"Defect, She Said."

An exploration of what might have been.

original cover art by Victo Ngai

Whenever I moderate a conversation with another author, the question I find myself returning to, no matter who it is, is: why did you tell the story this way and not another way? I ask that because there are always the choices you didn’t make, even if you were so committed to one story that you didn’t even see them. And the choices writers do make, in the face of so many options, reveal a great deal about their priorities, their interests, and the worlds they’re building.

I think about this often, and that’s why I decided to do this experiment. Below is a scene from a Divergent that never was—that never could have been, because I had to write it one way. Readers often ask me, why did you have Tris choose Dauntless? And for awhile that felt like a nonsense question— she chooses Dauntless because that’s the only way the story could exist.

But now that the story does exist— now that I’ve written it the way I needed to— I can see the choices I didn’t make, and I’m interested in exploring them, to see how they change the story and the characters and the world. So here’s 3,500 words of the Tris who chose Abnegation, instead.

As much as the factionless insist that our former allegiances have no place among them, they can’t seem to let them go. Case in point: they still ask me to be the one to look out for the new kid. I’m the Stiff, after all. The only one here.

Other than Evelyn, that is.

I guess I can’t blame them for struggling to unlearn everything they were taught. After all, when they ask me to do it, I still say yes. Yes, I’ll help the one-eyed failed Dauntless transfer. Yes, I’ll bring him soup—hot, but still in the can—and sit with him while he eats it. Yes, I’ll help the medic change his bandages.

I doubt most Abnegation pepper the medic with questions the way I do, though. Why do doctors do stitches with a hooked needle, what will happen to the socket now that the eye is gone, what will it look like if it gets infected. Edward told me, the first day, that it was better to know than not to know, so he doesn’t object to me asking questions about his missing eye. He seems bothered, though, when the medic isn’t able to answer all of them. She only studied medicine for a few years before she became factionless.

“You might consider studying with our best doctor,” the medic says to me, when she’s done putting a clean bandage on Edward’s eye. “He works out of Sparrow House.”

All the factionless safehouses have bird names. Sparrow, Eagle, Crow, Robin, Falcon—those are the main ones. We’re in Robin House now, which is a red-brick warehouse not far from Abnegation headquarters, on a street lined with overgrown trees. When robins have to defend their nests, I was told when I got here, they make a ruckus so other robins will flock to them. When you don’t have the talons of a predator, you have to find strength in numbers.

It may as well be the factionless motto.

“I didn’t know I could do something like that,” I say to the medic. “Learn a trade here, I mean.”

“Did you think we all just shuffle around the city driving trains and begging for food?” The medic pulls off her latex gloves with a snap. “We’ve got our own ways of doing things. We just have to be…scrappy about it.”

One thing I’ve learned since defecting from Abnegation a few months ago is that the factionless are good at putting on a show. On the surface, they’re unruly, unstable, unpredictable. But the deeper I go into the new society they’ve made right under the old society’s nose, the more I see…organization. Education. Dedication.

“I’ll put in a good word for you,” the medic says. “Anyone who looks at a fresh enucleation without wincing is a good candidate.”

I grin, and hold out the paper bag we’re using for medical waste. She drops some gauze scraps into it, but keeps the gloves to sanitize later. It’s not like we’ve got gloves to spare.

I’m just coming back from washing my hands—there’s just a faucet sticking out of the wall in the corner, the sink that once supported it long gone by now—when I see her.

Tall, curly-haired, sharp-eyed. Brown Amity boots laced tight, all the way up her calves. Evelyn Eaton.

#

After I chose Abnegation in the Choosing Ceremony, I knew right away I’d made a mistake. I felt it in my stomach. Aching. Heavy. And with each element of the Abnegation initiation ritual that followed—my mother sitting me down to wash my feet, my neighbor serving me dinner, an older classmate whispering a prayer in my ear—I got even heavier. I thought it would let up eventually, as I committed myself to the choice I’d made. I went through the motions of my month of service, my hands and feet obeying where my heart wouldn’t. And it seemed like I was fooling everyone else, but I couldn’t fool myself.

As it turned out, I couldn’t fool my mother, either. I wasn’t supposed to talk to her until I completed initiation, not after that first night, but she found me trudging home from volunteering at the hospital one day and beckoned for me to follow her into some half-collapsed building. She told me she could tell I regretted my choice, but there was one path left open to me if I had the courage to choose it. One path that would let me help her save the city from certain destruction.

