Chapter 10

Jamie POV

They put our scores up last night, and Tris and I are on top now because of the fear simulations. Because we both had such a low number of fears, we got through the quickest, putting us up top. I remember seeing a glare from Peter, and Al looked pretty depressed seeing that he was almost last, but I ignored most of it. I'm still excited now, and am having trouble getting to sleep.

"Okay, on the count of three."

That sounds like Peter.

"One… two… three"

I hear a muffled scream, but I don't move. If Peter sees me, I don't know what he'll do. I hear them struggling, and hear their footsteps head towards the door. If they're going to the door, they can't see me now. I get up and follow them out. I hide behind corners, following them quietly, and we seem to be heading to a place that I've only been to a couple of times: the chasm.

"Guys, we've got to get her to calm down, I'm about to drop her."

Her? Who've they got? I peek around the corner, and see them carrying a really small girl… Tris! They have Tris!

I keep following, because if I try to stop them, I'll get hurt, and they'll just keep going. They all have masks over their faces, so the only one I recognize is Peter because of his voice. We're at the chasm now, and they stop, so I do as well, still trying to keep an eye on them around the corner. I think they're trying to throw Tris over the edge of the chasm! I'm about to run out, but Tris pulls one of their masks off, and reveals Al, and I'm too shocked to move. Al? But he's one of our friends, he actually has a crush on Tris, what does he think he's doing? I see someone run in from the other end of the walkway around the chasm. It's Four. I back up, staying behind my wall, because I know Four's got it. He'll have a better chance than me. I hear him talking to Tris, checking on her, and hear footsteps running my direction, so I start running too, figuring it's her captors coming back through.

"Well, look who it is. The next target."

I stop running, and slowly turn around to see Peter and Al. Realizing the third is missing, I look over Peter's shoulder and see Drew laid out. Four got ahold of him.

"Peter, just stay where you are. You don't want to mess with me."

"Oh really? There are two of us, Jamie. Two of us, and one of you."

"Bet I can still take you. Look, just leave me alone. I won't say a word, just leave me out of it."

"Leave you out of it? Oh, you got yourself into this when you followed us down here."

He glances at Al, who nods and lumbers towards me, looking as if he almost doesn't want to do this, but he can't stop himself. Al throws a punch, but I dodge, ducking and punching him in the stomach. I try to kick him, but he catches my foot and throws me down. While I'm on the ground, I swipe out at his legs, my new signature move, and put him on the ground with me. Next second I'm on top of him, about to hit him, when I feel an excruciating pain in my left knee which was straight out behind me. I roll off of Al, holding my knee.

"As I said, two of us, one of you. Have fun getting back."

With that, Peter helps Al up, and they both run back to the dorms, but I just lay here. Peter stomped directly on my knee. Even if I did feel like getting up, I'm not sure that I can. What if this ends up like Edward, where I'm injured and useless so they have to throw me out? No, I can't let that happen.

After a while of laying there, I finally decide to try to stand. I can't put pressure on my left leg without falling. After who knows how long, I make it back to the dorms. I see Peter and Al, both asleep. Wait, no, Al isn't asleep. He's shaking, almost as if he's… crying. He's crying? He is crying?! After what he just tried to do to Tris and me, and he is the one crying? I'm so tempted to walk over and punch him in the face, but I remember that I can't walk all that well right now. I lay back and, despite the pain, go to sleep, so exhausted from what happened.

The next morning, I wake up and I'm the only one still here, everyone else having already gone to breakfast. I get up and limp my way to the dining hall. My knee isn't any better this morning, if anything, the pain is worse.

I walk in the door of the dining hall, and see Tris standing there in a sweater that's too big for her, yelling at Al. He drops his head, and starts toward the door, but looks up and sees me. His eyes are huge, and seeing him almost makes me cry, out of both fear and anger. He just drops his head again, and walks past me without saying a word. Christina, Will and Tris all see me walk in with a limp, and they come to help me out.

"What happened to you?"

I just shake my head, not wanting to talk about it. I'm still not sure it happened. I mean, my friend, Al, was part of Peter's plan to kill Tris, then get rid of me? I feel a hand on my shoulder, and it's Tris. She knows. She saw the way I looked at Al as he walked out. I notice she glances up, over my shoulder, and her eyes get big. I turn around, and nearly jump up, trying to get away from him. Peter was standing right behind us.

"Aw, what's the matter Jamie? You aren't afraid of me, are you? Little ol' me? And what happened to your leg, huh? You limp around like somebody stepped on it or something."

