Page 95 of The Sixth Fraction

I ignore them and sit down with Christina, next to a pillar.

Her way into the Foxes was a little harder than mine. Her knowledge of two faction headquarters didn’t hurt. She knew how to throw a knife—that was surprising—and a punch—less surprising. Ultimately, though, I think they let her in because when they mocked her for the eye patch, she bit back. The Foxes seem to like that kind of thing; too bad I’m not better at it.

The main hall of the Museum—where I just was—has the look of a place that used to be a marvel but has fallen into disrepair. It’s a long, narrow space, two stories high, with dirty, broken skylights overhead, hemmed in by crumbling columns. One side of the structure is collapsed and overrun with vines.

This room, though, is for the woodworkers. A layer of sawdust covers every surface. A freshly made chair stands on a platform nearby, its legs repurposed from an old school desk.

“What’s today?” I ask Christina. “Did they say?”

The secret meetings I was so eager to attend have turned out to be as mundane as Gretchen told me they would be: Foxes meet every morning to dole out assignments. That’s what’s going on right now: Sly, the head of the guild, is calling out names and tasks. Some of the tasks are deliveries, some are messages, some involve stealing, and some involve scouting. I get the feeling there’s a hierarchy to them that I don’t understand.

“Not yet,” Christina says. “But Rory thinks we actually get to do something today.”

Rory turned up the night of the fire with a banner from Amity headquarters and a mysterious bruise at the corner of her mouth that she refuses to explain. Colin, however, came up empty, no banner in hand. He didn’t make it in.

The past few days were all tests. Testing whether we knew all the streets, train routes, and faction headquarters by heart. Testing our speed, aim, and sleight of hand. And testing us on our ability to mimic other faction members, focusing on diction, posture, even facial expressions. Walk like an Erudite. Now walk like a Dauntless. Now walk like an Amity.

Those tests were harder than I thought they would be, because the Foxes don’t want a caricature, an exaggeration. They want subtlety. The goal, I was repeatedly told, is to draw as little attention to myself as possible.

The thought of actually doing something—actually leaving this building, beautiful though it is—makes my heart leap.

Sly finishes with the assignments, but no one leaves the room. Everyone stays to watch our tests. I hate it.

In the middle of the hall some of the others are setting out stacks of fabric. One gray, one yellow, one blue, one black and white, one black. One for each faction, obviously.

“Step on up, recruits!” Sly calls out.

The first day I met Sly, someone made a joke about her jumping out of a fish tank, which is how I discovered she’s one of the people who broke out of the detention center a couple weeks ago. She doesn’t look like someone who would commit a serious crime. Her smile is soft and beatific. I’ve heard half the people in Amity think Sly is a member of their faction, and the other half have never given her a second glance.

Most of the older Foxes have settled into specialties: some are good at pretending to be Candor, some Dauntless, some Amity. Most of them are better at sneaking around unseen. Some are messengers, entrusted with all the factionless secrets. Those are the ones Evelyn speaks to most.

I get up and stand in a line with the others, Christina on my left and Rory on my right.

“Today’s task is simple but important,” Sly says, in her sugar-sweet voice. “You’ll choose a faction and enter its headquarters. You are to remain there without getting arrested for at least one hour.”

“What happens if we do get arrested?” Trip asks. I don’t know his real name, since he didn’t offer it.

“Then you go back to being a stray, and try your luck somewhere else,” Sly says, with a smile.

It’s just another initiation. An education in subterfuge, and exactly as unforgiving as most of the other faction initiations. I find myself wishing that, in their attempts to eradicate the faction system, the factionless went a little further.

“Who wants to go first?” Sly asks.

“Eye Patch!” someone calls out. “She went last yesterday.”

Christina rolls her eye and steps forward. She points to the stack of gray clothing, and Sly picks it up and hands it to her.

“Go ahead,” Sly says.

This is how I earned my nickname: When we dress up as other faction members, everyone else changes clothes in front of the group to show the transformation in real time. Up until this point, I’ve refused to do that—I step out of the room, change, and walk back in. Priss. Priss. Priss.

Christina doesn’t seem to have trouble changing in front of people. She strips down to her underwear and puts on the Abnegation skirt—ankle-length on her—shirt, jacket, and slippers. Then she pulls back her braids and twists them into a knot, using a few pins she borrowed from me to hold it in place. In about a minute she’s transformed into a demure Abnegation woman.

“Very nice,” Sly singsongs. “Who’s next?”

“Priss!” someone shouts.

I recognize the voice. It comes from the boy who gave me that nickname: Boots. He has dark circles under his eyes, and today’s boots are striped iridescent, like the sentry uniforms.