The Dare I

'Oh, oh, oh.'

Delta wakes up in a state of lethargy after having been sleeping for way longer than she's used to. She woke up at about seven in the morning just to remember that it was Saturday, so she turned around and forced herself to fall asleep again, even though she shouldn't have. The week has been tough. She's been training with her team of Special Ops and also watching the initiates try to destroy each other in the hopes of finding new members for the new team they're planning on creating. Leon, one of the leaders, wishes to improve the security in the city, and so he's ordered to increase the number of specialised soldiers, not an easy task when the amount of initiates that year is as low as twelve, and only half of them are Dauntless born.

When Delta opens her eyes, she has trouble distinguishing the figure standing by her sofa-bed. The one thing she can clearly see is the green hair and coloured arms. Syd. Delta focuses her eyes.

'What the fuck, Syd?' Delta sits up, 'what are you-'

Before she can start asking about the bucket of paint, Delta feels a cold gooey liquid splashing against her face, dripping down her body and staining her sofa and everything on it with black tint.

'Syd!' she screams, 'you son of a-'

'It's Dare-day and the game is on, lady!' Syd drops the bucket of paint and runs away, but Delta's quick and she's already jumped over the headboard of the sofa-bed, still wearing nothing more than her underwear and an old t-shirt, and her long steps take her to Syd quick enough to grab him by the back of his t-shirt and drag him back inside her apartment.

'Kneel!' she screams sweating to keep Syd on his knees, whose laugh slowly begins to turn into a hysterical scream when he sees what Delta's up to.

'Delta, no, please, no!' Syd screams, 'this shit's poisonous!'

'And that's why you throw it all over my face?!'

'Del-'

Delta pushes Syd's head into the bucket and makes sure that he's gotten a taste of the bottom before pulling him up again. Syd goes down on his four coughing the paint out of his mouth, unable to breathe through his nose, or to hear anything for that matter. His head's so covered in black goo that he doesn't even dare to open his eyes.

'Avoid contact with the eyes,' Delta reads out loud while holding the bucket of paint, 'might cause permanent blindness.' Delta runs to the sink, 'What the fuck, Syd?!'

'I didn't read- I didn't read the text,' Syd struggles to breathe, 'fuck.'

'Too bad for you,' Delta grabs him by the shoulder and drags him outside the apartment, 'because you're gonna have to find someone else's bathroom to get cleaned up.'

Delta grabs her modified airgun from under the sofa-bed and runs downstairs using the handrails as support when she jumps over half of the flight of stairs and lands on her naked feet. She reaches the street in less than a minute, pushing the entrance door open with her shoulder and running in giant steps to catch whoever that Syd has been playing with.

Judging by their height and movements, Delta can already tell who they are. Ned's one of the tallest members of Dauntless and Prox's the only person of her height that would actually keep up with him during a race.

'Come back, cowards!' Delta screams gaining ground on them and beginning to grin.

They run down the street towards the Dauntless headquarters disrupting the activities of the faction members that stand in their way, especially when they see Delta all covered in black paint as if she had taken a bath in the Dauntless laundry. She enters the Dauntless headquarters drenched in paint, water and sweat, but it becomes easier to follow the steps of her potential victims thanks to the echoes that run along the tunnels. Delta stops to aim and shoot, but she misses and hits a passer-by.

'Sorry!'

She jumps over the whining body with her eyes fixed on the light at the end of the tunnel, where the glass-ceiling of the Pit allows for more illuminated entertainment. She smirks.

'Don't start climbing!' Delta warns Prox and Ned, who are already clinging onto the rock, 'don't you dare because I will make you fall!'

'Okay, alright! I surrender!' Ned goes down to his knees and stares at the floor. He has short brown hair that he likes to comb to a side. Delta rolls her eyes.

'Don't be such a coward, Ned!' she screams at him, watching how he begins to roll the sleeves of his dark grey hoodie carefully.

'But he's always been!' Prox glances at Ned a few meters above the ground. She's started to climb.

'I warned you, Prox!'

Delta aims at her and shoots. It hits her leg.

'You hit me!' Prox complains.

'I told you!'

By the time she shoots again, Prox's already reached the second level of tunnels and disappeared. When Delta directs her eyes towards Ned's position, she's surprised by his face being a few centimeters away from hers.

'You should know,' he says eerily calm holding her by the neck, 'that I never surrender.'

'Ned, you're so creepy sometimes,' Delta manages to say.

