3.

Tris was terrified.

When she'd first woken up in the weird classroom, she'd thought she was in another one of her fear landscapes. Luckily Four had been with her but unfortunately he had confirmed that this was in fact real.

He'd been the 6th person to leave and Tris had even gone as far as thanking God when the cannon hadn't rung out to signify his death. He'd promised that he would find her. That they would get through this together. And she was going to hold him to that promise.

Tris was startled out of her thoughts by the boom of the cannon. Someone was dead. Was it Four? Or was it the girl who had just left? Number 21?

One of the soldiers left the room for a moment before returning and marching up to Nova Morse, the lady in charge. "Number 20 is down, Ma'am."

Nova nodded her head and continued to stare at the last three tributes to have to leave the school grounds. Tris wracked her brain trying to remember who number 20 had been. The first death had been number 16 who was a girl with white blond hair, but who had number 20 been? Tris wanted to be able to recall all those who had died, so that they would never be forgotten, but instead celebrated for their unfortunate sacrifice. She hoped the others were memorising faces and names just in case it wasn't Tris who won.

Then an image popped into Tris's head. Nova calling out for Number 20. Peter standing up.

Peter. Peter was dead.

Tris didn't know whether to be happy or sad. He'd always been a bit of an ass hole, trying to kill her or other people for the top rankings. The whole Edward-getting-stabbed-in-the-eye-with-a-butter-knife situation came to her mind but Tris shrugged that off. It was sad, she decided.

Despite how much of a prick Peter had been, she didn't like thinking that he was dead. To think, she would never ever be able to argue with him or slap him across face ever again.

Her mourning was interrupted by Nova's voice.

"Number 23: Ron."

Tris must have missed the disappearance of the girl with long hair, because now it was down to just her and that ginger Ron fellow. His steps were even and soft and he simply grabbed his rucksack and left the building. His indifference freaked Tris out for some reason.

Now it was her turn.

Tris hated being last. That's why she had liked her name in Abnegation because she was Beatrice Prior and if they did things alphabetically from first names, she was one of the first few and if it was by last names, she was roughly in the middle. She probably should have thought about that before choosing 'Tris' when entering Dauntless.

Either way, she stepped up to collect her things when here name was called.

Tris stopped in the corridor of the school. She had two minutes until her collar blew up and she was going to use that time to check through her supplies whilst she had decent cover away from the other tributes.

Riffling through her bag she found out each of the items Nova had said there would be; water, bread, torch, map and … a sewing kit? Was that her weapon? Seriously? When Nova had said the weapons had varying value, Tris didn't know she had meant some of them would be completely random and useless. *Wait. It's a sewing kit. It has needles, right?*

It had one needle.

It was the only weapon Tris had though so she was going to have to make do.

Her time was nearly up and she would rather not be reduced to bloody chunks of burning flesh, so she ran outside until she was at least 10 meters away from the school just to be on the safe side, the needle held tightly in her sweaty fingers. She would need to find cover and soon, but right now she needed to survey her surroundings. There was the school that she'd just come from, sporting courts off to her right, woods in front of her with the rises of hills and possibly a mountain in the distance, to her left was fields and then what she reckoned was a residential area. Which direction would Four have gone?

He wouldn't have been tempted to go to the housing estate because a few others would probably have gone there and that would surely lead to possible death or injury, he wouldn't have risked staying near the school in case someone happened to come across him hiding in the bushes or trees. He would be on the move, into the forest.

Tris was glad that she was part Erudite.

The wooden bat seemed to come out of nowhere. It smashed viscously into her side, a couple of cracks signalling the breaking of some of her ribs. Tris yelped in pain and fell to the ground.

Ginger Ron who'd been called at Number 23, stood over her his fingers curling around the handle of his weapon. His lips were pressed into a hard line and his eyes held nothing more than determination. He raised the bat again, preparing to wallop her. Blearily, Tris managed to roll out of the way just in time so that the object fell against the hard packed dirt rather than her body.

Tris ignored the pain shooting through her side and stumbled clumsily to her feet. Fortunately she still held the needle.

Ron brought the bat back to take another swing at her, unknowingly leaving himself open to attack. Purely on instinct and her determination to survive, Tris dove forward, jabbing the needle towards his face, only withdrawing it when she heard 23 yell in surprise and unspeakable pain.

Tris didn't realise she had closed her eyes until she opened them again, and when she did, she wished, more than anything, that she'd kept them closed.

The needle had burst Ron's eyeball. Thick, white, gooey liquid mixed with a heavy amount of blood dripped down his face as his empty hand groped to staunch the flow of blood pouring from his now empty eye socket. He was wincing and moaning in agony.

Tris felt something wet touch the fingers of her right hand, the one holding the needle. She looked at it and hastily dropped the metal in disgust. The needle had been coated in blood and goo and it had started running onto her hand.

Her side ached and she really needed to get out of there. Surely some other tributes had heard their screams and were coming to finish any survivors off. Tris needed to go and find Four, but she was far to transfixed with the sight of Ron's eye or more accurately his lack of.

The pain in her side made her feel dizzy and confused. She was having trouble breathing and when she brought her fingers to her lips and looked at them she saw they were covered in blood. *Damn. Have I punctured a lung?*

Tris heard a grunt from in front of her and when she looked up she saw that Ron was fighting past his pain… and he was now sending the wooden bat hurtling towards Tris's face.

She didn't have time to react when it came cracking against her head, smashing her skull open, getting bone buried into her brain, killing her instantly.

~Tributes remaining: 21~