I always forget to put that I don't own these characters, in case you people thought maybe I did. Which I don't. Joss does. Joss is Boss
One hour after classes. That's my free time. If free is still free with guards all around. More today then ever. Khia has them thrown. Its sunny out, that's a nice change, the weather here is usually rain. Nevva has already been taken to session, mine will come later, for now I have silence, grass, and sun and five armed guards twenty feet away.
I remember when this school seemed like paradise. The first week, when I was still excited, before they started the sessions. Up until the first session here I am happy. It didn't strike me as odd that none of us knew his name, not that first time, he was just the interviewer. A nice looking man who could be my fathers age. He asked about school, he asked about my family. I shut my eyes thinking back.
"Are you settling in well?" The interviewer asked.
"Yes, Nevva is nice, the other girls don't talk to us much, but they aren't mean." I meant it, the other girls welcomed us, but didn't have much to say. They were already friends.
"And your family?"
"I miss them, I wrote them already, but I haven't heard back. My brother and I are close, I assume I'll hear from him even before my parents." I laughed a little.
"You're already top in your class, do you realize that?"
"The teachers told me, they said this is a very competitive place, and the rankings are listed every Friday. They showed me I was in the top place."
"And you like school?" He asked, looking up from his notes.
"I do. It's...Sometimes things move a little slowly for me." I answered truthfully. This school was harder then mine at home had been, but I still wasn't finding most of it difficult, even though many of the other students were older than me.
"I imagine they do. What's your favorite subject?"
"I'm finding physics a challenge." Mildly challenging.
"You're in the graduate program already?" He tried to sound surprised but I could tell he already knew.
"They call me 'Little Mouse'." I smiled. Volger had come up with the name. He was a couple years older, and very handsome.
"Do you think they're," he paused, choosing his words, "jealous, because you're so young?"
"Volger is, a little. He plans to become very important." A part of parliment.
"Did he...tell you he was jealous?"
"Oh, no! I just…." He interrupted.
"You feel it." He was watching me closely. I thought for a moment before answering, trying to choose my words carefully as Simon would tell me to.
"People tell you things all the time, without talking. The way they move, the way they aren't talking."
"You're very intuitive." He wrote that down.
I opened my eyes, intuitive. That word sealed my fate here. I was intuitive. Ever since I was little I had a feeling for people, for what they were thinking, how they felt. Simon used to quiz me with cards, seeing how many times I could figure out what shape was on a card without looking. I was right more than I should have been. That's how I ended up here. And it was getting worse.
I looked over at the security men as I sat up. I knew they were watching me with fear and arousal. I knew they were dangerous. I knew that one of them had spent two years in jail for assault. I had never spoken a word to them. But just by looking at them I knew it. I intuited it. Being at this school had made me wish I had never been intuitive. At the same time I wished I was as intuitive before I came as I am now. I might not have come if I had known everything that was going to happen.
Nevva strolled toward me from building C, where they did the experiments. She was hugging herself, I frowned, realizing my hour must be nearly up.
"It's worse," Nevva spoke quietly as she knelt next to me. "They say Khia had an imbalance. They, they do different tests today, trying to regulate the balance of the brain." Nevva shivered, wiping a small dot of blood from her forehead. I watched her carefully; they had never gotten to Nevva like this. She remained calm through all of it, I don't think she was quite the test subject they were looking for, not intuitive enough.
"It's going to be okay Nevva," I patted her arm, not used to being the one who did the comforting. She nodded, not looking at me. I felt the guard coming, the one who had been to jail. I knew it was time for my session. I stood before he reached me; I hated leaving Nevva like this but didn't even want to think about the consequences for missing a session.
The guard walked behind me silently. He wasn't really a part of this, just hired muscle to escort a bunch of scared kids from here to there. He felt important, but truth was he had no mission. He opened the door to the research building, shoving me inside, and standing guard. I knew where to go from here, the hallway only had one open door at the end, opening into a drab white room. I stepped inside, immediately missing Simon, the medical feel of this room always made me miss him. I sat in the folding metal chair at the table, right where I always sat.
