Location from Divergent by Veronica Roth
The invisible city within the city — crumbling buildings and abandoned warehouses where everyone the faction system discarded lives, organizes, and waits.
The Factionless sector isn't a sector at all — it's the negative space between the factions, the places no one claims. Failed initiates, faction deserters, and people born into the cracks live here. The factions provide minimal food and clothing because it's politically necessary, but the Factionless are invisible. Not counted, not represented, not considered. Evelyn changed that. Under her leadership, the Factionless organized into something the factions didn't expect: a population larger than any individual faction, with nothing to lose and everything to gain from the system's collapse. The abandoned buildings became meeting halls. The supply routes became communication lines. The people the factions threw away became an army. The smell is rust and cookfire smoke and the particular desperation of people making something from nothing. It's the most honest place in Chicago — no faction ideology, no pretense, just survival.
Scattered across Chicago's abandoned zones: gutted buildings, disused factories, collapsed overpasses repurposed as shelters. No faction colors — just the grey-brown of decaying concrete and the makeshift repairs of people keeping structures standing with whatever's available. Cooking fires visible at night. Laundry lines between buildings. It looks like poverty but functions like a community.
Also known as: Factionless Territory, The Factionless Zone