The rest of the Leaders departed the room save for Max and Eric. Tris stood uncomfortably, awaiting directions for what exactly she was supposed to do now. The pair exchanged a few more quiet words before Max turned to Tris.
"Eric is overseeing Initiation this year, more or less. Though you'll be getting your actual training from Lauren here. They'll get you set up and settled in," Max said. He clapped a hand on Tris' shoulder, startling her. He took in her wide eyes and pulled his hand back.
"Abnegation stiffness," he said with a chuckle. "I wish you luck with that. I'd say try to get over it quick, but I suspect that won't help."
With that, Max left. Tris looked now to Eric and Lauren - who had also remained in the room - for direction. Lauren pushed off from the wall and gestured with two fingers for Tris to approach. "C'mere, transfer," she said. It wasn't an unpleasant tone, just direct.
Tris wound around the table. She folded her hands in front of her, her nerves bubbling once again in her stomach. "Hi," she said quietly.
Lauren extended a hand. "To formally introduce myself, I'm Lauren," she said. Tris looked at her hand. Slowly she unfolded her hands and reached out to mirror the young woman. Lauren took her hand and shook it.
"Sorry, like Max said, you're gonna have to get used to things being different in Dauntless. Down to how we say hello," she explained. Again, not unkind. Just matter of fact. Tris let her hand drop back down to her side.
Lauren looked over her shoulder. Eric had followed behind quietly, his arms crossed over his chest. "What do you want me to do with her as far as living quarters? I think there's a bunk available, but it's not going to be fun for her," she asked.
Eric lifted one shoulder. "The point isn't to be fun. Tris wants to be Dauntless. She gets the whole experience. We don't coddle traitors," he said. When Lauren leveled a frown at him he cleared his throat and corrected himself. " Transfers ."
A wry smile twisted Lauren's lips. "Agreed," she said. She looked once more at Tris. "Ready to meet the others, then? Any questions so far?"
"Only about a thousand," Tris admitted. Lauren laughed and clapped a hand on Tris' shoulder to nudge her to the door.
"Let's see how many I can answer by the time we get downstairs."
Tris' head was spinning by the time that Lauren and Eric left the dorm. A lot of the details about Initiation needed some digesting to comprehend - just exactly what would conquering her fears made incarnate mean? - and even the basics were overwhelming as compared to the taste of Abnegation Initiation she had received.
Dauntless lived together in dormitories and not even in ones separated by gender. Their group of Initiates at least weren't with any full-fledged Dauntless members, but that was where the relief ended. The dorms were still incredibly open in ways that Tris did not want to process. She was pointed to the last available bunk above a surly looking girl who took one look at Tris and scoffed.
The introductions that Lauren oversaw were brief. There was another round of handshakes where several of the Dauntless-borns tried their hardest to crush her hand in a deliberate fashion. She flinched at the first one and then fought back for the others. Whether she won or not remained to be seen. The lights in the room clicked to a dimmer setting automatically and that was the cue for the trainers to depart.
"Training gym five tomorrow morning. Six thirty. Don't be late," Lauren said as her final parting words. Tris looked at the clock on the wall and winced. The soft blue numbers had just ticked to eleven PM. If this had been a school night, she would have been asleep ages ago and that was for an eight AM class. Six thirty would be miserable.
And then the trainer was gone, leaving Tris among the Dauntless-borns. She expected the same idle curiosity or perhaps open hostility as she had seen from the Leaders upstairs. Instead, after some brief questions confirming she really was an Abnegation and she really had chosen to come here of all factions, Tris was more or less ignored in favor of the group prepping for sleep.
The dorm had some open space near the dressers and trunks that had already been divided among the other Initiates. Tris watched quietly from her spot next to her bed until she identified a trunk that seemed to be untouched. Swallowing her nerves as best that she could, Tris moved over to it and tugged the lid open.
Her heart fell when she realized that it was empty. Looking over her shoulder at the others she could see the others had identical looking stacks of basic clothes. T-shirts, pants, and under things presumably in each initiate's size. Something that she had missed by not having arrived at the same time as the others.
She kicked off her sneakers and tucked them inside of her empty trunk. Her mouth refused to open and she didn't end up asking where the others had gotten their clothes. Instead, Tris closed the trunk and wound her way back to the bunk beds.
"Hey, Stiff." Tris bit her lip and debated whether she wanted to respond. She set her shoulders, summoned what would hopefully resemble a tough expression, and turned towards the sound.
"Sorry," they immediately apologized. It was the surly looking girl who had rolled her eyes when getting introduced. "That was rude. It's Tris, right?"
Tris nodded slowly. She wasn't stupid. Spending years in the same school as the other factions she knew that people would readily pretend to apologize for mocking "Stiffs" - Abnegations - before going right back to it. "Yeah. And you're Lynn?" Tris responded in kind.
The girl nodded. She had a bundle of clothes in one hand and had already changed into an oversized t-shirt and shorts. "You're gonna stand out if you stay in that dress," Lynn said simply. "Here. Something to wear until you get to requisitions."
She tossed the bundle to Tris who fumbled and caught it just before it hit the ground. It was another t-shirt and some jogging pants. Comfortable enough to sleep in and probably good enough to get through tomorrow's first hurdles of Initiation.
Tris blinked. "Thanks," she said honestly.
Lynn shrugged. "No problem. Good luck without a toothbrush though. That sucks," she replied cheerfully. She headed towards the doorway that many of the others had filtered in and out of - the bathroom, presumably.
