Page 106 of The Sixth Fraction

“You good?” he says.

I nod, even though I’m not. There’s a weight on my chest. It occurs to me that I’ll never be able to erase what I saw from my mind. It will always be there, waiting to surface.

“You did well,” he says, but he’s frowning as he says it, like he doesn’t quite mean it.

“Yeah, right.” I drag the heels of my hands across my cheeks, to wipe away my tears. “I lost it.”

“You were scared. It’s supposed to be scary,” he says. “But you got out of it in record time.”

“Really?”

He nods. “Do you know what I would tell you, if you were one of my initiates? I would tell you to practice shooting.”

It doesn’t sound like he’s mocking me. He’s giving me a serious look, like he’s analyzing me.

“Can you imagine how much easier that simulation would have been to face if you’d felt confident with the gun?”

I think about that for a moment. If I’d felt confident with the gun, maybe I would have grabbed it the second the woman moved away from me.

“The skills we learn in real life make the fear simulations easier,” he says. “And the fear simulations make us ready to act in real life.”

Like him climbing the Ferris wheel. It feels like the heart of Dauntless wisdom, to feel the fear and learn to move through it, to prepare to act so that bravery becomes, not choice, but habit.

He hesitates before saying, “You seemed pretty certain that she wasn’t going to hurt you. Why is that?”

I realize, suddenly, what the problem is. My real explanation for telling that woman to go ahead and shoot me is that I knew the simulation wasn’t real. Because I’m Divergent.

So I shrug, and say, “Well, why would she kill me? I can’t do what she wants if I’m dead.”

Four’s eyes narrow slightly.

“What do you think I’m really afraid of?” I ask, desperate to change the subject. “I know it’s not supposed to be literal.”

He runs a hand over his short hair. “I don’t know. I thought it was about loyalty, but . . . in the end, I think it was about capability.”

“Capability.”

“You’re afraid you won’t be capable of doing what you need to when you need to.” He tilts his head as he regards me, looking thoughtful. “Which is funny, really. Because you’re one of the most capable people I’ve ever met.”

I can’t suppress a snort. “I barely got out of that fire alive because I couldn’t do a single pull-up. That’s capable?”

He’s quiet for a few seconds.

“You did get out of that fire alive,” he says. “You did pull yourself up. You walked through fire for that girl. You rose to every single occasion. It was remarkable.” He hesitates and then says: “You’re remarkable.”

Heat courses through me, but it’s not embarrassment. I stare up at him because there’s nowhere else I want to look.

He clears his throat. “Anyway, that’s . . . what fear simulations are like. Everyone dreads this place. They think there’s something wrong with me for wanting this job.”

“I get it. Why you wanted it, I mean.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“The simulations get to the heart of people,” I say. “And that’s what you want to see. You don’t trust them until you do. Maybe you don’t trust them at all.”

Since the start, he’s been suspicious of me. Suspicious of my motives, my association with his mother, all of it. But suspicion is a kind of eagerness—an eagerness for the truth. For what’s real. I can’t fault him for that, especially not when he was lied to for so long by one of the people he loved most.

His face contorts a little, like he’s in pain. Like what I said hurt him, though I don’t understand how. He crosses his arms, and looks down at his feet.