The tall Dauntless member throws Delta down to the ground carefully enough not to hurt her too much. Prox's laughter and war cries approach their location and once again that morning, Delta finds herself drowning in three more buckets of black paint.

'Dare-day is on, D!' Ned screams at her face, 'it's on!' he repeats before running away with Prox.

In the middle of the cement floor of the Pit, under the morning sun that goes through the glass ceiling, Delta lies in her underwear, barefoot and wearing only an old torn shirt from her early days of her initiation. The sole of her feet is red with tiny pebbles that have gotten stuck to her skin while she's been running through the streets carelessly. She breathes through her mouth heavily under a thick layer of paint that has erased all the features of her face, but highlighted those of her body. Eric frowns at the surreal image. He's only been able to identify her thanks to the tattoos of her legs and feet, and the yelling too.

'Help her,' a woman in her early thirties says with authority. Her long hair is a mix of braids and loose wavy locks that fall over her shoulders. Eric notices how the Dauntless gather around her in respect and obey her command. Two men approach Delta and try to clear her nose and mouth with their hands. 'Take her to the showers,' the woman says making a gesture with her head to indicate the direction, 'that's not paint; it's insulator for the walls and it is highly toxic.'

'Stupid kids,' one of the men helping Delta up mutters.

'Since it's Dare-day,' she continues, 'I dare Ned Lenney and Prox Satta to clean this shit. Find them.'

When she looks up at the higher levels of tunnels, Eric sees that she has the same bold straight lines of black ink on her neck that Max has. She's a leader, a strong one, and now Eric understands what Delta meant by needing to up his game.

At lunch time, Eric sits strategically positioned so that he can keep an eye on the table where Syd's eating with Ned Lenney, Prox Satta and another woman, and where he guesses that Delta will go once she's released from wherever that they have taken her to remove the poison of the insulator out of her system. He hasn't talked to her since she left her apartment to go to work the morning after he slept on her sofa. He saw her outside the training hangar interviewing three of the Dauntless-born initiates, Zeke, Ash and Judith, and also talking to Max, to the female Dauntless leader that he saw at the Pit and to the woman that sits at Syd's table.

'She's alive!' Ned shouts over the voice of the other people at their table.

'Not thanks to you!'

Delta slides in a seat next to Ned and pushes him with her shoulder. He returns the playful hit looking at her out of the corner of his eye while eating his mashed potatoes. Eric pays attention to the two of them, to the way in which Ned talks and smirks without taking his eyes off his plate and the contradictory manner in which Delta comfortably takes food from his plate but replies to him avoiding his face, landing her eyes on the people around them instead. Eric can't tell if they are angry at each other, or if there's some private game going on. The Dauntless behave very differently than the Erudite, especially when they are in groups, and Eric still hasn't gotten the hang of it.

'Listen up!' suddenly someone says, 'Marshall wants to talk!'

The female leader from the Pit stands on her seat, one foot on the table, one on the sitting bench. Her eyes scrutinise the room, her faction members, her soldiers. She talks.

'As you might have noticed, it's Dare-day today,' she pauses when the multitude cheers her words, 'you may prove your bravery today, but be careful not to prove your stupidity as well,' she glances at Delta's table. The Dauntless laugh. 'Do us proud of your bravery, and not ashamed of your negligence,' she takes a long sip at her drink, 'enjoy!' she shouts one last time.

Eric returns to the training room after eating. He's facing Four the coming week and wants to make sure that he shows the Stiff where he really belongs; under the sole of his boots. He stares at the scoring boards at every push of his arms that lifts his body off the ground. The Stiff is second after him, then come three Dauntless-born, Ash, Zeke and Shauna. The other transfers are at the end of the list, except for a Candor boy named Hal Bradford that has mainly won his fights because of his size. The other two Candor, Sean and Anna, are too small to even be able to create a resistance to being lifted, and Mia from Amity keeps having trouble focusing on hurting people and on how to hurt them the least. Eric knows that Four is his only competition.

'I suspected I would find you here.'

Delta's boots appear in front of Eric's face. The sound of at least three more pairs of footsteps resound inside the almost empty hangar; two people run after each other, Eric hears a deep voice laughing, then the sound of a punch and a groan. Delta crouches down observing Eric's flushed and sweaty face with entertainment. She begins to follow the movement of his head with her own.

'What do you want?' Eric says in between push-ups.

'Two things.' Delta makes the victory sign with her fingers. 'One,' she announces, 'help you with your training. Two,' she looks away at someone else, 'Ned!' she yells, 'can he come to play dare tonight?' Delta shouts.

