to panic.
I think of Eric in his fear landscape, willing his terror into submission with deep breathing and logic. And Tris, conjuring weapons out of thin air to attack her worst nightmares. But I am not Eric, and I am not Tris. What am I? What do I need, to overcome my fears?
I know the answer, of course I do: I need to deny them the power to control me. I need to know that I am stronger than they are.
I breathe in and slam my palms against the walls to my left and right. The box creaks, and then breaks, the boards crashing to the concrete floor. I stand above them in the dark.
Amar, my initiation instructor, taught us that our fear landscapes were always in flux, shifting with our moods and changing with the little whispers of our nightmares. Mine was always the same, until a few weeks ago. Until I proved to myself that I could overpower my father. Until I discovered someone I was terrified to lose.
I don’t know what I will see next.
I wait for a long time without anything changing. The room is still dark, the floor still cold and hard, my heart still beating faster than normal. I look down to check my watch and discover that it’s on the wrong hand—I usually wear mine on my left, not my right, and my watchband isn’t gray, it’s black.
Then I notice bristly hairs on my fingers that weren’t there before. The calluses on my knuckles are gone. I look down, and I am wearing gray slacks and a gray shirt; I am thicker around the middle and thinner through the shoulders.
I lift my eyes to a mirror that now stands in front of me. The face staring back at mine is Marcus’s.
He winks at me, and I feel the muscles around my eye contracting as he does, though I didn’t tell them to. Without warning, his—my—our arms jerk toward the glass and reach into it, closing around the neck of my reflection. But then the mirror disappears, and my—his—our hands are around our own throat, dark patches creeping into the edge of our vision. We sink to the ground, and the grip is as tight as iron.
I can’t think. I can’t think of a way out of this one.
By instinct, I scream. The sound vibrates against my hands. I picture those hands as mine really are, large with slender fingers and calloused knuckles from hours at the punching bag. I imagine my reflection as water running over Marcus’s skin, replacing every piece of him with a piece of me. I remake myself in my own image.
I am kneeling on the concrete, gasping for air.
My hands tremble, and I run my fingers over my neck, my shoulders, my arms. Just to make sure.
I told Tris, on the train to meet Evelyn a few weeks ago, that Marcus was still in my fear landscape, but that he had changed. I spent a long time thinking about it; it crowded my thoughts every night before I slept and clamored for attention every time I woke. I was still afraid of him, I knew, but in a different way—I was no longer a child, afraid of the threat my terrifying father posed to my safety. I was a man, afraid of the threat he posed to my character, to my future, to my identity.
But even that fear, I know, does not compare to the one that comes next. Even though I know it’s coming, I want to open a vein and drain the serum from my body rather than see it again.
A pool of light appears on the concrete in front of me. A hand, the fingers bent into a claw, reaches into the light, followed by another hand, and then a head, with stringy blond hair. The woman coughs and drags herself into the circle of light, inch by inch. I try to move toward her, to help her, but I am frozen.
The woman turns her face toward the light, and I see that she is Tris. Blood spills over her lips and curls around her chin. Her bloodshot eyes find mine, and she wheezes, “Help.”
She coughs red onto the floor, and I throw myself toward her, somehow knowing that if I don’t get to her soon, the light will leave her eyes. Hands wrap around my arms and shoulders and chest, forming a cage of flesh and bone, but I keep straining toward her. I claw at the hands holding me, but I only end up scratching myself.
I shout her name, and she coughs again, this time more blood. She screams for help, and I scream for her, and I don’t hear anything, I don’t feel anything, but my heartbeat, but my own terror.
She drops to the ground, tensionless, and her eyes roll back into her head. It’s too late.
The darkness lifts. The lights return. Graffiti covers the walls of the fear landscape room, and across from me are the mirror-windows to the observation room, and in the corners are the cameras that record each session, all where they’re supposed to be. My neck and back are covered in sweat. I wipe my face with the hem of my shirt and walk to the opposite door, leaving my black box with its syringe and needle behind.
I don’t need to relive my fears anymore. All I need to do now is try to overcome them.
I know from experience that confidence alone can get a person into a forbidden place. Like the cells on the third floor of Erudite headquarters.
Not here, though, apparently. A factionless man stops me with the end of his gun before I reach the door, and I am nervous, choking.
“Where you going?”
I put my hand on his gun and push it away from my arm. “Don’t point that thing at me. I’m here on Evelyn’s orders. I’m going to see a prisoner.”
“I didn’t hear about any after-hours visits today.”
I drop my voice low, so he feels like he’s hearing a secret. “That’s because she didn’t want it on the record.”
“Chuck!” someone calls out from the stairs above us. It’s Therese. She makes a waving motion as she walks down. “Let him through. He’s fine.”
I nod to Therese and keep moving. The debris in the hallway has been swept clean, but the broken lightbulbs haven’t been replaced, so I walk through stretches of darkness, like patches of bruises, on my way to the right cell.
When I reach the north corridor, I don’t go straight to the cell, but rather to the woman who stands at the end. She is middle-aged, with eyes that droop at the edges and a mouth held in a pucker. She looks like everything exhausts her, including me.
“Hi,” I say. “My name is Tobias Eaton. I’m here to collect a prisoner, on orders from Evelyn Johnson.”
Her expression doesn’t change when she hears my name, so for a few seconds I’m sure I’ll have to knock her unconscious to get what I want. She takes a piece of crumpled paper from her pocket and flattens it against her left palm. On it is a list of prisoners’ names and their corresponding room numbers.
“Name?” she says.
“Caleb Prior. 308A.”
“You’re Evelyn’s son, right?”
“Yeah. I mean . . . yes.” She doesn’t seem like the kind of person who likes the word “yeah.”
She leads me to a blank metal door with 308A on it—I wonder what it was used for when our city didn’t require so many cells. She types in the code, and the door springs open.
“I guess I’m supposed to pretend I don’t see what you’re about to do?” she says.
