Disclaimer: I don't own Divergent.
"How are you really?" Shauna asks me.
I hesitate to answer her. I've contemplated that question in private, ever since I first went through one of the fear simulations. I know what Shauna's looking to hear, that I'm struggling as much as she is. And to some extent, that would be true. None of us initiates are truly fine. The simulations are so powerful, they'll break even the strongest Dauntless.
But that's just the problem. I'm not exactly Dauntless. I'm Divergent.
I have an ability that the majority of the Dauntless don't have. Shauna probably doesn't have it, either. Same for Zeke. Same for Eric. They all have a disadvantage in the simulation stage, compared to me. That's why I feel icky comparing my feelings to Shauna's. It's almost like I believe what Jeanine says about the Divergent "cheating" in the simulations.
Is it cheating, when it's just a simple genetic difference? Am I doing something horribly wrong by not revealing it to anyone, or am I being wise and protecting myself?
I can't discuss it with my girlfriend. That's the frustrating part. I can only open up to Amar, who can share in my experience, or to Tori, who was once close to another Divergent. But Shauna, the person who really should know, the person I should get to be vulnerable with, as she's been with me, she can't be trusted.
It's an undeniable fact, but it's still so screwed up.
Guilt eats at me as I look at Shauna, see her wrap her fingers around my bicep, lean in close so she's just inches from me. "You look under the weather," she says, sounding worried.
"I'm not sick," I say, "just exhausted." I choose to tell her half of the truth. "Today, they put me in the most intense sim."
"Was it too rough on you?" Shauna asks.
"Most likely," I answer. "It wasn't just heights. Not just tight spaces. Not even… that man."
Do I tell my girlfriend? Revealing to her what I actually saw would mean telling her about the stuff I learned, about the untold parts of our history, and how I learned it from the factionless. It would also mean betraying Bernard and Ysabelle and "E" and all the others.
Shauna's a Dauntless-born, I tell myself. It isn't her fault, not her fault at all, but she was raised to follow Max and the other Dauntless leaders, the ones who'd sooner spit on the factionless than join in their revolution.
No, I'm not gonna tell her.
"So what was it?" Shauna presses.
"It was… all three combined," I lie, referring to the fears I just listed, the ones I told my girlfriend about. I feel even guiltier when Shauna's expression becomes one of sympathy.
"Damn," she says in a quiet voice.
"I'm surprised I didn't die right there," I add on, knowing that, at least, is true. I remember how I felt when Marcus started hitting me in the simulation, how it slowly started to sink in that what was happening wasn't fake.
Shauna, thank God, changes the subject. "And your Erudite friend?" she asks.
"He's…" I hesitate. What do I say about Eric? "Having, uh, concentration issues," I finish.
I don't want to have to say more. Eric deserves his privacy, and besides, anyone would be embarrassed if they went through what he's going through. To go from number one in the ranks to, I don't know, fourth or fifth place, would be demoralizing. Especially as a Dauntless male.
I suspect that's not the worst that he's experiencing. I think we both know he's not adjusting well to life outside of Erudite, away from his family, and he's only just now coming to terms with it. The other day he went through a sim that he won't talk about. I have a feeling it involves his mom, his dad, and his sister. That night he was mumbling in his sleep, saying something to "Mae". I keep wondering, what'd he see? I wish I could help him, but he won't speak about it.
Well, I think bitterly, it's more common than I once believed, friends turning away from each other during initiation. Best thing I have to hope for is finding some new ones.
Shauna and I relax for a little while, just savoring each other's company, and then we walk back through the Pit. On the way, we meet Zeke, and he calls out to us, "Yo! How's it been?"
"I'm hanging in there," I tell him.
He embraces me like a brother would, and I have to smile, knowing I can call him a friend.
The Candor say that the truth will always break free. That it is too powerful to remain caged. Yet, Eric's realized, there are some truths that deserve to never see the light of day.
Like the one he just learned after going through his last simulation. What happened was, he was standing in front of a nameless teen girl, and he noticed that he had a gun in his hand. He was just about to put it down, then an invisible force began to act on his arm.
He tried fighting it. He strained against the pull on his arm. Jerked his hand to the side, only to have it whip right back into position. Screamed louder than a human should be capable of, until his ears and throat hurt.
Finally, he remembered that no one had seen him with the girl yet. He closed his eyes and let the evil force have its way. The gun went off, controlled by the force and his own actions.