In this moment, I don't think I've ever been more afraid. Behind him, at the leaders' table, I see Eric stand up, watching Peter, then I hear someone behind Peter clear their throat. Peter turns around, and immediately scurries away, revealing Four to have been behind him. Four nods to me, but I just turn and get out of the hall as fast as I can, heading to the chasm. I know, that's where all the crap happened to me last night, but it's still a quiet, peaceful place. I sit down, tears rolling down my cheeks, and start to sing. That's all I can do right now, the only thing that I can do to calm myself. I start singing my favorite song, Black Parade, and just block myself off, hardly noticing the world around me.

Eric POV

I'm sitting here peacefully eating my breakfast, when I see a commotion at the initiate table. I look, and Jamie looks like she's backing up away from someone. I watch a little closer and see something in her eyes that I've never seen before, other than in the simulations. I see fear. When I realize it's Peter she's backing away from, I stand up, ready to go down there and beat the crap out of him, but I see Four stand and look at me, shaking his head. He just quietly makes his way over behind Peter and scares him. As soon as Peter is gone, Jamie runs, or limps more like, away. Why is she limping?

I get up to follow her out, but Four meets me at the door.

"Eric, what are you doing?"

"Checking on my initiate. Move."

"Really? Checking on your initiate? Okay, so if one of the guys, or one of the other girls even, was running out, injured and scared of Peter, would you follow them out? Try to find out what was wrong? No, you would just give a speech in the next class about needing to leave the other initiates alone."

"Okay, you can get at me all you want about Jamie, but what about you and Tris? That's not her sweater that she's wearing."

At the mention of Tris, I can see Four tense up, wanting to pounce on me, wanting to beat me, but he knows I'm right.

"Fine, but don't let the others see what's going on. They'll accuse you of favoritism, she won't get fair judgement in the final part of initiation."

I nod and rush past him. I've got to get to her, figure out what's going on. If someone hurt her, I don't know what I'll do, but, quite honestly, it'll probably end up being something stupid.

I don't know where she went, but I take a few turns, thinking maybe she'll be somewhere close. It's not like she could go far, she'd get tired of walking on that leg pretty soon.

When I'm getting close to the chasm, I hear a sound that I haven't heard in ages. I hear someone, a girl, singing. Here in Dauntless, we aren't exactly the tender hearted people, so we don't really sing all that often. I can't help but think that, maybe it's her.

I go to the edge of the chasm, and look around, finally seeing someone sitting against the rail on the other side. There she is.

I start to walk over there, and realize that the singing is getting louder. It is her.

"Whatcha singing?"

"Holy crap! Eric, don't do that! Geez, make some noise or something!"

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. Seriously though, that sounded good, what song was it?"

"Black Parade. One of my favorites. What are you doing here?"

"I saw what happened in the dining hall a while ago. Want to tell me what that was all about?"

"No, not really."

"Alright, if you won't tell me that, then tell me, what happened to your knee? You weren't limping around like that yesterday."

"It's nothing. I just fell on the rocks last night."

"The rocks? I've fallen on the rocks before, and gotten bruised, but I wasn't that bad off, and I know you aren't any more sensitive to pain than I am. What really happened?"

"Why do you have to know? Why do you have to know about everything? You ask about my results, you ask about this, what if I just don't want to tell you?"

"If you don't want to tell me, then I guess I'll just have to drive you nuts until I get it out of you. I just want to make sure that no one hurt you, and that no one ever will. Unless it's necessary for training, but that's not the point. You don't have to tell me who, you don't have to tell me how, just tell me, did someone do this to you?"

She doesn't answer, she just hangs her head. It's like she's afraid to say anything, afraid that something worse will happen.

"Let me see it."

"Why?"

"I just want to see if you need to go to the infirmary."

She nods and pulls her pant leg up, her face scrunched up in pain because her pants are tight around the knee. It's already swollen, and as soon as she gets her pant leg past it, it swells even more. It's bruised all over, and swollen like crazy. There are lumps and divetts in places there shouldn't be, telling me that something in there is broken in some way or another.

"Oh yeah, you need to go to the infirmary."

She shakes her head.

"You need to."

"What if they say it can't be fixed and I'm thrown out like Edward was? If I can't walk on my leg, then I'm useless here."

"I'll take you there myself, and I promise I'll make sure that doesn't happen. You're not going to be thrown out. I'm not sure I could stand it around here without you. I'd get bored and have to go back to entertaining myself by making fun of the other initiates again. There are only so many insults I can come up with."

She laughs just a little, which was my intention. She's upset, she's in pain, she needs to laugh.

"Okay fine, I'll go, but only because I know you'll drive me insane until I do."

She tries to pull herself up with the rail, but I still don't want to make her walk all the way to the infirmary.

"You're about to hate me."