'Yeah, sure,' Ned doesn't sound too convinced, but he doesn't sound like he cares too much either. Delta turns to Eric again.

'Two,' she resumes her talk, 'invite you to come play dare at Ned's tonight.'

Delta lends him a hand and pulls from his heavy body to help him stand up. She can tell that he's been training harder during the week and suspects that her words about leadership might have caused a change in his mindset. Delta pulls her short white hair behind her ears feeling the heat of her body concentrate on her face. She swallows hard before turning to look at the scoring boards.

'The Stiff has become popular among some of the leaders,' Delta says, her lips curled up in disgust, 'Max and Clarence see him as the epitome of bravery. A Stiff daring to enter Dauntless, daring to think for himself and be selfish towards his faction,' she pauses to shake her head in annoyance. 'You will need the acceptance of the leaders to become a leader yourself, and I can already tell you that Marshall, Leon and Cass value endurance and fighting skills.'

'So you are here to help me?' Eric cocks an eyebrow, 'why?'

'Amar has been helping the Stiff,' she says plainly. She draws in a slightly shuddering breath, which tells Eric that she's not telling entirely the truth. 'Prox was second during initiation, I was third, and Ned was third in his too. He's also older, bigger and stronger. You should accept our help.'

'Why do they want to help me?' Eric asks suspiciously, 'I thought Prox wanted to be a leader too.'

'She does,' Delta nods looking at her boots, she kicks some sand away and watches the dust float in the air, 'but she's accepted to help me help you.'

'Because they have to, I guess.'

'Because we are friends, Eric,' Delta snaps, 'those things you still don't have and need.'

Delta turns to Ned and Prox. They wait by the fighting arena, trying moves on each other while Syd watches them from a side, giving them tips on where he thinks their next punch will go, or what they've done wrong. It looks somewhat ridiculous to see Ned standing in front of Prox. In spite of his almost two meters of height, Prox is making him sweat and he soon removes his hoodie with an angry rough movement to toss it to the floor.

'Watch Ned,' Delta tells Eric standing by his side, 'he's big and heavy but he doesn't seem like it, right?'

Ned's movements are very calculated, almost pre-designed, as if he fused with the air and his body flowed with its same lightness and precision. He's efficient with the amount of energy he uses, something smart taking into consideration that he probably needs a rather big amount of energy only to keep his tall body standing.

Prox, however, is much lighter so she can afford to loose some energy only trying to wear Ned down. She dodges his punches quickly, attacks low with sharp blows in strategic places that make him wince, complain and become angry. The anger makes him loose control somehow and Prox finds it easier to predict his next decision.

'Jump in,' Delta points at the arena with a commanding movement of her head, 'get what you can from both of them.'

'Go, Erudite,' Syd smirks, 'be alert.'

Ned and Prox give Eric some time to position himself in between them. They start easy and slow, throwing hits at him in turns, teasing him, forcing his senses to cooperate in order to be able to deal with two opponents at the same time. Prox kicks his lower back, Ned pushes him when he turns around, Prox passes him back to Ned with a punch to his side, Ned waits with his arm extended and doesn't have to do anything for Eric to fall on his knees.

'Up,' Ned holds him by the arm, but Eric refuses the help, 'up, come on.'

Delta watches Ned and Prox's game with her arms crossed over her rib cage, biting her knuckles and sometimes her nails.

'Eric,' with ease, Ned stops Eric from punching him in the face. He holds Eric's arms close to his chest until he calms down and looks at his face, 'you have to focus. Take a breath and start again.'

Delta sighs impatiently and steps into the arena.

'He needs to see it. He's an Erudite, that's how they learn,' Delta takes a fighting stance, 'it won't come to him as instinct yet.'

Delta's forearms are in front of her face in a defensive position, her knees are slightly bent and bouncy and her weight is equally divided on both her legs. When Ned throws a punch at her face, she dodges it crouching down and with a quick blunt blow to his exposed armpit forces him to loose the defense of his face. Delta holds his neck with the inside of her elbow, brings his body down and head-butts him on the nose. Her style is rough, nasty, bloody and direct, keeping her body close to that of the opponent in an aggressive type of defense.

The palm of Delta's hand violently impacts on Prox's nose and she uses the impulse to rotate on her heels, her forearms still defending her face, and blows a hit to Ned's face with the outside of her arm. She holds Prox's arm and kicks her back before throwing her at Ned and preparing for a second round.

'Keep close,' she tells Eric, 'use your instinct and react.'

