Chasm

Chapter 19

TRIS POV

"Ready?"

Lauren stands over me, a syringe in hand. Tobias meets my eyes from across the fear landscape room, silently giving me the encouragement I need with a simple nod. Things may be precarious between us right now, but at least he is willing to set aside our grievances for the moment I need him most.

Because this moment will determine my fate in Dauntless for the rest of my life this time. Passing the final test shouldn't be this nerve-wracking for me, as I have completed it before, but I am not eager to deal with any more turmoil, however fake.

"Yes," I say.

The needle jabs into my neck, and I bite my tongue to direct the pain to another place. Next to me, the leaders prepare to watch my full fear landscape, and I let out a heavy breath to relax myself. Hunter's gaze sets me on edge anyway.

My heart starts pounding. The dank room fades, and the spray-painted words on the wall across from me morph into different ones as my vision fails me:

Be brave.

xXxXx

Facing the crows makes me panic every time, since I am usually unable to fight back by using my Divergence. This time though, I am allowed to be aware, so I reach down through the thick undergrowth and pull out a gun. It is still challenging to pull the trigger, but it is not so hard when I realize how much I hate these feathered animals, how my only alternative is to let them peck and suffocate me.

The simulation shifts. I am in a water tank, just like the one that I used to be trapped in in simulations, just like the one that Jeanine constructed for me to drown in for the sole purpose of gathering data. I bang on the glass walls, soon realizing how idiotic it is to waste my energy every time. So I let the tank fill up completely before I try again, slamming my palm into the wall until I see a crack, until it shatters.

These fears are effortless; I have faced them each before with the same results. They are phobias, not genuine horrors.

Then, the real ones set in.

I once again find myself in a field, at the top of a pile of logs, bound to a stake. But this time, instead of Peter and his companions, the familiar faces in front of me are of those whom I have killed.

My mother, or a sinister version of her, holds the torch. My father pours gasoline at the base. Will and Al shovel more wood onto the pile. And Marlene watches, though she doesn't have a face to watch; her blonde hair is the only thing recognizable, since her face has been splattered into a gruesome image by jumping off a building.

"I will forget the ones I love if I do not serve them," my mother quotes.

I recognize the line. It is from the Abnegation manifesto.

Before I have time to question the meaning, she steps forward and lights the wood on fire. The flames burn around me, reaching upward and outward, until they lick my ankles.

With tears in my eyes, I say, "I'm sorry. But I don't deserve to die because I couldn't save you."

The admittance is a relief, something I would not have been able to think let alone say aloud in the real world. At my words, raindrops begin to fall from the sky, dousing the fires and relieving the burns I have acquired.

The scene disappears. I wipe away the moisture from my cheeks and stand, ready to face the next obstacle.

I turn around. A handgun appears on a table in front of me.

I gulp, having a notion of what this next fear will be. It will involve killing someone, which I somehow find worse with a gun. Although I didn't kill Eric, my goal was to see the life leave his appalling eyes when I stabbed him in Candor; I don't know why being up close and drawing out death is less frightening to me than a tool that could quickly and painlessly take a life if aimed right.