A/N: IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ! This chapter is written by me (labelma) because 64 is not here. I have the next few chapters planned out, which will all be written by me.
Avigayil:
"Sit here until your name is called, when you will walk through these doors." Four says, in a monotone voice, right before he, and Tris disappear behind a gray door.
We all scramble for seats in the narrow hallway. I sit with Dovid on my right and Shahar on my left, prodding me, and trying to bug me about Dovid. I slap her arm and she finally stops.
Right across from me, Yaakov sits down, and Shmuel is about to sit down before Rochel swoops in and takes the seat. Shmuel huffs, slightly angry that his seat was taken, and walks around to the seat on the other side of Yaakov.
Rochel scoots her seat closer to Yaakov so that their shoulders are touching,
"My name is Rochel, what's yours?"
"Yaakov."
"Can I call you Ginger?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Yaakov gives her a look that would sour milk
"Okay then, Yaakov it is. So what do you think is behind those doors?"
"I don't know."
"You certainly don't talk a lot."
"Or something is really bothering me right now."
"Oh that sucks." Rochel continues, not seeing what Yaakov is getting at. "Why don't we go for some cake or something tonight, to get to know each other?"
"Sorry, I can't be there."
"How about tomorrow?"
"I don't want to go out with you." Yaakov says coldly. This is not the brother I know. Rochel dejectedly scoots her chair farther away from Yaakov, leaving me, and half the room completely confused. Rochel is gorgeous, and her long black hair makes me jealous. In the 16 years I have known Yaakov he has never turned down a pretty girl. I will have to talk to him about it.
"Arye." Tris says, and a tall lanky boy makes his way towards the room. It is thirty minutes before the next name is called,
"Shoshie."
I continue chatting, and spacing off, until finally I hear
"Avigayil"
I slowly walk towards the door. On one hand I am extremely curious as to what is behind the doors; but on the other hand, there is a heavy feeling of dread that is weighing down on me, and a rabid squirrel in my stomach.
As I approach the door, Tris motions for me to walk inside.
"Please sit down." She says, while pointing at a metal chair that looks like a dentist's chair, but much less comfortable. Tris's words are somewhat cheery but they are laced with something I can't put my finger on. Depression, anxiety, fear, or anger maybe?
I do as I am told, and I find that the chair is just as uncomfortable as it looked in the first place.
"Ummmmm, explain please?" I ask. My voice quivers just a little.
"I'm that you have heard the term 'face your fears' we take this literally. This is a simulation that will teach you how to control your emotions in the middle of a frightening situation." Four says, in a monotone voice. He then picks up a very large needle that makes my face pale.
"I don't remember a large needle during the aptitude test." I say, trying to sound brave, although it doesn't come out right. Tris laughs. It is clearly fake, and forced, but it does help.
"We use a more advanced version. You don't have to wear any wires, or anything, although we will wear wires in order to see what's going on inside your head." Tris says, still in that fake cheery voice. "Now if you don't mind, Four will inject you, and the serum will go into effect in 60 seconds."
Of course I mind, but anyone with a brain can see this isn't a choice. The needle pricks my neck, sending an ache throughout my body.
"You will stay in the simulation until you find a way to calm down, and lower your heart-rate to average, and control your breathing." Four says, still monotone.
My heart is already beating faster than average, and I am sweating a lot. Black dots begin to appear, and Tris says,
"Good luck, and be brave. The first time is the hardest." As my vision blurs. The last thing I see is Tris's cheery exterior melt into a tired frown.
My eyes open and I am in a beautiful forest, not really the site I would expect for a horrible fear. I turn to see a raspberry bush, with large ripe berries, and I recall fond memories of picking raspberries with my brother from the bush behind our house. I'm not sure why this is a fear. I'm not afraid, just a little nostalgic. I pick a berry, and right as I am about to pop it into my mouth, something dark drops onto my hand. It looks like a flat, round spider, and I begin to realize how this is a fear. Another tick crawls onto my hand, and before I can react, the small black bugs begin to come at me from everywhere. They swarm my body. I thought it was hard to get a regular tick off of you, even when you haven't been bitten, but it's almost like they were super glued to my body. I try to rub them off, which does not work at all; in fact it just pushes them closer to my skin. I barely register the fact that I am screaming, and crying and wiggling, trying to get the ticks off of me. I can feel their tiny legs crawling all over me, and I let my brain succumb to the fear, and panic. I am hyperventilating, and my head hurts so badly, that it is as if someone took a sledgehammer and is repeatedly knocking it full force against my head.