Defect, she said.

And when I asked why, when I asked what—what destruction, what danger is the city in, what what what—she said she couldn’t answer.

Defect, she said, and I didn’t do it because she told me to, because I had learned my lesson about doing things just to please my parents after the Choosing Ceremony. I defected because the idea of remaining in Abnegation, doing all the choreography of selflessness without any of the conviction, made me want to scream.

My mother helped me get out. I’m given to understand it wasn’t her first time. She stood with me on the train platform in the dead of night, a bag of clothes and supplies slung across my back, and taught me how to run alongside the second-to-last car while it slowed. She did it first, and then grabbed my hand to lift me inside, and I asked myself how she knew these things, I asked myself where she came from, for the first time.

Evelyn Eaton was standing inside the car, half-hidden in shadow. She didn’t speak to me directly.

“Your daughter?” Evelyn said.

“She chose Abnegation,” my mother replied. “But it wasn’t right for her.”

“What a shock.” Evelyn’s voice was sour and dark. Like pumpernickel bread or the black coffee a Candor offered me a sip of on the bus once, just to laugh at me when I hated it. Too strong for you, Stiff?

“You’ll take her in,” my mother said, and it wasn’t a question, it was a command. “You’ll take care of her. And I’ll consider your debt to me repaid.”

Evelyn finally looked at me, and I wondered what she saw. Little blonde girl with her neat Abnegation bun, her loose Abnegation grays. Small and quiet and nothing special.

“What’s the faction you should have chosen?” Evelyn asked me. “Or do you even know?”

The answer came easily. “Dauntless.”

“Like mother, like daughter, I guess.” Evelyn laughed. And to my mother, she said, “You’d better get off at the next station.”

I didn’t get the chance to ask my mother if she grew up in Dauntless, though I already knew the answer. I didn’t get to ask her what it was like there, and why she left it at her Choosing Ceremony. She just gave me a funny little smile—wry and crooked, not like her usual smile—and jumped off on the next platform. I watched her disappear into the dark.

“Guess we’ll find out what you’re made of, Beatrice,” Evelyn said.

“Don’t call me that,” I said, and I’m not sure what gave me the audacity. Maybe it was the bitterness in Evelyn’s voice—it gave me permission to be bitter, too.

“Pick another name, then,” she said, and I did.

#

“There you are,” Evelyn says to me, beckoning. “Come with me, we need to talk.”

She walks me up the stairs to a courtyard surrounded by columns and hemmed in by red brick. All I can see above us is the bright blue sky. It’s hot out, too hot for spring, though we’re inching toward summer by the minute. I’m still not comfortable showing too much skin, but I went from a long-sleeved gray shirt to a short-sleeved one—Candor white—just a few days ago.

“I need your help with something,” she says.

My first thought surprises me. Oh, sure. Ask the Abnegation girl, she’ll help. But I’m not quite bold enough to say something like that out loud, especially not to Evelyn Eaton. That sharpness in her eyes reminds me of a fox that wandered through the Abnegation sector when I was a kid. Not rabid, my father said, but wild and hungry.

Evelyn is hungry, too.

“My help?” I say, instead. “With what?”

“A recruit.” Evelyn folds her arms, which is my first sign that there’s more to this than she’s saying.

I’ve gotten to know Evelyn the past few months. The first day I woke up in Robin House, she gave me a knife, then sent me to an ex-Dauntless named Gretchen to learn how to use it. Gretchen made me practice drawing it so many times it started to feel easy, and only then did she talk to me about fighting with it.

That was how my time with Evelyn always went, after that. She would show up at Robin House, look me over, and then send me to someone else to learn something new. A lithe, quick man everyone called “T,” who taught me how to get on and off the train. Gretchen, for the knife. The Mender, “for clothes that don’t make you look like such a goddamn Stiff,” as she put it. A man named Blank who made me ride the train all night looking for oddities—including the ever-bright lights of the Erudite sector. Bit by bit, I learned about the city from beneath, instead of from above, and I observed Evelyn Eaton, former Abnegation and now undisputed leader of the factionless.

She doesn’t cross her arms unless she thinks you’re getting too close to something. So whoever this recruit is, it’s more personal than she’s letting on.

“I don’t know if I’m a good poster child for the factionless,” I say.

