Ambivalence [p.h.] - EDITING

chapter 22 || sort-of divergents

A/N hehehe.  Hope you like the chapter.

It's a horrible sight really.

I mean, who would want to see somebody that they knew; somebody that they lived with; somebody they could have saved, lying dead on the floor of the Pit.

Horrible, I tell you.

Though my eyes are still heavy, longing for a few more hours of sleep, I anxiously run across the Pit floor next to Tris and Christina.  The girl about my height stops in her tracks once we get to the ledge of the chasm.  We manage to spread out a little so that everyone can see the two men hoisting something up and over with ropes from deep into the rushing waters.  They struggle to pull whatever it is up, but eventually a dark figure appears above the railing.  A few other Dauntless members rush over to help heave it up, and then let it fall with a heavy thump to the cold stone.  Then I realize, they aren't hauling up an it.  

The soulless, empty eyes of the human we used to call Al are open.  Open, but cold and lifeless.  His lips are blue already, and his face is something I don't want to describe.  I can't look.  I turn around and wobble around through the growing crowd of people until I manage to locate Peter.  He doesn't say anything, but his face looks sheet white with shock, and a little bit of something else.  I wasn't close to him, so I'm not feeling the brunt of it.  But with a bunch of accidents like my hand, still healing a bit with a huge scar, or Eddie's eye, this is probably going to give us all a scare.  Somebody pushes past me with a large black bag to put Al in.  I watch them pass through and almost laugh at the fact that Al is too tall for the body bag.  A sour laugh, one filled with anguish and a little insanity, but a laugh nonetheless.  

Tris runs off, and I don't know how long we're left standing in the Pit.  Eric wastes no time with funeral services; by the time twenty minutes are up, he's stepping into a box next to the railing.  I don't process what's going on.  Next thing I know, we're chanting Al's name until it loses it's meaning.  I don't get why people do that.  It's over soon enough, and we all sulk back to bed for the last few hours of sleep we can get.

• • •

Lauren, the Dauntless-born instructor, stands in front of all of us initiates.  Four has let me practice my simulations a few times over the course of the last three days, but we don't have any other training to do.  Fear simulations are going to be a surprise.  

"Two years ago, I was afraid of spiders, suffocations, walls that inch slowly inward and trap you between them, getting throw our of Dauntless, uncontrollable bleeding, getting run over by a train, my father's death, public humiliation, and kidnapping men without faces.  You've already been through one of my fears at the beginning of stage two, but you weren't able to do it as though you would be in your fear landscape.  Most of you will have anywhere from ten to fifteen fears in your fear landscape.  That is the average number," she explains, fiddling with one of her eyebrow piercings. 

"What's the lowest number someone has gotten?" Lynn shouts.

"In recent years, four."  Four?  If the average is ten, then getting four is outstanding.  "You will not find out your number today.  The simulation is set to my fear landscape program, so you will experience my fears instead of your own.  For the purposes of this exercise, though, each of you will only face one of my fears, to get a sense for how the simulation works."  Lauren points at each of us in line to give us a fear.

"You, spiders."

Oh, great.  

Peter is standing in front of Molly, who is standing in front of me.  With public humiliation, his must not be terrible.  Molly looks terribly shaken by the end of it, and then it's my turn.  I step up to Lauren as she injects a serum into my neck.  I hiss in pain after it goes in.