If she chose Erudite

Chapter 3

I feel someone grab my shoulders and shake me, which is followed by my brother's soft voice. "Beatrice, hey, Beatrice, wake up!"

I groan and turn away from him, covering myself up with the dark blue blanket everyone has gotten from the Erudite, so the morning sun won't burden me. "One more minute, Caleb," I croak out, but he doesn't loosen his grip.

"Come on! Everyone is having breakfast right now, we're the only ones here. We have to be in the library in about..." he checks his watch, "3 minutes."

That's the only thing he has to say to get me out of my bed. Cara said yesterday that if we were late, we'd become factionless. And there is one thing worse than being Erudite, and that is being factionless. I would rather be dead.

"But Cara said she would wake us, why didn't she?" I ask Caleb, who's waiting at the door till I'm changed with a breakfast muffin in his hand.

"She did, but apperantly you didn't hear her. I went to breakfast and noticed you weren't there so I came back to wake you up." he says with an annoyed voice.

While pulling my shirt over my head I run to Caleb, grab the muffin out of his extended hand and rush to the library.

Caleb follows right behind me, and we race down the hallway. Caleb leads me to the library and as he pushes the door open, immediately all hope leaves me. Cara is already standing there with all the initiates except for me and Caleb, and Jeanine stands besides her, her cold piercing eyes lingering on me.

"Look, who decided to show up." Jeanine speaks up in her cold, sneering voice. "You're lucky, Prior, if you had been 12 seconds later, you would have been factionless."

Surprisingly she doesn't even look at Caleb, even though he wasn't even a second earlier here than I was.

Looks like Jeanine has already chosen her favourites in this group.

I scowl and cross my arms, while Caleb smiles politely at Jeanine and she gives him a small nod.

Caleb nudges me with his elbow, trying to remove my scowl from my face. In response I put my foot on his, because punching him would give too much away from my partly Dauntless nature.

Then I hear Jeanine talking to the group of initiates and see Cara glaring at me. Quickly I put my best Erudite expression on my face and pretend that I know where she's talking about.

"... going to work in pairs. Tomorrow you will have permission to travel around the city for your project, you can go to whatever faction or other place you want. But if someone notices you're using this moment to visit your family, you will be factionless in a minute. Got it?"

Everybody nods and mumbles a yes and Jeanine walks to the door, but turns halfway around and walks to me.

"Prior," her eyes go from my face, to my shirt and back to my face. "I would be careful, if I were you."

She studies my face and waits for any kind of response, but I don't do anything. I don't flinch away from her, I don't change my face expression, I don't cough to make me feel less nervous. She can't think she has an intimidating effect on me.

As she sees she doesn't have any effect on me, she continues talking. "Look, if you keep behaving like this, I might consider to let you join the factionless. Erudite don't stand on other people's feet."

And with these words she walks away, while I'm standing there in the library, staring to the door she just passed. I think she's overreacting, I mean, come on... I just stood on Caleb's foot, I didn't shoot anyone?!

But inside, it feels like she knows something. Something nobody should know, something that could be my death.

I hear Tori's words inside my head, "...you should never share this with anyone, ever, no matter what happens. Divergence is extremely dangerous..." Dangerous... Does she mean dangerous, like, death?

What if Jeanine suspects it? What if she's already planning how she will kill me? What if-

"Hey, Beatrice, are you in there?" fingers snap in front of my head and suddenly I remember where I am. "Huh, what?"

I look confused from the fingers to the person and see Jane standing there with a worried expression on her face. "Oh, thank god. I called your name for three full minutes before you finally responded! I just wanted to ask you if you want to be partners for the project?"

"Uh, yeah.. sure. Sorry, I just kinda zoned out, I think" I give her a fake smile while she looks at me suspiciously. "Really, it's nothing"

"Okay then, let's get started!" she half-shouts, and with new found energy she drags me to one of the available computers in the corner of the library. Don't ask me how she is so energetic this early in the morning.

"Okay, where is our project going to be about?" she asks me, dropping me on the chair in front of the computer.

"Uhh.. I don't know?" I answer, and Jane sighs annoyed, but starts talking again. "We have to find something the others don't even think about. Everybody is going to choose to observe one of the other factions or some kind of technology, but I want something different."

She frowns and I can see she's thinking very deeply. Her eyes are narrowed and she leans with her chin on her hands, something every Erudite seems to do. A strand of her long, black hair falls in her face, and she blows it away as it hits her nose.

"How about..." I start, "the factionless. Everybody thinks that they are poor and all starve from thirst and terrible diseases, but what do we really know about them? Nobody cares about them, apart from the Abnegation."

Her eyes fly open and I see some kind of fire in her eyes. Not the kind of fire you see when someone's really angry, but lust. Lust of knowledge. She throws her long hair over her shoulders and suddenly she's hugging me.

I don't know how to deal with hugs, I'm from Abnegation, I've never hugged someone. At first I freeze, I hold my breath and I stand straight, looking at the computerscreen behind her, but after a few seconds I start relaxing and I lay my own arms on her back.

She pulls back abruptly and jumps up and down, her hair flying up and down and it becomes full of knots, but she doesn't seem to care.

"That is such a good idea! Thanks Tris!" she squeals. She shoves me from the chair she pushed me in a few minutes ago and starts searching in the Erudite files for information about the factionless.

"Tris?" I ask confused, "Why did you call me Tris?"

"Oh, sorry, do you not like the name? It's short for Beatrice..."

"No- no, it's just, nobody has ever given me a nickname.  Tris... Tris- I like it! Thank you!" I give her a genuine smile and she winks friendly at me. "Come on, we have a project to work on!"

A/N Yayy, Beatrice's Tris now! But it's Jane's nickname for her, so other people will keep calling her Beatrice. Please let me know what you thought about this chapter. <4