Prologue

—Third Person

"As many of you know," Amar's voice booms across the pit, various colors scattered among the carved rock and stone hole in the Earth. "This is not my usual time slot for story time."

He was right— Tris always claimed the last slot on the final day of the visiting week: Friday.
She was the one who created the event, and she also was the one who always brought the most gruesome stories to share.

"It's been years since her story; the story she does not share too often. However, it has not been that long, and I must say I am fucking disgusted by how I hear rumors spread about her. It hasn't been so long that you all could have quite possibly forgotten who the hell she is."

He sighs, looking over to the patch of Ambassadors sitting on a ledge.
For once, they all are somber— as angry as Amar is.

"I knew her husband way before I ever knew her. That's another story for another time," he pauses, then continues. "But after years I was reunited with him, and he was different. He was not the same man whom I had known when I had left two years prior, and I knew he had met someone."

He smiles lightly, remembering the reunion after he was forced to fake his death and take shelter in the Bureau.
He smirks upon remembering the first time he met Tris on a mission to the Fringe, and how he had to reassure her he was no longer interested in her boyfriend to calm her jealousy.

"I met Tris individually: not knowing she was his significant other. And let me say," he laughs, breaking the sentence. "I would've never have guessed that a sarcastic, headstrong, stubborn woman like her could change him to the point that I didn't recognize his strong type A personality anymore."

Many Dauntless chuckle, knowing either Four or Tris individually. The Ambassadors find his attack on Tris remotely hilarious, all clearly agreeing with what was said.

"But all jokes aside," his tone turns serious again. "Her story has clearly been forgotten, and it is not one to be forgotten."

The Pit becomes silent again.
Amar knows there's people here that hate Tris with a burning passion.
He knows there's people here that fear her because of her New York ties.
He knows people here think she should be banished from the city.

He knows it's important for himself to do a justice for Tris, because right now, in the midst of surgery, she cannot speak on her own behalf.

"At age sixteen she transferred from Abnegation to Dauntless, and in one of the most brutal and aggressive years of Dauntless initiation, she ranked first by the end. After being challenged by one of the strongest in a spar, being told she was cut from initiation, and nearly being thrown over the Chasm because of an ambush, she survived."

He pauses, taking a breath.

"Yes, many people have issues with Dauntless initiation, and yes, Tris was not the only one to deal with the brutality of Dauntless initiation that year. She is not specifically unique in that scenario, but the fact that she survived being an Abnegation transfer, Divergent and being just over five feet tall really does say something."

He pauses again to take a breath, but this time to also shift topics.

"Still at sixteen years old, she was drafted into war. Forced and pressured by her Divergence, she turned herself in to Erudite at one point, just to try and slow the innocent murder of members of the city. Again, she survived, being rescued just hours before her own execution after the trials that nearly killed her on their own."

"Upon leaving the fence and sheltering in the Bureau, it was made clear to her that she was not just Divergent, but genetically pure. She ended up sucked down a path of chemistry and biology for she was technically the first to come out of this city being pure. Because of the raging war in the city, memory serum was to be released to calm the war; to make each person of Chicago forget their name and the look of other's faces. Her brother was planned to stop the serum, to punch in the code and ultimately die from the death serum that guarded the keypad."

Amar swallows, finishing the first large section of her story.

"She took his place. Being genetically pure, along with fucking stubborn as shit and sometimes too selfless for her own good, she went in and successfully deactivated the serum." He starts oddly chuckling, making people confused. "She survived the death serum." His laugh gains strength. "Genetically pure people still cannot survive that, but she did! And she is the one to thank for the city not being completely controlled by the Bureau today. She is the reason you have your memories back to childhood. I think some of us might have forgotten that."

He pauses, knowing the dark part of the story has yet to come.

"She was shot, two of three times, I can't remember, and we were all told she died because of blood loss. Her friends, whom have always been basically family, were told that she was dead, but she wasn't."

Amar sighs, tossing his next sentence around in his head before speaking.

