“Did you get your results?” he managed to get out faintly. He held up the single sheet of paper that had been handed to him as he’d entered the gymnasium a good half hour before anyone else finished. “They gave this to me on my way in…?”
Viv didn’t answer immediately, her gaze still far away. After a few seconds, though, Rei’s question appeared to reach her, because she started and looked around.
“I-I did!” she answered, a little too enthusiastically, clearly as eager as he was for any distraction from the dark places her thoughts had likely been dunked into. Reaching for the bag she was still carrying around, she pulled out her own—slightly-crumpled—sheet and held it up. “97th percentile in the physical assessment!” Viv’s voice regained a little of its usual energy as she pointed out the line, which was sub-marked with a dozen different measurements and the broken-down percentiles of each. “99th in flexibility and red blood cell count!”
“Whoa!” Rei said, genuinely impressed, reaching to tug the paper from her. “Badass, Viv!” His eyes trailed the lines. “Only 93rd in bone density, though. I told you that you should have been doing more high-impact training.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Viv waved the comment away with one hand as she plucked the page back before he could read any of her other numbers, folding it in half to leave on the table. “What about you? Let me see!”
Sheepishly, Rei handed over his printout. Viv snatched it up like a starving man offered bread, eagerly looking it over.
“98.7% on the written?! Holy shit, Rei! I scored a 94.5 and I thought that was good.”
Rei laughed nervously, waiting for her eyes to drop, knowing what she would see next. They did, and he felt his stomach lurch.
On the line for “Physical Assessment”, all that had been printed was a single word: “Passed”. No percentile ranking. No sub-markings. Just the word.
“‘Passed’.” Viv read it out loud, quietly at first. Then she read it again, then again, louder each time. “Passed? Passed! Rei! YOU PASSED!”
She practically screamed the last bit, and Rei was suddenly being lunged at, Viv’s long arms wrapping around his neck as she laughed and danced in her seat. He found himself smiling even as he tried to fight her off, the final dregs of the darkness the MIND had left his thoughts in trailing away.
There was an echoing cough, and Viv stopped moving abruptly. Together they looked around, towards the front of the line of tables, where an evaluator in his black and gold uniform was standing at ease even as he stared at them very, very pointedly.
“Sorry,” Viv said in a stage whisper to the officer, releasing Rei but not letting go of his result. “But he passed. He passed!”
A hint of a smile crossed the man’s face, but then he was looking dead ahead once more, pretending he hadn’t seen anything.
“Rei. This is amazing!” Viv was breathless as she looked down at his sheet again. “Not gonna lie, I was really, really worried.”
“Ha,” Rei managed to squeak out, wondering how many of the MIND’s eyes and ears were trained on their conversation right then. “Yeah… Me too…”
“But you passed,” she hissed again. “It’s weird that they didn’t grade or sub-mark you, but maybe they only do that for the upper echelons. And that writing score…” Her eyes were afire when she turned on him. “Rei, if you get a CAD with a decent Rank, Galens might just take you! We can do it! We can do this!”
“You’re assuming I get one,” Rei corrected her softly. “That we both get one. They didn’t mark the third portion on this printout.” He tapped the blank white under his “Physical Assessment” line for emphasis. “Nothing’s for sure until they call our names.”
Viv, however, was apparently in no mood to be deterred.
“That third part was awful, but I nailed it. Knowing you, I don’t think for a second you didn’t too, if we had a remotely similar test.” She grinned, the flame in her blue eyes growing all the brighter. “We’ve got this. We’ve got this!”
Rei couldn’t help it, then, seeing his best friend’s enthusiasm on their behalf. He smiled back.
“Yeah,” he managed to get out more confidently than he felt, recalling his conversation with the MIND. “Yeah. We’ve got this.”
Even if it’s as a guinea pig.
*****
Over the next two hours the other finalists slowly trickled into the gym, taking to their seats one at a time. Finally, after what seemed like forever—and more warning looks from a few of the evaluators when their whispered conversations got too animated—Rei and Viv watched what had to be the last candidate to have passed the first and second portions of the exam enter, because the officer who handed the boy his results at the entrance closed the sliding door behind him.
Sure enough, the moment the examinee had found his seat again, Major Albert Connelly made his appearance once more, striding out from one of the lobbies at what must have been some digital summoning, his flat-top military cap in perfect order atop his head, a wide pad in one hand. Seeing him again, Rei felt a buzz of nerves and excitement.
Reaching the front and center of the tables, the major turned to face the scattered hopefuls who had managed to serve the day’s trials.
“Applicants,” the man barked, “this marks the end of your CAD-Assignment Exam. First of all, a congratulations to all 112 of you who have made it this far. Of the 521 in this gymnasium at the start of the day, you are the only to have weathered the tests without cause for disqualification. Regardless of what happens from this moment onward, that is commendable, and worthy of praise.”
Rei might have imagined it, but he thought he saw the major’s eyes flick to him from under the brim of his cap.
