Tobias gathers all of the initiates, transfer and Dauntless born alike, in the commissary on the morning of the first day of Stage Three. He leads us into the Pit and up through the glass ceiling, rickety stairs creaking from our weight. In the daylight I can see that all the buildings around us are abandoned and crumbling down, leaving their innards exposed to the elements and our eyes.
My brother keeps going, herding us through the large glass room and through a door that's been painted to match the wall. The room beyond is massive and covered in bright graffiti, some of it depicting blurry individuals managing great feats of bravery and some of it illegible scrawl. Exposed pipes wind over the walls and through the ceiling and floor. Old-fashioned fluorescent bulbs try to light the dank space, but they don't quite succeed.
"This is a different kind of simulation," he says. "We call it the Fear Landscape. It's disabled right now, so this isn't how it'll look the next time you see it. Through the last stage, the computers have compiled and stored information on your worst fears. The Fear Landscape accesses that data and presents you with a series of physical obstacles. Some of the fears you see will be ones you've previously experienced in Stage Two; some will be brand new. The difference is that you will be aware that this is a simulation.
"To beat the Landscape, you have to beat your fears. You can do this in two ways: you either find a way to calm down, to lower your heartbeat and your breathing until you fool the system into registering a normal pace, or you can face your fear, which will force the simulation to move on. One way to face a fear of drowning is to swim deeper.
"Tomorrow afternoon, you'll each be subjected to the simulation in front of a panel of Dauntless leaders. The faster you face them, the better your score. That will be the test to determine your final rankings for Stage Three. I suggest you take the next twenty-four hours to consider what will show up."
"How many fears are we going to face?" Jack, the Dauntless born that Alice cut, asks.
"How many do you have?"
"That's why they call you Four, isn't it?" I ask my brother. "Because you only had to face four fears?"
He and I are sitting on the roof of Dauntless HQ on the same concrete platform I jumped from on Choosing Day. I'm wearing his spare jacket against the night chill, but I'm still shivering. Tobias has a cigarette between his fingers; he lit it when we sat down, but he hasn't sipped from it, only watched it burn out.
"Yeah," he says quietly.
"Is – is Marcus…"
"Yeah, Marcus is still one of mine."
"Sometimes I think we'll never get away from him."
"We're away from him now," he says. "He's still in our heads and he may always be, but he's gone."
"No," I whisper, "he's not."
Cate is waiting for us outside of the Fear Landscape the next morning. When it seems like everyone has arrived, she starts talking.
"Twelve years ago I was afraid of heights, spiders, snakes, failure, being lonely, choking to death, public humiliation, needles, small spaces, burning to death, and the dark. Most of you will have ten to fifteen fears in your Landscape; that's average," she pauses. "You won't find out your number today. The Landscape has been set up to run each of you through one of my fears. This is just so you can get a feel for what the simulation is like. When you face your own fears, it will be more traumatizing.
"For the sake of time and my own sanity, I'm going to guide each of you through conquering a fear, but the simulation won't move on until I decide that you've got a firm grasp on what's happening. Everybody clear?"
We all nod our heads.
"Let's start with the first in ranks then. C'mon, Olivia."
When Cate and I step into the Landscape room, it's no longer the empty, bare brick room that Tobias introduced us to the day before. We're standing in a clearing several yards wide, but completely surrounded by dense, black trees. A ferocious wind pushes at our backs. The grass under my feet is dry and brittle, and the air stinks of smoke. The wind suddenly slows, and before my ears can hear it, lightning has stuck the ground in front of me. It smells like ozone, and ashes, and there are flames burning up the grass.
I look back at Cate; she's worrying her lip between her teeth, watching the flames with a concentration so heavy an elephant could envy it. I look back at the fire, back at Cate.
"I don't understand," I tell her. "I thought this was supposed to expose some of our fear."
"Maybe you're not afraid of burning to death," she says. "But I am."
"But I don't even feel like it's real. It feels like...it's like a scene from a book that forms in my head: I know what it looks like, and how it's supposed to feel and smell, but I know it's not real. I'm not afraid."
"So prove to the simulation you're not afraid," she says. "Show it you know it's not real."
I look back at the fire and take a step forward, then another. When I'm standing in the middle of the fire, cool flams licking the tips of my fingers, I look back at Cate and shrug. She heaves a put-upon sigh, and slowly follows me into the fire.
