Eric Coulter Imagines

Hiding It

You sit on the edge of your seat, silently preparing yourself for what is to come. At some point, you're going to have to get up, walk to the door and force yourself out of it. After that, despite your best attempts at careful planning, you have no idea what's going to happen. You have a rough idea, but Dauntless tends to wreck all schemes. This is a brute force faction, meant for those who pick action over thought. You did, when you first made your decision in your Choosing Ceremony a couple of years ago.

Now, you're on the other side of the initiation process for the first time. The Choosing Ceremony is happening today, if it hasn't already started. Dozens of new initiates have just made their decision, sealed their fates away in dashes of blood. It's up to you to find the best of the best out of those who reach you, and shape the future of your faction through them. The rest will fight to survive, or be cut, their lives gone before they even started.

It's a cruel process, of course it is. Nothing about Dauntless has ever been easy, that's just how it works. For an army to be strong, a general has to be able to depend on everyone, not just the well-trained captains but every single person fighting under its colors. If you can't count on the weakest among you to fight, then why are they there?

It's funny that you, of all people, will be instilling these values into the next round of Dauntless. It's not that you don't believe in them, far from it, but that you yourself are toeing the line between strong and weak. You always have been, ever since the second you joined this faction.

Actually, this problem goes back far before you had your Choosing Ceremony. There was an accident when you were a child, and even though you don't remember the details, whether it was because of a hard fall or overeager driver, the effects are plain; your leg was injured, and now you can't walk without a serious limp.

It hurts more than anything, but you've been able to hide it pretty well. Once you get used to pain, it becomes you, has to serve you. Even when you only taste metal lancing through your mouth and your leg feels as if it is about to be wrenched clean of your body, you could keep running until the very end of time. You're used to this sort of ache, so it almost goes away.

You had to hide it, at any rate, to get into Dauntless in the first place. No one here knows about it to the best of your knowledge, and you intend on keeping it that way. Every single Dauntless would see it as a weakness, something they could exploit to hurt you if they so desired, or even just for the fun of it.

You can't afford to be shot down by this, so you disguise your limp as best you can. It didn't hold you back during initiation, and you've been sure to get jobs that will let you spend less time on your feet. All the same, you've been careful to seem as if you aren't actively avoiding harder work, which is why you're now leading initiation. You'll spend a year or two guiding trainees through the difficult process of becoming Dauntless, and then you'll rotate to some job in security where you can sit down for longer. Anything to keep the secret.

Speaking of which, you have to actually get to initiation for this to work. So, after treasuring one last moment staring into nothingness, you force yourself to your feet. Your leg twinges almost immediately, but you ignore it as per usual. It's time to get the job done.

You walk down the corridors, heading to a large, high-ceilinged room on the south side of the Dauntless complex, near where the train tracks roar overhead. The room is empty for now, although you can tell people are starting to come over. The only other person looks up when they see you arrive, and his face twitches into something that could almost be considered a smile, if Eric Coulter has ever allowed himself to experience a positive emotion in his life other than spite.

You smile back at him. "Ready for the new initiates?"

Eric nods. "Just about to head up to the roof. You'll be helping them out of the net, then?"