I Let My Enemy From Erudite 'Study' My Body, And Now I'm Breaking Every Rule To Be With Her

The air in the Pit smelled of sweat and rust. It was a familiar smell, the smell of home. Around me, my fellow Dauntless initiates were a mess of black fabric and restless energy, shouting over the clang of weights and the rhythmic thud of fists against punching bags. Then Four, one of our trainers, blew a whistle that cut through the noise like a blade.

“Inter-faction cooperation drill,” he announced, his voice flat. A collective groan went through the Dauntless-born. We hated these exercises. They were a pointless gesture from the city council, forcing us to play nice with the other factions for a day.

We were herded toward the east wall, where a group of Erudite stood in their neat, sterile blue uniforms. They looked like a row of identical dolls, their expressions ranging from bored to faintly disgusted. I was paired with one of them. A girl. She was tall for an Erudite, with dark hair pulled back so tightly it seemed to stretch the skin at her temples. Her name, she said, was Fawn. She didn’t offer a hand.

The task was simple enough. A logic puzzle on a screen at the base of the climbing wall, connected to a grid of light-up handholds. She solves the puzzle, the holds light up in sequence, and I climb. The catch was the physical duress part: the wall would be slicked with water at random intervals, and we were on a timer.

“I will communicate the coordinates for your hand and foot placements,” Fawn said. Her voice was low and even, completely devoid of the nervous energy buzzing around us. She looked at me, but her eyes weren’t really seeing me. They were assessing my height, my reach, the width of my shoulders. It was the way a butcher might look at a side of beef.

“Just tell me where to go,” I said, chalking my hands.

The buzzer sounded. I put my hands on the first holds.

“Left hand, C-4,” she said into the small comm unit clipped to my collar. Her voice was a sterile presence in my ear, a stark contrast to the grunts and shouts of the Pit.

I moved. My muscles were coiled, ready. I could scale this wall in under a minute on a dry run.

“Right foot, E-5. Wait.”

I froze, my body tense. I could feel the seconds ticking away. “What?”

“Recalculating the sequence,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “The algorithm is inefficient. Right foot, F-3.”

I shifted, my boots scraping against the composite rock. I glanced down. She wasn’t even looking at me anymore. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, her brow furrowed in concentration. I was just a pawn on her board. The thought was irritating. In Dauntless, your body was your own. It was your weapon, your pride. To her, it was just a piece of equipment.

“Left hand, D-2,” she commanded. “Faster. Your optimal energy expenditure is degrading.”

I gritted my teeth and pulled myself up, the muscles in my back and shoulders burning. A spray of cold water hit the wall just above me, making the next hold slick. I adjusted my grip, my fingers digging into the crevice. I could feel her watching me then. Not with concern, but with clinical observation. She was gathering data. The efficiency of muscle groups under stress. The effect of moisture on grip friction. It was unnerving, having my physical exertion reduced to a set of variables. And yet, there was something in the precision of it, in the way her mind and my body were working as a single unit, that was entirely new.

“Final sequence,” her voice said, pulling me from the thought. “Right hand, A-7. Left foot, B-5. Push from your left leg. Now.”

I did as she said, my body responding to her commands instantly. The muscles in my calf and thigh bunched, propelling me upward. My fingers found the final hold at the top just as the buzzer blared, its sound sharp and final. We’d finished. I hung there for a second, my lungs heaving, then dropped, landing lightly on the balls of my feet on the padded floor.

The other pairs were still struggling, their shouts and curses filling the air. My fellow Dauntless were gathering, slapping each other on the back, comparing times. The Erudite were already forming a neat line by the exit, ready to be dismissed. Factions separating. It was the natural order of things. I turned to grab a water packet from the communal bin, expecting her to be gone, another blue uniform disappearing into the crowd.

But she was standing right there. She had crossed the invisible line on the floor, stepping out of the designated Erudite space and into ours. A few of the Dauntless initiates looked at her, their expressions shifting from surprise to suspicion. She ignored them. She walked directly to me and held out a foil water packet.