After a few minutes of panicking, I begin to calm just a little, but I am still breathing heavily, and I'm still consumed with fear. Finally I feel the ticks bite into my flesh, and begin to suck my blood, and that is what brings me to my senses.
I have never been bitten by a tick before, but I know that when they bite, they release a chemical that numbs the nerves. I shouldn't be able to even feel them on my body, much less feel them bite me. This is all a simulation, it isn't real. The ticks are not real, the forest is not real, the raspberries are not real, and this is all in my head.
It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.
I repeat in my head so many times I lose count. My head stops hurting, and I can feel my pulse throughout my body. I take three deep breaths, and by the time I exhale for the third time, my eyes are open and I am back in the simulation room, with Four and Tris staring at me, with just a little bit of shock, although I could be imagining it. I should probably feel scared, or panicked, but instead I feel angry, and my rage is increasing by the second. Eventually it builds up, and breaks my calm dam.
"Well what the fuck was the point of that?!" I yell
Tris is taken aback, although Four just narrows his eyes.
"The point is to get you to control your-" he starts before I interrupt him,
"Yeah, yeah I got that. It just seems like a load of bullshit to me. I'm sure there is another way you can teach us to control our emotions but no. You choose to torture us instead. You two are just a couple of sadistic, evil bags of horse shit." I don't even know what I'm saying; I am just so caught up in my rage that it just exploded from my mouth. I expect Four to continue his calm approach, but instead Tris slaps me in the face. I am to shocked to say anything, but she talks instead,
"You actually think we enjoy this?! You think we enjoy putting a bunch of KIDS through this?! We both had to go through this; we know what it's like. We know that it's absolute hell! And here you come, with the nerve to say that we enjoy this! Ha! This is our job, it's not like we have a choice whether to do this or not. We have our reasons, and not one of them has to do with a sadistic desire to watch children face their worst fears!" she says almost on the brink of lunacy. I get up; wanting to leave the room as fast as I can, but I can't just let her scream at me, and not scream back.
"Okay fine, then maybe you don't necessarily enjoy doing this to us, but I don't think that you have a right to slap me, and scream at me, after putting me through hell."
Tris almost lunges at me, but Four grabs her waist with one arm and gingerly touches her hair with his other hand trying to calm her down. It doesn't work. He mouths for me to go, which I do, but not before I flick my middle finger up at them.
Maybe my anger is misplaced. It probably is, I'm just so angry at the world. I had to take it out on someone. It probably wasn't smart to take it out on a woman who can jeopardize my future in Dauntless. I guess I can apologize tomorrow.
I walk down the hallway that leads straight to the dorms. As soon as I get inside, Marge leaps into my arms. She was the only one of my friends to go before me, and I'm guessing her experience was just as bad, if not worse than mine.
"That was so freaky, I didn't stop crying for 20 minutes." She says. Her voice is still shaky.
"Really? The only emotion I had after coming out of that was extreme rage. I took it out on Tris, I might have just screwed up my future."
"Oh, you're screwed unless you apologize. You seriously weren't even a little scared?"
"I was during the simulation, but I mean, it wasn't real you know. I just kinda realized that, and it made me feel better."
"Really? It felt so real to me. I didn't even realize it was a simulation, I was so scared."
"Mmm" I grunt. I go to sit down on my bed, and I space out for a few minutes. I am startled back into reality when my brother comes in. His face is pale, but other than that, he seems fine.
"Avi, are you okay? I heard a lot of screaming and cussing before I was called in."
"I'm fine, I was just angry."
"That's good. Umm, I need to talk to you about something. In private."
A/N: dun dun dun duuuunnnn. If you can figure out what Yaakov needs to talk about, then you will get a prize, which I haven't figured out yet. If you were paying attention, I have been dropping hints since the beginning of the story, one of you should have guessed by now. I almost gave myself a panic attack writing this, because I really am afraid of ticks. Creepy little devil bitches. Anyways, the next chapter will be Tris's point of view. Maybe you will see a little bit into the reason that Four got drunk in the original book.