I picked at my cuticles as I waited by the stairwell exit. I'd filled my water bottle with fresh water from the mess hall - the lemon one since I had the option - and clipped it to my belt with a tiny carabiner that I'd snatched from the spare equipment locker that Lynn had shown me yesterday afternoon. Now that we were training together we'd moved into a slightly larger gym, one with some spare gear lying around for general use.

My fidgeting with the bottle was a necessary distraction. I'd gotten to the stairwell a few minutes earlier than usual and my anxiety was in full throttle. Would another initiate want to go running with me? Would Eric allow that? I'd argued that we didn't have anything "special" going on with our training together, but, well, part of me did still want to just keep it between Eric and I. Beyond that, I was still chewing over his vague warning to not be alone at the chasm. Did that also mean I shouldn't be alone here now? Was he even going to show up?

I peeled a little scrap of skin a little too far up on my finger and wiped at the well of blood that followed. It was a bad habit to start up. Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I looked once more down the hallway. "Hey," I called at Eric. He waved back and a smile overtook my worry.

That smile didn't last long. After our run, which went through mostly factionless territory before looping back into yet another side entrance to Dauntless, I ended up just barely catching both a shower and breakfast before we once again gathered in the hallway with the fear simulation rooms. Four, Lauren, Eric, and Max were all there. We all knew what the Leaders were here for.

I think I saw Lauren look over at me, specifically, while speaking with Eric. I exhaled sharply, earning a confused look from Will. I shook my head. Everything would be out in the open soon enough, since I assumed this was all just about yesterday. We didn't fall into our usual chatter as we waited for the four Dauntless to finish talking among themselves.

The cluster of adults broke up. Lauren cleared her throat - the signal for us to pay attention. She didn't care to shout over us. Not that she would have needed to today. Heads turned and we waited for the announcement. Without further preamble, Max stepped forward and started to speak. "I'm certain you all know about the situation that arose yesterday," he said.

I was getting better at ignoring the faces that tilted in my direction before returning to Max. Oh yes. They'd all heard. "Molly Atwood has been eliminated from the initiate class. Her actions were unacceptable behavior for anyone within the faction. We do not harm one another. Dauntless is the faction of the bold and brave, not the brutes," Max growled.

He cast his glare over us once more. "Keep that in mind." With that, he clapped Four on the shoulder and brushed past us to return to the elevator. He didn't need to say much else. I'm sure he already knew about Eric's not-so-peppy talk from the other day. There was a quiet moment as Lauren glanced down at her clipboard. Then, she listed off names, directing them into rooms - business as usual.

There were three names to start off today. Eric hadn't followed after Max, remaining by one of the open doorways. So he was helping with the simulations.

I was grateful that I was once again at the top of the list. I could have a brief respite before everyone started to talk about Molly. Peter had been looking particularly murderous last night when she'd never showed up, as had Drew. Their little pack was down to two now. I held my head high as I stepped past Peter. The scratch on my cheek was halfway healed. I wasn't going to let him put another mark on me unless it was part of training. Maybe not even then.

Lauren waved me into her room, her attention still on her clipboard. I heard Eric clear his throat. Looking up, Lauren stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. "Hang on, sorry Prior. You're in that room," she said quietly.

If I hadn't been standing in the middle of the hall already under everyone else's eyes then I might have asked her why it mattered. As it was, I just wanted to be out of the way while I mentally prepared for today's fear. "Okay," I said with a shrug. I crossed the hall and entered Eric's room. He shut the door behind me.

"So what's on the menu today? Darkness?" I asked. I was waiting for him to tell me if I needed to help prep anything or just sit down. I heard the soft click of the lock instead. I turned my head and froze when I saw the expression on his face.

His forehead was furrowed and his eyes flicked between mine as he met my gaze. "Today is going to be a little bit different," Eric said quietly. He was enunciating each word, almost coldly. I would have said that I didn't recognize him standing there, but he was still the same Eric. Just without the casual camaraderie of this morning. This was all business.