Eric clenches his fists in anger when he steps back in. He feels like the child he thought he had stopped being and doesn't like the feeling of superiority that the Dauntless-born display towards him. What angers him the most is that he is aware that so far they are superior than him in everything, in strength, skill and most importantly, instinct.

'Own the place, Eric,' Delta tells him, 'we are leaders, we are predators.'

Eric lunges at Ned, his body low, his left shoulder impacting against Ned's hip, his arms tying around the legs and he manages to tackle him down. Delta grins at the uncontrolled raw strength, at the animalistic position of his body, at how there's at least a base to work with.

'Naughty, naughty boy,' Ned says, 'what are you gonna do now, huh?' he blocks Eric's punch with his forearm. 'Is this all you've got?' Ned teases him with a slap to his face, 'huh, Erudite?' he slaps Eric's cheek again, protecting himself from Eric's blows with his strong forearm positioned over his face, 'Prox's not even attacking you,' Ned dodges Eric's blow, his fist impacts on the floor and Ned uses his arms to sweep away Eric's and make him loose balance. He holds his knee to Eric's neck.

'Fuck,' Eric struggles to talk with his cheek squashed against the ground.

'Yes, you are fucked,' Ned says without a sweat, like it's an obvious fact.

'Again,' Eric says through gritted teeth.

'Again,' Delta repeats with a smirking nod at her friends.

...

The sun is going down in the horizon tinting the sky with orange, purple and a hundred shades of blue. The silence of dusk in Dauntless is occasionally broken by the distant sound of the trains or, in a day like Dare-day, the half drunk war cries of mostly Dauntless teenagers terrorising their neighbours, their friends and the members that, only for that one day, feel unfortunate to live close to the Pit. Eric waits outside Delta's apartment glad that he decided to take a jacket in the last moment. The night is chilly. He jumps in place to bring some heat to his body and glances up at Delta's window. The light is off.

'How ya' feeling?' Delta locks the main door with a key that she keeps in her pocket.

'I'm fine.'

'Sure,' Delta blinks for a bit longer than usual, 'you're always fine.'

He keeps his hands in the chest pockets of his jacket after passing his hand over his hair.

'Where does Ned live?'

'Not too far away,' Delta kicks a stone and keeps playing with it during their walk, 'so, how's Amar as an instructor?' she asks all of a sudden.

'I don't have anything else to compare him with,' Eric frowns, 'why?'

'He's always been a bit of a weirdo. He went through the initiation the year before me and I remember there were rumours. His way of dealing with the simulations,' Delta shakes her head confused, 'he was almost too good, and his instructor never wanted to talk about it. He was surprisingly slower than usual during the final fear landscape, though, which usually doesn't happen.'

'Hm,' Eric thinks of how to continue the conversation. He remembers the things Delta said under the influence of the truth serum. She's on his side. 'Diver-'

'Divergence, perhaps?' Delta says almost at the same time.

'I'll keep an eye on him,' Eric nods, 'thank you.'

Delta laughs loudly.

'You are very welcome, sir,' she nods back.

Delta points at a low white-brick building at the end of the road. The lights of the second floor are on.

'What do you think of the Divergent?' Delta asks almost in a murmur, glancing at him quickly.

'They are a threat to a society based in factions,' he asserts, 'the whole point with the factions is to have a better control of the population,' he glances at her too, 'anything that can't be controlled is therefore a threat to the system. Wouldn't you agree?'

'I don't know,' she shrugs, the wind clearing up her face, 'I don't mind them as long as they are Dauntless-born,' she frowns, 'except Amar. I do mind that freak.'

'Why?'

'Before training the transfers, he was the instructor for the Dauntless-born,' she grabs a few pebbles from the street and plays with them in her hands. It seems to Eric that she is constantly restless, unable to stay still, 'he was our instructor too, and he was the last one that saw Syd's brother alive. He killed him,' her face hardens, 'I'm sure.'

'That's a serious accusation, Delta,' Eric is entertained by getting to know the quarrels that hide behind Dauntless' public image of camaraderie, 'when did that happen?'

She clears her face from some locks of hair that the wind has placed on her eyes.

'When Amar became an instructor, he kept on putting himself through the fear simulations. We all thought that it was awkward. Kyle, Syd's brother, told us he was gonna investigate,' Delta takes a pause to allow her memory to remember. She chuckles. 'He liked investigating. Last thing we know, he intended to go into Amar's landscape while he was in it.'