The image of the field and the trees and the fire fade, melt to the ground so that the only thing left is the bare brick, and exposed pipes, and dankness of the Landscape room. Cate looks relieved to be out of the fire, and motions me to the door. When I swing it open, the rest of the initiates, my brother, and Max are all waiting. I pause in the doorway, startled, but Cate pushes past me, gulping air like a new babe from the womb.
"You okay?" my brother asks.
"I'm fine," I say slowly. "Cate's the one who had to face her own fear."
"Cate will be fine," he says confidently. "How did you do?"
"She did perfect," Cate says between inhales. "She knew how to beat it, didn't even hesitate."
"It didn't feel real," I mumble, "like when you read a book, you know?"
"No, not really," he sighs. "Who's next?"
I'm dismissed from the group as soon as Cate and Az have closed the door behind themselves. I don't go far, just down into the pit, but it takes forty-five minutes for Az to follow me. She's pale, and winded from her trip down the rickety stairs, like she was running from something. She wipes her palms against her shirt, and insists that we head to the commissary for something to drink.
"What did you get?" I ask as we pass the tunnel to the chasm.
"Choking to death," she says. "You?"
"Burning to death."
"What an exciting bunch we are. I want a nap."
"I don't think we have time for food and a nap," I tell her. "We have to face the judges this afternoon."
"I don't want to talk about it," she says somewhat cheerfully, and widens her step until she's ahead of me.
I follow her through the food line, though the only thing I pick up is a bowl of banana pudding, and sit with her in a quiet corner. Tamsin, then Harper, then Alice and Jack and Connor file in after us. No one wants to say anything to each other.
I head back to the transfers' room alone and leave everyone else in the Pit. My footsteps echo off the empty tunnel walls. I watch my boots and let my fingertips go numb as I let them glide along the wall. The room I share with the others is actually tidy for once, beds somewhat made and clothes and belongings stashed away under mattresses and in the provided dressers. I pull out a new tank top and a new pair of socks; it may be the leftover Abnegation in me that wants to be presentable to the rest of Dauntless, but I do feel better after I change. I'm re-lacing my boots when someone knocks on the door.
"It's time," Eric says without his usual malicious glee.
I nod.
"The others are already on their way up. You're brother noticed you were missing."
I stand from my bed and thread my fingers through my hair, tugging the wavy strands into a messy braid. I look at my bed, and at Az's, and Harper's. I don't know what I'll do if I'm cut.
"Get a move on," he says, again, almost dully.
I head towards the door.
"Can you do me a favor?" I ask as I walk through the doorway.
"What?" he turns to follow me.
"There's a book under my mattress. Will you make sure Four gets it if I don't make it through?"
"You're going through a simulation, not playing Blanks and Bullets," he says roughly.
"So I'm going to be allowed to gather my things and say goodbye before I'm kicked out on my ass?"
His silence is my answer.
"That's what I thought."
There's no one to pass on our journey from the transfer's room through the Pit and up the stairs to the glass floor. It seems like every member of Dauntless has been shoved into the very limited space around the Landscape room. The other initiates stand at the front and when I'm spotted, I'm quickly shepherded to the front. At the last minute, Eric lays a hand on my shoulder and murmurs 'good luck' in my ear, but when I look back, he's already faded into the crowd.
When I'm pushed through the rest of the crowd and in with the other transfers, I feel Az take my hand. Her other hand is holding Harper's. Max puts his hands up in the air, and slowly everyone in the room falls silent, waiting for the introduction of our final test.
"As always," Max says, "our transfer initiates will go first by order of their current ranks."
That makes me first.
I see my brother clench his hands, then smooth them over his thighs; he's more scared for me than I am. I listen as Max talks about who's judging and how we'll be judged, but it's all nonsense to me: if I pass, I pass. When he's finally done talking, he motions for me to step to the door. Eric injects me with the simulation serum, just like he did through the last stage, but instead of going under, I walk through a door.
I'm standing in my house in Abnegation. Everything has a hazy grey quality to it, and it takes me a moment to realize that that's how my memories really are: hazy and dull. The sink is running and there are several dirty dishes stacked on the counter. In the distance my ears register the closing of a car door, and I realize what fear this must be. I look down at myself. I'm still wearing my Dauntless black clothes, and I know nothing will enrage my father further.
