Chaos Faction

• S E V E N T E E N •

Techno had been playing with the edges of his rolled up scroll the entire time the group had been talking, and now, he opened it up, and laid it out on the table. Everyone else crowded round to look.

"A map of the city?" Asked Imane. "Where'd you get that?"

"Sapnap and Rae went on a mission to pinch it from Erudite for me," Techno glanced at the young initiates, who both nodded, a slight smirk gracing Sapnap's features, as he nudged Rae. Rae smiled back at him.

The map looked old, slightly frayed at the edges of the paper, although that was partially from Techno's fingers picking at it for the past ten minutes. It was brown, and a little smudged with oil and dirt, but highly detailed. It curled up at the edges, indicating it had been rolled up in a scroll for considerable time.

Jord reached out with her power, sourcing four of Dream's heavier books from the shelf, and flew them over, landing one on each corner of the map, weighting it down. Techno and the others looked at her in surprise.

"Stop flexing," Dream rolled his is eyes at her, and Jord laughed.

"Anyway," said Techno, turning back to his map. "I wanted a map so I could find a place where we could build our new faction. And..."

"You found one?" Asked George.

"I found one," Techno confirmed. He pointed to an empty space in the open fields, not as far out as Amity, but still, it was almost in the middle of nowhere. "I was looking at this map, and I noticed something. Dream, do you have a pen?"

Dream nodded silently, and went over to his bookshelf, pulling one out of the pot that sat at the top of it, and passing it to Techno. Everyone watched as he began to draw lines on his map.

"I realised, the city is actually divided up like a pizza," he said, as he drew. "It's in two halves like this - see, we've got Dauntless and Abnegation on this side, and Amity, Erudite and Candor on the other. Each faction's got roughly one sixth of the city. So what's this empty spot doing up here, between Dauntless and Amity?"

He pointed to it with his pen, jabbing the paper insistently.

"It's for us," said Jord. "The Divergent faction."

"That depends who you ask," said Techno, glancing at her. "Amina and I went there this morning, and well..."

"Someone's already moved in," said Amina.

"Who?" Asked Dream, his brow knit together.

"The factionless base is there. It's pretty much just a tin shed, and at a glance you'd mistake it for a junk yard, but it's there."

"They've kept that quiet," said George, with a frown. "Judging by the map, even the Erudite leaders don't know they're there."

"Unless Erudite are trying to hide the fact that it exists," Suggested Amina. "Believe me, that's possible. Don't wanna shame my old faction too much, especially since I'm part Erudite myself, but they could really do with some Candor honesty in there."

"What do you mean?" Asked Brooke. "What are they hiding?"

"A lot of stuff," said Amina. "Talk about a corrupt government. You think Dauntless is bad? Try living there and see how you get on."

"Every human character is flawed in some sort of way," said Dream. "Don't ever think that because you're Divergent and you can see things for what they are that you're above that, because you're not. You've got your own inconsistencies, okay? If we're gonna build our own faction, we're gonna build it on people who are humble enough to know they're flawed, or we won't build it at all. And perhaps most importantly, we have to work together."