Just seeing what was left of the girl's face was bad enough, but the worst torture was the feeling in his gut when he looked up and realized that Tobias had been there all along, watching him. Now he feels like the biggest coward to ever exist.
No, scratch that. The worst part of that whole experience was waking up and realizing that what he feared was not the gun, nor the violence, nor the act of killing the girl.
Eric's heart is beating so fast, and his palms are getting so sweaty. He thinks he may go crazy trying to escape what you can't escape. He pushes the chilled surface of his water bottle into his forehead, attempting to force his nerves to relax. It works about as well as fighting the gun did in the simulation.
Then Tobias is saying his name, and Eric's looking up at him.
"You all right there?" Tobias is asking. There is genuine worry on his face.
Eric puts his water bottle down. He runs one of his hands down the length of his pants, drying the sweat there. Then he does the same with his other hand. Finally, he replies to Tobias.
"Yeah, I'm alright," he says.
He just lied to his best friend's face, but he'd do it happily over and over again. The conversation they could've had is not one Eric ever wants to have.
I just left the room where Eric was hiding out. I won't try to talk to him anymore. At this moment, I'm taking a second look at the photos I got from "E".
The ones that she put in a separate folder, it's obvious why she did. They seem to be notable images from the history of the entire nation. Images from the Olympic Games, from specific marches and protests, from events attended by hundreds, even thousands. The pictures taken in Chicago that "E" isolated, they seem to be more intimate. Displaying a tighter world, a world in which only a few people are centered.
I stare hard at the face of the male elder in one of the photographs. His expression is a challenge to read, but I still see, in his eyes, his unbending will and pride. One of his brown hands rests on the shoulder of the boy in front of him. He's the father of the family, possibly the grandfather. He's someone I'd guess has worked hard for decades, and sacrificed a ton for the sake of his child.
Or maybe I'm projecting, wanting this man to have been a better father than Marcus was.
Wait… Marcus. My enemy's name. Why was that name the first one to come to me when I looked at the face of the elder? A third look, and the similarities between my enemy and this long-dead man begin to pop up.
They have the same face shape. The same nose. The same jawline.
My breath's been stolen from me. The man in the photograph is a direct ancestor of mine.
My family lived in Chicago at this time, in the neighborhood where King stayed before he wrote the book, and I never was aware of it till now.
"It's the last day of stage two," Amar announces. "You know what that means?" He smiles, and it freaks me out more than it puts me at ease. "This afternoon, you'll be staring down your worst fear."
Complete silence among the transfers. We're not stupid, we knew the boss fight was coming, but damn, this entire stage of initiation already felt like one long boss fight. I worry that, by the time this is all over, I'll be committed to an institution instead of considered for Dauntless leadership.
The other transfers, my allies in this fight, are feeling it, too. Jason raises his hand, then speaks before the adult in the room can even call on him. "Really, Amar?" he says indignantly. "Can we get a break after this?"
Amar's already shaking his head. "Not unless you pass initiation," he counters.
"Man," says Jason, "I regret picking this faction." He lets his head drop into his hands, and in that instant, he looks more defeated than when I beat him in combat. He doesn't even look over at Sean to see if his friend agrees with him. That's the most un-Jason-like behavior I've ever seen from him.
A few weeks ago, I would've been glad to see that from him. Now? I'm scared shitless.
It turns out my last simulation wasn't hard to beat at all.
I went into the room, knowing that fluttering feeling of trepidation was normal. Amar got me connected, hit all the right buttons, then just sat aside and watched. All I would let myself think was, I've got to conquer this illusion fast while not letting the leaders know I'm Divergent.
It was good for me that the simulated situation was identical to the one from a few days ago. Same simple setting with the same sweet-faced teen girl in front of me. Same model of the same kind of handgun in my right hand, and a very familiar evil force about to act upon my arm.
But I was fully ready to counter it.
See, the way I screwed up the first time around was, I didn't think too hard about how to properly fight the evil. I thought the only possible way was to fight, to use brute force to solve my problem. Now that I've opened myself up to the alternatives, it's made a world of a difference.
I thought quickly, and then I acted.
I thought of King's words on nonviolence. What he said about Orpheus and the Sirens and the "sweeter music". I figured the same might apply to the evil force pushing on my arm.