Delta stops by the entrance of the white brick building. She opens one of the pockets of her chest to put the pebbles in them and takes out a bunch of keys. The different keys are labeled with the initials of her friends, Syd, Prox and Ned. Eric guesses that they might have known each other for a long time, that they really trust each other. He finds it hard to trust people and wonders if he will reach that state in a relationship with someone. Delta takes the key labeled with a capital N and opens up.

The environment is smokey inside Ned's place. Sitting in a corner in front of a fireplace, Syd and Prox observe the different hues that the fire takes when they throw different objects into it. At that moment, it's turned green for an instant. They sit there laughing while picking their next piece to burn.

'Make yourself at home,' Ned takes Eric's jacket and hangs it by the entrance door. Ned's outfit looks like it's made out of dyed Erudite clothes. He wears a black tight vest and a dark grey shirt that he's buttoned up to his neck. He has rolled up his sleeves and Eric can see that his arms are almost as covered in tattoos as Delta's. 'Have you seen a ghost?' Ned's voice is flat when he catches Eric's eyes on him.

'Yes, indeed,' Eric purses his mouth, 'the ghost of Erudite clothes.'

Ned smirks.

'Sleekest guy in Dauntless,' Delta passes her hand over Ned's shoulder as if she was cleaning some dust away from him, 'stop talking clothes and let's get started. I'm getting bored.'

Delta shuts the lights down but the place remains illuminated by the warm light of the fireplace. They sit on the floor in a tight semicircle in front of the fire, Delta and Eric being the closest to the flames, Ned in the middle presiding over the group. There's some sort of palpable tension in the air, but it's not hostility; Eric identifies it as excitement blended with provocation and a hint of derision. Ned rises his eyebrows at Delta in what looks like a flirtatious movement. Eric doesn't understand whether they're serious or not. He also doesn't understand what they are about to do.

'Wanna go first, D?' Ned asks, 'you can do the honours.'

'But of course,' Delta says with a funny reverence.

From the shelf above the fireplace, Delta grabs a small wooden box and places it in the middle of the semicircle. When she opens it, small metallic surfaces flicker under the yellow light from the flames. They're blades, a few of them, and Delta places them carefully outside the box. Once the metal is out, Delta takes the pebbles that she grabbed from the street and adds them to the bunch. Syd places a silver flask; Prox, a bunch of screws; and Ned, a small knife.

'Interesting,' Delta's eyes linger on the knife. 'I dare Prox to cut the skin between her fingers. All of them.'

Eric gulps not sure about his thoughts on the game, if one can call that a game. He watches as Prox grabs the knife and proceeds to slowly slice the thin skin that form the valleys between her fingers. Eric forces himself to watch the blade cut through the flesh, although his first impulse is to look away. He questions the sanity of Delta's friends, and also of Delta herself. There's something creepy in the way they all smirk, in the way they enjoy the blood. Perhaps life in Dauntless marks their members in a way that Eric couldn't have imagined before.

It's silent when Prox puts the knife back on the floor. She keeps her arms on her folded legs, her hands hanging down like dead limbs, immobile. She takes a breath. The ritual continues. 'I dare Ned to drink what's inside of the flask,' Prox says.

Ned places his long fingers around the flask, opens it and sniffs the air.

'Rubbing alcohol,' he licks his lips, 'excellent choice.'

Eric notices how Delta's smirk is suddenly not so joyful, neither is Syd's. For an instant, he worries about their mental state, and he also worries about his own reaction to their actions. There's something in their personalities that he finds fascinating, something sinister, dangerous and arcane, something destructive that he's beginning to get attracted to.

Ned pours the liquid into his open mouth and swallows hard. He shakes his head, coughs, retches and vomits into the fire. The flames grow big, their eyes open wide and Ned is forced to remove his shirt when the fabric catches fire as well. They observe the reactions of his body and marvel at the images and patterns on his skin. He talks.

'I dare Syd to cut his neck.'

Eric feels a shiver going down his spine. In his brain, images of the human body begin to flood his thoughts. He knows for a fact that there's approximately a one inch deep margin in which Syd would only slice the skin of his neck. However, if Delta's friend went deeper than that, he could rupture some cartilage, although that wouldn't be a problem compared to what would happen if he reached the carotid artery or the yugular vein. Then, he would die in a matter of seconds, perhaps he'd survive a minute or two if any of them knew where to pressure to control the bleeding.

'How deep?' Syd asks.

'Don't be stupid,' Delta blinks slowly.

'Yeah, don't be stupid,' Prox adds.

'If you don't want to do it, you are out,' Ned's voice is rough, his throat is still recovering from the alcohol.

