Page 35 of The Sixth Fraction

I hold out a hand to Christina, who has a split lip and an eye that’s almost swollen shut. Still, she’s lucky she’s in one piece. Hell, I’m lucky she’s in one piece.

She puts a trembling hand in mine. I let her pull herself up—I don’t want to yank her arm. She gets up, and she’s favoring her right side, but she seems okay.

“Go to med bay and get checked out,” I tell her. “Uriah? Walk with her.”

I wait until she’s safely out of the arena before I turn back to Peter.

I can’t let this continue. Peter’s been targeting other people for weeks. First Will—an Erudite boy who seemed like an easy mark but turned out to have a good right hook. Then Myra—small, attached at the hip to her Erudite boyfriend, Edward—and now Christina. His behavior keeps escalating, with no one checking his ego.

So yeah. It’s time to check his ego.

I say, “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen you fight someone your own size. Maybe you should start with me.”

Peter narrows his eyes at me. “You can’t fight an initiate.”

“Pretty sure I can,” I say. “And if you refuse, well, I guess you can expect the same consideration you just showed Christina.”

But he won’t refuse. That’s the thing about people like Peter—they never admit they made the wrong choice, so it’s easy to back them into a corner. I move into the arena, and all the initiates who were creeping closer when Christina fell step back, so they’re outside the white line.

Peter pushes his sweaty hair away from his face and cracks his neck as he squares off with me. There are maybe six feet between us, maybe more. The room smells like chalk and sweat, not exactly pleasant but comforting in its familiarity; this was where I found my footing in Dauntless, with my height and my pain tolerance as my greatest assets.

The conventional wisdom says to keep space between you and your opponent, but I never liked the straightforward boxing most Dauntless are taught. It didn’t seem useful to me for what the Dauntless actually need—a nonviolent way to subdue dangerous people. I learned other methods, instead.

Peter’s hands are up, his feet staggered—at least I’ve managed to teach the basics well enough. He bounces a little on his toes, like he’s waiting for me to make the first move. All right, then—I jerk forward like I’m about to hit him, and he lurches back. Just a tease. Shows how jumpy he is.

He scowls. I embarrassed him. Good. He jabs at my face, and I slip to the side, turning us both around. He jabs again, and I bob to avoid it. I should counter with a punch of my own, but despite what I said, I don’t actually want to fight one of my students. I just want to humble him.

I’m pretty sure he’ll move on from jabs, now that he’s failed to hit me twice. He lowers his shoulder for an uppercut aimed at my gut, and this is it, this is the moment—I bring my left arm down on his, to derail his punch, then grab his wrist and twist.

He tries to turn and punch me, now that I’m so close, but the motion only wrenches his wrist further. He can’t hit me, and he can’t pull free. He’s stuck.

I release him, and he stumbles back, holding his arm close to his chest.

“Go on,” I say. “Hit me.”

“Screw you,” he says, but he’s too angry to resist the invitation. He punches wide and wild at my left side, and instead of evading him, I step in close and bring my left arm down hard against his shoulder. He’s off-balance, on one foot. So I clothesline him with my right arm, swinging it so it comes down right across his throat. He chokes, startled.

I bear down on that arm, forcing his body to bow back until he can’t keep his legs under him. Then he hits the ground, hard, gasping.

Before he can roll away, I lift up one foot and let it hover over his neck, like a threat.

“Attack one of your fellow initiates again,” I say, “and I won’t show such restraint.”

I step back and turn toward the door.

Where Eric, youth leader of Dauntless and the actual worst person I know, is standing with his arms crossed.

“Interesting teaching method, Four.”

He always says my name like that, like it’s sarcastic, even though he knows exactly where my nickname came from.

We’re in one of the smaller practice rooms now, the one with all the punching bags hanging from its low ceiling. It’s dark in here, with only the blue-tinted emergency lights in the corners casting strange shadows. Eric hooks his pale fingers into the chain supporting one of the punching bags and tugs at it, as if to test its strength.

Eric was in my initiate class. Of all the pierced members of our faction, he’s the most committed to that aesthetic. There are studs through his eyebrows, his lips. There have been moments when I’ve fantasized about yanking some of them out with pliers—my darker moments, I’ll admit—but for the most part I just find them distracting.

“Thanks,” I say. “I try to innovate.”

“Still, we do try to discourage our instructors from attacking their students. What would Amar say?”