The Leader

18

"Listen up, initiates," Eric's voice booms, successfully silencing the entire room. "Instead of making you all come back this afternoon, we're going to inject you with a stronger serum, one that will make you go through two fears instead of one."

"We thought it would be better to let you adjust to one or two fears at a time," Four says, "before putting you through all of them at once. And the average person has twelve to fifteen fears, so that's a lot of fears to go through it one sitting."

"What's the least amount of fears someone has gotten?" Thomas says, from his spot at the back of the room.

Jillian and Reid sit next to him, looking anything but happy. I haven't really seen much of them lately. Waiting for our fear landscapes is really the only time I see them. They're not allowed in the dormitory, and I haven't seen them during meal times. Thankfully, they haven't tried bothering me anymore. I'm hoping they've learned their lesson and won't do that to anyone else.

Jillian, Reid, and Thomas are supposed to sit at the back of the room. Eric told me that he has a friend that works in the control room that monitors the three of them while Eric is in the fear landscape room. There are cameras and microphones near where they're sitting, so if they were planning to do anything, there would be proof.

"Four," Eric answers, his mouth set in a straight line.

"Is that why Four's name is Four?"

Honestly, I had been wondering why his name was Four ever since he first introduced himself. I'm glad Thomas asked about lowest number of fears, because I probably wouldn't have pieced it together.

"Yup," Eric grumbles, causing a hint of a smile to appear on Four's face.

Four and Eric exit the waiting room and enter the landscape rooms. I take a look around the room, noticing how nervous everyone looks. Some are bouncing their legs up and down, and others are tapping their feet or fingers. It's kind of calming to see that everyone looks just as nervous as I am. I'm not exactly nervous about the simulation itself. I'm more nervous about the fact that I don't know what's going to be in it, and the fact that Eric is watching. 

Before coming to Dauntless, I hadn't really given my fears much thought. I mean, Amity was a peaceful and carefree place. And both of the fears I've gone through have been fears I've gotten since being here. The first one must've been because of the attack, and it made me realize that I don't like being overpowered. The second one was where Eric rejected me, and I hadn't been afraid of that previously because I didn't put myself in the position to be rejected. I'm just nervous about what is going to show up in my landscape.

"You know," Tera whispers, leaning in closer, "I planned on asking you about your fears at breakfast, but I didn't want to ruin the moment."

At breakfast this morning, I told her about how Eric asked me on a dinner date. And she said that we would go shopping after the landscapes to find something cute for me to wear. She said she talked to a lady from the shops and was told we could charge up to forty points while in initiation. After we're members, we'll have a couple weeks to pay the points back.

"You want to talk about yours first?" I ask.

"My first fear was where I had hundreds of tiny spiders crawling on me." She shudders and takes a deep breath before continuing. "I couldn't move or get them off me. It was awful."

"That sounds like a nightmare."

"It wasn't as bad as my second one." She raises her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them. "You and Finn were in my second one." I raise my brows and rub her back, urging her to continue. "In my landscape, I watched you both get attacked by creepy men wearing masks. I was being held back by two of the men."