'It's not fair, come on, you're asking me to cut my neck!' Syd tosses a pebble to the fire.

'Rules of the game,' Ned smirks.

'Fine, I'm out.'

Prox, Delta and Ned share high-fives.

'My turn to ask for a dare again,' Ned pretends to think, 'are you up for the challenge, Eric? Are you a true Dauntless?

'I'm-' Eric looks around, they are all staring at him, including Delta, 'I'm Dauntless.'

'Prove it to us,' Ned challenges him, sweeping the floor with his hand and gathering all the screws in front of Eric's feet.

Eric doesn't give himself time to think. He kneels down in front of the group and slams the palm of his hand against the bunch of screws. He bleeds from each wound caused by the screws, his bloody fingerprints are left on the floor and a pool of blood appears around his palm. The pain is sharp and intense but Eric doesn't allow himself to wince.

'It was enough with one, but I'll take it' Ned says amused. 'Your turn.'

Eric lets the air escape his lungs through his nose in a noisy exhalation. He shakes his hands to remove the screws that are still stuck and holds his wrist to prevent it from moving and causing any more pain. It's not a part of the Dauntless fashion to show any type of pain or to pay attention to it, so Eric tries his best to ignore the stinging sensation and turns his eyes to Delta.

It's Eric turn to propose a dare and Delta's the only who hasn't gone through one yet. She stares at him intrigued at what his Erudite mind could come up with in such a situation, but she also knows that he's trying to fit in, and to fit in he'll need to think like Dauntless do.

Eric struggles to find something to say. He is shocked at his own brain refusing to suggest something that could get Delta hurt and wonders if the chemical reactions of attraction have caused a physiological change in the grey matter inside his head.

Eric grabs the small but sharp knife that Ned placed on the floor. He hands the knife to Delta and looks at her in the eye.

'The knife game,' he says finally.

'Oh! Come on, dude!' Prox complains, 'that's easy!'

'Eric, come on,' Ned laughs.

Delta grabs the knife with determination and places the palm of her hand down on the floor with her fingers apart. She stabs back and forth between her fingers, increasing the speed of her movements and also the size of her grin.

The knife misses the floor.

'Fuck!' Delta screams, 'fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!'

Ned, Prox and Syd laugh. Delta pulls the blade out of the ring finger of her left hand and looks at the perforated skin with a grimace of pain in her face.

'Fuck!' she repeats, then laughs, 'it's the first time in ages!'

Prox rips the lower part of her t-shirt and offers the piece of fabric to Delta so that she can bandage her finger and stop the bleeding. Eric looks at his own hand, still bleeding, red and sore, and somehow feels left out for not having been offered any help.

'You're gonna be out soon,' Ned tells him, 'then you can go to the bathroom and wash your hand.'

Delta talks.

'I dare Prox to stick her hand into the fire long enough to watch it burn.'

Prox's eyes open wide with incredulity.

'Delta!'

'Are you out?'

Prox approaches the fire with determination and extends her arm into the flames. She screams three seconds into it, falls on her back and begins to flap her hand into the air in a weak attempt to cool it down.

'Yes, you are out,' Delta confirms, 'we didn't see it burn.'

Ned grabs a blade and hands it to Eric.

'I dare Eric to remove his tattoos with the blade.'

The mood eases and they all laugh. Eric shakes his head and separates himself from Ned and Delta, who are the two last ones to survive the game. They sit in front of each other, staring into their eyes as if they had been waiting for that moment to arrive. Ned's back straightens as he gets more comfortable and he smirks at Delta already knowing that he will win.

'I dare you to eat the pebbles from the street,' Delta says.

'Tasty,' with delicate movements, Ned places the pebbles inside his mouth one by one and swallows five of them, 'will that suffice?'

'It will,' Delta smirks back.

Eric doesn't understand the game between the two of them, and he's not sure he wants to either.

'I dare you to suck my -.'

'What the fuck, Ned?!' Delta says loudly, 'what the fuck, dude? I'm out!'

'I win,' he grins, 'that's how you win the game.'

Prox shakes her head.

'Next time we should include rules,' she tosses a pebble at Ned's face, 'no sex allowed!'

'Next time,' Ned stands up, 'but this year, I proclaim myself the winner of Dare day.'

'Of course you do,' Delta stands up and kicks his thigh, 'asshole.'

Water mixed with blood splashes on the cold steel of the sink. Eric washes his hand marveling at the repeatedly punctured skin. Each of his five fingers move without issue, although it hurts him to stretch the index one.

