The simulations are today. The second phase of training, primarily focused on emotional preparation.

I wonder how the initiates are going to cope with this?

As a promising candidate for first-ranked initiate, he's going first. All the initiates lined up outside the simulation room look worried, except for Four. I can't help wondering why. He can't know anything about the simulation.

'Four,' I call. He walks towards me, his expression unreadable. Eric gives him a dirty look, but he doesn't seem to notice. I shut the door silently behind him.

Four looks at the computer, running the program of the simulation. 'A simulation?' he asks. Are all Stiffs this perceptive?

'The less you know, the better,' I reply. I don't really know why, but it's what Lauren told me when she administered my test. The look she gave me told me that I shouldn't ask questions. 'Sit down.'

He does as he's told, climbing into the big reclined chair. I jab the needle into his neck without warning, and he flinches slightly.

'Let's see which of your four fears come up first,' I say. 'You know, I'm getting kind of bored of them. You might try to show me something new.' I smile.

He smiles a little. 'I'll work on it.'

Four is sitting on a wooden bench next to a kitchen table; an empty plate in front of him. The shades are drawn. Judging by the sparse furniture, this is an Abnegation house.

He lifts his head and starts slightly as Marcus materialises in front of him. But this is just the ordinary Marcus, the one I remember from the Choosing Ceremony rather than the one from Four's simulations. Maybe this is some kind of different fear.

Four looks around. He's wearing Dauntless black, heavily contrasting with Marcus's plain gray clothes. I wonder if he's confused, or scared, or perhaps something else. But he doesn't look either of them.

Then the light flickers, and Marcus turns into the man in Four's fear landscape, a monster with pits for eyes and a huge, gaping, empty mouth. He lunges across the table, and I see the glint of razor blades in his fingertips.

Four sprints into another room. A living room. Someone has sealed the door with some kind of blocks. I think they're cinder blocks - only the Abnegation and Amity use them. Either way, he's trapped. Four dodges another Marcus reaching for him from the wall, and takes the stairs two and three at a time. He trips on the last one and sprawls out on the floor, breathing heavily. A Marcus leaps out of the closet, another one walking threateningly from the bedroom. Five or six more crowd into the hallway, cornering Four. They press him to the wall, dragging their fingers down his face. More of them appear so he's staring at a huge, shining mass of blades. Their fingers clutch at his legs and another Marcus digs his hands into Four's throat.

Calm down, I think. Calm down. You won't get out of the simulation otherwise. Come on…

Suddenly, as if hearing me, Four twists upwards. A door materialises. He opens it and falls into a closet with a window. The window shatters as he throws his shoulder against it. As the Marcuses rip open the closet door with their bare hands and stream into it, he leans out of the window. Seven stories up. I didn't know it was possible to face more than one fear in a simulation, but he must be terrified. Four takes a deep breath and falls.

The simulation ends.

He sits up in the chair, gasping. I check my watch. Five minutes? That can't be right. Suddenly, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I remember what Lauren told me, two years ago. After I'd faced my simulation and escaped it within minutes. Simulation awareness helps you to get out of the simulations. But it's also dangerous. You have to hide it.

I don't want to scare Four, or to get him worrying about it when it may be nothing.

'What?' he asks breathlessly. I've been staring at him for too long.

'You were in there for five minutes,' I reply.

He frowns. 'Is that long?'

'No. No, it's not long at all. It's very good, actually.' He puts his feet on the floor, and his head in his hands. 'Is the serum still in effect? Making me panic?' he asks, clenching his teeth so hard they squeak. We're both still hooked up to the monitor. I watch his heart rate spike again and again.

'No, it should have gone dormant when you exited the simulation. Why?' I watch him shake out his hands and instantly feel stupid. 'Sometimes the simulation causes lingering panic, depending on what you see in it.' I'm really not surprised he's still panicking. I know I would be. 'Let me walk you back to the dormitory.'

He shakes his head. 'No, I'll be fine.' It's so unconvincing it's almost funny, if it wasn't for the still worried look in his eyes.

'It wasn't a request.' Hopefully by the time I get back, a more realistic time will have elapsed for the simulations, so no one will be suspicious. I open the back door and we walk down the hall. Four seems unusually jumpy, twitching at every sound. I stop him and put my hands on his shoulders, noticing that he's almost as tall as I am.

'Hey,' I say. 'Get it together, Four.'

He nods and flushes slightly.

'Can I ask you something?' I say. He winces; maybe he thinks I'm going to ask him about Marcus. I'm not that tactless. 'How did you get out of that hallway?'

'I opened a door,' he says.

'Was there a door behind you the whole time? Is there one in your old house?' I already know the answer. The door looked exactly like the one leading to the simulation room. It would have had to be deeply engraved in his mind for the door to look like it did.

As I suspected, he shakes his head.

'So you created one out of nowhere?'

'Yeah. Simulations are all in your head. So my head made a door so I could get out. All I had to do was concentrate.' He says it like it's simple, like it's obvious. And there is some logic in that statement.

'Strange,' I can't help saying.

'What, why?' He sounds worried. Does Four know about simulation awareness?

'Most initiates can't make something impossible happen in the simulations, because unlike in the fear landscape, they don't recognise that they are in a simulation. And they don't get out of simulations that fast, as a result.'

