Disclaimer: I do not own Divergent, any of the characters or any of the dialogue that comes directly from the text.
Chapter 28
As we get ready, I can't help but notice a change in the atmosphere. The stress of what today will bring weighing heavy in the air. The playfulness of our easy morning is long gone.
I meet Tris at the door as she finishes buckling her boots.
"You ready?" I ask, pulling my arm through the sleeve of my jacket.
She stands and takes a deep breath. Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she looks nervous as she nods in response.
"You've got this. You'll be fine," I say, rubbing her arms up and down lightly. She doesn't look convinced.
"You can do this," I say earnestly, looking her directly in the eye. "I'll be right there, just outside the room. Everything will be fine."
"Okay."
I lean down and press my lips lightly against hers. She takes me by surprised by wrapping her arms around my neck and deepening the kiss. We stumble backwards together, her back now pressed against the door. We continue to kiss, Tris setting the pace. When we break apart, I keep my forehead pressed against hers.
"I can do this," she says.
"You can do this."
I feel her nod against my forehead.
"Time to go."
I open the door and look down both sides of the hallway. Finding it empty, I motion for Tris to follow me out. The door latches behind us and we take a few steps hand in hand before I reluctantly let go of her and purposely fall back. She looks towards me confused and I motion for her to continue on. After giving me a small smile, she turns away and picks up her pace.
Tris is the last initiate to complete her fear landscape. As I have with everyone else, I stand from my chair and collect the simulation serum.
"Tris," I call out and she makes her way towards me from the back of the room.
She looks worried and I want to reassure her but there are too many people watching us. The best I can do is a half-smile as she approaches.
I lift the syringe to her neck, breaking through her skin and pushing the plunger down.
"Ready?" I ask.
She lets out a deep breath and moves passed me, entering the fear landscape room.
Her first fear is a familiar one. The birds.
Powerlessness.
Unlike the first time, this time Tris uses her gun to quickly dispose of them.
Her next fear begins. She is back in the tank. The fear I monitored. The fear that confirmed her Divergence to me.
Weakness.
My heart begins to race as I watch her try to break through the glass with her bare hands. She continues fighting against the tank to no avail. After entirely too long, she takes the time to compose herself and finally manages to break the glass.
She falls into a large body of water. The water is rough. She scrambles to cling to a nearby rock but struggles to keep hold of its wet surface. Wave after wave slams against her body.
Loss of control.
She continues to struggle against the rock, letting out a frustrated scream. Counting down the rhythm of the water, she manages to climb up onto the rock and instantly sprints away from the ocean.
The ocean disappears and Tris is bound to a pole. Stacks of logs rise around her feet and she is high above the ground. The other initiates appear carrying torches and Peter approaches her, igniting the wood below her.
Burning alive.
The flames rise.
"Smell that, Stiff?" Peter says loudly.
"No," she replies, the flames getting higher.
Peter sniffs the air. "That's the smell of your burning flesh."
Tris stays calm, stilling herself against her restraints.
"I smell rain," she says, smirking at Peter.
I can't help but smile as rain starts to pour down, putting out the fire.
The ropes fall away and Tris stands in a plain bedroom. One of the walls is covered in mirrors. A scarred man and two featureless men appear outside of her window. She backs up, pressing her back against the wall of mirrors. The scarred man begins to pound his fist against the window, his fist is quickly joined by more. Over and over again the men slam their fists against the glass. The three men begin to walk slowly towards her.
Kidnapping.
My fists clench and my face grows hot as I recall the events of that night with Peter, Drew and Al at the chasm.
She reaches behind her back, into the mirror that has transformed into a closet door, and pulls out a gun. She fires at the men and an awful, loud scratching noise erupts from the window. Bent fingers scratch the glass and then the glass shatters.
Pale bodies – human bodies, but mangled, arms bent at odd angles, too-wide mouths with needle teeth, empty eye sockets – topple into the room, one after another.
Tris retreats into the mirror closet and crouches down, pointing her gun to her head. She stays still, audibly trying to steady her breath. She turns to face the back of the closet and finds another door. She pushes it open and reveals a hallway. She crawls through the door and the hallway vanishes, replaced by…my apartment?
I see myself in her sim, standing before her. We are in my bedroom, standing a few feet from my bed.
What is going on?
Sim me smiles down at her before he presses his mouth to hers. I watch as his fingers find the zipper of her jacket and pull it down in one slow swipe until it detaches. He tugs the jacket from her shoulders.
His hands slide down her arms and then squeeze her hips, his fingers brushing over the skin just above her belt.
I shift uncomfortably in my seat at what feels like a very private moment.
She pushes him back and presses her hands to her forehead. He moves back towards her, kissing her neck.
She looks Simulation me in the eye and says sternly, "I am not going to sleep with you in a hallucination. Okay?"