"This is where many people think her story ends. This is the story we want to hear: 'Oh well she magically came back from the dead and now all is fine!'. But it's not."

Am I making the right decision doing this? Amar second guesses himself. This isn't truly my story to tell, but nothing else will get these people to stop the rumors and accept her.

If it's not what she wants me to do, she'll hopefully forgive me for this someday.

"Just a few weeks ago Tris confided in me; telling me she began to remember vivid details and specifics of her life that she has neglected to remember before. These details that she never had, they were what caused the people of this city to once treat her with so much disrespect. And I see that disrespect returning in this very moment. We the people put her on trial, under truth serum five plus times because unlike other survivors she had memory loss. Being rescued and returned to Chicago at nineteen, and being "killed" at sixteen, there was only a few moments that she could recall from those years."

Amar swallows hard, blinking twice.
No turning back now.

"What she did know: that her family was alive, that she had a new niece, that she was held captive, she was shot five times in the leg and stabbed with a rusty knife, that she was abused and beaten various times a day and more than the others that were being held captive— This was all she knew returning to the city, and yet there was these brandings and these scars that she could not explain under trial because she did not remember. WE caused her to relive the few moments she did remember over and over again on trial, and we shamed and distrusted her for things she couldn't control."

He pauses, moving back to where the story was suppose to go before he rambled.

"Tris confided in me a few weeks ago, and I told her to write down what she could. Anything that she could recall, and in as much detail as she could manage." He recalls the memory of standing in her office, her exhausted form holding her head in her hands, her eyes red from lack of sleep. "And she did. After I found her injured in her apartment on Monday and took her to the Infirmary, I went back to retrieve her and her husband's dog, and in the process I found what she has written; what she has remembered."

The first page, labeled age sixteen.

Final memory: David stands from his wheelchair, shoots me in the abdomen how many times I am unsure, and all goes dark. I see my mother, who at the time I thought was dead, and I ask her if I am done, which she tells me that I am.

The following page begins the vague memories of age seventeen.

The first page begins with an idea.

I do not remember any branding, but I remember seasons. I remember healing, the painful changing of the bandages and the fried skin below. We were chained with whatever limbs weren't branded to our bunks so we didn't try to move. This specific moment in time is all I remember.

It was turning summer. There were no windows, but the humidity allowed me to suspect that it was surely warmer outside. Because my birthday is in the winter, I know not much time has past, but that I am seventeen.
I know I have been conscious— I know there is memories before this. I don't recall much of seventeen yet, but this single memory gives me so many answers.

My right leg was chained to the end of my bunk, and my hands in front of me.
My left palm has peeling skin on it, along with my right forearm. They're bandages slightly, but not in the extreme of the new burning on my left calf.
There is a symbol on my left palm, and on my right is the bars that the Bureau uses to identify genetically pure individuals. Also on my right forearm is the same seal that is on my left palm. It is newer than the others, but not as new to need an extreme bandage.

I listen and hear someone move forward towards me.
I don't move and continue to stare at the crusty stone ceiling.
If you move they take it that you will attack them. I don't know how I know this, but I assume I tried via trial and error in the past.

The person stops and touches my foot. I flinch, the burn still fresh and making all of the nerves in my leg overly sensitive.
He barks at me to sit up, which I do, and shoves a water bottle in my hand.

I remember biting through my lip in pain as he removed the bandage. I never had in the past, but this time I brought myself to look at the fresh wound.
This one wasn't like the others. This didn't have the seal, nor was it the pure bars.

It was like a shipping label you would put on a package, or like a dog tag but with more details.
In my boiling red flesh, letters were clearly visible as the man held up a paper to clarify it was correct.

And in a clear square it read:

BEATRICE PRIOR F ORIGIN: CHICAGO
GENETICALLY PURE
NEW YORK INSEMINATION TRIALS
BASE ID: 284

The man put some painful cream over the wound, causing me to screech. I remember him pushing me back down to the bed forcefully, telling me to shut up, and then continuing to bandage the branding.

For years of trials, years of curious people, and even me personally have always asked the same question.

