Choose Your Own Adventure: Divergent

The Zipline- 87

You rush over, all of them looking up at you. 

"Y/N!" Uriah says, beaming at you. He grabs your arm and pulls you into the group of Dauntless. "Exactly the initiate I wanted to see. Want to get out of here?"

"Come on, we've got to hurry," he says, answering for you as the Dauntless start down one of their tunnels. "It's an initiation ritual!"

You jog next to him and Tris.

"They only usually let the initiates with older siblings in Dauntless come," he confesses, then grins a mischievous smile. "But they might not even notice. Just act like you belong!"

"What are we doing?" Tris asks, breathless as she keeps up with you, and you suddenly wonder if you should have grabbed the rest of the group. It's too late for that now, though.

"What's the STIFF doing here?" a boy with a nose ring whines. Hey, at least he didn't complain about you. No one except Peter seems to mind that you were supposedly Amity anymore, which is pretty refreshing.

"She just saw that guy get stabbed in the eye, give her a break," Uriah retorts, and you run into a pack of Dauntless. One grins at you, pushing you forward, and you open a door into a stairwell.

"Well? Up!" he says, and you race up, sprinting so they won't catch up to you. Their laughter echoes through the stairwell, injecting raw anticipation into your veins.

A door is open, pure daylight filtering through, and you step forward, the sound of the train's familiar whistle surging through your blood. You waste no time, jogging with it and slinging yourself in with a gleeful yell. The train picks up speed, and you maneuver over to sit next to Tris and Uriah. 

"Where are we going?" Tris shouts, the wind stealing her voice and whipping your hair every which way. 

Uriah shrugs, making a wide-eyed face. "Zeke never told me!"

"Zeke?"

"Older brother," he explains, pointing to a boy sitting with his legs dangling out the car. He looks at peace, eyes closed, but it's an adrenaline-filled kind of peace, like the feeling you get before a performance you're prepared for. 

"You don't get to know. That would ruin the surprise!" The girl on Tris's left shouts, extending her hand to Tris, then you. "I'm Shauna!"

"Y/N!" You say, shouting over the train with a wide grin. 

"I'm-" Tris starts, but Shauna cuts her off.

"Yeah, Four told me about you," she says, nodding with a grin. "And you too, Amity kid."

You bark a laugh, shrugging. "What can I say? I invite conversation."

Uriah snorts at that, and Shauna jumps to her feet.

"Here we go!" she shouts, throwing herself out of the car. The others follow in a stream of black, leaping, jumping, whooping.

The train is going faster than you're used to, but you jump off, smacking into the ground with an oomph and going for a roll. You jog to catch up with the rest of the Dauntless, and recognize where you are. The Hub is far behind you, the buildings silent. This is the abandoned part of the city. You know it well, and pray that no one recognizes you and blows your cover.

"The Hancock Building," Tris breathes, pointing to a giant black pillar with crisscrossed girders. It's immense, huge. The pace picks up, and you realize that the Dauntless have started to run. You bolt after them, jostling each other with your elbows. They push through the doors at the base of the building, crunching broken glass and pressing the button for the elevator.