Percy didn't sleep that night. After making sure Tris would live and (reluctantly) taking Drew's unconscious body to the hospital, he returned to the dormitory at four-thirty in the morning.

Everyone appeared to be sleeping, but as he moved inside, he saw a large face with broken brown eyes staring off into nothingness.

Without a word, Percy stalked up to him, seething with rage, and drove his fist into Al's already beaten face before Al could react.

Al let out a strangled gasp and pushed his covers off, clambering backwards and nearly falling into Tris's empty bed next to his. "What the hell, Perce?"

Percy leapt over the bed and brought his fist to Al's jaw, grabbing his shirt. "Don't call me Perce," he growled. "What the HELL were you thinking?"

At this point, all the initiates were awake.

"Get the lights!" The room was immediately illuminated.

"Percy!" Annabeth scolded.

Percy ignored them, holding Al's shirt tighter still. "You're pathetic," he snarled. "How could you? How could you betray Tris like that?"

Al, still recovering from the punch, didn't respond, blood leaking from the corners of his mouth. In his peripheral vision, Percy saw Peter slip out of the dormitory, but he didn't care. He'd deal with Peter later.

"What do you mean?" Christina asked sharply as she stepped closer. "Where's Tris?"

Al put his hands over his face to block another punch, but Percy was done for the moment. The rage still built up in him uncontrollably, but he released his grip on Al's shirt and set his arms down. Blood speckled his knuckles.

"I'm sorry," Al whispered.

Percy laughed out loud. "Sorry?" He repeated with wild incredulousness. "Sorry? YOU NEARLY KILLED TRIS."

His sudden roar made everyone jump. Molly was smirking over by the door. Thalia was staring at Al with daggers in her eyes. Percy drew in one more long breath then turned on his heel to find Peter, but Annabeth grabbed his arm.

"Percy," she warned. Al, still covering his face, ran out the room. Percy made no move to stop him, he only watched Al's long, retreating shadow vanish along the rough stone walls of the hallway.

"I'm going to the bathroom," Percy said stiffly. He glanced at Annabeth before stalking out the door.

Al was leaning his hands against the sink, staring into the mirror. He flinched when Percy walked in but he didn't move. Percy didn't look at him.

He stepped into the showers and turned the water on, fully clothed, standing as the water trickled in his face. It felt cold and dry as it beaded on his clothes, and Percy closed his eye and stood in the cold stream for a moment, letting Al's blood speckles wash from his hands in a pink stain. The eye Peter stabbed throbbed painfully against its patch.

When he left, Al hadn't moved.

He entered the dining hall and found a seat by Will, Christina, and the demigods. As soon as he reached for a blueberry muffin, Christina turned to him and demanded, "where is Tris?"

"She's safe," Percy assured her.

Christina clenched her fists. "You can't just beat up Al, yelling about how he killed Tris, then say 'she's safe!'"

"What happened?" Will asked in a more controlled voice that was laced in urgency.

At that moment, the door swung open, and Tris entered. Nico looked up and swallowed his toast.

Tris slunk against the wall as she walked, her head ducked down. She reached their table and slid silently into the seat. Her face was covered in scratches and bruises and dark purple marks wrapped around her neck. Her skin was pale and sickly and lifeless and her eyes were dull.

Will slid closer to Tris. "What happened?" He asked again, this time to her.

Tris looked up, then around the room. "Peter, Drew..." she swallowed hard and reached slowly for a piece of bread before wincing and hunching over. "And Al."

Reyna's expression was furious. Everyone was. Even though they had heard it from Percy, seeing Tris so beaten down was devastating.

Uriah slid over quickly, his face anxious. "Are you alright?"

"Not really," Tris said thickly.

"But..." Uriah shook his head. "Three against one? It just isn't fair."

Percy laughed harshly. "Yeah, And Peter's all about fair. That's why he stabbed me in the eye."

The door opened again before they could make another remark, and another veteran of the struggle by the Chasm entered. Drew walked in, his entire face swollen, black and blue. He was even worse than when Percy brought him in— at least the blood was clouding the wounds. Drew limped to Peter and Molly's table, not even drawing the strength to look at them.

"Please tell me you did that," Annabeth said with an uncharacteristic growl.

Percy and Tris glanced at each other, though Tris looked at Percy with a sudden realization as if recalling what happened. Her eyes narrowed and Percy looked away.

"No," Percy finally said. "It was... someone I didn't see when I caught Tris from falling in the Chasm."

There it was again. That calculating look Tris gave him.

Annabeth broke off a bit of muffin and nibbled it carefully, also looking at Percy. He reached for some water for lack of anything else to do-- she had found a hole in his story.

Christina was about to say more when Four stood up and walked to the gap between the tables. Chatter stopped abruptly.

"Transfers, we're doing something different today," He said. "Follow me."

++++

They trudged along the walkways in the Pit until they reached a narrow metal staircase leading out of the Pit. Everyone seemed to take a collective breath as they stood on the glass ceiling; it was the first time since the trip to the fence that they had seen sun.

Four led them across the glass to another room. Then he stopped and turned around.

"This is the fear landscape," he said. "It has been disabled for our purposes, so this isn't what it will be like the next time you see it."

It certainly didn't look special, just a dank room with pipes and flickering lights.

"Through your simulations, we have stored data about your worst fears. The fear landscape accesses that data and presents you with a series of virtual obstacles. Some of the obstacles will be fears you previously faced in your simulations. Some may be new fears. The difference is that you are aware, in the fear landscape, that it is a simulation, so you will have all your wits about you as you go through it."

"But what if you've got no wits?" Nico teased with a pointed stare at Percy.

Four ignored him. "The number of fears you have in your landscape varies according to how many you have." He scanned them slowly. "I told you before that the third stage of initiation focuses on mental preparation. That is because it requires you to control both your emotions and your body—to combine the physical abilities you learned in stage one with the emotional mastery you learned in stage two. To keep a level head. Next week you will go through your fear landscape as quickly as possible in front of a panel of Dauntless leaders. That will be your final test, which determines your ranking for stage three. Just as stage two of initiation is weighted more heavily than stage one, stage three is weighted heaviest of all. Understood?"

Everyone nodded and Four paused before continuing. "You can get past each obstacle in one of two ways. Either you find a way to calm down enough that the simulation registers a normal, steady heartbeat, or you find a way to face your fear, which can force the simulation to move on. One way to face a fear of drowning is to swim deeper, for example." He shrugged. "So I suggest that you take the next week to consider your fears and develop strategies to face them."

The entire time, no one had spoken up, but now Peter frowned.

"That's not fair," he said. "What if one person has seven fears and another has twenty?"

Four stared at him before laughing. "Do you really want me to talk about what's fair?"

Peter didn't say anything.

When they returned to the dorms, Al was there. His eyes were red and puffy with dark circles under them.

But before he could speak, Tris stepped forward. Reyna put a hand gently on her shoulder, but Tris made no indication she felt it.

"Tris," said Al, his voice breaking. "Can I talk to you?"

"Are you kidding?" Will asked sharply. "You don't get to come near her ever again."

"I won't hurt you. I never wanted to..." Al covered his face with two shaking hands. "I just want to say that I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I don't... I don't know what's wrong with me, I... please forgive me, please...."

He lowered his hands, reaching out as if to touch her shoulder. No one moved, but only looked at Al with such protective loathing that he dropped his hand.

"Stay away from me," Tris said in a dangerously soft voice. "Never come near me again."

Al raised his eyes from his hands to look at Tris. Her shoulders grew rigid as their eyes met.

"If you do, I swear to God I will kill you," she said. "You coward."