"Wh- Eric, you better put me down."

"I am not going to make you walk all the way there, so shut up and quit trying to hit me."

She yells at me all the way to the infirmary, and still gives me the death stare when I put her down on one of the beds.

I leave her and go to find someone who can check her out. I find one that I recognize and drag him over there.

"Can I borrow you for a minute?"

"Sure, what's up?"

I don't even say anything, I just point to her knee.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

He has her lay back, and try to straighten her knee. It pains her, but she does it. He asks me to watch, maybe hold her down, which confuses me at first, but as soon as he puts his hand on her knee, she tries to strangle him. From then on, I had a good hold on her arms.

"Okay, this is pretty messed up. It looks like something crushed your knee. Did anything land on it?"

"Yeah, but that's not important. What's going to happen?"

"Well, your knee cap is broken into three pieces. Whatever landed on it was either really heavy, or had a lot of force behind it. We can mend it, but recovery is going to be painful and very long. You won't be up and fighting for months."

"Okay, but I will be able to fight again at some point though, right?"

"Well, yes, but you'll have to be careful. You'll have to guard that leg and you'll need to keep it on the ground. Your full out sparring will turn into boxing. You won't be able to kick, or anything like that."

"Okay, thank you. What do you have to do to fix it?"

"Just a surgery. Shouldn't take more than a few hours."

"When can it be done?"
"Umm… I would have to see when someone is available to do it."

I look him in the eye with the hardest stare I have.

"She said, when can it be done?"

His eyes grow to the size of dinner plates.

"You know what, I think one of our surgeons has an opening this afternoon, that work?"
"Sure."

The guy runs off, I'm assuming to tell his surgeon that he no longer has the day off. I turn to look back at Jamie, who is trying not to laugh.

"Okay, I know you want me fixed, but you didn't have to scare him to death."

"And yet, you're laughing."

"Fine, it was kind of funny."

"You still aren't going to tell me what happened, are you?"

"If I tell you, I know you won't just leave it be. You'll go try to fix things, and though I don't mind it, it's cool to know you're trying to protect me, but this time it might cause me more problems."

I nod, wanting to disagree, but she is right. If I figure out who did this, it won't be pretty.

"Actually, Eric, can you tell me something?"
"Uh, sure."

"Why are you like that with me? Everyone else is afraid of you. If this happened to anyone else, you wouldn't have carried them to the infirmary, you would've made them walk it off. You wouldn't be so worried about what's going on, about who did it, you would just go in the next morning saying, 'Look guys, you only fight in class, stop trying to kill each other.' Why do you treat me so differently than you do the others?"

"I… I don't really have a good answer for that. I mean, I guess I kind of treated you differently from the start. Even most of the Dauntless born are afraid of me. If anyone else had smarted off to me before jumping into that net, I would've made their lives miserable, but you weren't afraid. You seemed to know, even before you actually got to know me well, you seemed to have an understanding that I'm still a person, just like everybody else. I'm not a monster, I can be treated like a person, just like I can treat others like people. I just don't very often, because I don't like that many people."

"I thought you said you didn't have a good answer."

"Hey, I was being nice for a change, don't push it too far."

"I'm just saying, that was a pretty good answer."

While we're sitting there, I see the doctor guy come back out, still looking a little wide eyed.

"Eric! We have someone on the way to help her, but you are needed at the chasm."

"What? Why?"

"Max didn't say-"

"Wait, Max?"

"Yeah. I don't know what's going on, but when the big guy calls, I'd say it's pretty urgent. He said he needed you down there as soon as possible, and try to grab Four on your way."

"Okay, tell her where I've gone. Thanks."

I run out of the infirmary, to Four's apartment.

"Four! You in there?"

He opens the door, looking confused.

"What are you doing here?"
"Max called. He needs us both down at the chasm, ASAP."

"What happened?"
"I don't know, but if he needs us both, my bet is it has something to do with one of the initiates."

Four and I pick up the pace, getting to the chasm and seeing Max and few of the leaders standing at the edge, looking down.

"What happened?"

"Someone jumped. I think it's one of the initiates."

By now, a few people have started to show up. I guess they saw me and Four running and followed. We pull the kid up, and once he gets within view, I can't say I'm surprised. It's Al, the kid that hangs out with Jamie and her little group. He saw the rankings, he knew he wasn't going to make it anyway. Also, I talked to Four earlier this morning and he told me what Al, Drew and Peter did to Tris last night. With what he did to his friend, that probably took him over the edge.

As we're pulling Al up, I look over my shoulder and see Tris, close to tears. Really? After what he just did to her, and she's crying over him? Well, I guess now, right in the middle of initiation, we have a funeral to plan for.