More. || Eric Coulter

Five.

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This was it.

This was the last fear simulation and then the first part of the graduation score would be final.

My brother and I had been training for this over and over again but unfortunately, it hasn't been as easy as I hoped it would be.

Apparently whatever I did to combat my fears in the first simulation was impressive but my brother said that I was lucky that he was the trainee.

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"Vinnie, can I talk to you? It's urgent." He said once our first ever fear simulation was over and everyone left.

We sat there in the room with the seat and as I was waiting, Frank visibly searched for any words to say.

"Vinnie..." he said again. "Whatever you did today in the simulation was good. Really. I'm honestly so proud of how you handled everything and it's truly amazing to see someone be able to go through the simulation so quickly. But Vinnie... you might have to stop doing that."

"What do you mean 'stop doing that'?" I scoffed trying not to be too offended. "If it's because of how jealous the others might be because of my abilities then trust me, I don't care about any single one of them and I absolutely will not stop just to get rid of cowards."

"Listen to me! It's not about the jealousy at all! It is about something way more serious and you have to swear on your life that nothing we ever talked about here will reach anyone else. Not Mom, not Dad especially not Max and not even Freyr." With that I gulped and nodded slowly. "Do you remember what you got in the aptitude test?" I nodded again. "Well I hate to break it to you but, as rare and amazing as the result may be, only a handful of people outside the sixth faction approve of people like you to be part of other factions like Dauntless for example."

Even though I figured out what that meant I still asked. "What do you mean people don't approve of that?"

"Have you never heard people talking?" He asked and I just shook my head. "They hate seeing people like you in a faction that is not the sixth. People like you are being seen as threats even if it's not official. Especially transfers here at Dauntless feel threatened because in the end, people like you tend to be one of the best with one of or even the highest scores."

"But Frank. That again is just jealousy and I don't care about that."

"There's more. The year I graduated there was a guy called Amar. He was already part of the Dauntless but he somehow had to go through a simulation again and before we knew it, his body was found splattered in the pit and everyone thought he jumped. Another incident, one year before I transferred, there were two divergent, both of them got killed shortly before they could graduate."

"And why has no one heard about those cases?"

"Well think about it. Whenever someone gets killed, it's a transfer that did it out of jealousy. But it was different that year. Apparently, the murders were too perfect, planned out just right and how they handled the bodies was a lot more different than how they usually do after a suicide. There are speculations going around that it wasn't a transfer that killed them."

"It was either a dauntless-born or even a chief." I said, finishing my train of thought out loud.

"Exactly. People would've found out the truth if Dauntless decided to go public and it would put shame on our faction so that's why it never got out."

"So what you are trying to say is that it's the chiefs that I should keep an eye on and hide my results from as best as I can."

"Correct. I heard multiple times how the officials plan on decreasing the number of divergent transfers. Some even talked about eradicating the whole sixth faction because people perceive it as a threat for the whole system due to the lack of control. So, whatever you do in the simulations, we need to change how you approach your fears so that no one can tell that you are divergent. Are we clear about that?"