“So what happened next?”

Lyssa looked up from her lap. Recognition flashed in her eyes as she left her memories and returned to the room. The one she had been told to enter. The one with the ferns and the kinetic toy on the dark wood desk, endlessly swinging its metal beads back and forth. Doctor Froyd put down his pen.

“You were under the rubble,” he said. “It reminded you of Twenty-Four. Then you fell asleep?”

“I think so. In a way.”

Froyd checked the report on his desk.

“It says here the rubble was seen being tossed aside. Then you walked out, carrying the victim android.”

“I remember that.”

“But you said you fell asleep.”

“In a manner of speaking I did. It’s kind of like how you remember your dreams.”

“I see. Do you mind telling me what you remember happening after that point? From your perspective, of course. The reports are always too impersonal.”

---

Concrete, dust, brick, and glass. All of it so flavorless and grey. But metal had a certain feel to it. Perhaps it was the looseness of its particles, the way electrons just flowed like a gentle stream through metal; she liked it. And it liked her. For when her will welled up from within her core, metals accepted it without resistance. With the one arm wrapped tight around the victim, she held out the other. Her fingers curled. The rebar obeyed. She could feel the war machine hover just outside of the ruin she had been buried under. It was too far away for her to touch. But if she could extend her will…

Lyssa grasped the rebar all around her and thrust it into the VTOL, piercing its armor. With the connection made, her force flowed through like an open artery, wreaking havoc on its innards, pulling against the metals inside until something irreplaceable broke. She felt it sputter and fall onto the ground, dead. And then she waited. The crawler had yet to pass.

The other applicants moved pass first. None of them stopped to help. Lyssa did not mind. She had been left alone much longer before. In that moment she was beyond apathy, for not caring about something required one to make a decision on whether or not they did. Many people upon seeing garbage on the side of the road don’t consider putting it in a bin; they simply don’t notice. The feeling was like that.

She laid there in the dark, gently pushing against the steel structure of the fallen building to prevent further collapse, and when the earthquakes finally stopped and the crawler had passed, she threw the rubble aside.

Wordlessly, she walked to the muster point.

Holy Toledo! It looks like the applicant with the fire gift is still in it! And she still has that victim in her arms. If that isn’t an exemplar of hero behavior, then tie my hands to the bedframe and call me Sally.

Now wait a minute. There’s more bots on the way. Looks like the other applicants missed a few.

Lyssa had felt them come before she heard the announcer. She waited until she could practically smell the rubber from their wheels. Their metal fists wound up and swung with enough force to crush a car. The victim android closed its eyes. But the skirmisher’s knuckles slowed the closer they got to her, until they came to a dead stop. Ripples travelled through the metal fingers, up the forearms and to the rest of their bodies. The skirmishers were tossed back, crashing in a heap many feet away.

Unbelievable! Is this the same applicant? That’s not the gift we saw earlier from this one, is it?

The rest of the way proved uneventful. She delivered the objective. The practicum concluded minutes later.

---

“That’s all you remember?” Froyd asked.

“Yes. That’s what she- I did.”

“She?”

“Izanami. That’s what she calls herself.”

“Would you say you were unconscious while Izanami completed the practicum?”

“I wasn’t. When I said I was asleep, it was metaphorical.”

“I see.”

“I remember doing all those things. I just remember being…”

“Different.”

“Right.”

“Thank you.” The doctor finished filling out a document and handed it over the desk. He smiled cordially. “Take this to the registrar. Welcome to M.A.G.E.”

Lyssa accepted the paper. She read her own name and skimmed the documentation. Her eyes rested on the assessment.

PSYCHOLOGICALLY SOUND

ALL ROLES APPROVED

The enormity of its meaning sank in. She had done it, passed one of the most dangerous tests a human being could take in the twenty-first century. She hummed quietly on her way out of the admin offices of the academy.

The campus was sprawling, with many interstices of gardens and ponds. She even saw a couple gardeners tend to the flora. When they walked, the grasses and flowers followed their movement. Green thumb gifts, affinity with vegetation. The higher categories could even make trees grow years ahead of schedule.

