The Chasm

Chapter Twelve

"Omg last night was so fun. You should've been there." I said as I was eating my lunch with Max and Eric.

"I can't believe you got past me, I thought I was doing a good job," Eric says.

"A good job at staying out of the way," I said, teasing him.

"Well I'm glad you guys had fun. We'll do it next year." Max says. The conversation ends as people are leaving the pit.

"We should go back to work Delilah." Eric says. It's the last day of gun training before meeting all of the leaders of the other factions.

"You mean you have to go back to work. I have to watch you."

"Great." We reach the last step at the top of the building, where all of the targets are lined up waiting to be used.

"Go on, hit them." I say. Eric picks up the gun and inspects it before he fires.

But it doesn't fire. Eric stands there confused, as I start timing. He doesn't know that I put in the pin backwards on purpose to test him.

"Hey what's wrong with the gun?"

"I don't know. It won't fire."

"Well figure it out then!" I yell at him. "If your target was a real person you'd be dead by now!"

Eric puts the gun on the table and starts taking it apart. He analysises it, then picks up what was wrong.

"Someone put the pin in wrong." He says, his movements slow. He's pissing me off with three minutes going. He's doing it on purpose.

"Hurry up and put it in! I don't have time for this Eric!"

"Oh calm down. It's just a target."

There's a gun hiding behind my back. I pull it out and put it to Eric's head. "Is it a target now?"

His eyes go slack as he fumbles for the gun. He pulls out a shaky breath as he realizes that I might shoot him and it won't be just a dart simulator.

"Delilah what are you doing?" Max asks.

Without looking at him I say, "I'm teaching Eric that not everything is a game. One day he'll be a leader and he needs to know how to act fast. And so far he's failing. Now hurry up Eric. I'm timing you."

"Well just don't pull the trigger," Max says.

"I won't."

Eric finally gets his scrambled brain together and pieces the gun the right way with a time of six minutes and four seconds.

"That's what I thought. You need to be faster than that, Mr. Coulter if you want to pass the testing part of the section."

He whips around to face the target and fires shots at the head and the middle where the bullseye is, hitting each one perfectly.

I lower the gun from his head and put it on the table. "Now let's try something different. Put the gun on the table."

He looks at me, reluctantly setting the gun down. I pull a black cloth out, wrapping it around his eyes.

"Delilah what are you doing?"

"I want you to hit the target with your eyes closed. Let's see how good you can be."

I put the gun back in his hand, as he raises it, he puts a hole right in the middle of the bullseye.

I don't want to know how he did that.

He pulls the cloth back and smiles. "Look how my training paid off."

"How the hell did you do that?" I ask. Even Max looks impressed. It took me a few tries when I did the same thing last year. But Eric perfected it in one shot.

"I've been coming up here at night to practice." He confesses. "I want to be a good of leader as I can be."

"Well then you are doing amazing because I am impressed with what you did."

"Thank you." He returns to hitting the targets until suppertime, where we are don't for the night. We pack up the guns and return them to the training room and head down to the pit for supper.

"No cooking supper?" He asks.

"Nope. I want to take a break. It gets boring after a while and I can't bake a good chocolate cake like other people can."

"We had fizzy drinks in erudite."

"I thought candor has the fizzy drinks?"

"Nope it's us. Well I should say them because I'm not a part of them anymore."

"I wonder what abnegation has. Or amity."

"Probably stale bread and carrots." I giggle at that fact, knowing I probably shouldn't. It's not nice to make fun of another faction. I couldn't live a life without having a variety of foods. Especially chocolate cake.

"Candor has ice cream," Eric says.

"I wonder what it tastes like," I say. I imagine it's cold hence the word ice in the name.

"Probably boring as fuck."

"Yeah I can't imagine having something cold like that."

We eat in silence for a few moments before I push my food away. "I'm done."

"How can you be done when half of your food is still on the plate?"

"I'm just not hungry tonight." I lied. "I'm going to go home and go to bed. See you early tomorrow."

I walked away from the pit and went to my apartment where I could clear my thoughts.

"Why the hell did you do that Delilah? You could've shot him. What were you thinking?"

"I could've shot him." The thought floats in my head over and over again, forcing myself to be scared and sick. I've never put a gun up to anyone before, never shot at anything or anyone but a target. Leaning over the toilet, I heaved up everything that I ate today.

"Maybe I'm not cut out to be a leader. Maybe I should be factionless."

Pulling myself up, I pushed all the thoughts out of my head and headed to one place: the fear landscape room.

I set the machine to go through my fears and grab a syringe, letting the contents go through my body and consume me.

"You got this Delilah. Breathe."

I stand in the darkness, wondering what the first one will be. Walls enclose me, with no way to get out.

"Hello?" Can anyone hear me?"

No answer.

"Hello?" I keep my breathing slow and steady and focus on other things. Once the machine reads my steady heartbeat, it moves on to the next fear.

I'm alone in the desert land. Suddenly train tracks appear and the men come to grab me. But I don't let them get that far. I punch each one of them until they are knocked unconscious. And I let the train run over them instead of me.

"Think like a dauntless Delilah."

The next one isn't so bad. Heights. I stand on the platform ledge and inch towards the pillar that takes me down. I grab each one and make it towards the ground safely. It's just the tiny edge that gets to me.

The ground changes to white floors and white walls. Erudite headquarters. Jeanine comes towards me with a syringe filled with purple liquid.

"You're divergent. Say goodbye Delilah," she says as she pounds the needle into my neck.

I can still hear the manic laugh even when I pull out of my fears, grasping at my neck. Four wasn't the only one who had four fears.

As I pack up the machine, I hear someone's voice.

"I wondered where you went."

"Not now Eric."

"But-"

"Leave me alone!" I storm out of the room, forcing myself to not see him again until tomorrow.

And he doesn't come after me. Which is good because I don't need anyone like that.

I'm fine on my own.