"Good afternoon, River," the doctors cheery voice came through the loudspeakers in the room. I nodded, keeping my head down as three attendants filed into the room. Two women and a man, one woman sat across from me, opening a folder as the other two began hooking me up. Pads on my forehead to monitor the electrical impulses from by brain, needle up in my hand, measuring the chemicals rushing through my veins. It didn't even hurt when the man shoved it in anymore. I don't think he's become gentler I think I'm just loosing feeling. A clip on the finger, more pads on my chest, all to tell them who the hell knows what.
"River," the woman smiles across from me. "You are a prime example of what we look for here."
"Thank you," I nodded, head still down.
"We'll start with the basics," she held up a card. "What number is on the back of the card?" I didn't even look up, I didn't have to anymore.
"Five," I answered after a few seconds.
"Good. And this?"
"Twenty-two."
"This?"
"Nine."
"And this."
"Four hundred thirty-two point seven." I hardly hesitated anymore, I was past intuiting. I knew.
"Very good," she nodded. "Moving on then." She pulled out their latest test. It was a board with twenty buttons with a rat in a cage in the middle. Fifteen of the buttons would electrocute the rat. Each time I hit a wrong button they simply removed the dead rat and replaced it with a live one. I had to pick all five correct buttons before the test was over.
I bit my lip, fighting back tears. I had killed at least one rat every day for the last three weeks, as many as six the first day. Each button was exactly the same, nothing to distinguish one from the other, twenty buttons fifteen deadly. Me playing God on the academy's behalf.
"River, please begin," the lady spoke curtly motioning to the board in front of me. I wondered for a moment what they would do if I refused, but the image of Khia came back to me and I knew it wasn't a choice. I reached out tentatively, hand floating over the choices, I focused, this didn't come as easy to me as the cards. I hovered for a moment over one button, and pressed it.
The rat continued bathing itself. I let out the breath I was holding, four to go. I reached out for the button three to the left of the one I had just pushed. I pressed it quickly, still no change in the rat. I hardly thought about it, chose two more buttons and pressed them quickly. The rat was still alive. Last button, I shut my eyes, hand floating over the board, then pressing one. I opened my eye, the rat stared curiously back at me. I smiled for the first time in days.
"River Tam, you are very gifted," the woman breathed gently, a huge smile on her face that made mine fade. The man quickly came and whisked away the board. "The doctor will see you now."
I had never actually met the doctor before, he would welcome me to the room, and I assumed observed, but never was present. The woman stood and I followed her out of the room, through the door the attendants entered through and into an inner room. The woman flicked a switch by the door and the room was filled with bluish light. I stared around with awe and fear, the room was round with computer screens all around, each displaying a scrolling banner saying 'Pyxis'. This all awed me, what scared me, terrified me, was the chair in the middle of the room, it looked almost like a dentists chair, aside from the screens attached to each arm.
"River Tam," the doctor stepped in through a panel of the wall that slide back into place before I caught a glimpse of the room behind him. "Wonderful to meet you."
"Thank you," I nodded.
"If you could just have a seat," he motioned to the chair. I shook my head.
"No, please," I felt tear's coming, the chair was screaming at me, I could smell blood.
"River, don't be silly, I just need you to sit down so we can do some tests." Two of the attendants took me by the arms pulling me toward the chair.
"No," I whimpered, twisting, trying to pull away from them. The third one, the man, started pushing me from behind, and as much as I squirmed, they soon had me in the chair. He held me by the shoulders as the women strapped me in. They attached electrodes to the metal plates on my 'uniform' and slid something over my head, think wire arms resting on my cheeks and in my hair. The doctor stepped forward.
"My name is Dr. Mathias."
"Please," I spoke through tears as he filled a needle from a vial of clear fluid.
"What?" He asked.
"I want to go home," I whispered.
"Oh River," he placed a hand on my forearm. "You are too important to the project. Parliament has invested great sums of money into Pyxis. We're doing fine works." Smoothly he slid the needle in, pushing the fluid into my vein, and slowly, the world faded to black.
