Invergent

Chapter Three

McKell's Perspective:

I open my eyes and I'm in a new place. I'm back in the school cafeteria, but the tables are all empty and it's snowing beyond the glass walls. On the table in front of me are two baskets, one containing a hunk of cheese and one holding a knife. I hear a woman's voice say, "Choose."

I look behind me, but there's no one there. I look back at the baskets. "What is it for?" I ask.

"Choose," the voice says again. I swallow and look at the options. The way I see it, I'm choosing between a kitchen utensil and a snack. I grab the cheese and take a bite.

The baskets and the knife disappear.

I hear a door open behind me and spin around. A dog stands across the room from me, growling. It crouches and starts towards me, teeth bared. I wish I had chosen the knife. I shove the rest of the cheese into my mouth to empty my hands. I swallow it and bend my knees, getting into a defensive position with my hands blocking my face and vital organs. The dog's muscles tighten, then it leaps. I dodge to the side, causing its teeth to miss my face by inches, but I'm not quite quick enough to avoid its claws. They dig into my shoulder, knocking me to the ground. I cry out, trying to push the dog off of me. Its muscles are thick and tightly coiled. I can't hope to overpower it. I feel its warm breath on my cheek, and I realize that this is the end. There's nothing more I can do.

"Puppy!" a child's voice calls out. The dog turns, shifting its weight and allowing me to get out from under it. The dog barks at the child, a little girl wearing a white dress. She starts running towards the dog, arms outstretched. It gets ready to pounce. Without thinking, I throw myself on top of it, wrapping my arms around its neck. Only, there's nothing there for me to grab. 

I blink and am on a crowded bus, standing in the aisle. I immediately look at my shoulder, but the claw marks and blood are gone. Not even my shirt is ripped. A man across from me looks up and asks, "Do you know this guy?" His hands are scarred and clench tightly around a newspaper. He shows me a picture on the front of the paper with the headline, "Brutal Murderer Finally Apprehended!" I look at the man in the picture. He has a plain face and a beard, and I realize that I do know him. As soon as I have that thought, though, I have an overwhelming feeling that it would be a bad idea to tell the man that. "Well? Do you?" he asks again, anger in his voice.

I look at the man, then back at the picture. My hands are shaking. "Um–"

He lowers the newspaper and I can see his face. Half of it is covered in scars like his hands, and he wears large sunglasses that reflect my own pale face back at me. He leans close to me and I smell cigarettes on his breath. "Do you?"

"I–"

"Well?"

My heart pounds. If I tell him, I know something awful will happen to me. But I know in my gut that I can't lie. I steel myself and say, "Yes. Yes, I know him."

He grabs my hand roughly and says, "Thank you. Thank you."

I blink and wake back up in the test room. The Abnegation woman is typing away at the machine behind me. "Um," I say, sitting up straight.

The woman walks over and removes the electrodes from our heads. "Sorry," she says. "I'm just a little confused."

Confused? Did I do something wrong? I thought this test was impossible to fail.

"I'm afraid your results were inconclusive. You selected the cheese, which usually means aptitude for Amity or Abnegation. However, despite choosing the cheese, you still chose to fight the dog, which shows a leaning towards Dauntless. Throwing yourself on the dog when it attacked the little girl is both a Dauntless-oriented response and an Abnegation-oriented response, although you chose to tell the truth on the bus, which shows aptitude for Candor."