Ambivalence [p.h.] - EDITING

chapter 25 || fear landscape (again)

"You wanna get out of here?" Peter asks with a raised eyebrow and a faint smirk.

"Mhmm," I mumble, barely even being able to form words. I'm still in a daze, so I just nod my head. Peter releases my waist and grabs my hand, entwining my fingers with his before dragging me through the crowd and up the stairs to the glass roof at the top of Dauntless.

"Come on," he says, just quiet enough so that I can hear. "I want to show you something."

• • •

"Why are we in the fear simulation room?" I ask. The bright red graffiti splaying out "Dauntless" onto the brick wall floods into my line of vision. I glance at Peter, who proceeds to then pull a small black box out of his back pocket.

"I asked Four for these," he says, shaking the box ever so slightly. He lifts the lid off, revealing two syringes filled with an orange serum. "They're the fear landscape serums." He takes one of the syringes out. "I wanted to go through mine again, even though we just did them today," he continues, "and I was hoping you'd join me." My eyes flicker from the syringe up to Peter's eyes before I give a slight nod.

"Okay."

"Come here," Peter says. With shaking hands, he holds the syringe up to my neck before plunging it in. I hiss from the sharp feeling of metal piercing my skin, but the pain instantly vanishes and makes way for jolts of electricity once Peter brushes his calloused fingers over my neck. He hesitates before giving me the other needle. He takes a second to breathe before closing his eyes and mumbling a faint "go ahead." I then stick the needle into the olive coloured skin of Peter's neck. I put the syringe messily back into the black box as Peter types a few things into the computer set.

"Where'd you learn how to use that?"

"I helped Eric set up earlier," he replies, his eyes unmoving from the screen. "He said that a lot of Dauntless go through their fear landscapes. Those syringes are widely available." Peter finishes typing and walks away from the computer. He pulls the door of the simulation room shut before the lights dim. I just watch him as the dark consumes his image, and I shut my eyes and I feel Peter's hand slip into mine.

When I open my eyes again, my nose is about two inches away from a glass window. I look next to me to make sure Peter's still here, although I'm already sure of his presence based off the fact that his fingers are still laced with mine.

"Which fear is this, Peter?"

He doesn't say anything. I look around; upwards, down, left, right, and backwards. We're completely encircled with glass. I press my fingers onto the surface in front of me before I'm interrupted by Peter.

"You can't break the glass. This one isn't terrible." I raise an eyebrow before my eyes widen. The sound of something like a... a rattle? A rattle, a hiss, and something like scales scraping against the floor... oh.

"Snakes?" I ask, not bothering to turn around.

"Yeah," Peter exhales. His grip around my hand tightens just a little. "Childhood incident."

"That's like my spiders. It would be quite a funny story, actually, if, you know, I wasn't mortified of the little beasts."

"Enlighten me after this whole thing," Peter whooshes his finger around in a small circle, gesturing to the situation we're in now, "is over."

"Alright. What do we need to do?"

"I just sat down and let the wretched things slither all over me. It wasn't very pleasant, but it worked." I nod at what Peter instructs me to do. We both turn around to face the somehow rapidly increasing population of snakes within the glass compartment (or cage, really)we're in. Our hands remain entwined as we sink to the floor with our backs pressed up against the wall. A snake touches my foot and I yelp. Peter holds in a laugh.