“However,” Connelly continued, and a tingle of anxious fear crawled up Rei’s spine, “while the exam is complete, the selection process is not. I have here—” he held up the pad he’d carried with him into the room, and as he spoke the light of blue text appearing on the tablets surface shined off the gold buttons of his uniform “—the names of thirty-four individuals who have been deemed appropriate for Device-assignment over the course of the third portion of the exam you all undertook.”
Despite the reduced, scattered number of people left in the room, there was a hum of mumbled noise at this announcement. Rei couldn’t blame them.
“Thirty-four?” Viv hissed quietly from beside him. “Only thirty-four? That’s way less than one in twelve…!”
Rei didn’t answer, feeling her nervousness, but also clinging to the major’s every word as Connelly continued.
“Yes, that is below the average pass rate, but it is called an ‘average’ for a reason. If you are on this list—” he waved the pad briefly “—then you earned your place there, as you have all certainly experienced today. If you are not, then consider what elements may have caused you to fail the third evaluation and try again next year.”
At that, the major flicked his other hand, and several things happened at once. First a rumbling sound from their left had all heads turning towards the south lobby door, where four or five men and women in uniform were escorting a floating white platform with a large, awkward shape atop it hidden from view by a black drape. Second, the lights in the combat gym went out, tossing everyone into the dark for a moment before color blazed to life over them again. There were gasps and shouts of amazement as the projection cast itself over what had been a plain synthetic floor, old tables and chairs, and amphitheater seating. In their place, a ballroom out of some science-fiction epic built itself into being around them in rapid order, pixilated blocks forming and sliding into place from the ground up. Within a handful of seconds a dozen stone pillars of intricately-cut marble towered up on either side of the still-seated examinees, reaching for the ceiling where they arched and formed a webbed lattice whose empty in-betweens were left unfilled. This space extended to the floor, and beyond these intricate—if meager—walls, a view unlike anything Rei thought any of them had had the opp
ortunity to witness hung in slow rotation.
“Whoa…” Viv breathed from Rei’s right.
Gaseous clouds of every color were suspended in a sea of black and stars, with narrow points of brighter light marking the largest or hottest of distant suns. Like dyed silks the nebulas overlaid each other, bathing them all in a faint, handsome glow.
“Deeeefinitely a hologram,” Rei whispered sidelong to Viv. “That’s the Crab Nebula, projected right next to the Eagle.”
“Shut up,” she hissed back, eyes fixed on the endlessness of the heavens that were turning slowly all around them. “It’s pretty.”
Rei chuckled, forcing himself to bring his own attention earthward again. The tables they’d all been seated at were still present, but hidden under simulations of heavy wood covered by black cloth. In the center of each of these, the seven stars and crossed swords of the ISCM had been stitched in gold, and Rei was pondering at the impressive quality of the projection when a motion at the front of the room caught his eyes. He looked up in time to see that the floating platform the evaluators had been bringing into the space had finally reached its resting point at the front and center of the room, and was being settled down atop a raised dais of stone behind which hung nothing but more of the wondrous heavens. Two of the evaluators were in the process of pulling the black cloth free of whatever it was that was atop the platform, and as they slid the covering loose, Rei swallowed.
A surgical table.
No. That wasn’t exactly right. It was similar to a surgical table, but not formed from the clean titanium or sterilized steel Rei was accustomed to feeling as the drugs dragged him under. Rather, this table looked to be made of several different sections of a dark, matte sheen, the seams of which were outlined in glowing purple lines which appeared illuminated from within, faint shafts of light swimming upward, like something was moving beneath the metal.
Carbonized steel. Stryon particle-powered vysetrium.
CAD materials.
Archon technology… Rei couldn’t help but think.
Whispers started breaking out all about the room as others noticed the device, and Rei elbowed Viv in the ribs to make her bring her eyes down from the nebulas swirling around them. She grunted in pain and was very likely about to curse at him when she, too, saw the table.
“Thaaaat’s not freaky at all,” she muttered.
“Everyone, if you would please turn your attentions to your NOEDs.” The major was standing patiently to the side as the officers under his command finished setting up the strange object that would clearly be key in the assignment of those who would be granted their Devices that day. “You are about to receive an essential contract of military service. All are required to review this, and sign before we can proceed with distribution of CADs. For those of you who are being assigned to duty, this will serve as your bond of service to the Intersystem Collective Military. For those of you who do not receive a Device, this contract acts as an agreement of non-disclosure regarding anything you might see or hear from this point forward. It is also an implied letter of recommendation from the evaluators of this test for any other employment you may or may not seek within the ISCM, given the fortitude and ability it takes to reach this point in the Assignment Exam.”
As he finished, a notification indeed flashed into view in the frame of Rei’s neuro-optic, and he selected the message—sent directly from the ISCM—with a quick eye command. It opened, and text started streaming across his vision.
It wasn’t, in the end, an overly complicated contract, with most of the details citing to known documents anyone who had passed the written portion of the exam would have memorized by heart already. The ISCM’s “Oath of Duty”. The military pay-structure, generous especially to CAD-Users, SCT circuit successes in particular. There were even addresses to the intersystem civil codes, adding mostly that the responsibility of Device wielders rested mainly on the banning of calling on a CAD outside of sanctioned areas without valid reason, in any form, phantom of true. Rei read it through carefully—answering a few whispered questions from Viv as others directed theirs to the major—before finally reaching the bottom.