I forced my lips up into a smile, and then I shouted, using a playful tone, at the girl in front of me. "Hey, bet you can't dodge this one!"
I prayed I'd be able to fake it till I made it.
Mercifully, my strategy worked. The girl thought I was just fooling around, and she ducked out of the way of the gun, laughing, at the exact moment that the malevolent force got me to pull the trigger.
Bang! The bullet passed harmlessly by, and the girl didn't get a scratch on her. When the dust settled at last, I realized I was laughing, too.
I've woken up now, and I'm looking across the simulation room at Amar.
He's checking my results on the screen. He must've seen them, because a wide smile forms on his face. "A job well done," he praises. "Less than two minutes on the clock."
I sit still in the chair, processing his words. Instead of satisfaction and pride, a red-hot fury stirs within me. I think of what I saw earlier from Jason, his body language that spelled defeat and his dead-eyed look of hopelessness. I think of the initiate who chewed their own nails to the point where the tips of their fingers bled. I think of what I have to hear from the dorms every night, the wails and howls of people being psychologically tortured.
And then I get the urge to just… snap.
"It wasn't that good," I reply to Amar, "when you take my cheating into account." I allow the sarcasm to drip from my words.
Amar doesn't even catch on. "Hey, don't say that out loud," he scolds. He stands up and walks closer to me. "You never know who might be listening."
Okay, now I'm gonna snap for real. "I'm just amazed that you care this much about me," I say evenly, then I stand as well. I'm ready to just bolt out the door. "Especially when you don't give a damn about the others," I finish, then I make my exit.
No one stares after me as I go. They don't even look up from their hands that they're fiddling with, or their knees that they're fixated on. The fear of what they'll soon see, it's a fear that consumes everything else, and it has its hold on all these poor initiates.
Eric's going through it now.
I didn't actually leave. I'm still here, still within sight of the simulation room, just keeping my distance from Amar and the others. I chose to hang around for one reason, to see how my best friend does in his last sim.
The door's closed, so I can't see his physical reaction. But the sounds he's making tell me enough.
He's just barely hanging on, about to lose his grip and drop into the abyss.
I try to puzzle out what it is he's trying to ward off. I stick near the wall I'm standing next to, but lean my ear in the direction of that godforsaken hallway. Now I can hear a little bit of what Eric's muttering. He's saying, in a voice contaminated by panic, something about his mother "not moving".
My brow furrows. But I keep on listening. His mother must be alive in the simulation, because Eric addressed her directly, he just didn't get a response. He tried again and again, but got nothing. He moves on and tries his sister, Megan. She's there too, but she's no more responsive than the mother.
The more I listen to what Eric's saying, the more shocked I am that this is his greatest fear.
Finally, something completely unexpected happens. I hear the door to the simulation room open with force. Two people storm out, one of them Eric, the other Amar, who's calling after the former, to no avail. Eric hurries past me without so much as a glance my way.
I take one look at his face, and I know it'd be fruitless to try to stop him.
So I let him go. That's what Eric would do, if I were the one trying to run away, unable to swallow the truth about the kind of person I am.
The chalkboard is still in Amar's hands, but that's of little importance to the initiates, transfer and Dauntless-born alike. They've all crammed themselves around the spot where their rankings are gonna be shown. Despite this, Amar takes his time counting and calculating.
At last, he gets it all done. He puts the board up without saying anything to the kids.
Eric's eyes travel down the list, and when he sees where his name is, he feels something start to collapse inside of him. This isn't possible, a voice in his head tells him, but a more insistent voice says that it is. After how he did in his final sim, this stage of initiation couldn't have ended any other way.
Tobias' name is in the first position. Eric's fallen to sixth.
Some of the other initiates are talking, discussing where they are in the ranks, but Eric's not hearing them. Even if Tobias were next to him right now, Eric would be completely oblivious. He holds both hands against his ears, but still he's forced to hear his own heartbeat get louder and louder, drowning out all other sounds in the dormitory, a testament to his most catastrophic failure.
Some amount of time's gone by. Eric couldn't tell you how much.
A hand reaches out and tentatively touches him on the shoulder. The hand belongs to an enemy, Eric knows, and that's confirmed when the visitor finally speaks.
"Eric. Are you okay?"
It's Tobias. Not Amar, or Lauren, or even another initiate.