“Better that you aren’t a poster child, with this one.” She looks away. “He’s former Abnegation. Chose Dauntless but I don’t think his heart’s really in it anymore.”

“It seems like you’d be able to relate to someone who came from Abnegation,” I say. “And you know what to say to someone who might want to leave their faction. Better than I do, anyway.”

“You should have left this irritating self-deprecating streak behind when you defected.” Her teeth come together with a click. She looks away.

I don’t know what to say to that, though my face probably says it for me. My cheeks are burning but I know better than to lash out at the leader of the factionless in anger.

“This particular recruit…has made his distaste for me well known,” Evelyn says, without looking at me.

“Oh,” I say. And then: “Oh.”

Which is how I figure out the “recruit” in question is her son.

#

I don’t know how they’re communicating with someone in Dauntless, how they tell him where and when to meet. But when I go with Evelyn to Falcon House, in the city center, I see all sorts of sly, quick-handed, light-footed people. That’s where they live: right in the middle of the city, so it’s easy to get anywhere they need to go.

Falcon House is underground, a system of tile-walled tunnels that used to offer shelter from the harsh winter. The trains used to go underground here, too, though the factionless can’t use those pathways much anymore, thanks to cave-ins and blockages. I hear a rumor when I’m in line for dinner that some people are working to clear out the tunnels so it will be easier for the factionless to sneak around undetected, but I’m well-trained to ignore rumors. My father always said gossip was self-indulgent, and I still hear his voice in my head at every turn.

I didn’t say goodbye to my father when I left. I didn’t think I could stomach it. He was so proud of me when I joined Abnegation, his eyes glittering and his smile so broad it looked like a grimace of pain. And the way he sounded when he introduced me to the Council Leader. This is my daughter.

I wince, thinking of him now.

It’s dark, the moon is high, and I’m waiting for the right train. I can see it coming now, gliding along in the distance. Its light isn’t on—that would draw too much attention, but I can see the moonlight reflected on its metal side as it moves. It churns and pounds closer, and I start jogging. I can feel it behind me, its heat and its energy, and I break into a sprint so I won’t run out of ground.

Then I throw myself to the left, grabbing the handle and stepping up into the train car in one fluid motion. I’m not good as a knife fighter—Gretchen keeps telling me to stop being so hesitant—but I’m fast and nimble. Sometimes it’s good to be small.

The recruit is already on the train. I knew he would be, but somehow I was unprepared for…this.

For him.

He’s standing in a sliver of moonlight, and that’s how I see his eyes. Blue, but not bright like morning; dark blue, like dreaming, sleeping, waiting. I stare at him, suddenly tongue-tied, and the train starts to turn, shuddering on its rails as it switches to the elevated track. I lose my balance, and his hand stretches out to steady me. I stare at his fingers wrapped around my bare, pale forearm. His knuckles are callused.

This isn’t how I’m supposed to be, so easily distracted. Like some kid with a crush instead of someone who’s made hard choices, someone who’s doing something important.

I get my feet under me and clear my throat.

“Thanks,” I say, to Tobias Eaton.

He’s only two years older than me, so I saw him around when we were younger. I must have, anyway; I don’t remember it now. And I think I would remember meeting someone like this, who looks at me with a focus so absolute I wonder if he ever gets distracted by anything at all. Someone with the kind of face that makes me feel aware of every inch of my body in a new way.

Evelyn told me very little to prepare me for this meeting, but she said the Council Leader—no, she said Marcus, and she spat his name like it was a dirty word, which lit up all the parts of me that love puzzles—liked to keep his family away from everyone else, all in the name of privacy. I’m beginning to realize that when an Abnegation says “privacy,” what they mean is “secrecy.” So I wonder what secrets Marcus Eaton was keeping.

Tobias is wearing all black, but I don’t see any piercings, any tattoos, any signs of the ostentatious Dauntlessness that I’m expecting. There’s black ink creeping over the collar of his jacket, but just a hint of it. I think of curling a finger over the neck of the t-shirt to tug it down; I think I probably have a better chance of my hand spontaneously catching on fire.

“I thought Evelyn was the one who requested this meeting,” he says, his voice low and clear.

“She was,” I say. “She…wanted me to come instead.”

“Oh really.” If he didn’t look so much like her, I would know he was her son by that tone—that sour, bitter way of talking they both have. “And who the hell are you?”