In agreeing to this document, I Pledge myself to the Responsibilities listed above, as well as the charges of Good Faith and Sense in the undertaking, training, and application of my Combat Assistance Device, should I receive one on this day.
AGREE / DISAGREE
Rei smirked a little, reading over the simplicity of the sign-off. It seemed wanting, somehow, compared to the weight of the moment. He even hesitated, staring at the “AGREE” for a time, feeling the burden he was—potentially—about to bring down on his shoulders.
Then, with a quick flick and blink, he signed his consent, and the contract vanished.
“And so I grant thee my life and soul, oh cruel mistress of battle,” he quoted dramatically, earning a snigger from Viv as she, too, agreed to the terms.
It was another couple of minutes before the others had read through the document to their satisfaction, in which the pair of them sat in silence, feeling the tension in the room grow. By the time the major cleared his throat and began to speak again, both Rei and Viv had knees bouncing nervously beneath the table.
“With that done, we shall proceed.” Connelly held up the pad again. “Names will be read out in alphabetical order. If you are called, please stand, and join me here—” he indicated the spot beside him, in front of the dais and its raised table “—and I and the other evaluators will instruct you further. If your name is not on the list, I respectfully request that you stay seated until all CAD recipients have been assigned their Devices.”
He paused then, letting the distinctly non-optional “request” sink in. Beside Rei, Viv made a jerking motion, and he felt her take his hand under the heavy wood of the table, gripping it hard. He didn’t look around, but returned the pressure, understanding her anxiety. If they were indeed going alphabetically, then there was a decent chance that—
“Arada, Viviana.”
The trembling inhalation Viv took then was something between relief and absolute, sheer terror. She didn’t stand immediately, staring at the major as though not believing her ears, but with an encouraging squeeze of her fingers Rei spoke to her quietly.
“Viv. Go.”
After a seconds more hesitation, she finally got up, shaking and releasing his hand to move unsteadily down the aisle. For all her strength, for all her height and designed beauty, Rei’s best friend looked then like a newborn fawn trying to stand on unsteady legs. No one laughed, though, as she half-walked, half-stumbled to the end of the row, then around to the front of the hall to come to a halt beside the major. No one did anything more than stare, watching the proceedings with an anticipation that roiled in the atmosphere of the room despite its silence.
Connelly bent down when Viv reached him, instructing her quietly and motioning to the table. She nodded, and as she moved towards it two of the evaluators—a man and a woman—fell in beside her. As a trio they climbed the dais, then the platform, then the officers helped Viv slide onto the table and lie down. The light of the purple vysetrium pulsed a little as she let her head down on the flat, hard surface, and Rei could practically hear her breaths coming harder and faster while the evaluators shifted her position a little this way and that, paying particularly close attention to the placement of her hands. One of them appeared to ask her if she was ready, because she swallowed hard even as she gave a quivering nod. The officer who’d asked the question—the man—in turn gave an affirming gesture to his female partner, then stepped smartly off the platform. The woman, meanwhile, had moved to the back of the table, and looked to be inputting some sort of command into a master panel Rei couldn’t see.
For a little while, nothing happened. The Crab and Eagle nebulas spun around them in drifting silence, the quiet of the room so absolute they might have all been actually adrift in space. The absence of sound and action extended so long, in fact, that Rei
started to worry something had gone wrong.
Then, with a pulsing woomph of sound like pressurized atmosphere being released from an airlock, the table blazed into life in a brilliant plume of violet light.
Beneath Viv the dark plates of carbonized steel around the outline of her body began to shift, lifting and moving into a complex array that bent steadily upwards around the girl in their center. Before long a half-dozen ribs of broken, angular black shapes had curved over Viv’s body like a distorted cage. The light flared brighter, so much so Rei was forced to bring a hand up to cover his eyes as a few cries of surprise and discomfort came from the other examinees around him, and Viv’s form was completely lost to the glow. There was a building whine of machinery, like the ramping whir of a neutron-collider engine, rising in pitch until it hurt the ears.
And then, with a flash and a down-spinning calming of all sound, it was over.
Rei had to squeeze his eyes shut a few times to clear his vision, and by the time he managed it Viv was being helped off the table by the two evaluators who’d seen her initially settled. For a moment she teetered, like the process had drained her, but then she stood… tall? Too tall, almost. Viv too, looked surprised by her own composure, her mouth hanging slightly open as she looked down at something on her arm.
That was when Rei saw the CAD.
It sat, just tight enough not to slip off her hands, around both wrists. Nothing more from the outside than matching plain, thin bands of the same carbonized steel that made up the table behind Viv—now still and returned to its original configuration—Rei thought he could make out a faint silvery glow in a clash of dark purple and yellow. The colors fit her, somehow. Firm, and yet bright in the same space and time.
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 7