"Why?" I pressed. He still hadn't moved from the door. What was this about? And why had he locked the door?

"I looked at your file. All of it, from day one. I've got a couple of theories, and Lauren thought it would be easier for me to run through them on my own," Eric said in that same cool voice.

I slid my hands into my pockets in case their trembling betrayed me. "Theories about my fears?" I offered. "I know Four said I probably didn't have anything against the elements." If I just kept talking about the things that I knew, if I didn't even think about the warning that Tori had given me on the day of the test, then this couldn't be the moment that I'd worried about.

"Sort of. Your times have been good - even yesterday's - but that might be making things more difficult," Eric said. I blinked, not following. Finally he stepped away from the door and broke eye contact with me. For the first time in the weeks that we'd been comfortable with one another, I edged back when he walked by me.

When he sat at the computer desk, I waited for further clarification. He typed away for a moment before pausing to regard me again. I was cemented in place when his eyes were on me. "You've got an… innate talent with the simulations," Eric explained. "It complicates things. The time you had yesterday was still well within normal parameters, but with someone like you who has that… talent… it makes it trickier to detect the fears we should narrow in on."

I didn't like the way that he said the word "talent." Talent should have been a good thing. Edward had been a gifted fighter. He would have been a great Dauntless. But now when I was flourishing at the fear simulations it seemed that Eric didn't consider it that great a benefit. It made me complicated, difficult to understand.

"We're going to test around that fear you had yesterday, maybe a couple of times. It's going to take a little while," Eric explained. I nodded like I understood what he meant. I had no idea what that meant. But I had to keep going.

I moved to the chair and took the electrodes that he passed me. He didn't have to tell me where to place them anymore. When I leaned forward to let him inject the serum, Eric muttered a quiet "good luck." I closed my eyes rather than watch the room grow dark from the serum.

I stood on the beach, white sand between my toes. I had a full-body suit on like the ones I'd read about in one of the books that Mr. Feldstone made us read over the summer. They were designed to keep divers and surfers warm. Neither hobby was accessible to us anymore. The lake didn't have waves large enough for surfing and only Dauntless had boats big enough to safely get to the deeper reaches of the lake.

This wasn't Lake Michigan. This was the ocean. Seabirds called overhead and I craned my head to search for them. The bright, blue sky above me was empty. I was in a picturesque scene. Too perfect to mar the skyline with ugly flying birds.

The bird calls continued and they screamed over the crash of each wave. Cold water rushed over my feet as one wave succeeded in reaching for me. I jumped back from it, onto the sun-warmed sand. Dry sand stuck to my feet and each further step back threw more sand to stick to my now-wet ankles.

I lifted one foot to try and rub it off. That only spread it to my hand. I gave up and looked at the coastline up and down from me. On and on it stretched without end. This was a beautiful beach. Mr. Feldstone would have given an arm and a leg for photos to use for his class rather than relying on the archive. No matter how pretty it was, though, I didn't want to be here.

The sand was hot under my feet now that I wasn't moving. I could go into the water. Cold as it was, it would be better than burning the soles of my feet. I hopped from one foot to the other as the heat now reached unbearable levels.

I turned around. Maybe there was an umbrella or shady lifeguard station. I remembered those, too, from books. There was only sand. Sand and a sign which read "Swim at Own Risk."

I would have rolled my eyes had my feet not been on fire. Okay then. I guess I was supposed to start swimming. It was apparently the point of this simulation. I jogged back towards the water, relief instant the moment that my feet hit the damp sand of the shore. A nagging sensation pushed me forward, to knee-deep water, to hip-deep, to chest-deep.

Swim or else, it felt to me. That was the point of this. Choose to get in the water. Prove that you're not scared of it. It was so obvious, just like the last one had been to keep treading water. I pushed myself to kick forward, into the water that was now over my head. I tried to stop and stand just for a moment, but all I found was more and more water below my foot. My head went under as a wave surged closer to me. And that was when my heart started to hammer.

