Page 105 of The Sixth Fraction

“Please,” he says. “Don’t.”

I hear a click by my ear. I turn to look at a woman in a Dauntless uniform. Weaver, her eyebrow pierced and her throat tattooed. And she’s holding a gun to my head.

It’s not a needle gun. This one is bigger, more solid. No luminous stripe. No—this gun is full of lethal ammunition, like the one on the table in front of me.

Dread is a heavy thing. It weighs down every part of me. Because I know what the simulation wants me to do.

“Do it,” Weaver says.

“What?” I say.

“Pick up your weapon and do it,” she says.

I know the gun she’s holding isn’t real. I know none of this is real—it’s a pile of symbols concocted by my mind to approximate what I’m really afraid of. Hurting my father, maybe. Betraying the people I love. Becoming something I don’t recognize. I’m not sure which one, but when the cold barrel of the gun presses to my temple, my heart starts to race. I flinch away from the woman.

“Do it,” she says, through gritted teeth, “or I’ll kill you.”

It’s not real, I think. It’s not real.

“No, you won’t,” I say, my voice shaking.

She presses the gun harder into my temple, so hard it hurts. I tense, my jaw clenching, and wait for the gunshot. Does it hurt, to die in a simulation? I don’t know.

But instead of shooting me, she yanks her weapon away from my head with a frustrated noise and walks around the table to my father. She puts him between her and me, and points the gun at the back of his head, instead.

“If you won’t do it,” she says, “I will.”

He cowers, shrinking into himself, his eyes squeezing shut.

I grab the weapon from the table and hold it up, thinking of the dart gun I practiced with in the Rookery. My only chance of keeping her from shooting my father is to aim at the sliver of her that I can see over his shoulder.

My hands are shaking so hard I can barely keep my grip on the gun. It’s heavier than the dart gun, harder to keep steady. I try to remember what Colin told me about aim, but my mind is blank.

“Five,” she says. “Four.”

“Screw you,” I say. I need to shoot her; I know what will happen if I do. Even if I manage to aim well, she’ll get hit, she’ll bleed, she’ll crumple to the ground. She’ll die, and that’s the best-case scenario.

I try to steady my breaths. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

“Three,” she says. “Two.”

“Don’t!”

“One.”

I fire, but my aim is off. I hit my father in the shoulder, and blood gushes from the wound, spreading over his shirt. Weaver fires, too, right into the back of my father’s head. His eyes turn empty as a doll’s, and his mouth drops open, slack-jawed. Then he collapses, and I see the back of his head, where Weaver’s bullet went in.

I scream. I scream so loud that the sound startles me. My back hits cold stone, and I hunch over, my arms wrapped around my middle. My eyes are closed, and I don’t want to open them, can’t stand to see all that blood, my father’s blood, my father’s body on the ground. My eyes are hot with tears.

“Hey.” A hand brushes my arm, and I flinch back. “Tris. Tris, it’s over.”

It’s Four’s voice, deep and quiet. I open my eyes, and my father’s body is gone, the Dauntless woman is gone, the gun is gone. Four is standing in front of me, bending a little so he’s at eye level with me. Tears roll down my cheeks.

“Give me your hands,” he says.

I’m squeezing my hands into fists. I watch as he takes them in his own, coaxing my fingers out of their tight hold. His palms are warm beneath mine, and calloused. He has long, thin fingers.

I look up at him again, the start of a blush tickling at the back of my neck as I realize how foolish I must seem to him, this Dauntless boy who goes through fear simulations every single day, who climbed a Ferris wheel despite a fear of heights without batting an eye.