A few minutes later, Minn walked back to the waiting hall and sat down next to Deya. She tapped her feet nervously and looked at her watch.

"What's wrong?" asked Deya.

"N... nothing," she said quietly.

Deya shrugged. When girls said 'nothing' to the question 'What's wrong?', anything could be wrong. Her thoughts wandered over to when the I.F. officer told her that she would be seeing Jane. 'I don't believe it...' she thought to herself. 'Jane? Really, how could Jane get into Battleschool? Well, I guess she is smart, but she's too... well, social. I can't really say what's wrong with her, but I don't think she'll last. I'll have to take care of her while we're there.'

The nurse stepped out of the testing room and smiled widely. "Number eight?" she said.

Deya looked down at her nametag. Sure enough, she was number eight. She got up hesitantly and entered the room, glancing back at Minn with a small, unsure smile.

Inside the testing room, everything was white, as usual. The nurse beckoned for her to have a seat. "Your name?"

"Deya Glaines," she said clearly, looking straight into the nurses' eyes.

"Hmm..." she said, writing with an ink pen on a form. "Age?"

"Seven."

"Height?"

"5'4"."

"Weight?"

"I... I don't know," she said. "I guess seventy-eight pounds."

The nurse nodded, her pen making a scratching noise as she filled in the information. She flipped through the number of pages on the clipboard. "Well, aren't you a little genius?" she asked with a smile.

"Uh... uh..." Deya glanced down at the paper, trying to read what she was reading.

The nurse smiled. "I'll tell you your test scores. This is the test you took in first grade."

"What'd I get?" asked Deya. The scores on standardized tests were never revealed. "Eighteen hundred out of eighteen hundred on literature and seventeen hundred out of seventeen hundred on mathematics. Oh and..." she flipped to the next page and read the scores aloud. "Nineteen hundred and seventy five out of twenty hundred on physics –"

Deya cringed. 'Mom told me to study physics more... I didn't.'

"Anyway, if you'd like to read the rest, you're welcome to. I'm just giving you a sample of your intelligence level."

Deya nodded. "May I?"

"Sure!" she said, handing over the papers.

She quickly glanced through. She had ranked top twenty percentile in the nation. "I've a question."

"Yes?"

"Why am I here?"

The nurse frowned a bit. "You're here to serve your country, dear, and that's all I can tell you. More information on the Battleschool you're going to will be given when you arrive there."

'So, this is a different kind of Battleschool...' she thought.

The nurse interrupted her thoughts. "You may go now," she said, taking back the test scores.

"That's all?"

"Well, we have virtually everything on you ... the I.F. keeps the records and such. We just wanted to know the updated version of things."

"Okay," she said quietly. "I have another question though."

"What's that, dearie?"

"Is the Battleschool I'm going to... hard?"

Immediately, the smile on the nurses' face left. "Oh, you'll do fine," she said absent-mindedly. "From the test scores I've looked at, I'm sure you will."

"Is it like bootcamp?" she asked, itching to know. 'I shouldn't be asking, but I really want to know where in the heck I'm going to.'

After a few seconds, the nurse smiled sadly. "You'll see. I'm not even sure how hard it is, I'm just a nurse." She laughed, then signaled for her to leave.

Deya got up and left without a word.

*

Back in the waiting room, she looked nervously at Minn and sat next to her. "Minn... how hard is the school we're going to?"

Minn didn't say anything. Finally, "I don't know. My father wouldn't tell me anything about it," she murmured. "But..." she whispered, her voice barely audible, "The country needs us soon. My father didn't want me to even go, but he knew how badly the U.S. needs us. Some people, I've heard, say that we're treated like lab rats. Tested... in the queerest ways. It'll be hard, but the strongest will survive. Those who don't will be sent back as failures. This is why I'm nervous. This is why I'm scared. I don't want to go back home and disappoint my family. And I don't really want to go to this Battleschool, because I don't think I'll be able to survive."