'Looks like a raw burger,' Delta steals the water, 'your hand.'

'Wanna take a bite?'

'Sure.'

Delta's sharp teeth land on his neck and she gives him a quick bite.

'Let's go have fun.'

The music being played in the depths of the Pit is loud, full of electric guitars, repetitive drums and synthesizers. The singer's voice feels like velvet caressing the inside of Eric's ears, soft but somewhat childish, attractive to his untrained ear. The woman jumps on a stage positioned in the middle of a dining hall full of mostly youngsters that dance and drink as if they were in a trance. Behind a layer of dyed blond hair, the velvety voice sings about youth, freedom and decay, about being lost, abandoned and shattered to pieces.

'... playing with hand grenades through smoke and fire, 'til my love showed up, 'til my hands grew cold... Pushed away by the universe, we are discarded by a closing door... When the days don't offer possibilities, we must return for more... Offering my memories in exchange for my own remains... Pushed away by the universe...'

Delta, Syd and Ned sing their lungs out, dance and scream together with dozens of other Dauntless who seem to be very much in need of the release given by the music. Dauntless is the faction with the highest death rate among teenagers and young adults. Three and a half quarters of the people gathered in that place have known someone of their own age that died during the last year. More than half of them won't make it until their thirties.

Delta keeps dancing.

'...we are the wild ones, running around in the land of the lost, in the shadow of the city... Hey! We are trying to find them all, but they won't let us find anything else than their souls... Call me strong, call me Dauntless, you're on the other side afraid to tell me that I'm fucked up... Can you call me human, can you call me human... Tell me I'm off to space...'

Delta walks up to Eric suggestively, her body following the waves of the music, of the velvet voice. Dauntless isn't a safe place. Not even for the most prepared.

'... I never wanted to go home... One of us will carry on... In a house that is not our own... Only one of us will carry on...'

The red lights reflect on Delta's white hair, on her skin and her tattoos. Her eyes shine in the dimness, full of fire, energy and life. Eric watches the shape of her body when she lifts her arms up in the air, when she jumps and moves her head from side to side to the slower rhythm of the music, when she sings to him with a funny face.

'...I've got nothing else to hide, the future is mine... I'm me, all that I believe... Babe, I have to let you go, so take all the strength you need, and love yourself instead...'

She points at her face.

'...I'm as crazy as they say, this is all there's to say of a broken heart... I'm the entrance to a escape hatch... Hey, man, it was long ago, can you read my Dauntless brain... Our youth will set us free, our youth will set us free!'

Delta takes a sip at her soda.

'What's up?'

'How many of your friends have died?' Eric asks without affection, warmth or feeling. He wants to calculate, to make use of the statistics, to know what are the chances of Delta dying. Of him dying, for that matter.

Delta's face goes blank for a second. Then she begins to jump, dance and sing again, but she modifies the lyrics and stares at the glass ceiling instead.

'...all the clouds where the stars play... two or three each year went away and I stayed here... and we stayed here, Ned, Prox, Syd, Kyle and I... ah, ah, ah, and when the days passed by in a countdown of evenings... the wind took Kyle and he too left... ah, ah, ah! The wind took Kyle like many before, like Alec, Xavier, Chris and Dawn, Anton, Elise, Sonja, Paul, Val and Leif...'

Ned and Prox join Delta in the singing and they all repeat the names over and over again following the rhythm of the music. It's a mystery to Eric how the Dauntless youth manages to carry on after suffering so many losses throughout the first two decades of their lives. He suddenly thinks of the private and intimate relationship they all share and deduces that those losses somehow have turned into the glue that keeps them together and alive. Eric sees past the superficiality of words and he begins to understands what Delta meant when she told him he needed friends. Friends help you survive in Dauntless, not only physically, but also mentally.

One doesn't need friends to survive in Erudite. One doesn't need to survive in Erudite. Dauntless is different and Eric is only obtaining a glimpse of its intolerable levels of hardships in the way that the youngsters enter a trance without even taking drugs. It's the mix of the music, their losses and their thoughts. Such an overdose of strong emotions would make anyone high.

When the song ends, Delta's out of breath, laughing and red in the face. She drinks the rest of her soda, grabs a bottle of water and shares it with Ned. They all go upstairs and sit at the edge of the swimming pool looking down at the concert.

'That's where we wanna be,' Delta points at the other side of the pool.

Max, Marshall and who Eric identifies as the other three leaders of Dauntless stand by a window chatting and watching over the crowd.