I kicked my feet over and over until I broke through the surface again. It was nothing like swimming in the community pool. I sucked in a gasping breath and closed my eyes as I realized another wave was coming. I flailed around to try and stay above the water, keeping my nose just barely above the swell.

On and on the waves came. I breathed in water through my nose more than a few times until I'd remembered to exhale when a wave overtook me.

And then, it was all gone. I wiped at my eyes to get rid of the sensation of water and opened them to see the door of the testing chamber in front of me. I curled my fingers into fists, focusing on breathing normally again. No more huge gasps and frantic exhales.

Then I looked at Eric. He turned from the screen to look at me. "Close. But that's still not right," he said.

I coughed once, just to get rid of the feeling of water in my chest. Of course it wasn't actually there. Coughing did make me feel better, though. "What's still not right? The fear?" I asked.

"Exactly. We're going to do it again," Eric said.

"Big surprise, I'm not afraid of being left on a beach and getting told to swim. Oh no. How scary," I grumbled under my breath. I think he heard me, because he did chuckle once. It was an improvement. However, it was only another minute or so before he was back at my side, needle in hand.

"Round two, here we go," I whispered to myself. At least, I tried to. It was hard to tell in the fuzzy darkness behind my eyelids.

This time, it wasn't a nice day. The sky was grey. The waves seemed just as dark. They were practically frothing. Still, I knew that the whole point of this was for me to still walk forward and enter the ocean. So I did. And once again, though I was sure that I was going to drown, I kept going forward until I woke again in the examination room.

Eric frowned at the computer readouts. Changed some unknown parameters. Put me on a boat this time.

And I got in the water again. And I woke up after a few minutes of swimming again.

"I don't get it. What's the key part that's not making the panic set in?" I heard him muttering under his breath.

I edged forward on the seat. "Am I supposed to be afraid of the ocean?" I asked curiously. It had been the constant each and every time. Clearly that's what Eric thought it was all about, yet the timers lining the side of the screen all contested that assertion. No time had been greater than six minutes today.

"It's not literally the ocean. That's just the - how does Vera explain it - the delivery mechanism for something that affects you," Eric said. He ran a hand through his hair and leaned on his elbow. "Talk me through what it's like. I can tell from the vitals there's a moment there where you're close to the tipping point, but it hasn't pushed you over."

My guard hadn't dropped. There was surely something about my Divergence that was causing this difficulty, and I didn't want Eric to find it out. But it's going to be even more difficult for you if you don't pay attention to exactly how you're acting. The people here - the people in charge - won't stand for having someone like you around. Tori's warning rang around and around in my head. No matter how much Eric did like me, he was very much one of the people in charge who didn't want Divergents around.

I couldn't trust him, not about this. Shrugging, I looked at the computer screen rather than Eric directly. "It's just sort of like the aptitude test. Things are fuzzy or all-too-clear. I'm on the beach or on the boat. It's real enough, I can smell the sea air. Feel things around me. And I get that the point of being there is to get in the water. So I do," I said vaguely.

Eric rolled one finger in the air. "And?" he pressed.

"And then I'm in the ocean, trying to swim. I'm not very good at it, so sometimes I get caught up in a wave. That, I mean it makes me freak out a bit, but then I get past it and I keep going. I get things under control again. And I know that I can go back to the beach or to the boat again, even if that's not what the sim wants me to do," I said.

He tipped his head. "What the sim wants you to do," Eric echoed. His eyes narrowed slightly, just for a moment. "How do you know what it wants?"

Adrenaline coursed through me. I could even see my vitals shoot up on the screen. I looked at Eric, praying that he didn't look at it until the spike ran past the current view. "It's just… like based on what's happening. Like the dog in the aptitude test," I offered as an example. "Seeing the dog come at you, all angry like that, you know that you have to deal with it. Get it to calm down or stab it. It's… obvious."

