Everyone gathered in the cafeteria. The kitchen had been closed for at least an hour, so the only Dauntless around were from our group and a few scattered second shifters on an early break. Lauren wrangled some of them to leave, but the remainder were stubborn and unwilling to leave their coffee just because she asked.

I'd passed Marlene off to Lynn and Uriah after we'd reported what happened. They were standing in a human wall, one each to the side of Marlene, as though that would deter any further danger. I rubbed my shoulders, feeling a distinct tinge of loneliness. Where had been my show of support after Molly attacked me? I'd been left to the infirmary, quite literally left behind as the rest had planned to go to the stupid paintball match.

It was a stupid feeling to get wrapped up in during this moment. Still, I levered a dull glare at Will and Christina as they clustered together murmuring. No one quite knew what to think of what was happening. No clear consensus had been formed.

Four arrived last, bringing with him the last two straggler Dauntless-born along with Al. Wide-eyed and shaking, Al skittered to join me. "Something happened?" he pressed.

"Yeah," I replied flatly. He'd find out in a minute anyways as Four and Lauren wrapped up their hushed conversation. There was plenty of head shaking, urgent pointing, and veiled glances at both myself and Marlene. I sighed and tried to remain unfazed. I think at best I managed irritated.

Clapping her hands together, Lauren instantly summoned everyone's attention. "Right then," she said heavily. "I think it's about time we address the elephant in the room. Something or someone's rotten in this crew. I've never seen such a thing in so small a group, especially one this young. But it's true and it needs to be addressed."

Four leveled a sour expression on the group. "We've just been told about another incident. An attack on yet another Initiate on their own. This time there were at least two others involved," he explained.

The tension in the room could have been cut by a stiff wind, never mind a knife. Marlene cleared her throat and blinked harshly. She didn't let any tears fall though. Smart. Tough, too. Four continued to speak. "Whoever did so, if you come forward - with or without your companion - you might still get some kind of leniency, some opportunity to remain within the faction."

Lynn sputtered and stepped forward, one hand still wrapped firmly around Marlene's. "What the hell does that mean? Leniency? How is that acceptable? This has to stop!" she hissed. Marlene tugged her friend back, shaking her head fervently. Uriah put another hand on her shoulder in consolation.

Both instructors looked at one another. "This comes from up top," Lauren replied slowly. "That's not to say that there would be no repercussions."

Lynn refused to be mollified. I didn't blame her one inch. "Fuck 'repercussions!' We want to see them get what's coming to them. This isn't school anymore. This isn't dicking around pushing someone down or having some stupid rivalry. People have been hurt. Permanently hurt," Lynn fumed. "How are they going to be punished?"

My heart hammered in my chest. Across my fellow initiates, there was an uncomfortable amount of angry, tense feelings starting to come out. Myself included. I flexed my hands by my side and cracked one knuckle at a time. "They deserve it," I found myself chiming in. "For hurting Edward and trying again." I didn't want to bring up my own experiences since Molly had been successfully apprehended.

All eyes swiveled to me. I focused on Al, since he was closest and least intimidating what with the wet, anxious twitch to his. "They had a knife. Dunno about the second person, but they could have had one, too. This isn't a joke. What if someone's not around next time? What if there's three on one?" I said.

Four turned to look at Lauren. She looked pained and I realized this was the first time that it had been one of her kids to get hurt. This wasn't just Four's problem anymore. "We have to do something," she admitted.

"Till we know the responsible parties-" Four countered. Lauren cut him off with a shake of her head.

"Not about that. That's a conversation between myself and Max, later," she said vehemently. "But we need to do something to protect them. All of them."

Lynn returned to Marlene's side, wrapping her arms around the other girl's waist. Al shuffled closer to me. I edged away to keep at least a step's distance between. "You were there."

"Yeah," I whispered in response. "They were too fast. Split up."

"You didn't see who it was?" he pressed. I glared at him.

"If I did, do you think we'd be doing this whole fucking charade?" I hissed.

Lauren cleared her throat again. They'd shifted back to a murmured, rapid-fire chatter and had apparently resolved on something. "Starting tonight, we're moving Initiate quarters. It'll be tight, but there's space in the trainee bunks now that the next round of specializations have been picked. You'll be with last year's initiates. All full Dauntless. All good people. Vetted," she said confidently.

Rita raised a hand and called out, "How's that going to deal with the actual problem? You know. The other people in the group who are attacking us."

"More eyes. And maybe spending a few weeks with actual adults might knock some sense into those of you who think this kind of bullshit is OK," Four replied.

I wanted to feel like this was a good call. I think it actually was. But it wasn't going to fix anything. Not by a long shot. It was a preventative measure that wouldn't stop someone from acting if they were still determined. We still had to leave the dorm, regardless of who we were bunking alongside.