Actually changing into the clothes was an uncomfortable moment, but Tris dragged herself through it. The pants had been easy to slip on under the dress first. She managed to face the wall and shrug off her grey, formless dress quickly enough before getting the t-shirt on. Then it was just a short walk back to the truck to fold away the dress. Her face was bright red regardless. No one seemed to care.
Before she could worry too much more about anything else, Tris had hauled herself onto her bunk and after barely a minute of fiddling with the sheet over her she had fallen asleep.
Tris' first day of Initiation was off to a great start. She had been shaken awake by Lynn rolling - literally rolling - off of the bed to get up. When Tris had rubbed the sleep from her eyes she had found that the lights had already kicked back to full brightness. Another minute of blearily remembering that this was certainly not a weird dream left Tris to finally realize that the clock on the wall was reading ten past six.
That left her about twenty minutes to get ready with her non-existent toiletries, get some food, and then find her way to wherever the gymnasium was supposed to be. The other initiates were chatting excitedly or getting ready next to their things. Once again, no one was paying any kind of attention to the transfer.
Tris slid off of her bunk and dipped into the bathroom. She kept one eye out for Lynn since the girl had shown her at least a little bit of kindness yesterday. Apparently she had disappeared as soon as she had gotten up. She didn't need much to get ready; her head was shaved and she wasn't lingering by the mirrors like some of the others doing makeup.
Leaving the bathroom, Tris got her sneakers and found herself lingering at the doorway to the dorm. She peeked into the hall, her teeth worrying at her lip. When she had been brought here by Lauren last night she certainly hadn't remembered their exact path, never mind the fact that going back to the conference room or even the motor pool would be precisely useless right now.
"Hey, Stiff, you're blocking the door," someone said. They slapped a hand on her back in a way that might have been friendly. Tris didn't have a good judge of what was friendly or not here. She jumped and pressed herself flat against the doorframe to try and get out of the way.
"Sorry," Tris insisted. "I'm just looking for-"
The boy who had spoken rolled his eyes. Tris thought his name might have been Callum. Something like that. "You don't know what you're looking for. Just move out of the way and try to keep up."
Tris' mouth pressed in a frown but she kept herself from retorting. Callum and two others passed by her, turning confidently to the left. There was a fifty-fifty shot that they were also hungry like she was or that they were going to the gymnasium directly. Either way, Tris decided to follow them. They didn't notice or didn't care that she was shadowing behind them, their conversation turning instead to excited discussions about what phase one would be like.
"They gotta get to firearms first, right?" one of the girls said excitedly.
Callum swatted her arm, a grin on his face. "Keep dreaming, Layla. If you wanted to shoot a gun you should have gone to the range before now. It's not like your dad doesn't have enough of them. Doesn't he collect rifles?" he said with a laugh.
She scoffed and swatted him right back. "Not all of us have cousins who like to break the no-guns-for-dependents rules," she retorted. Callum shrugged and the other initiate joined in, too.
"Zeke may or may not have bent that rule a little with me," he admitted, "but it'll definitely be different to actually, you know, be taught how to use 'em instead of just getting the 'point and squeeze' instructions."
Tris edged a little closer, her curiosity about what may be coming up today outweighing the feeling of being an outsider. "We're going to get to use guns?" she blurted out.
Three sets of eyes looked back at her. "Yeah, 'course we are," Layla replied like it was obvious. And maybe it was. "If we don't train with them, we're gonna be pretty shit Dauntless." Tris blinked at how casually she swore on top of how matter of fact her response was overall.
"Oh." There wasn't much else to say to that.
They returned to their conversation, now diving into deeper details about what kind of shooting techniques they might get exposed to. Tris kept her mouth shut while she listened. The finer points went over her head, but a small part of her bubbled with excitement the more that they said. This was exactly what she was missing yesterday at the Hub. Questions and new, extreme parts of a faction to learn.
They ended up at a large cafeteria with lines of tables. Across one whole wall was a row of serving tables that opened into a massive kitchen. It was perhaps twice the size of the kitchen that Tris had been to in order to pick up food boxes to distribute with her mother. Her mouth watered when she spotted the section that had breakfast prepped and steaming.
"Time check?" The boy whose name Tris didn't know pointed to a clock over the door they had just passed through. It was just barely before six thirty, their deadline to be in the training gym.
"Shit," Callum sighed. "Was really looking forward to eggs today."
Tris spotted a separate section of food, all cold as opposed to the eggs and sausage that peeked out from atop the silver serving trays. What caught her attention most was the fruit bowl and some pastry. They screamed portable to her. The other three had scattered, though Tris kept an eye on Callum's bright red hair. She still didn't know how to get to the gym from here.
The cold station had plates and bowls stacked in neat order which Tris ignored. She glanced through the fruit until she decided on an apple and a small packet of mixed nuts. That was all that she had time to consider. The three initiates she had followed into the cafeteria had suddenly regrouped at the door, and she had to rush through the tables to catch back up with them.
It only took a few twists and turns through Dauntless' halls to end up in a hallway with widely spaced rolling doors. Each was spray painted with a letter and number. All of them were closed except for one labelled "T-5".
She had only finished half of her apple but she pitched the rest into the trash can that was by the front when they walked in. The others had taken similar small bites and had finished along the way. Tris pocketed her remaining nuts and jogged with the others to join the semi-circle of initiates that were surrounding the trainer.
"Nice of you four to join us," Lauren called from deeper inside the gym. Her voice echoed slightly in the open room. "Close enough to on time, but let's do a little better next time, eh?" Once everyone was gathered she clapped her hands together firmly.
"Alright, Initiates," she said loudly. "Are you ready to begin?"