“Tris,” I say, at first, because that’s the name I’ve been clinging to since I got here. Just hoping that one day, it will feel like it belongs to me more than my Abnegation name.

But then I remember why I’m here.

“Beatrice Prior, actually,” I amend, and Tobias Eaton is already shaking his head.

“No. Absolutely not.” He paces away from me. “I know why she sent you, and I’m not interested.”

“Why did she send me? I really don’t know.”

“Because she—” He cuts himself off. “No. I’m not doing that, either.”

“Doing what?”

“This…thing where just because we came from the same place, you pretend to know what I’m going through!”

We’re between stations right now, but I bet if we weren’t he would throw himself off this train and I would have to chase him down the street. Or maybe I wouldn’t bother. I don’t really care if Evelyn Eaton’s son joins the factionless. Do I?

“Well, let me guess what you’re going through,” I say. “And you tell me if I’m right. And if I’m not, you’ll get off at the next stop.”

“That gives you about twenty seconds.”

My throat feels tight. I decide I have nothing to lose.

“You chose the wrong faction, or you think you did,” I say. “You don’t quite fit no matter where you are. And the more you learn about the world, about this city, about all the things you were told, the more confused you feel about where to go, what to do. You think maybe no one feels right, anywhere, and they’re all just pretending. Or maybe you have to think that, because the alternative—that you’re the one who’s broken—is too much to bear.”

The train slows as it approaches the next station.

Tobias Eaton stands in the middle of the empty train car, his hands loose at his sides. He’s not holding on to anything, despite the sway of the train; his boots are planted and his body shifts this way and that, by fractions, to keep him steady. I’m pretty sure Gretchen would love Tobias Eaton; she wouldn’t yell at him for not knowing where his feet are. He’s probably fantastic with a knife.

I really shouldn’t find that so appealing.

The station comes and goes. Tobias doesn’t jump off.

“Why did you join them?” he asks me, voice softer now.

I’m ready for this question, but all the answers I had prepared to persuade him—because that’s why Evelyn sent me here, isn’t it?—feel small and meaningless now. I open my mouth to offer one of them, it doesn’t matter which one, and what comes out instead…is brand new.

“I couldn’t stay where I was,” I say. “And someone told me…that something is coming. Something bad. Something I might be able to do something about, if I’m better positioned to. And…I figured that if I’m going to feel this way, if I’m going to feel wrong all the time, it may as well mean something. It may as well do something.”

Tobias nods. He walks over so he’s standing across from me, the gap of a doorway between us. I’m not afraid of standing so close to the edge anymore, no matter how the train tilts as it turns, but he stands a pace away. Wary.

“And you just…left everyone you care about behind?” he says. “Because that’s what she wants me to do.”

I look out at the city. We’re high up, now, close to the entrance to Dauntless headquarters, though I’ve still never seen it. The marsh is behind us, and before us, the dark uneven shapes of buildings, the straight lines of cracked and broken streets, the arc of the fence that hems us all in.

And beyond it…who knows?

“I think caring about them doesn’t mean I owe them a version of myself that isn’t real,” I say.

It’s not something I’ve ever articulated to myself before, but saying it feels right. The only person I really left behind was my father, but knowing that he’s out there, shamed by my absence, disappointed in me, maybe even pretending he doesn’t have a daughter anymore—it aches somewhere deep that I couldn’t reach to soothe, even if I knew how. But when I think about what I owe him, in exchange for giving me life, I come up empty. I didn’t ask to be born. I never promised to stay the same as I used to be. No one can promise that anyway.

“Do you know why she sent you?” Tobias says, his voice lower now that he’s closer. He’s been staring at me, I realize, since I spoke last. Like he didn’t know what to make of me, or like—like he’s bothered by what he sees, the way a person is bothered by a question they once knew the answer to but can’t now recall.

I shake my head.

“Because.” He laughs a little. “Because she knows you’re just my type.”

The train is slowing again. Tobias grabs the handle next to the door while I’m still too stunned to respond.

“Tell her I’ll think about it,” he says to me, without looking back. Then he throws himself out of the train car, lands on light feet on the platform, and disappears from sight as the train turns.

Thanks for reading! If you had fun with this, let me know— I might consider putting more of this kind of exploratory writing in the newsletter if people enjoy reading it.

-V