I took it from her. Her fingers didn't touch mine, but for a second, I thought they might.

“You’re inefficient,” she said. Her voice was just as quiet as it had been over the comms, but it cut through the noise of the Pit all the same. “You favor your upper body. A better understanding of strategic weight distribution would compensate for raw strength. It’s a common Dauntless flaw, valuing power over precision.”

I felt a familiar heat rise in my chest. It was the same condescending tone all the Erudite used. But then I looked at her eyes. They weren’t on my face. They were fixed on my neck, just below my jawline. I could feel the sweat there, cooling on my skin. Her gaze was so focused, so intense, it was almost a physical touch. She watched a drop of sweat trace a path down my throat and disappear into the collar of my shirt. Her expression didn't change, but there was a stillness to her that was unnerving. It wasn’t a challenge, and it wasn’t desire, not in any way I recognized. It was something else. Analytical, yes, but personal. As if she were memorizing the exact way my pulse beat in the vein just under my skin.

She held my gaze for another second, her own eyes dark and unreadable. Then she turned, her blue uniform a stark, clean line as she walked away and merged back into her own faction without a backward glance. I stood there, holding the water packet, the cool foil crinkling in my fist. The spot on my neck where she had been looking felt suddenly bare, exposed. I was used to being looked at, but not like that. Not like I was a problem to be solved.

I spent the rest of the day trying to beat the feeling out of myself on the sparring mats, but it lingered. A strange awareness. When I finally went back to the dorms, the air was thick with the smell of cheap booze and sleep. I sat on the edge of my narrow bunk and pulled at the laces of my boots. My knuckles were raw, my shoulders ached. It was a good, familiar pain. The kind that was supposed to clear your head.

As I yanked my left boot off, something small and cold slid out and clattered onto the concrete floor. I stared at it. It was a data chip, thin and silver, the kind Erudite used for everything. It hadn't been there this morning.

I picked it up. It felt weightless in my palm. There was only one person who could have put it there. Fawn. When she’d handed me the water. She must have brushed against my leg, a movement so slight and precise I hadn't registered it. The thought made the skin on my arm prickle. To be that close, to touch me and plant something on my body without me even knowing. It was an invasion. A demonstration of a different kind of skill, one of stealth and subtlety that we in Dauntless didn’t value. She had assessed my body, then bypassed its defenses entirely.

My jaw tightened. I should have crushed it. Thrown it into the Chasm and forgotten all about her and her quiet, unnerving stare. Instead, I waited until the dorm was nearly empty, the snores of the few who’d passed out early providing a low, rumbling soundtrack. I slipped the chip into the pocket of my trousers and made my way to one of the communal terminals. The machine was old, the screen scarred with cracks, but it worked.

I slid the chip into the port. I expected a message. A line of text, maybe another condescending analysis of my performance. But the screen just flickered and then displayed a map.

It was a detailed schematic of the city’s northern quadrant. A single, pulsing blue line traced a path from the edge of the Dauntless sector, through a network of derelict streets and collapsed underpasses, and ended at a specific building deep within the neutral zone. The abandoned central library. It was a place no one went. It was dangerous, structurally unsound, and sat right on the unspoken border between our territory and hers.

There were no words. No time, no request. Just the map. The silent, arrogant assumption that I would understand. That I would follow. It was a challenge, laid out in cold, logical lines. A blatant disregard for every rule that kept our factions separate, that kept people like me and people like her from ever meeting like this. It was reckless. It was stupid. It could get us both reassigned, or worse.

I stood there for a long time, the blue light of the map painting my face in the dark room. Every part of my Dauntless training, every ingrained prejudice, told me to walk away. This was Erudite manipulation, a game I didn’t understand. But I couldn’t shake the memory of her eyes on my neck. The feeling of being seen, not just as a body, but as a mechanism she wanted to understand. The invitation wasn't a trap. It was an experiment. And I was a variable she wanted to test. A dangerous curiosity began to burn in my chest, a low heat that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with a sudden, inexplicable need to know what would happen if I showed up.