Cold Hearts | Tobias Eaton

°15°

"THE FIRST THING you will learn today is how to shoot a gun. The second thing is how to win a fight." Four presses a gun into my palm without looking at me and keeps walking. "Thankfully, if you are here, you already know how to get on and off a moving train, so I don't need to teach you that."

I shouldn't be surprised that the Dauntless expect us to hit the ground running, but I anticipated more than six hours of rest before the running began. My body is still heavy from sleep. Or maybe not sleep, just Beatrice.

"Initiation is divided into three stages. We will measure your progress and rank you according to your performance in each stage. The stages are not weighed equally in determining your final rank, so it is possible, though difficult, to drastically improve your rank over time."

I stare at the weapon in my hand. Never in my life did I expect to hold a gun, let alone fire one.

"We believe that preparation eradicates cowardice, which we define as the failure to act in the midst of fear," says Four. "Therefore each stage of initiation is intended to prepare you in a different way. The first stage is primarily physical; the second, primarily emotional; the third, primarily mental."

"But what..." Peter yawns through his words. "What does firing a gun have to do with...bravery?"

Four flips the gun in his hand, presses the barrel to Peter's forehead, and clicks a bullet into place. Peter freezes with his lips parted, the yawn dead in his mouth.

"Wake. Up," Four snaps. "You are holding a loaded gun, you idiot. Act like it."

He lowers the gun. Once the immediate threat is gone, Peter's green eyes harden. I'm surprised he can stop himself from responding, after speaking his mind all his life in Candor, but he does, his cheeks red. "And to answer your question...you are far less likely to soil your pants and cry for your mother if you're prepared to defend yourself." Four stops walking at the end of the row and turns on his heel. "This is also information you may need later in stage one. So, watch me."

He faces the wall with the targets on it—one square of plywood with three red circles on it for each of us. He stands with his feet apart, holds the gun in both hands, and fires. The bang is so loud it hurts my ears. I look at the target. The bullet went through the middle circle.

I turn to my own target. The Priors would never approve of me firing a gun. They would say that guns are used for self-defense, if not violence, and therefore they are self-serving. But they would be really mad if they saw Beatrice. But I am not a Prior.

I push my family from my mind, set my feet shoulder-width apart, and delicately wrap both hands around the handle of the gun. I squeeze the trigger. The sound hurts my ears. I stumble, pressing my hand to the wall behind me for balance. I  see that my bullet went through the edge of the target.

I fire again and again and again, and each time the bullets come close. I feel proud of myself. For the first time I can do something special.

"Statistically speaking," the Erudite boy next to me—his name is Will—says, grinning at someone next to him, "you should have hit the target at least once by now, even by accident." He is blond, with shaggy hair and a crease between his eyebrows.

"Is that so," Beatrice says without inflection.

"Yeah," he says. "I think you're actually defying nature."

I squeeze the trigger, not pulling it, looking at Jin-Soo. Who is as successful as me. Call it Trash Buddies luck.

"So you see, I'm right. The stats don't lie," he says.

I smile a little. Beatrice did it.

By the time we break for lunch, my arms throb from holding up the gun and my fingers are hard to straighten. I massage them on my way to the dining hall. Christina invites Al and us to sit with them. Every time I look at him, I hear his sobs again, so I try not to look at him. But when I'm not looking at him, I look at Beatrice. And I hear her say, that I don't belong here, on repeat.

I move my peas around with my fork, and my thoughts drift back to the aptitude tests. When Cara warned me that being Divergent was dangerous, I felt like it was branded on my face, and if I so much as turned the wrong way, someone would see it. So far it hasn't been a problem, but that doesn't make me feel safe. What if I let my guard down and something terrible happens?

"Oh, come on. You don't remember me?" Christina asks Al as she makes a sandwich. "We were in Math together just a few days ago. And I am not a quiet person."

"I slept through Math most of the time," Al replies. "It was first hour!"

What if the danger doesn't come soon—what if it strikes years from now and I never see it coming?

"Tris," says Christina. She snaps her fingers in front of her face. "You in there?"

"What? What is it?"

"I asked if you remember ever taking a class with me," she says. "I mean, no offense, but I probably wouldn't remember if you did. All the Abnegation looked the same to me. I mean, they still do, but now you're not one of them. You're the first person from Abnegation that looks different than them."

I stare at her. I feel Jin-Soo squeeze my hand. I do remember Christina from Advanced technology.

"Sorry, am I being rude?" she asks. "I'm used to just saying whatever is on my mind. Mom used to say that politeness is deception in pretty packaging." No honey, you're not honest, you're just rude.

"I think that's why our factions don't usually associate with each other," She says, with a short laugh, and looks at me. Candor and Abnegation don't hate each other the way Erudite and Abnegation do, but they avoid each other. Candor's real problem is with Amity. Those who seek peace above all else, they say, will always deceive to keep the water calm. Maybe that's the reason there's war inside me. Because I'm Candor and Amity. Maybe that's one of unsolved reasons why I chose Dauntless - because it took some braveness to go against my heart values.