I. Session 1: The Iceberg.

Simon Tam embraced his sister in the parking lot. The two siblings had dark hair and wore high class clothing. Simon twirled his fingers through River's long curls. She had a small smile on her face, as her round brown eyes looked over her brother's shoulder at the large building behind them. She would miss Simon, but not much else while she boarded at her new school.

Simon's mother and father had always taken a greater interest in Simon's academic endeavors than those of his sister. Although River possessed a greater intellect than her brother, she was eccentric and had a habit of unintentionally showing up her parents during social events. Her parents perceived her aptitude as arrogance and insolence, especially when she logically managed to explain her way out of her chores or silly pranks. Simon, on the other hand, followed his parents ardently. Simon was going places in society. They had Simon.

When his parents discovered The Academy--an Alliance-funded school for exceptionally talented individuals--they discovered the perfect way to take care of their daughter. River wanted to go to the school too: she herself had left The Academy's brochures on the counter for her parents to spot. More than anything, she wanted to go someplace where she could be challenged, where people would appreciate her intelligence, and, where she would perhaps finally meet other people, besides her brother, who she could really connect with.

"Will you write to me?" Simon asked River as he held onto her.

"Of course, if I have the time. Look at it." River gestured toward the building behind her brother. He turned towards it. "With an edifice that large the facilities must be..." She lost the rest of her words as she mused about the school.

Simon gazed up at The Academy. It was grand. Completely white, with the Alliance insignia in gold on the faГade. Domes caped the roof tops and reflected the sunlight across the green lawn. The lawn stretched out over distant hills and a few trees. And, there were no other buildings in sight.

"It's very isolated."

"Most of The Academy is underground. Like an iceberg," River explained.

Simon still felt the campus appeared eerie. If you could call it a campus, thought Simon. The white building was too perfect, too artificial against the empty blue sky and the perfectly trimmed grass. "Do you need help carrying your bags in?"

River gave him a look. She had one large duffel slung over her shoulder. The other she was holding a few inches above the ground; however, she didn't seem strained at all by the weight. "I'll be fine, Simon. I will begin my first letter to you once I am settled in. Now, I must go or I will be late for orientation."

As her brother scanned the parking lot, he realized that there weren't any other families heading to The Academy. In fact, he could not see another single person in the area. "Are you sure you have the right time? There's no one else here."

"Yes. They're probably all inside by now. We are running a bit late."

Simon gave her one last hug, and River leaned onto him as he did so. "Good-bye, mei-mei."

--

"And do you like school?" The interviewer asked.

River had checked in with the woman at the front desk, after frantically apologizing for her tardiness. As two Alliance guards took her bags away, the receptionist had grinned at River. "The entrance interview is just routine. They just want to see where you are at before they fit you in to the curriculum." The two guards then led River into an empty room. It looked like an interrogation room for criminals, not a friendly office for incoming students. There were two chairs, and a small table. One of the walls even included a one-way window. The interviewer was waiting for her when she entered.

"I do," she replied. "It's..." River paused. Even if their exchange felt more like an interrogation than an academic interview, she supposed she ought to be honest about how easy most of the courses were at her school, so she would be put into appropriately leveled classes. "...sometimes things move a little slowly for me."

The interviewer flipped through a folder containing her transcripts, and made some notes in a notebook. "I imagine they do. What's your favorite subject?"

"I'm finding physics a challenge."

"You're in the graduate program already," he stated.

"They call me 'little mouse,'" she responded with a slight laugh. He didn't laugh with her.

"Do you think they're jealous because you're so young?"

River hesitated for a second. It was a strange question to ask during this kind of interview, but she still answered. "Volgar is a little. He plans to become very important."

"Did he tell you that he was jealous?"

"Oh. No. I just..."

"You feel it." He wrote down another note.

"People tell you things all the time without talking," she explained. "By the way they move, or the way they aren't talking."

"You're very intuitive."

It was not the first time someone had told her that. But, this man seemed to hint that she possessed more than mere insight in people's motives. "Simon says I was born with a third eye," she said, laughing, trying to get the edge off. The thought of her brother gave her comfort. "He hates it when I can tell which girls he likes."

"Your brother. He's a doctor, right?"

"He's a trauma surgeon in Capital City."

"Quite a family," the interviewer said to himself as he wrote in his notebook.

"Simon's a genius. I could never do what he does."

The interviewer put down his pen, and folded his hands on the tabletop. "I think you could do whatever you put your mind to. That's what the Alliance needs. That's what this institution is all about--your mind; letting it do everything it could. Does that sound like something you'd be interested in?"

River watched the man across from her. He had a slight smile on his lips, and a almost hungry glare in his eyes. She turned away from his gaze, the one lamp in the room was so bright that she couldn't see most of his countenance. He's not hungry, she convinced herself, he's just...excited, as I am, to have a new pupil. River met the man's face again, grinning. "Would I still be allowed to dance?"

--

The two guards who took River's bags led her down numerous flights of stairs after the interview. As they went deeper and deeper underground, there were less and less windows. The lights became brighter, but the hallways still seemed darker. Despite the cleanly painted walls and wide corridors, the air was still thick and constraining. A hospital, thought River, uneasily, It has to be some kind of one. She always felt queasy when she entered a hospital, which was one of the reasons she had not been able to follow Simon into the medical profession. She scanned her surroundings underneath the fluorescent lights. She noticed that the doctors, the guards, and even the janitor mopping the floor wore white masks that covered their nose and mouths.

No one looked at her. No one even acknowledged her presence. She would have felt like a ghost if not for the guards' firm grips on her upper arms.

Just like an iceberg.