Drown [Eric Coulter] Divergent

Part I

I

 "Larger than life,
niceties,
bigger than you,
more than me
I've got the Monday morning blues and,
oh my God, I've got the home for you
And give the everyday morning you use
There's things right here I can't afford to choose" 

"Think Twice" - Groove Armada

The chatter on the train was short lived, as the Dauntless-born initiates began to get riled up, piling up at the large doors of the train. The small group of initiates not from Dauntless glanced around to see what they were up to, murmurs growing and fears being outspoken. Harper walked to an opening and saw what was coming her way; she had been preparing for this for an entire year. It wasn't the jump or the fall that scared her, it was what came after she survived it. Perhaps falling to her death would be the easier way out, but being an Erudite, she knew that she couldn't simply opt out like that. Her brain simply wouldn't allow her to fail now.

The train rumbled underneath her feet, feeling as though it would topple off of the track any day, but it was sturdier than she was. The path of the train was far more distinct than hers was, and she felt herself waver for only a second. To force this out of her head, she jumped. The air whipped across her pale flesh, her tied-back brown hair loosened in the elastic that she always had it in. She leapt as the horde of other kids did the same, some lingering longer, some jumping before her.

He grabbed her arm in an almost forceful way, and it was in that moment that Harper knew something was wrong. In this perfectly balanced world, where nothing could possibly go wrong, something had shifted. As a fifteen-year-old girl who worried of nothing but her initiation in a years time, she knew nothing about the problems with the political aspect of the world. She didn't want a job in politics, she didn't want a job wielding a gun and watching that empty, boring fence that surrounded their world, she wanted to use her brain for making this perfect world even better.

How naïve she had been.

"Dad, what are you doing?" she said with a half smile she always put upon her face when she was worried, as if she was trying to cover her fear with a casual, nonchalant ambiance.

"Harper, kiddo, you know I love you," her dad said, but his voice was rushed, stern.

"Yeah..." She knew, of course she knew. Every parent loved their kid. "Look, dad if this is about that lab explosion, the teachers blew it out of proportion. It was just a chemical reacti-"

"Stop, Harper." He grabbed both of her shoulders and held them tight, his knuckles losing their colour. "What I'm about to tell you can never leave your lips, you can never speak of it to anyone but yourself."

"Dad, what's going –"

"Listen," he urged, "something bad is about to happen, it could be tomorrow or five years down the road. I need to ask you to do one thing for me, and it is going to change your life."

She stiffened, but waited for him to continue.

"I have discovered Jeanine Matthews is up to something, something that has to do with the turmoil and troubles with Abnegation. My information leads me to believe she is working with the Dauntless leader, Eric. Harper, I did not want to bring you into this, but you are the only hope we have to stop whatever it is she has planned."