Eric guesses his former friend will expect an answer to his question. So he musters all the humility inside him and manages to swallow his pride, to address the person he now hates with a passion.
"Do I look it?" he snaps. "Toby, I haven't been okay in forever."
Tobias isn't receiving the warning signs at all, because he keeps talking. God, his voice is torturous to listen to! "If every now and then," he starts, "you still think about your family…"
No, Eric thinks. He can't go there. He's not allowed to. "That's just it," Eric says, his frustration starting to boil at the surface. "I don't want to. But I do."
It's not clear if Tobias gets what he's saying. It probably didn't even register in his head, because he's pushing ahead in the conversation again. "You'll be fine in a few…"
"Easy for you to say," Eric bursts out. He can't take much more of this. It's time for him to get to the root of the issues between himself and Tobias. Starting with the true reason the latter was able to surge ahead in the ranks. "You're in first place now, did you know that? You passed us by, like we're nothing. 'Cause you…" Here Eric stops to think. Is it time now to level this accusation at Tobias? Oh well, there's not much left for Eric to lose. "You cheated, or something like that," he finishes, with all the vitriol he can bring to the surface.
The sneering hatred in his voice and expression, it's taking Tobias' resolve from him. The latter has to stand back before he can talk to Eric again. "I didn't cheat," is all he's able to say.
Eric's about to lose his shit. "How do I know for sure?" he spits back.
That's what finally gets Tobias. He truly has no idea how to answer. "Just let me be," Eric says with fury, then he's off to bed and shutting out the existence of his ex-best friend entirely.
It's nighttime in the control room. Lora's covering for another one of the security guys. She's gotta admit, night shift isn't exactly her favorite. It's boring as hell. She's been staring at the same screen for an hour straight, and nothing's happened. If she doesn't get outside soon, she might lose her mind.
Lora pushes her chair aside and gets up to stretch. She suddenly realizes, her boss likely won't find out if she goes out of the room for a few minutes. The guy went out and got drunk out of his mind for the fourth time this week. He'll definitely forget to check the room logs in the morning.
Lora's outside of the cramped room and in the hallway before her rational side can stop her.
She scans her surroundings, looking for anyone who might tell on her. A janitor? Another member of the security team? An initiate up to no good? None of these are to be found.
Lora relaxes, until she hears some loud stomping sounds up ahead. An initiate most likely, a young one looking to calm his restlessness and get out of bed.
Maybe she can help. She creeps toward the source of the sound, and is surprised to see that kid, Eric.
Lord, she thinks, he's in need of a major intervention. Physically he's a disaster, someone unable to hold up his own wasted frame. His legs look about to give out with every step he takes, and the tears messing up his face render him nearly unrecognizable.
"Kid, what happened to you?" Lora wants to know.
"I just…" Eric nearly chokes on his words, he's sobbing like a little kid. "Can't stand it anymore," he finishes. "I miss my mom. Can you…" He stops to try and gather himself. "Will you talk to someone? So they'll let me out of here." He sobs again, and more tears stain his face.
Lora watches him passively, completely stunned by the change in the Erudite transfer.
"I need to go see my mom," Eric pleads again, and this makes Lora want to act immediately.
The kid's mistaken. She won't need to talk to anyone. She'll take care of the cameras herself. This poor kid's gonna be let out of the Dauntless compound, even if it means breaking a law or two.
Eric cleans the fake tears from his face with a sleeve. He's walking down the moonlit road directly outside of the Dauntless compound. A snicker escapes him as he thinks over what he just did. Acting out like a two-year-old never helps at this age, but the Dauntless need to be tricked.
Now Eric is free to sneak off to Erudite headquarters if he wants. And that's just where he's heading.
He'll go to Jeanine's office, using that access card she gifted him. Jeanine works late often, she'll probably still be at her desk. She gives better advice than any therapist ever could, she'll be able to articulate to Eric why he's feeling down. She's the one he can count on, when everyone else has abandoned him.
The pillars of light in Erudite territory begin to make their appearance, and Eric can't resist smiling as he wipes the last of his tears.
AN: Oh Tobias, you are gonna be so surprised when you find out the REAL reason "E" has access to your family's personal photos. But it's gonna remain a secret until much later.
Mae means "mother" in Thai language.
Next chapter will feature some controversial politics! I know I haven't been posting too much of Eric's perspective, but things are gonna look up on that front in the next installment!