I feel my heart rate spike in my chest, feel my breathing get heavier. Marcus slams through the front door, already in a rage. I hear a photo frame from the wall hit the floor and shatter.
So this is it, I think, my first fear is Marcus in a screaming fit. He came home like this the night of Tobias's Choosing Ceremony.
He appears in the kitchen doorway, face disfigured and fists already clenched. He sees me in my Dauntless black and he roars. I take a deep breath, and two steps to the storage closet in the corner. When she was alive, my mother insisted on keeping a fire axe there for safety after there was a widespread fire two neighborhoods over. It's still there when I open the door. Marcus roars again when he sees it in my hands, and charges at me.
Calmly I bring the axe up over my head and bury it in the curve of his neck. Blood sprays, but it doesn't bother me, and when he keeps coming, I swing again. Nothing has felt so good in a long, long time.
I'm standing in front of Dauntless headquarters, on the platform where we first jumped from the train as initiates. The sun is hot on my back but not uncomfortable, and I can feel the vibrations of an oncoming train through my boots. To my right, I can see the train coming from the direction of the Hub, but when I try to move, I realize my foot is stuck between a railroad tie and the metal brace that sits on top of it. I try and pull my leg away; I even unlace my boot and try to leave my shoe behind, but it's no use. I'm going to be run over.
When I've finally exhausted my options of removing my foot from his trap, I sit down and I wait.
It's dark and I can hear water rushing.
There are hands all over me, pulling and pushing and keeping me from screaming. My heart is trying to crawl up my throat. I'm swaying back and forth with the movement of the people carrying me. My body hurts, my heat hurts. Just like before, there is no real way out of this situation, and I doubt my brother and Eric will be coming to my rescue. Not this time.
I'm not giving any kind of protest, and if that shocks my subconscious it doesn't affect the simulation, so when they step out onto the metal grated walkway above the chasm, there isn't anything I do to stop them. They haul me out into the middle and hoist me up. I take a deep breath, and look the one at my ankles in in the eye. They toss me over.
This time I don't reach out for the rail.
The space that forms around me is dark, damp. There's a pounding echoing through my head, but there's no discernable rhythm. A bright light starts to blink in and out of existence. A shape in front of me fritzes in and out before collapsing to the ground, twitching like a body that hasn't realized it's dead yet. My head swims, and the room spins, and I hit my knees and vomit.
When I wake up, I'm staring up at the ceiling of the infirmary again. There's an IV drip in my arm and my mouth tastes like death and disease. The bag hanging on the other end of the line is full of light blue liquid that shimmers when I turn my head. My skin is hot and I don't want anything other than a cold shower.
"He- hello?" I croak.
The curtain pulled between my bed and the rest of the room twitches then pulls away. My brother stands there looking exhausted and rumpled, shirt wrinkled and dark bags underlining his eyes. He places his hand on my head and smoothes my hair back.
"What happened?" I whisper.
"You had an allergic reaction to the simulation serum," Tobias whispers back. "We had to shut the sim down and drag you out. You scared the shit out me, Olivia."
"I'm sorry."
I close my eyes and lean into his touch.
"Did I pass?" I ask, afraid to open my eyes and see his reaction.
Tobias chuckles, deep and relieved in his throat, and when I look at him his smile is blinding. He pulls the blankets up to my shoulders and kisses me on the forehead.
"You passed," he says. "First in your class."
"Well, shit," I yawn.
"Yeah," he says. "And," he moves away from my bedside and turns to pick something up. He places a small black box on my lap, "someone left this for you last night."
I have to strain to pull myself into a sitting position, and my brother takes pity on my and helps, pushing my shoulders forward. The box is about the size of my palm, and unadorned. When I pop the top off, Tobias standing over my shoulder, a black bracelet falls out. It's tiny, like it was made to fit my wrist, and made of braided leather. There's a single gem nestled in the middle of the strands that fades from yellow to orange to red when I turn it in the light.
"Who left it?" I ask.
Tobias shrugs.
"Do you have any clue?"
"No," I say. "But I like it."
"It's pretty," he agrees.
"Put it on for me?" I ask, holding it and my right wrist out to him.
He takes it from he and carefully ties the ends together, making sure they're secure before dropping his hands away.
"Congratulations, Olivia."