secondary school. We only started going to school with the other factions six years ago, when I was ten years old. Every faction educates their own until the students turn ten, and then again after sixteen, when we make our choices. We don’t really make friends outside our faction, as a result.

“Come on,” Robert says to me as we pass the library. “We have a couple minutes.”

Caleb sighs and waves us along. He doesn’t approve of our little hobby, but he doesn’t stop us, either.

Robert and I duck into the library and walk along the wall until we get to the Abnegation section. It’s the smallest one, since only certain books are approved for members of our faction. Fiction is screened by a panel of elders for its moral value. “Useful” knowledge is permitted as long as it doesn’t get “too technical,” whatever that means.

We walk to the end of the stack, where the windows are. Robert drags a chair over for me to stand on, and cracks the window open so we can both look at the elevated train tracks behind the school.

We do this every morning.

“We’re right on time,” he says.

The train reaches the platform, slowing but not stopping, and then . . . the Dauntless start jumping.

Some land on two feet, stable and steady. Others stumble forward and brace themselves on the platform railing. A few even lose their balance, toppling and then rolling to their feet, casual, easy. I hear them on the wind, shouting, teasing, laughing.

Robert grins. We used to shelve books together before school, which is how I discovered that he, like me, loves watching the Dauntless disembark from the train. So now we do it together, a little rebellion.

I know I’m not selfless enough for Abnegation, but I’m not quite sure where I belong instead. I know where I’d like to belong, though; I know what I wish I could be. I’d like to sling my arm around a friend’s shoulders and laugh with them; I’d like to wear my hair loose over my shoulders and tease someone with a sly look. I’d like to be daring and funny and capable, like the Dauntless are.

“You think you’ll get a Dauntless result?” I ask Robert.

He laughs. “Not a chance. But it’s nice to dream.”