When I woke up, I was immediately put to work.
They showed me how to shoot guns. There was a time where we had to shoot at Bianca, which I did gladly. She was nimble, but I did manage to get her once on the leg. Mostly what Hart taught us was to stay focused during an attack.
I was once paired against Katie Harper in a fighting match. Katie was only fifteen, so it wasn't a fair match since I was older than her. I studied her intently as she got her gear on... she was small with about the same figure as mine, making her target for Peter. I felt a rush of sympathy for her.
When we started to fight, I went easy on her. She was not good at it. Finally, Hart called it a day, but told everyone to stay around. He went up to Katie and spanked her. She crumbled to the floor, and he sat on her legs and yelled in her face. "You call that fighting, huh? You call that fighting?" He tore off her shirt and sat on her stomach. She started coughing up blood. "Well, you've lost eight fights, you know? Eight! Guess what, Katie? You're out of the game." He stared groping her and bouncing on her stomach, and she screamed for mercy, her face turning blue. Finally, with one big push, he finished the job.
Katie died.
"And then he was saying how it was a lesson to us all." I sobbed out to Tobias that night in a dream. "And he made us put her in the coffin she slept in and he took it somewhere."
He hugged me and patted my hair, comforting me until I stopped crying. "I'm sorry to hear that Tris. But I have some good news! I..."
Then I was pulled out of my dream into reality. "Okay, all up!" Peter screamed. He took us out of our coffins and we scrambled into line. He had us march into a room where we were squished, and they turned on a TV. It was the Chicago news, and many of us burst into tears as we were forced to watch the horrible story.
"...is it true, Ben?" Phyllis was asking. "Was there really a mass killing?"
"That's right, Phyllis. At a nearby Ice Cream Palace, a few people murdered everyone there and took the manager with them when they left. The funeral for these people will be held on Saturday. Thousands of people are demanding answers, and the police are working overtime, trying to find out who has committed the crimes in the past few years. The names of the people will now be read aloud."
After the first few names, I was too busy comforting the people around me to pay too much attention to the names... until I heard somethings which made me become frozen.
"Hazel Prior. Natalie Prior..."
"Well actually, Phyllis, Natalie Prior's death was not established."
"That's right, Ben." Phyllis turned dramatically to the camera. "Natalie was wounded and hospitalized. We have no news from the doctors, but she will be "gold-leafed" as dead until we know her condition."
They went on, but I heard no more. All I could do was stare blankly at the screen, sees and hearing nothing, just going through memories of family time, remembering Hazel's face when I gave her my first creation as a birthday gift... a phone case made out of duct tape and the scraps from an old dress. She always kept the phone case, even though it wasn't good.
And I remembered the change purse I got Mom for her birthday... the last one, before I was kidnapped. Then I got this empty feeling, one of loss and... I can't even describe it. I felt even more hopeless than I did before I tried to kill myself at the Chasm. I... don't even know.
And you know what? I don't want to.