You die, I die too

Chapter 14

"All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy."

- Scott Alexander

Candice POV

I woke up the next morning to someone shaking me.

"Candice, Candice wake up." I heard the voice of Meg say, she sounded panicked.

"What, what's going on?" I asked groggily.

"They've found someone."

"What do you mean, found someone?" I was now leaning on my elbows looking up at her.

"They've found someone in the chasm. Someone jumped!" Matt said behind Meg. Noah and Lip where at their beds getting dressed, they were all waiting for me to get up.

"What?! Seriously? Who?"

"We don't know yet, but we think it's an initiative." Hearing that I jolted up from my bed, not caring that I was only in a tank top and underwear, not to mention braless. I hated sleeping with a bra on. I took some clothes that hung by my bed and went to the bathroom to get dressed. After a quick look in the mirror I walked back to the others and we went to the chasm to see what had happened.

We arrived only minutes later, the hallway was crowded with people and it was hard to see anything. We pushed through the crowd only to be greeted by two tired twins.

"Nice way to wake up to, huh?" Kev said yawning.

"Do they know who it is yet?" I asked yawning as well.

"I think so, they are about to bring him up, now look." We all watched how four people hauled a body up from the chasm. None of us could see who the person was, least of all me since I was the shortest in our group. I saw Eric, he was one of the people who helped. He looked up and scanned the crowed, his eyes catching mine. I remembered what had happened the other night and I looked away. Out of embarrassment? Perhaps. All I knew was that I couldn't look him in the eyes without thinking of what had happened the previous night. Soon enough, Four walked up to us and ushered us out of there. He took us to our dormitory, the dauntless born were with us as well because Lauren had to stay behind with the other leaders.

"I know that this might be hard for some of you, but you need to know that this always happens in Dauntless. There will be a memorial tonight. Now, get ready for breakfast, we will continue training as usual. Dauntless born, Lauren will be back to take you to training after breakfast.

"Who was it?" Someone asked.

"An initiative." Four said with slight sorrow. We all looked around us, I knew that all my friends were there, thankfully. but someone was not here, Ben. I didn't know the guy that well but he seemed sweet. I saw that May was crying, they were probably close, Lip seemed sad too. I guess they were somewhat of friends too before he joined our group. I felt bad for not trying to include Ben and May as well, I guess it just never occurred to me to ask them.

"Come on, we should go before we're late." Matt said to all of us and we walked to the dining hall. Four was sitting at our usual table and we sat down with him, me next to him.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine, a little tired but I will be okay. I didn't know him."

"Don't feel bad about it, like I said this happens every year. Someone can't take the pressure and they jump thinking that's the only solution."

"Why don't they just fight harder?"

"Because they don't see the point. They know they are not doing well enough and they don't want to become factionless, so the only option they've left is to jump. If they're not preforming well they rather end their life than failing. Becoming factionless means they failed."