There was no other place in the world with a higher concentration of gifted. The knowledge settled warmly in her chest, even if it did not feel entirely earned. She had not known she had other gifts. And if called upon to use them at will, she doubted they would manifest. But that was a problem for later.

She packed her things, ended her lease early, and began the process of moving into the dorms, an applicant no more. On her way through the tall iron gates signed ‘Marlowe’s Academy for Gifted Enhanciles’, she noticed young men and women her age walk out. Some of them looked like they were on the verge of tears. Some were past tears, their eyes red from the evidence.

She had heard what happened with many of the applicants. They got hurt, their gifts simply weren’t powerful enough, and they scored zero points. The test wasn’t a competition. Being able to score just half a point meant something.

The dorm had room for four. Each bedroom was separate. A single bedroom had as much space as the apartment she had lived in. And the window gave her view of the campus gardens, not an expanse of downtown architecture. Lyssa sat close to the window and spent a good while taking it all in. Even if being a hero did not work out in the future, having a certification from M.A.G.E carried weight. Police work, government positions, military. Law school. There was no doubt that many students likely had career goals in mind other than heroism, as much as that was where the glory was.

The door to the unit opened. Lyssa heard muffled voices and rolling dollies. The roommates. She left her bedroom.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m- I’m Lyssa.”

She had stuttered. This was disastrous. She usually wasn’t this bad with people, but one of her new roommates had startled her.

The woman was tall, and wore all silk. Black chitin coated her legs and forearms. Her fingers—all twenty of them shared between four arms—ended in claw tips, her joints covered with cotton-like down. If she had pupils, Lyssa could not see them amid the pure black sclera. Holes in the back of her clothes allowed enormous, folded wings covered with spectral patterns.

An animalian.

“Amelia Linnaeus,” she said. She held out a hand. “Charmed.”

Lyssa shook the hand before it looked like she hesitated. It felt like grabbing warm ceramic.

“This is Penny,” Amelia said.

Penny stopped directing the movers to walk over. She was a dark-skinned woman with emerald green eyes that seemed to move with the light.

“Looks like we’ll be sharing a space for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Lisa, you said, right?”

“Yeah,” Lyssa said. “That’s my name.”

Dollies continued to be moved while they talked.

“So…” Penny said.

“So?”

“What’s your gift?”

“Uhm.”

“Already?” Amelia said. “Rather private information.”

“Until the first Gift Application Tutorial,” Penny retorted.

“You do not have to answer, love,” Amelia said to Lyssa.

“It’s alright.” Lyssa thought about it for a second. “I kind of have to get angry first. I think that’s how it works.”

“You don’t sound so sure,” Penny said.

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s cool. You should see what happens to Amelia when she gets mad.”

“Alright that is enough,” Amelia said, pinching Penny’s lips.

The last dolly came through carrying the refrigerator. It had double doors and an interactive screen, complete with water dispenser.

“I will take this one from here, thank you.”

Amelia placed a hand against the side of the refrigerator and lifted it off. The movers took the dolly away and closed the door behind them.

“Have any preference of location?” She asked. “This is yours to use as well, Lyssa. If you wish.”

“Anywhere is fine, thank you,” Lyssa said uncertainly. “How are you holding it like that?”

“Well…” Amelia placed it next to the cabinets in the kitchen. Penny reached down to plug it in. “You know how insects walk up walls and on ceilings?”

“That can’t be-”

“Well you are right, it is nothing like that. At my size it is not enough. I channel supramolecular induction. It is a form of van der Waals force but far stronger.”

“That’s… really cool.”

“Yeah she’s a real cheat at the climbing gym,” Penny said.

“Hilarious,” Amelia said. “Anyways, we were thinking of touring the school. Want to come along?”

Lyssa wanted to. This did not happen often; strangers wanting to interact with her. But she wasn’t ready. She didn’t know what ready meant.

“Later,” she said, smiling. “I still have some preparation to do.”

“Suit yourself,” Amelia said.

They left. The place became silent. Lyssa noticed they were missing a fourth roommate, then retreated back to her room, thinking nothing of it. She took her seat again by the window and watched the people below walk together, wondering why she didn’t say yes, despite not regretting her decision to say no.