"Come on," Lauren called. "Sooner we get you over there, the sooner we can get this figured out. I still need to talk with those of you for statements-" alibis, she meant "-about earlier. And think long and hard about anyone you're thinking about covering for."

I got to move bunks. It was for a horrifying, upsetting reason and I certainly shouldn't have felt happy about anything that was happening. But I was unequivocally relieved that in the active trainee unit there weren't any free double bunks. I ended up in one of the corners of the dorm crammed into an upper bunk across the aisle from Christina. Underneath me was a self-proclaimed narcoleptic who greeted me before promptly going back to sleep. I didn't have to worry about waking them while hopping up and down, apparently. They barely budged even as I got changed atop my mattress and replaced the sheets with freshly laundered ones.

Looking up at the ceiling, I felt a streak of giddiness break through the mild nausea from my anxiety. There wasn't anything up there. Wasn't anyone up above me. Just a sleepy, disinterested Dauntless grunt below.

Hell, maybe with a setup like this, I would be able to feel comfortable with Al as a friend again. That would be better than creeping dread, right?

Getting up the next morning was painful. The trainees were up at my usual wake up time - the crack of dawn - but they were loud and plentiful. I'd grown used to "dorm life" with no more than nine people. Adding our number to twenty-plus more and the Dauntless-born was far from the same. There just wasn't physically enough room for everyone to have their own personal space. I lingered on my top bunk watching the bustling full-fledged Dauntless go through their morning routine.

Eventually they cleared and I scooted down to join Christina, Will, and the rest in our usual morning ablutions. The bathroom was bigger but more dishevelled. I guess the trainees had a lot more time spent here to mess things up. That was going to be us one day, if we made it out of this hellish crucible that was Initiation.

I couldn't have relaxed if I'd wanted to. Everyone was quiet, now that the other Dauntless had cleared out. Uriah tried to get people talking by musing about training, which was just about the only topic that was going to work.

"It's weird, right, to be watched while the sims are going down in your head?" he said loudly to no one in particular. When no one replied, he continued to himself. "I dunno, it's weird to me. Sitting there knowing 'ok here I am again in this stupid sim and now I'm walking around, too! I'm not just strapped to the chair, and people are just watching me do all this shit!'"

I found myself smiling at that, particularly his overly emphatic stomping he did to emphasize the situation. "It's intimidating," I agreed.

Will laughed and shook his head. "I'm still just getting over actually being aware that there's a sim going on. Going in and not just feeling like everything's right. That's the weird part," he said.

My hands stilled as I laced my boots. Oh. That was right. Not everyone felt the same way I had during the other phase. No one else had been - what was that phrase Eric had used - Sim Aware.

"Ehhh," Uriah replied. "That's actually easier. Like, I used to figure it out eventually before. So knowing from the get-go; that's much nicer."

"You know, a lot of guys get performance anxiety," Christina suggested. Her too-casual tone cued me in that this was another joke that I was supposed to get right away. Watching Uriah's head turn whip-quick to glare helped, too.

"That isn't- God, Candor. You don't just say that to a man!" he sputtered.

She lifted one shoulder lightly, a signature Christina move. "Let me know when you see one," she sniffed. I laughed along with the rest of the group, slapping Uriah on the shoulder as we headed out the door.

"You can't freak out on us now," I told him.

He shook his head, his easy-going smile back on his face. "It was getting a little tense for morning," he said. "Now it's better." I paused at the door, waiting for him to follow along. Then I spotted Lynn and Marlene still lingering behind. Uriah nodded for me to go ahead.

His efforts were nice, but he was just as realistic as the rest of us. We couldn't let our guard down yet. The illusion was nice. But it was still fake, like his smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"See you upstairs," I offered.

Every day since our orientation up in the conference room I expected not to see Four alongside Lauren. I hadn't forgotten the weird, hushed conversation between him and Max; nor had I been able to puzzle out just where Four would be leaving to so that he could come back like he'd mentioned.

It seemed he wasn't going anywhere soon. Maybe it was because of the attack on Marlene. Maybe not. He was stepping up more, though. He'd help set up the electrodes and give encouragement when the current group finished their run through. I did still find myself wishing he hadn't been there. I wanted to see Eric there, rooting for our group as we painfully improved inch by inch.

And in general we were improving. There was just a haze of distrust in the air, stronger than the discomfort that came from enduring the sims. The gentle - or not - ribbing from yesterday was gone. Between runs, the groups that had started to bond during their challenges immediately broke back to the previously defined lines of Friends and Others. There was no casual chatter. Just stoney quiet peppered with occasional hushed murmurs.

Will leaned over to me as the next group prepped to run. "I feel a little bad for them," he said.

