Spitfire - Eric Coulter

Chapter II

It is the day of the choosing ceremony, the welts on my back are red streaks and the wound has scabbed over.

My choice was clear. Has been for two years since my brother left. Which is why I put on my brothers' trousers underneath the shapeless grey dress. I never understood the whole, covering-everything-up philosophy of Abnegation. As if someone would faint once they see my elbows.

Downstairs my father made breakfast. Eggs and toasted bread.

"Good morning princess", he smiles at me.

"Morning father."

"Well isn't it a good day today? Very exciting. Maybe there will be more transfers this year. We really worked on accentuating the fact that we are the government, and who wouldn't want to rule?"

I poke around in my egg.

"People who don't love power", I mumble then.

I leave after breakfast, my father stays. Something about tension with Erudite. He expects me to come back.

The big hall is filled with people in yellow and blue, white, black, and grey.

I wave at Beatrice who chooses with her brother today. Her parents are attending. I sit alone in the third row. Abnegation is the last faction to choose, but then I am one of the first this year.

It is rather boring. A few tears and disappointed shouts when someone leaves for Amity or Abnegation.

"Theresa Eaton."

Janine Matthews is leading the ceremony and hands me a clean knife. It is interesting to see which way the people cut themselves because most use their palms which is absolute bullshit since there are way more nerve endings there and you really need your hands. The puncture wounds from my nails are always bad enough. So I simply prick my thumb, let blood gather on it, then turn my hand, letting my blood fall onto the sizzling coals.

"Dauntless."

Cheers fill the room, hollers from the Dauntless as they clap me on the back, at which I grit my teeth, but smile. I grin from ear to ear. I wait. Wait for the last names, for the factions to leave. To climb up to the train. Beatrice is on stage now, after her brother transferred to Erudite, some kind of treachery in the eyes of Abnegation. It looks very much as if she was going to stay with our faction, but in the last second, before the blood from her palm drops onto the plain stone, she moves it and it sizzles.

"Dauntless."

I let out a small laugh, grin at her when she joins us, a smile on her face, but guilt in her eyes.

"Wouldn't have picked you for a Dauntless kinda girl", I say.

"Same with you", she mumbles, "where is your father?"

I didn't have to answer the question, because at that moment the ceremony ended with the last Abnegation choosing...Abnegation and the leather-clad people around us swarm out of the building. I take off after them, running in front of the other transfers, but making sure Beatrice was following behind the Candor and Erudite teens.

I watched them for the last few years, the climbing of the railways, the jumping on the train.

Which is why I don't hesitate when they start climbing, I follow, arms slightly shaking when pulling myself over the edge. Holding a hand out to Beatrice who follows after me.

"Get ready."

"For what?"

I chuckle. "The train."

And it already rounds the corner, going past us and I start jogging along, waiting for the ones in front of me to start jumping, then grabbing onto a handle myself and throwing myself into the cart.

"Not bad", a dark-skinned dauntless born smirks at me.

I smile and look back outside, where Beatrice is climbing into the last cart.

"I am Uriah. And these are Marlene and Sammy."

"Nice to meet you."

"What made a Stiff choose Dauntless?", the blonde girl asks with raised brows.

"Same as you I believe."

Uriah smiles. "You don't talk much, do you?"

I shrug and lean against the wall, waiting for the arrival at the Dauntless Compound.

The city is flying by outside the door until I hear yells, look outside and see people jumping onto the next roof. On that roof stand three people, seemingly waiting for us, not moving when one of the transfers almost falls back off the roof and would have plummeted to certain death if not caught by a dauntless born.

"You guys are crazy", I mumble, they laugh and ready themselves, Uriah jumping first, me last, trying to copy the way they rolled off, but fail, skidding onto the gravel, tearing my skirt and cutting open my left palm.

"Fucks sake", I grumble, Marlene laughing and helping me up and pulling me towards the figures standing by the edge of the roof. One on the low barrier.

"Who's that?", I whisper, eyeing the man up and down. He had tattoos on his neck and forearms, piercings in his ear, above his brow and at his lip, his forearms were defined and his eyes a piercing icy blue.

"My name is Eric, this is Lauren", he says, his voice as cold as his eyes.

"That answers that", I say.

"I am one of the four leaders of this faction, and I will also be keeping an eye on you during initiation. This here is the initiates entrance to the Dauntless compound", he explains, gesturing behind him, over the ledge.

"Who is first?"