May watches the final test of every initiate. She's seen their training, and she has a fair idea of who's going to make it and who's not, but she watches every test. Every initiate has a few of the common fears: spiders, snakes, heights, confinement, drowning, fire. She gets to see many of their families as well; parents, brothers, sisters, and friends making appearances as the initiates watch their loved ones die. But everyone has at least one unique fear, one thing that she's never seen before. That's in the nature of fear, she supposes.

Bobbi's fear comes in the form of black-and-white uniforms, marching in neat patterns all around her. The words "Thank you for your candor," the mantra of the honest faction, echo throughout the landscape. Bobbi flounders through the neatly organized crowd for a moment, before calming her nervous system. May has had doubts about many initiates, but from the first day that Bobbi chose Dauntless, May knew she would make it through initiation. Bobbi's courage oozes out of the swagger of every step she takes.

Bobbi shows up in Hunter's fear landscape as well. She's armed, he's not, and the two are in a fight to the death. He manages to end the scene by throwing himself onto her knife, thus defying his fear and forcing the simulation to move on.

Leo stumbles only once, on the discovery of an Erudite girl. She's bleeding out in his arms, as he strokes her face and shakes her and whispers to her and screams "Stay with me!" at the top of his lungs. May wonders if she's his sister, then dismisses the thought. The two look absolutely nothing alike. He takes longer than he should to stand up, to abandon the bleeding girl and walk away. Once he does, the simulation moves to the next fear, but he may have already lost too much time.

Skye's unique fear is a hedge maze. She stumbles through, searching desperately for a light or a sign or anything to let her know whether or not she's headed in the right direction, or even to give her a hint of what she's looking for. She handles the fear, though, and calms herself down enough to end the simulation.

When Ward takes a seat, May sits forward in her chair. The prodigy of Phase 1 hasn't held such a large advantage in Phase 2, but he's still one of the most formidable initiates, and May's nearly certain that by tonight, he'll be a full-fledged Dauntless. Her interest is not curiosity about whether he'll face his fears; it's desire to see what haunts the nightmares of the boy who's rumored to have no fear.

The simulation starts with a few standards: drowning, being attacked, small spaces, abandonment, failure. He handles them well, averaging less than a minute per fear. Interestingly, he chooses to fight all of them using the same approach, calming his nervous system to a resting heart rate and slowing his breathing rather than trying to actively combat the fear. Most initiates make a few attempts at the latter, only resorting to the physical route when the cognitive one fails.

Through watching his next fears, May learns more about Ward's family, including why he was so eager to leave Candor. She pities him, when she sees the cruelty in his mother's and brother's eyes, but her pity runs dry when she remembers seeing the same cruelty in the same brown eyes, when she pulled Ward off of Skye.

Ward's next fear is his own funeral. Again, death is a common fear, but usually the simulation begins with the weakest fears and works up to the strongest and most deeply held fears. Death isn't so high on the list for most people. It takes him almost a minute and a half to calm down enough to register on the simulation. It's by far the longest any fear thus far has taken, and he still hasn't once opted to confront his fears.

The system chimes, informing the proctors that the initiate is entering his last fear. May double-checks the record to make sure she hasn't miscounted. Nine fears. Only nine, and he's blazed through them all in record time. He's a full three minutes ahead of the current scoreboard leader, and he only has one fear left.

As the simulation solidifies into Ward's greatest fear, May is confronted by an unexpected face: Skye. What does Ward have to fear from Skye? she wonders. She isn't armed to represent an attack, nor is she dressed seductively to represent a fear of sex or attachment. But the look on her face is one of rage.

"I know, Ward," Simulation Skye says. "I know everything."

Ward takes a step towards her, hands out as if to pacify her. "Skye," he says gently, but his voice is tinged with fear.

"You can't fix this," she snaps. "I'm going to tell everyone. They're all going to know what you are. Everyone."

She turns to leave, and he throws himself on top of her, pinning her to the ground. She struggles, screaming, and he covers her mouth with his hand, trying to muffle the sound. They fight for longer than Ward has fought any of his fears. He's trying to get his heart rate down, but he can't seem to do it.

After two whole minutes in the simulation, he resorts to the strategy he's avoided for the whole test. He sits back, and allows Skye to run off, screaming. The simulation registers that he's countered all of his instincts and faced his fear, so it comes to an end.

As the test proctors help Ward stand up, he is shaky and unsteady on his feet. What's more, when May watches him rejoin the other initiates, he won't make eye contact with the star of his final fear.