by C. S. Nelson
“Giving up is not a viable solution to this test. You are not allowed to leave until you have completed every component or your six hours is up. Any questions?” If anyone did, they didn’t dare ask. “Alright, please proceed through these doors. You will be given your timekeepers and be led to the testing grounds. Good luck to you all today. I truly wish you the best.” She flashed a genuine smile, but it was too late. Every student in the room now knew what the administrators were about.
Annie was wide-eyed as they were pushed into the next room. “Pick a line!” someone yelled at them from across the room. Annie was shoved forward by her classmates and ended up at the front of one. There was a man standing there in the same suit that the other administrators had been wearing, with the same mirrored glasses that revealed nothing of their intentions. If they were trying to be intimidating, they were doing an excellent job.
“Hold out your arm,” he ordered.
Annie looked back in fear, but all of her other classmates just stared at her with furrowed eyebrows. Not even Dustan had a look of comfort on his face. The man pulled out a long thin gun and cocked it. Annie felt her arms shake as she held one forward. He grabbed it and pressed the gun against the inside of her wrist. “It will only hurt for a moment,” he whispered to her.
She smiled back at him, but only for a second. He pulled the trigger, and she felt agonizing pain in her arm, like something was scraping the sides of her veins as it went up into her shoulder. And then just like that, it went away. Annie breathed deeply for the first time since she had entered the room, attempting to control her heart rate. The man yelled “Next!” before smiling at her as she backed away.
Someone behind Annie grabbed her shoulder. “Follow me please. If you see any of your fellow test takers in between tests, say nothing to them,” she said. Annie followed the woman out of the room through another set of doors. She was now incredibly lost. It was as though there were a whole part of the school that was invisible from outside the building.
“Where are we going?” Annie asked. The rest of her peers were still getting their timers.
“To your first task, my dear,” she said.
“Got any advice?” Annie joked.
The woman scoffed as she opened one last set of metal doors. “I know that there are rumors that if you deliberately fail certain tasks than you will be guaranteed a specific career. These rumors existed when I was your age. Do not fail tasks. You do not want to come in last place,” she said, motioning for Annie to go through the doors. “Sit in the chair, someone will be with you momentarily. Good luck.” She slammed the doors shut and Annie was left alone in the room.
There was a comfortable looking chair sitting in front of a desk. The rest of the room was completely empty. Annie rubbed her hands together as she made sense of the sights around her. “Okay,” she said, to no one in particular. This was rather anticlimactic.
The door opened behind her, and Annie scrambled to her seat like she had been told to do. “Hello…” A young girl looked down at the chart in front of her. “Annie! Such a pleasure to meet you!”
The girl stepped over and shook Annie’s hand aggressively. “Hi,” Annie mumbled nervously.
“How are you feeling on this very important day?” The girl had a chipper singsong voice that would have been pleasant in any other situation. But in this moment it was only irritating.
“A little stressed,” Annie admitted.
The girl laughed. “I totally get it.” Annie could sense that this girl’s superior had told her to try to be relatable. It doesn’t matter what they say, laugh and agree. And it made Annie feel even more uncomfortable. “So you’re in luck, you got the single most laid back task first. Trust me, there are some tasks that you do not want to do first, totally draining. You’re a very lucky girl.”
That didn’t seem fair. Annie thought about Anthony. If he had been unlucky enough to be chosen for a difficult task first, he wouldn’t have been able to get past it. Doing poorly on one task would have stuck with him through the rest. Annie kept her mouth shut, though, thinking about what had happened to Barrie.
“Anyway,” the girl sang awkwardly when she realized that Annie wasn’t going to react. “This task is very simple, Annie. What I’m going to do is show you a series of images. There is going to be something inconsistent, something that doesn’t make sense, in every picture. I need you to point it out as quickly as possible. You cannot skip any images, but don’t worry. Everyone gets caught up on one or two. There’s no reason to panic.”
Annie took a deep breath, feeling slightly more relaxed. She had heard so many horrible things about the Test. This was not what she had been expecting. “Okay,” she said, smiling a little.
“Note that I will not be able to speak to you once the task has begun,” the girl said. “Are you ready?”
Annie nodded.
The girl held a picture up in front of Annie’s face. A couple walking in a forest with their arms wrapped around each other. It was a grainy photo. It looked like it had been taken Before. It must have been. No one took leisurely strolls in the forest anymore, not unless they had a death wish. Inconsistencies? Annie panicked. What inconsistencies? Her eyes shifted back and forth across the picture. Faces, bodies, arms, hands…hands? Onetwothreefourfive. Five hands. “The man has too many hands!”