I raised an eyebrow. I had chuckled when the roster had been announced, too, but usually Will was a bit kinder. "You shouldn't," I replied. "Peter could use getting taken down a notch. And not for nothing, but having him out there and not in here should make everyone feel better."

"Wait, who are we feeling bad for?" Christina joined in. She slid across the couch to end up mostly in Will's lap. I averted my eyes then out of self preservation. It was obvious how much they were into one another. I didn't need the visual reminder while we were trying to pay attention to training.

"We're not feeling bad for anyone," Will said. "Al's just going to… do his usual thing. And if that makes Peter and Drew flub a bit, no big loss."

"Ouch," Christina sighed. She still didn't jump to Al's defense though. Initiation had given him plenty of options to prove himself to us and to the instructors. If he wanted people to believe in him, it would help if he did himself.

Christina shifted to pretend she wasn't draping herself over Will. "Has he been… weird with you still?" She stumbled over the question. I appreciated her efforts to be less, well, Candor in her approach.

"Still is weird. Hasn't tried pushing the boundaries though," I said lightly. "He's actually not the one I'm glad to get away from."

"Why?"

I gestured through the window. "I mean, Al makes me uncomfortable but he's… I know what to expect from him. And his actions." I made a face rather than continue talking about it. I didn't want to think about that night any more.

"But Peter. He's got a mean streak. You've heard all the dumb shit he kept saying to me when we started off," I explained.

Through the glass, we watched Lauren administer the serum finally. The three boys all visibly slumped before springing to life once again, eyes darting furtively without seeing what was truly in front of them. It was unnerving to watch, especially thinking about how this was what I looked like, too, during the sims. Like a sleepwalker or a hypnotist dummy. Completely alien. They were still Peter, Al, and Drew underneath the drugs yet they almost weren't within our world. They belonged to the sim completely and wholly.

No one seemed interested in agreeing - or disagreeing - with my comments about Peter. I watched the trio in front of us stumble their way through the first trial. Al did seem to keep up with the other two fair enough. Maybe he still had a chance. I didn't know what to think anymore.

"Why do you think Marlene was the one who got jumped?" My mind had returned yet again to last night. I needed to know what the others were thinking, too.

"Hmm?"

I turned my head to study my friends. "Marlene. She was targeted for a reason, yeah? She must have," I reasoned. "Edward was top of the group. He was a threat. I was the out of place Abnegation. Molly wanted me out. So what's Marlene's target? Why was she at risk?"

Two pairs of confused eyes blinked back at me.

I continued my train of thought aloud. "Maybe it was just convenience? Right place, right time? Or I guess wrong place for Marlene. There has to be a reason, though."

"Why does there need to be a reason?" Will countered.

"Because otherwise - isn't that worse? There is no reason and we're all just as likely to be attacked?"

One set of eyes widened. The other narrowed. "I don't want to think about all that's happened like that," Christina muttered.

"So you'd rather not think about it at all?" I shot back.

"No one's a 'target.'"

I scoffed, unable to resist rolling my eyes as well. "Oh, yeah. No one's ever been specifically targeted by someone," I drawled. "Ribs just break sometimes. No biggie."

Will winced. I wished that I'd gotten the same reaction from Christina. She merely shifted in Will's lap. "You're taking this way out of proportion," Christina said.

"And you're not taking this seriously," I snapped.

Will put a hand on Christina's as her face reddened. "I think we're all a little paranoid from what's happened," he said. "Let's try to stay focused on what matters though. Stay safe, don't wander off alone, and don't let your attention off of the actual goal."

"Survival?" I retorted.

"Initiation," Will replied simply.

My hands felt shaky. I rubbed them together and then my face. "Awesome," I huffed. "Awesome, awesome, awesome. You're just - gah!" My patience had evaporated to absolute zero.

"Marlene probably looked like a good target. She's middle of the pack and everyone pays attention to Uri and Lynn more. For a Dauntless-born, she's low on the field. Can you at least agree with that?" I reasoned.

Will clammed up. He was staring near-blankly at the ceiling. Christina lifted one shoulder, completely non-committal. I took it as agreement.

"But I mean, is there any other reason? Are those good enough reasons that someone would think 'that's the girl to try and take out next'?"

Christina's expression shifted from unamused to frigid. "Why are you thinking about people like this? That's how a predator thinks," she hissed.

My stomach did a little flip, but hardly enough to remain bothered by. Just like Christina's remark. I didn't feel bad for looking at things realistically. "So what," I replied flatly.

"It's a very Eric thing to do - to think about the cruelest thing, a person just as a target for someone else." She pursed her lips and turned away.

A few weeks ago I would have been upset, insulted. I think she intended for me to backpedal and get flustered by the comparison. "Good," I said instead.

A/N: Happy weekend, everyone! This chapter was a bit conversation heavy. Don't worry. More action is coming just around the corner ;D