Intimacy.
Outside of her Sim, my heart races and panic bubbles up in my chest. All of Dauntless leadership are watching this. Tris being afraid of me would be easy to dismiss. But this is different, this is intimate and it's taking place in my apartment. They'll know she's been there. They'll know something is going on.
In her sim, she grabs my shoulders and turns us around, my calves hit the edge of the bed. She presses against me and kisses me, her hands wrapping around my arms.
I disappear
A gun appears in her hand and she curls her fingers around it, slipping her index finger over the trigger. A spotlight shines from the ceiling and standing in the center of it is her mother. Next to her mom is an older gentlemen dressed in grey and a boy about her age. These must be her father and brother.
"Do it," Jeanine's voice rings out.
Tris stays still.
"Do it," she says again, pushing a gun to Tris' temple. "Do it or I'll kill you."
Being responsible for the death of loved ones.
"Go ahead, Tris," her brother says. "I understand, it's okay."
"No," she croaks back, shaking her head.
"Tris," her dad says. "You have no other option."
"Eight."
"Tris," her mother smiles. "We love you."
"Seven!"
"Shut up!" Tris shouts, holding up the gun.
"Six!"
"Five!"
She closes her eyes.
"Four! Three!"
"Two!"
She releases the trigger and lets her gun drop before turning and pressing her forehead to the barrel of Jeanine's gun.
"One!"
There's a bang and the simulation ends.
The lights come up in the fear landscape room and I disconnect myself from the wires linking me to the simulation. The rest of leaders do the same and I don't dare look at them. Along with Four, we walk together into the simulation room where Tris stands.
I push my nervousness from her fear of intimacy sim down and try to act casual.
"Congratulations, Tris," I say. "You have successfully completed your final evaluation."
She gives me a half-hearted smile but looks shaken.
"Thanks," she says.
"The banquet is in two hours. Your ranking among the other initiates, Dauntless-born included, will be announced then. Good luck."
I want to stay and talk to her, tell her she did great and not to worry, but the other leaders turn towards the exit and I know I need to go with them.
As I leave the room, I notice Four lingers. I know I shouldn't feel jealous, but I do.
The leaders take a quick break before meeting in the conference room to discuss the final evaluations. To my surprise, no one comments on my appearance in Tris' fear.
Once the rankings are determined, the majority of the leaders leave to prepare for the banquet but, noticing Max is slow to gather his things, I stay behind.
When only Max and I are left, I speak.
"You said the serum would be administered today. When is that happening?"
"Already done," he says with a smile.
"What? When?" I ask blinking, struggling to cover the fear that immediately threatens to take over my senses.
"Infirmary staff have been administering it to the members throughout the day and we were able to mix it into the simulation serum for the initiates, so technically you administered those," he replies clapping me on the back.
I stand frozen, not sure how to react outwardly to this news as anxiety sets in internally.
"Actually, that reminds me, I need to double check to make sure everyone who was supposed to receive it has," Max says picking up his tablet.
I watch as he scrolls through an application on his tablet. "Hmmmm…looks like only two members were missed, Kendra and Four. I guess I'll have to go deal with that before the banquet," he says scowling.
"I can do it," I say, a little too quickly. Maybe I can keep Four from being dosed. "I don't really need to do anything to get ready for the banquet."
"You sure? That would be great man," he says, looking relieved. "I'll send you over the key codes to log into the database. You should be able to access it from your leadership tablet. You'll have to bring Kendra and Four to the infirmary since the last of the serums should be there. Once they've been administered, make sure to tick off their names and have the nurse who administers it input their member ID and the code on the serum into the database. I took the liberty of inputting your info for the initiates. We need to keep track just in case something goes wrong with one of the batches."
With that, Max walks to the door. Before leaving, he turns back towards me, smirking.
"The girl, Tris," he starts. "She's the one isn't she? The one you came to me about. The one who was attacked a few days ago."
Shit. He's going to bring up her simulation.
"Yeah, she is."
"I knew something was going on between you two," he says cockily. "I guess not quite as much as I thought considering that fear of hers, but still, nothing wrong with a challenge. Good luck with that."
His words should anger me, but the realization that Tris has been injected with the serum…and that I was the one to inject it…has made me numb to them. I need to find Four now and figure out how to fake giving him the serum.
Let's go, let's go people! Moving along into the next phase of the fic. This chapter is a bit shorter than they have been lately, but I kept going with it and it ended up incredibly long so I broke it into two chapters. Lots of different shorter "scenes" in this one. I hope you like it! I was hoping to be back to bi-weekly updates by this point, but I just can't seem to manage it so I'll be sticking to weekly for now. My program ends mid-August so hopefully after that I can update a bit more frequently.
As always, let me know what you think and I'll see you next Friday.
- MWB
