Potato peeling duty lasted three hours and felt like twelve.
Christina's knife moved with mechanical efficiency while her mouth produced a continuous stream of observation, complaint, and commentary. Candor, I was learning, processed the world through verbalization—they didn't fully understand something until they'd described it out loud, dissected it, examined it from every angle.
"—and then Molly just stands there like she can't believe you actually hit her back. Which, honestly, fair, because you looked like death when Peter finished with you, but still—"
"You're really committed to this recap."
"I'm building to a point." Christina set down her peeler and turned to face me directly. "You fight like you know what's coming. Not react to—know. That's not normal."
The kitchen was empty except for us. Morning prep, before the breakfast rush. No witnesses except stainless steel and root vegetables.
"What's your theory?"
"I don't have one yet." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "That's what's bothering me. Usually people are either good at fighting because they've trained or bad at fighting because they haven't. You're bad at the physical part but weirdly good at the prediction part. Like someone downloaded tactics into a body that can't execute them."
The description was uncomfortably accurate.
"Abnegation teaches you to read people," I said. The lie came smoother each time I told it. "Years of watching faces to figure out who needs help, who's lying about being okay, who's hiding something. You learn to see patterns."
"Patterns in dinner conversations, sure. Patterns in combat?"
"Turns out the skill transfers."
Christina was quiet for a long moment. I watched her process—the slight movements of her jaw, the micro-expressions that Candor never learned to hide because their faction considered hiding them immoral.
"Okay," she said finally. "I'm going to believe you. For now."
"Generous."
"I'm a generous person." She picked up her peeler and resumed attacking potatoes. "But Logan? If you're hiding something—and I'm not saying you are—but if you are? I'd rather you just told me than kept pretending. I can handle weird. I can't handle dishonest."
The irony of a Candor expecting honesty from a transmigrator with a secret system and foreknowledge of multiple deaths was not lost on me.
"If I'm ever hiding something important," I said, "you'll be the first person I tell."
The lie tasted like copper. Christina smiled like she believed me.
Will joined the circle during lunch with a notebook full of calculations.
"Ranking algorithm," he announced, sliding into the seat beside Christina. "I've mapped it. Mostly."
The notebook contained pages of careful handwriting—formulas, variables, weighted coefficients estimated from observable data. Erudite precision applied to Dauntless brutality.
"Combat performance is forty percent," Will explained, pointing to a cluster of equations. "Split between win/loss record and subjective assessment from instructors. Shooting accuracy is fifteen percent, physical conditioning tests are twenty percent, and fear simulation performance is twenty-five percent."
"Fear simulations haven't started yet," Tris said.
"Which means the rankings will shift dramatically once they do." Will tapped his notebook. "Right now, Peter's third and you're climbing, Tris. But if your simulation times are bad, all that combat improvement won't matter."
[INFORMATION ANALYSIS]
[WILL'S ALGORITHM: APPROXIMATELY 87% ACCURATE TO MC'S INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT]
[MINOR CORRECTIONS AVAILABLE: SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT WEIGHT LIKELY 12-15%, NOT 10%]
"The subjective component might be higher," I said, framing the correction as a question. "Closer to fifteen percent? Eric seems to weight 'attitude' pretty heavily."
Will's eyes lit up—the particular brightness of someone whose work had been refined rather than criticized. "That would explain the variance in third-tier rankings. If Eric's assessing intangibles..."
He pulled out a pencil and started adjusting his formulas.
Christina caught my eye across the table and mouthed nerd with obvious affection. I shrugged. Will was useful. Will was also genuinely likeable. The distinction between the two was getting harder to maintain.
The afternoon sparring session put me on coaching duty.
Tris struggled against opponents who outweighed her by thirty pounds or more—the physics of leverage working against her every time she tried to match power with power. I watched her lose two consecutive bouts before intercepting her during the break.
"You're fighting their fight," I said. "Strength against strength. You'll lose every time."
"I noticed." Her voice was sharp with frustration. "Any helpful suggestions?"
"Use their weight against them. When they push, you pull. When they pull, you redirect. You're small—that's an asset if you stop trying to be big."
I showed her a hip throw technique I'd catalogued from watching one of the Dauntless-born initiates—a movement that used an opponent's momentum to flip them rather than requiring raw strength to overpower.
Tris practiced it three times. On the fourth attempt, she landed the throw cleanly.
[DPA PASSIVE SCAN]
[SUBJECT: BEATRICE PRIOR — "TRIS"]
[DIVERGENT INDEX: HIGH (ESTIMATED 78-85)]
[SERUM RESISTANCE: SUPERIOR TO MC]
[EMOTIONAL STATE: DEFIANT DETERMINATION — RESPONDS POSITIVELY TO COMPETENCE-BASED ASSISTANCE]
[NOTE: TRIS'S DVG EXCEEDS MC'S BY APPROXIMATELY 16-23 POINTS]
The numbers burned.
Tris was more Divergent than I was. Better equipped for the simulations. Better protected against the mind-control serum that would turn Dauntless into murderers. While I was scrambling to reach DVG 80, she was already there.
"She'll survive the massacre. You might not."
I pushed the thought down and kept coaching.
"Better," I said when Tris landed another clean throw. "Now do it when someone's actually trying to hit you."
She grinned—brief, fierce, the first genuine smile I'd seen from her in days. "Thanks, Logan."
"Abnegation has to stick together."
The words came out automatic, performative. But the feeling underneath—something protective, something almost brotherly—wasn't performed at all.
I filed the dissonance and moved on.
Christina was watching me coach Tris.
I didn't notice until the session ended and I turned to find her sitting on the bench with that particular expression—the one that said she was cataloguing something for later examination.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." She stood, stretched, started walking toward the dormitory. "Just wondering where an Abnegation stiff learned leverage throws."
"Watching videos in a previous life" wasn't going to work as an explanation.
"Observation," I said. "Same as everything else."
Christina made a noncommittal sound. She didn't push further.
But she didn't stop watching, either.
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