You And Me Against The World | ✅

Chapter 85

We've been going through fear landscapes for hours now. Each of the initiates had at least eight or nine fears, the highest number being fourteen, a Dauntless-born. I would have thought a transfer to have the most. Guess I was wrong. I was tempted to go through my own fear landscape, but thought better of it. I don't want to stress out, especially now that I'm pregnant. I don't want to hurt my baby. Maybe I'll go through it later, after the delivery.

There are two more initiates left. Since Lauren and Uriah finished already with their initiates they offered to take the last one of ours. Monica is mine and Tobias's last initiate and she looks from him to me with big eyes. Obviously, she is scared, but I try to calm her down as much as I can.

"It'll be alright. Try to control your fears, try to control your breathing and your heart rate. If things go too far we pull you out," I reassure her. She nods and takes a seat on the chair. While Tobias prepares the program I prepare the serum. I inject it into her blood stream and push her into the chair. Soon the serum activates and we watch her fears on the screen.

The first fear is of spiders. Hundreds of them appear out of thin air and crawl toward her. She tries to run away but wherever she turns more spiders come. Just ahead of her a torch appears and she runs toward it. She grabs it and points it toward the spiders burning them out of her way. The image goes dark and I know she is done with this fear. Her next fear is strange. She is on a beach. The sun is shining, the sea looks calm. Monica enters the water and takes a few tentative steps. Suddenly, the ground disappears and she starts thrashing. The more she struggles to stay above sea level the more she is dragged to the ground. There is no escape. She is now completely under water trying desperately to swim to the surface, but is unable to do so. She closes her eyes and I can see on the monitor that she tries to calm her fast beating heart. The screen goes dark and a new image appears. We are in the meadow behind Abnegation. I wonder what we're doing here. She isn't an Abnegation transfer. She takes a few steps and I recognize the path. Don't tell me... Yup. The Hanging Man. I can't believe she is afraid of a made up dead person. I chuckle to myself and Tobias looks at me with a curious expression.

"What's so funny?" he asks telepathically.

"Don't you recognize it?" I ask back. He looks at the screen and nods.

"The meadow behind Abnegation," he says. "But what's so scary about that? I don't get it."

"Wait," I say smirking. And then we see it. The old oak with the dead man hanging there.

"The Hanging Man? The one you made up?" he asks and looks at me.

"Yup. How about that? I do scare the shit out of people," I say in my head but laugh aloud.

"Oops," I say and turn around to look at Monica, who seems to be oblivious to us.

"Don't worry, she can't hear us," Tobias assures me.

"Oh. Then why didn't we talk, you now, out loud."

"'Cause it's funnier our way," he says with a chuckle. We return our gaze to the screen and watch what is happening next. The Hanging Man comes to life or at least starts moving. He unties himself from the rope and falls to the ground. He stands up again and starts walking toward Monica. For some reason she is rooted in place and doesn't move, but I can see she is desperately trying to escape. Just as the Hanging Man gets closer, Monica closes her eyes and starts singing a song, a lullaby I figure. The image changes and Monica is on the Hancock building. I recognize what she's doing – zip lining. She must have gone with the Dauntless after Capture the Flag, just as I did last year. I see Uriah beckoning her to try it out too. Just as she starts sliding down the line something goes wrong and she falls out of the safety harness and keeps falling indefinitely. Her heart beat increases and she is desperately trying to get out of the sim. Just before she hits the ground the screen goes black and a new image appears. A man and a woman appear in front of her, both Candor. Monica runs toward them, I can tell she is happy to see them, but they look at her with angry expressions.