I pause, thinking. Lauren said simulation awareness is one of the most dangerous things to have. Is it so dangerous that I shouldn't tell him? But he should know.

'I was like you,' I say softly. 'I could change the simulations. I just thought I was the only one.'

He opens his mouth, as if he's about to say something, but no words come out.

'It's probably not something you should brag about,' I say quickly. If it is as bad as Lauren said, I don't want him getting into trouble. 'The Dauntless are all about conformity, just like every other faction. It's just not as obvious here.'

He nods. 'It's probably just a fluke,' he says slowly, but I'm not convinced even he believes it. 'I couldn't do that during my aptitude test.' Well, of course you couldn't, the aptitude test is specially designed so you can't change it. 'Next time I'll probably be more normal.'

I can't help hoping that there's more people like me. Lauren said I was the only one she'd ever seen, but I know, for some reason, that there are more people like me somewhere. I know I need to stop looking, because it's dangerous, and will get me into trouble, but I want to know I'm not the only one.

'Right,' I say. 'Well, next time, try not to do anything impossible, all right? Just face your fear in a way that would always make sense to you, whether you were aware or not.'

'Okay,' he replies.

Suddenly I remember the other initiates waiting to be tested. The ones who don't know this is just a simulations, the ones who will be safe. 'You're okay now, right? You can get back to the dorm on your own?'

He nods again. I clap him on the shoulder, and walk the other way, back to the simulation room, listening to the quiet echo of my footsteps.

When I look back, he's still standing there.

I jerk forward in the chair, pulled out of the simulation mid-fall. My heart is racing, my fists clenched.

So much for an evaluation. Calm down. The first thing I see is the Erudite, Jeanine and her lackeys. Just after dinner, they called Four and me in for an evaluation, saying that his simulation results were a little abnormal. I regret telling him about simulation awareness. How else would they have found out?

Four did well. He was in there for eight minutes. On the way to the simulation room, I tried to communicate to him that he should be careful. Use his simulation awareness to his advantage, but face his fear in a normal way.

I wish I could have taken my own advice.

The simulation I faced was one exactly like my simulations as an initiate. I was hanging above a waterfall, held up by only a thin rope. All I could do was watch as the rope frayed, then snapped… There was nothing I could do - when I was an initiate, I had tried to scramble up the rope, but it had only frayed faster.

As I fell, plummeting towards the roaring water, a net appeared not too far below me. I know that I created it, and it will save me, but too late I remembered that I was being watched, and not by Lauren or another initiation instructor.

Someone must have hit a button, because I jerked back to reality before I could hit the net.

I'm still hooked up to the monitor. I watch it, see my heart rate spike again and again. Gritting my teeth, I put my head in my hands and try to calm down. But I keep remembering the waterfall, the image of it forcing itself into my mind until I can't think straight.

I silently disconnect the machine, scowling at the Erudite. I want to punch Jeanine in the face. She has no right to be here. No right to look into the deepest parts of me.

I drag my arm over my eyes, wishing that they weren't watching me. I would give anything for privacy right now.

'Do you know how long you were in there?' asks Jeanine smoothly.

I scowl. 'How the hell would I know?'

'Four minutes, thirty six seconds. We seem to have detected an anomaly in your results.'

'Yeah. And?' I snap. I'm not usually like this, but the simulation does strange things to everyone.

'Put simply, the anomaly is simulation awareness.' Jeanine says. Her voice is as mild as ever. 'They call it Divergent. It makes you very, very dangerous. And as a result, to avoid being a threat to our system, you must be…eliminated.'

I never knew you could feel words, like a punch to the gut. But I can feel these ones. Although Jeanine says this with no inflection, they force their way into my mind, bouncing around.

And besides, as if I didn't have enough to worry about. The raw panic of the fear simulation combined with the threat to my life means that I can't think at all.

I roll my eyes. 'What could you do to me?'

Jeanine smiles. 'We got your George, why not you?'

Oh, God.

'Right. Anomaly, Divergent, elimination, all fine. Can I go now?' My voice shakes slightly, but I'm slightly pleased at how casual I sound.

'Don't think we're done with you yet, Amar,' Jeanine says threateningly. I roll my eyes again and swing my legs over the side of the chair, then walk out. The effect is, again, ruined by my unsteady legs, but I slam the door behind me as hard as I can.

On the way to my room, I can't walk normally, as if nothing's happened. As if my death hasn't been guaranteed.

So I run, elbowing people aside, sprinting like there's no tomorrow - maybe there won't be, for me - ignoring the mixed looks of curiosity and anger directed at me.

But when I open my apartment door, slam it and lock it, it only makes the pain worse. This is the room I shared with Georgie, before he died. Before they killed him. Before the Erudite murdered him, just because he was aware in the simulations.

For a while, I pace around the room, throwing things at the wall as hard as I can, watching them break, snap, fall to the ground. Still internally screaming, still panicking. Georgie. Divergent. Erudite. Eliminated…

It's still fairly early in the evening, less than half an hour after dinner. But I pull the pillow over my head, and try to sleep.

A/N: Hi! Sorry this took a while to update. Blame it on the great and terrible thing known as school. I've got exam week starting on the 17th this month, so I'm quite busy revising. I only write fanfiction in my spare time, and I don't have much of that right now.

Guess who the next chapter's going to be? (I don't actually know yet, just that it won't be Amar) One last thing: please, please review? It means everything to me :)