Why the left leg?
Why shot so many times?

I never had an answer— I mean, it's not like your kidnapper just tells you their sick motives to everything. They just do it, and you're just kidnapped and prisoner with no say.

But this memory— this gives me a valid answer to that question.
He did not want that branding to be visible anymore.
I was not to be part of the New York experiment anymore.


Seventeen has one more page.

There is so much empty space in this year.
Somewhere I remember being taught the staff trainings: being beaten to the ground until you picked on to techniques and strategy without being formally taught.

I remember thinking that Dauntless initiation was nothing compared to this.
I also remember thinking that if it weren't for the brutality of Dauntless initiation my year, I would have never survived any of this.

After doing one on one "training" of being beaten to the ground instead of formally taught by some random man, we began sparring other females in the program.

I stood in the ring, a larger and taller woman in front of me— my first opponent. Before we are told to start, I steal a glance at her calf.

Her number is much lower than mine.
She has been training a lot longer than I have, and I just know it by her stance and the scars that cover her face.

She has done this before.
I have not.

Someone gives the okay, and she swings, fast and hard at my head. I block her, a painful zing electrifying the pole I hold, causing my elbows to tremble and arms to weaken.

She was smart.
Sparring her taught me all I needed, and the tactics she used, such as the swing to the head and weakening the opponent through vibration were strategy I still use today at age twenty-eight.

But in the moment, it was awful, and a hard way to learn.

From the distraction of the vibrating pole numbing my arms, she swings and hits me in the place where my neck meets my shoulders. I instantly collapse, my knees scraping the cement floor.

I don't remember falling unconscious, and I clearly remember not receiving blows when I was down.

She wasn't here to kill me.
She was here to play.
Here to -nearly- kill me.

I tried to stand, but my world was spinning.

"Wait till she's conscious." I clearly remember some male instructor saying, and in my circular whirlpool vision I see her sit next to me in the ring.

I remember wondering what the hell she was doing.
Why was she sitting next to me.

I felt my breathing calm and my tense muscles slowly become less stiff as another spar was audible across the large room.

And then I remember the attention turning back to our ring as the other noise slows.

"Can I?" The buff woman sitting next to me shifts, causing me to jump in reflex. She grips my wrist tightly, as if to deny me the option to try and run away.

Some male comes over and hands her a knife which she looks at like a dog would meat.

I try to shake from her grasp but she is much stronger than I am. She somehow holds me down, her forearm is across my chest and is so heavy I am convinced all of her weight was on it.

She takes the blade and runs the tip down my nose almost teasingly. She has no struggle pinning down my disagreeing limbs, and she seems to be taking my struggle as enjoyment.

"Every time we win a spar in training, we are to give our opponent a scar of their loss. I've been around for a while, girl, and I've won against a lot of pretty faces."

She runs the tip around the curve of my face, from my temple, down my cheek, to the curve of my chin.

I stop resisting.
I know I can't get out of her grasp.
I stare into her deep eyes that are such a dark shade of brown that they're seemingly black.

"I've given many girls their first scar, and each time I do the same. Time for you to join the group."

The blade presses down near my ear, right on my jawline. I remember crying out as the blade drags down my jawline, stopping somewhere near my chin.

And I feel warm.
Warm blood drips down my neck as her weight lifts from me.
I remember finding myself gasping for air, and I'm not sure if it was out of pain, panic, or if she knocked the wind out of me from her weight on my chest.

By this point in time the humidity had changed, and I found myself chilled from time to time.
Remembering vaguely on further from this point I know that it did get much colder, so this was the beginning of winter or the near end of Fall.

This was the last thing I remember from what I will classify as my seventeenth year.
What I recalled was a much of empty space of training, but I still do not specifically remember receiving the brandings I have.

I was taken away from my life in Chicago and placed in a new trial for some city called New York.

I was branded in four separate places.

I learned how to spar with a metal staff.

I received my first scar down my jawline that still is clearly visible eleven years later.

And this was just the beginning.