Page 115 of The Sixth Fraction

He’s breathing too fast. I can hear it.

“What’s this one?” I ask.

Something hits me in the back, throwing me forward. Then there’s something on my side, too, and something in front of me, a box wrapping around me and then shrinking. I have no choice but to move closer to him, to press into his side as the roof of the box slams down on top of us.

Then nothing moves. We’re in total darkness. The air is close. His breaths are loud and frantic against my cheek. I can feel them pulsing in his body, right up against mine. He’s hyperventilating.

“Hey.” I touch him, blindly, and I feel the ridges of his spine against my palm. The muscles in his back are hard and defined.

Look at people as people, Beatrice, not as objects to be admired—that’s what my Abnegation teacher taught me, only now I realize she’d set up a dichotomy that didn’t exist. I’m looking at Four as a person, worried about him, eager to help him, and I’m aware of how beautiful he is, of the thrill of touching him. I can do both things at the same time.

“Hey,” I say again. “What about this one?”

“This one’s . . .” He sounds like he can barely breathe. “Difficult.”

Then I notice something. A sliver of light. I reach for it, running my fingers along it. It feels like the bottom of a door.

If I can get him talking, his breathing should regulate. I can’t just let him keep hyperventilating; he’ll pass out.

“Where are we?” I say. “I mean, not a real place, I know. But where did this come from, do you know?”

I run my hand up his back, a little, so it’s pressed between his shoulder blades.

“Yeah,” he says. “Not every . . . not every Abnegation family thinks the Penalty of Silence is sufficient.”

Something cold grips my chest. I think of our family’s apartment in Building A. The upstairs hallway, where my family’s rooms were. The stairs down to the Black family quarters, kitchen, and living room. And right in the middle of it all, a small hall closet.

They locked you in a closet? I want to demand, but I don’t think now is the time for my outrage.

“Okay,” I say, trying to think of something, anything, that will help with this situation. My feet are going numb, so I shift forward onto my knees, and my hand slides up to the back of his neck, covering the Dauntless flames I can’t quite see.

“In initiation they taught us how to be present,” I say, and I’m so close to him I can feel the heat radiating from him. “To focus on one sensation—like the way air feels going into your nose, or the rise and fall of your chest as you breathe.”

I reach out and lay my hand over his chest, right on top of his sternum.

“Pay attention to my hand,” I say. “How it moves as you breathe.”

“I think there’s a flaw in your logic,” he says, unsteady.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You touching me,” he says, “does not calm me down.”

He shifts closer, and I think, He’s going to kiss me—but he’s just reaching over my shoulder. He grips a handle that wasn’t there before, and pushes. Light floods into the space.

I don’t move. My hand is still on him, my fingers curled a little over the collar of his T-shirt. Our faces are inches apart, so close I can see faint freckles dusting his nose.

His gaze shifts over my shoulder, and I pull away, remembering where we are. This place isn’t frightening to me, but it’s a collection of his worst nightmares; I should be focused on getting him through it as quickly as I can.

We’re in a blank room. White walls, white desk. It almost looks like Jeanine Matthews’s office, but it’s more sinister than that. The blankness is menacing, somehow.

A woman appears in the middle of the room. She has no facial features; she’s just a blur, like I’m looking at her through a rain-streaked window. Her hair is blond, like mine, and she’s dressed in gray.

On the white table in front of us is a gun. The same kind I saw in my own fear landscape: a lethal weapon.

“This one’s—easier,” he says. “Less panic involved.”

I never thought of fear this way, as coming in all kinds of flavors. There was the terror of heights, for him, and the panic of claustrophobia, but this is less acute. Deeper.