Page 135 of The Sixth Fraction

This one seems to be used only for weapons training, because there’s a row of targets along the back wall, and a line painted on the floor nearer to us. Tobias is standing on that line, his stance staggered, his weapon raised.

“Four,” Shauna says, and he doesn’t react.

He fires, instead. A needle hits the target just shy of the center. At first, I can’t see why she’s so worried. He just looks like himself. But the longer I look, the more the cracks show. The way his hands tremble. The sweat curling behind his ear. The focused-yet-unfocused gaze.

I nod to Shauna, and she slips out of the room, so it’s just us, alone.

“Tobias,” I say, and he startles. He lowers the gun and disables it in one motion—a habit that must be deeply ingrained, for him to do it so readily. He stares at me, his eyes bright.

“What are you doing here?” he asks roughly.

“Shauna found me in your apartment,” I say. “She said you might need some help.”

“Shauna.” When he sets the gun down on the table by the wall, I can see the impression of it on his fingers. He must have been holding it tightly.

I want to ask him what happened, but everything I’ve found out from Tobias about his life, he’s shared himself, in his own time and in his own way. So maybe it’s better to just let him surface from this, whatever it is.

“Since we’re here,” I say. “You could teach me how to throw a punch. Christina’s been trying, but I bet you’re better at it.”

For a moment I’m braced for Gretchen’s look of skepticism to flash across his face, but his expression is thoughtful.

“All right,” he says.

He takes us down the hallway, farther away from the main training room, and into another smaller one. This one holds old equipment— at least that’s how it smells to me, dusty and faded, like a library. There are stacks of old mats up against the walls, rusted barbells and targets with peeling paint. But there’s a punching bag hanging from a chain in the middle of it, cracked in places, and a pair of gloves that looks like it’s seen better days.

He has me pull them on and stand in front of the bag. Suddenly I feel self-conscious. I’ve only learned from Christina, who was a novice herself. Am I about to embarrass myself in front of him?

I put my left foot forward and hold up my hands. His mouth flickers into a smile.

“Not bad,” he says. He puts a hand under my elbow, and pushes it up so my hand is higher. “Guard up higher. Good.”

He says to jab, and I do, punching hard at the bag with my left hand. I feel his foot hook over the back of my ankle.

“Step with each punch,” he says. “Then reset.”

I try again, this time stepping into the jab when I throw it. I can feel the subtle shift in strength that the step gives me—some momentum, and some power that I didn’t have before. When we move to the cross, I try to remember what Christina said about twisting my back foot into the ground as my body turns.

“It’s about weight transfer.” He stands behind me, and sets his hands on my hips. “Try again.”

I try another cross, and this time his hand pushes my right hip forward as I move, forcing me to shift my weight. My back foot turns automatically, and the sound, when I hit the bag, is sharp as a snap.

“Feel that?” he says, his breath against my hair.

I felt it. And I also feel the heat of him behind me. I feel his fingertips right inside my hip bone. I shiver a little, and look back at him.

He’s looking down at me, his eyes dark in this dim room. He doesn’t look half-in, half-out anymore. He’s right here with me.

“Take the gloves off,” he says.

I tug them off my hands, and let them fall to the floor. Then I turn toward him. His hands are still resting on my hips. I raise mine to his shoulders, one hand curling over the back of his neck, where the Dauntless flames play across his skin, and the other finding the ridge of his collarbone.

He touches his lips to mine. Then he huffs a laugh against my jaw. “Are you wearing my shirt?”

“I didn’t come dressed as a Dauntless. I had to improvise.”

“I see.” He tugs at it, a little, so the oversized collar pulls away from my shoulder. He kisses the skin he exposed, right where my neck meets my shoulder, and then lower, right above my collarbone. “A little big on you.”

“Well, I’m a little shorter than you. You may have noticed.”