Page 114 of The Sixth Fraction

To risk something.

“I can show you,” I say.

Chapter 41

Tris

We’re back in the fear simulation room, and I think I’m finally witnessing what makes Four flinch. He’s so tense I can see the muscles in his jaw.

“The final test of Dauntless initiation is something called a fear landscape,” he says. “It’s like . . . a sequence of all your deepest fears. Most people have anywhere from twelve to twenty-five.”

I try to imagine it. An assembly line of terrors, one after another— it sounds like torture, but I can also see the wisdom in it. Once you know yourself in that adversity, you really do know yourself, forever.

I dread it. I crave it.

He goes on: “The simulation computer is more flexible than most people realize. It doesn’t just take a person through their own fear simulation, and it doesn’t just allow an observer. It can incorporate the observer into the simulation, too.”

I’m still confused about why he brought me here. “So . . . you want to go through my fear landscape?”

“No.” He looks up at me. “I want you to go through mine.”

I can feel my pulse in my throat. His eyes look dark and fathomless in this light—and certain. He’s decided. Now I have to decide, too.

When I looked at our interlaced fingers, before, I thought of Eustace and Mary, my fellow Abnegation initiates, playing that children’s game. Just an excuse to hold hands, really. Suddenly it was like I could see the two of us, Four and me, in Abnegation gray, on the bus. Our silence compelled by an initiation rite, all our communication done through meaningful looks and smiles and gestures. It was the life I wanted—or rather, the life I wanted to want. Only I never could have had it, because neither of us could choose it.

And now here we are. In this dim stone room, on the very edge of something.

“Okay,” I say to him.

He tips his head back, like he’s speaking to a god. “Take us both through.”

The room disappears, and in its place is a glittering array of buildings, their glass windows catching the light of the sun. The wind rushes over me, pressing my clothes against my body and then away from it.

We’re high up, above everything. We must be on top of the Hub. The marsh is in the distance, its grasses and muddy patches an irregular patchwork quilt. I move closer to the edge of the building by instinct, wanting to see more. Then I look back at him.

He’s rigid, his throat working as he swallows. After a few seconds I detect a tremor moving through his body. I remember this is one of his worst fears.

“How do you face it?” I ask him, and then I remember this is a simulation. I’m not supposed to know what’s going on; I’m supposed to think I just appeared on top of this building, somehow.

But when he looks at me, he doesn’t seem confused.

“I jump off,” he says.

I can’t breathe. It’s dangerous. For you and for every person you tell. Apart from that one conversation with my mother, I’ve been alone with this secret since the day of my aptitude test, wondering what’s wrong with me, why I don’t work the way I’m supposed to. And now, suddenly . . . I’m not alone anymore.

“You’re Divergent,” I say, my voice strained.

“So are you,” he replies.

He walks toward me, and every step looks forced, like he’s resisting the commands of a puppeteer. He stands next to me on the ledge, the tremor of his fear now a full-on shudder. I look down, and I can feel something like it, maybe—but my body thrills at the height, too.

“Well,” I say. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

I hold out my hand, like I did in his apartment. He takes it.

I step off the edge, and I take him with me.

The rush of air, the horror of searching for stability and finding nothing, they last for less than a second. I hit the ground and then open my eyes in the dark, my hand still clasped in his.