His head remained tilted, just so. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. I wasn't certain that I'd given the right answer, but it was as honest as I was willing to get without yelling "I'm Divergent! Maybe that's why I haven't been terrified of anything!"

"Speaking of aptitude-" another spike of my heart rate flared on the monitor. Eric still hadn't looked at it. "Do you know what your family's aptitudes were? I know you're Abnegation personally, but there's a phenomenon with some Erudite where they've got what's called 'simulation awareness' during any kind of sim - even the aptitude test. Maybe there's something there that you're picking up from inheritance that's giving you that 'obvious' cue," Eric said.

I looked down at my hands. I knew my own aptitudes from Tori - I did have a genuine aptitude from Erudite within my Divergence. If what Eric said was true, then I wasn't wrong with my worries that my Divergence - or at least the fact that I wasn't one hundred percent Abnegation in aptitude - could be detected here.

But…

He was also giving me a way out. I looked up at Eric. I'd only paused a second, just long enough to have been thinking about his question. "My dad, I think? He was Erudite before he transferred. Could that be part of it?" I said quickly. This wasn't admitting to a full Erudite aptitude, just… elements of it. I could lean into that.

His mouth quirked in a small smile. It was the first time he'd been anything but coolly focused since locking the door. "That could be part of it," Eric replied earnestly. He looked back at the screen. My vitals had calmed down, and I hoped that the setup wasn't still recording them while we were just sitting here. After a moment, he muttered under his breath. "Control…"

Clicking around the screen, something lit up on his face. "Ah, that's what I thought," Eric said. He turned back to me, a cocky smile now gracing his features. "We're going to try this one more time."

I nodded and moved my hair out of the way. My neck was starting to ache, even though Eric was trying to inject different spots. He frowned at the array of red marks - three from the other days and three fresh - and wheeled over to my other side. "Sorry," he said quietly.

"S'okay," I muttered back. He still hadn't injected the next round. I looked at him from the corner of my eye.

"This can wait until tomorrow. Or later today. We're doing a second round of testing after lunch. You're probably exhausted from three rounds already," Eric said in a moment of uncharacteristic thoughtfulness.

"It's the last one, for now," I replied. I lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. "Might as well get it over with."

He still didn't budge, the syringe still in his lap. I turned to face him fully. There had been a question that I hadn't figured out the time to ask. Now seemed as good of a time as any. "Can I just ask - why is it so important to figure this out? This whole phase is just dedicated to figuring out our fears and flaws. Why?" I asked.

Eric's grey eyes searched mine. He'd been sizing me up all day, but now it was different. He'd been examining me, trying to decipher me for the good of the faction. This wasn't the same. He nodded. "The point is to know what each Dauntless' stop point is. What their weaknesses are to avoid or to build up past," he said softly.

"The tests usually figure them out by the time each section is over with though, right?" I replied.

He nodded.

"But you wanted to know now. Today. Because… why?" I asked. He'd said he would stop if I wanted to, which meant that this wasn't just him doing his job. As far as he was concerned, we'd figured out why I was getting faster times, and that had meant they just needed to pay more attention to subtler time differences to find my fears like now. We could have stopped now.

I wanted to believe it was because I was special in some way. Not because of my Divergence - not directly - but just because of who I was.

Here was where I was expecting a snarky comment, a brush off of "because I'm a Leader and I said so." It would be what I thought Christina or Will would get in response.

"I want to push you past that. To know what could break you." Eric's grin turned toothy, near predatory. "When you confront what can break you and defeat it, then you are the only thing that can break yourself."

Phase three was supposed to help us deal with the fears we found in this phase. Coping with fears was a lot different than defeating them. He was going to make me face them now, to conquer them.

Moving my hair out of the way, I nodded towards the syringe. "What are we waiting for, then?"