'You already know Max,' Delta continues, 'he became a leader after Marshall's father jumped down the Chasm when he found out he was sick. The old man next to him is Clarence. He's been a leader since I can remember, he's quite conservative, he values honour, honesty and altruistic bravery. All of them except for Marshall want him to resign. Marshall's close to him because Clarence was very close to her father and she believes his experience could be useful. I think she'll give up though. He's just too old to keep up.'

'How old is he?'

'Fifty.'

Eric nods. His father, Charles, is turning fifty soon and he won't be considered too old for Erudite. On the contrary, his years are extremely valuable, his experience is useful and priceless in a faction where researches, studies and experiments last a lifetime.

'Marshall's tough and very strict. Serious as fuck, but she's also extremely loyal, loyal to the Dauntless, to the faction.'

'Not to the city, I suppose,' Eric screams over the music.

Delta shakes her head.

'To Dauntless only,' she drinks water, 'like it should be.'

'What about the other two?'

'Leon and Cass. They're a thing, and they've lost all credibility because of that. Cass was part of Ned's group. She was first during the initiation and so was Leon one year before her.'

'What do they think about the Divergent?' Eric asks all of a sudden.

Delta shrugs before tossing the cap of her water bottle to one of the teens that's dancing at the bottom of the pool.

'They don't talk about it openly. You're the one that's actually mentioned them without a wince in your face,' she covers Eric's face with the palm of her hand. 'Do you wanna get out of here?'

'Delta Turner, where are you taking me?' Eric stands up with a smirk on his face.

'Dare day is not over yet, Mr. Coulter.'

The streets of Dauntless are barren at the late hours of the night. It's cold and somewhat windy, the sand sweeps away traces of blood, dirt and broken glass, but the sound of it is calming, soothing for two brains high on adrenaline, hormones and hunger. Eric considers the possibility of kissing Delta in the middle of the street, of having her body close to his, but his Erudite ego restrains him on every crossing, against every wall he feels with the tip of his fingers, away from Delta's shoulders every time she leans against him playfully trying to make him stumble.

'I will fight Four soon,' he says in an attempt to steer his thoughts away from Delta, 'I am sure that the little Stiff has some secrets he does not want to share with the rest of us.'

'Every one has secrets, Eric. Every one is different.'

'What's your secret?' Eric feels a rush of adrenaline running through his body all the way down to his toes. 'What are you hiding, Delta Turner?'

'You really wanna see, huh?' Delta turns around to face him. Her mood reminds Eric of the velvet sound of the music they just heard. She's the personification of music, emotions and despair, and the combination attracts Eric in ways he didn't think his Erudite brain would fall for.

'Let's go play Dare,' he says.

Eric kisses Delta on the lips as soon as she's locked the door of her apartment. Her lips are softer than he remembered, almost addictive and he finds it difficult to control himself when Delta softly pushes him away from her. She kneels on the floor in the middle of her living room and incites him to do the same with her fiery eyes. Eric can feel his breathing is unstable, quick, deep at times, superficial at others, like there's not enough oxygen in the room to feed all the muscles of his body. His face makes Delta smile. She knows what he's thinking of because she's seen it before.

'I dare you to remove your t-shirt,' she says.

Eric's trembling fingers slide under his t-shirt. His own skin suddenly feels smooth, gentle and warm when the fabric breezes against his stomach, his chest and his face and lands by his bare feet in silence. The smell of his own clean skin makes him want to inhale the distance that separates him from Delta, but he remains still, quiet, focusing to control the growing surge of energy that's been traveling through his body every since he saw Delta dance.

'I dare you to do the same,' he almost whispers.

'I dare you to get closer to me,' she answers back.

It takes only their covered knees to touch for their bodies to fuse inside. The heat their skin emanates reaches each other's senses and so does their anticipation, their hunger, their restlessness.

'I dare you to put your lips on mine,' Eric says under his breath.

The space in between them is reduced to an intimate sphere where only the surface of their lips meet. The rest of their bodies remains barely an inch apart, hovering against each other, distant but close.

'I dare you to touch my skin,' Delta whispers against his own breath.

Eric rests the palm of his left hand on Delta's side, on the light curve that precedes her hips. Her body waves in the wind of her breath, her hips rock her thighs just a little bit closer to his and Eric releases his body to sink his fingers into her flesh until he can feel the tide of her hips swelling once more.

A/N: Not sure if there's anyone out there, but if there is, I hope you enjoyed this one!
I don't like to leave things unfinished so I'm determined to complete this story sooner or later :)
For those who were awaiting this, thanks for the (massive amounts of) patience.