Venus Eaton is desperate to escape the abuse of her previous faction although she is unaware and unprepared of the ordeals of Dauntless initiation. She is a stranger to her own brother until he accuses her of murdering their mother, and finds out th...
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VENUS
I'M NOT afraid of not knowing.
I missed days of training, I could have more than four stupid fears but that doesn't make me scared anymore.
Somehow, I know nothing is worse than being shoved off a chasm, and this is not going to affect my life. If I die in the sim, I will not die in real life. I just have to make Dauntless decisions.
A Dauntless would stand up to her father instead of cowering and running away. If I want to be the strong version of me, I'll have to kick his ass.
I let the sim take me.
***
The darkness. It's around me, like black fog, pulsing against my eyelid and wrapping around my fingers as I stretch them out before my face.
The shuffling of feet as my friends back away from me, and the realization that I'm alone here, no one to turn the lights on, and I have to deal with it.
Running won't do any good. I can't run away from it. I have to face it, make something better out of it.
And I do.
I look up and focus my eyes against the sky. Squinting and squinting until I see pencil-pricks of light, flashing brighter and brighter and filling the sky.
Stars.
Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, the Orion and the Gemini - the beautiful constellations glittering against the blackness. Upon the weakest stars are some of the strongest, growing brighter the more I stare at them - Mars, twinkling multicolors, Saturn without the rings, and Venus... Venus, the brightest in the sky.
And then they disappear, and I'm no longer alone.
I'm falling, and the celestial objects in the sky are getting further and further away from me as I keep on falling, and then splash. Water fills my ears and bubbles from my lips as I open my mouth in a shriek. I snort it through my nose, then I cough, but more water sneaks into my mouth until I'm sure it has replaced every liter of my blood.
I open my eyes through the sting, and around me is gallons upon billions of gallons of water. Beneath me, I'm sinking into the blackness of more water, and above me, I can only barely see the light in which the sun shines against the waves above.
I need to swim. I need to breathe. I need to multitask.
My fear of drowning is also the fear of not being able to breathe, I just need to try and breathe normally to get through this.
Besides, this is a Sim, I cannot die in real life. In real life, I'm not choking up water. When I wake up, I won't be choking up water.
So I breathe.
And it works.
In through my nose, out through my mouth. Closing my eyes to stop myself from looking at the water around me, trying not to feel the pull as it sends me deeper to the bottom of the earth.