The girl smiled at her, lowering the picture and picking up the next one. Annie’s head was swirling with adrenaline and she had to blink a few times to focus. A bathtub. Annie had heard of them but never actually used one herself. This didn’t seem fair. Annie had never seen one before, how was she supposed to know what was inconsistent about the image? Once again Annie felt flustered, looking around desperately for anything that could have been considered abnormal. This was stupid. This test was stupid. How was staring at a picture of a bathtub proving that she was ready for the real world?
There was a plastic yellow duck floating on the surface of the water. There were bubbles on top, and floating in the air above the tub. Annie found her eyes drifting to the fingers of the girl holding the photo. Her nails were perfectly trimmed. There was no dirt underneath any of them. Annie wondered if she had ever experienced a bath before. Focus. There was a hole on one side where the water seemed to be draining. The hole leads to nowhere, Annie thought. “The water is draining from the tub but goes nowhere,” she stated more calmly this time. She was getting the hang of this.
Annie smiled as the girl nodded and switched the images. There was no need for fear, she realized. She was ready for this; she was ready for the Test. She had been preparing for it for months. If all they wanted her to do was name a couple problems with a few images, she was going to do it flawlessly. She answered three or four in a row within a few minutes. By the time Annie had gotten to the last one, she was convinced that no one would have been able to beat her time. The girl held up what appeared to be the last image. A group of children holding hands and climbing up stairs. There was nothing else to the image, no background, and no little tricks that could have been hidden. She was confused. “Nothing?” Annie asked.
The girl didn’t meet her gaze, but didn’t lower the image either. No, of course it wasn’t ‘nothing’. Annie shifted in her seat uncomfortably, staring at the image. Look harder, she told herself. It felt like she was staring for hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. Her eyes couldn’t focus. She could feel the panic setting in again. Focus. She breathed. But her eyes once again drifted to the fingers of the girl holding the picture. This time, though, the girl’s finger was moving. Ever so slightly, in a tiny circle. Round and round and round. Her eyes shot back to the image. The stairs formed a square. Just behind the last child in the line was a corner, and just behind that corner was where the first child was running up the stairs. “The stairs…they never end?” Annie asked. She felt so stupid. It had been so obvious.
The girl grinned and placed the picture down on top of the pile of the rest of them. She picked u
p a small tool with a single button on it, and pressed it. Annie felt a shock within her arm. She looked at where the timer had been injected before this test. There was a thin line of blood from the hole down to her pinky finger, and dripping onto the floor. The sight of it made her woozy.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I just stopped your timer for you. Sometimes it bleeds a little bit the first couple of times. But you’re fine,” the girl said.
Annie nodded. She just didn’t like the sight of blood. She remembered way back, when she was just old enough to remember, seeing someone getting carried into the Shield from outside. He had been covered, from head to toe, in dark blood that had dried and cracked all over his body. His clothes had been torn away. There were two people carrying him. Annie hadn’t known if he was alive or not. Looking back now, she realized that it had just been a body retrieval mission. Ever since then, the sight of blood had bothered her.
“How did I do?” she asked.
The girl looked up from filling in a sheet about Annie. “You did a fantastic job,” she said, smiling. Annie wasn’t sure if that response was truthful but it made her feel better nonetheless. The door opened and a man stepped in, dressed in the same uniform as the administrator that had dropped her off here. “This is where we say goodbye, Annie.” She smiled at her one last time, reaching out and shaking her bloody hand without hesitation. “I wish you the best of luck, and I’m sure you’ll do great.”
Annie stood up slowly. She was finished her first task already, and she couldn’t believe it. It hadn’t been overly difficult, but she was thankful that it was over. She wasn’t stupid. She knew that there were horror stories about the Test for a reason, and this one was definitely not it.
◆◆◆
“Step on the scale, please,” he said. Annie stepped forward and climbed up onto the contraption he had referred to. Another thing that Annie had heard of but never personally experienced. The man pushed weights back and forth in front of her until they balanced in the middle. “You’re only 120 pounds,” he sneered. “You’re small for your age.”
You’re rude for your age, she thought. Annie stepped off, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Maybe they should get better breeders,” Annie muttered. The man chuckled, throwing black weights into a backpack two at a time. “What are you doing?”
“You don’t ask questions.” He zipped the backpack up and handed it to her, which she dropped to the ground. “That backpack has two thirds of your body weight in it. Complete the obstacle course without taking the backpack off.”
Annie used all of her strength to pull the backpack up onto her shoulders. She adjusted the straps but the pain digging into her back didn’t subside. She could see on his face that her struggling was amusing to him. Don’t let him get to you, she thought. “Is that it?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows. “Step up to the start line and I’ll start your timer. Stay within the red lines or you are disqualified. If you take the backpack off, you are disqualified. If you skip an obstacle, you are disqualified. Ready?”
Annie took a deep breath and walked up to the line, focusing her attention and making her face look relaxed. She was tough, and she wanted this guy to know she was tough. “I was born ready.”
A genuine smile crept over his face. “Then go.”
Annie took a deep breath. These were the tasks that would put her above all the others. She was used to being underestimated because of her size, but it had never stopped her before. She sprung forward, sprinting toward the first obstacle. For a few moments, Annie didn’t notice the weights hanging off her back as she sprinted. Then she reached the obstacle, a pit of mud with sharp wire hung over top. She dropped to her hands and knees and that was when she felt the weight of the backpack.
She gasped as she sank into the mud. Deeper and deeper until she could taste it. Annie used one arm to propel herself forward, under the wire. She spat out mud as she struggled, every lunge forward making her arms burn. Annie reached the end, pulling herself back onto the grass and feeling as though she had almost drowned. She forced herself up and somehow convinced her legs to run again.
Annie reached a wall, the next obstacle, with footholds and rope. She reached up the rope and tried to pull, but the backpack weighed her down. She let out a frustrated grunt and pulled again, this time managing to get her feet off the ground. She propelled herself up from the footholds and grabbed the rope. The weight of the backpack was digging into her shoulders so hard that it was making her arms shake, but there was nothing she could do but push forward.
She reached for the top, and screamed as she pulled herself over. Bringing her legs up, she leaned too far over the top of the wall and couldn’t stop herself from falling. She landed on her back ten feet below, the weights digging in and the wind knocked out of her. Annie stared at the cloudy sky gasping for air. “No,” was all she could say. “No, no, no, no.” This wasn’t supposed to happen. She didn’t have time to recover.
Annie pulled herself onto her stomach and started crawling toward the next obstacle. “What, did you think this was going to be easy?” The administrator had walked up the obstacle course and stood next to her as she crawled.
Annie couldn’t do anything but wheeze in response.
“This is going to be the worst day of your life,” the man said as though he took pleasure in the thought. “Get up and keep going, new adult.”
Chapter 3: The Results
The day was grueling. She was exhausted after the obstacle course, which had taken her so long she could have sworn her six hours would have already been up. When she finished though, she had been told that she had done very well. She thought about Anthony. He was small but even faster than Annie was. Would he have been okay?
After the obstacle course, she was brought into one of her old classrooms, where there were many of her classmates already sitting. None of them dared to even make eye contact with her when she walked in. Everyone had taken the threat of not communicating with their peers very seriously after Barry had been killed. She was handed a page of instructions, given a dull pencil, and sent to one of the desks. Far enough away that she had no chance of cheating, she noticed. She had read the sheet slowly, trying not to breathe too loudly. She was still out of breath, even though she had finished the obstacle course fifteen minutes before.
It had just been a knowledge test. Basic language, math, science skills that Annie had been learning her entire life. She had never been very good at math, but she was confident in the other two, and tried her best not to let the questions she had to leave blank get to her. Annie had handed in her test before some of her classmates, who had been in the room before she had arrived, finished theirs. She smiled to herself as she left.
Next, Annie went through a farming test, a career that she had always dreaded. It was autumn now, but days in the Shield in the summer, without the wind or rain, got incredibly hot. Farmers were dropping from heatstroke constantly in the months of July and August. Apparently, before she had been born, the farmers used to grow their crops outside of the Shield, where the food didn’t have to be constantly manually watered, and could benefit every once and a while from the natural rain. But the soul suckers were smart, and had lived underground for so long. They knew exactly how to hide for unsuspecting farmers, and they could take life in an instant.
She didn’t intentionally throw the farming test. But she had felt confident enough that doing well in it wasn’t really a priority. The Shield was always going to need farmers, without them everyone would starve to death. But it was hard work, day after day, with little stimulation and few thanks. There were plenty of her classmates hoping for a career in farming, as it was safe and their bellies would always be full. She would leave this career for them.
Annie slowly planted some vegetables, slightly overwatered the garden, and broke a couple of carrots as she pulled them out of the ground. But the administrator didn’t seem overly unimpressed. Annie didn’t know if it was the right s
trategy, but she was sure that she would rather have been sucker bait than farming every day.
They fed Annie after that. Just an apple and a piece of bread with cheese. But Annie ravaged it. She sat alone in one of the small rooms, eating her food and feeling genuinely good about herself. She wondered how other people were doing; if anyone had dropped the ball on any of the tasks, or if anyone had quit. There was no way that some of the girls in her class would have been able to complete that obstacle course. There was no way that some of the brawny boys in her class would have been able to pass that intelligence test. She was worried about Anthony when it came to the intelligence tests, because school had never been his strong point. She was sure that Dustan would have done well on every task.
“Annie?” She looked up to see an administrator standing in the door. “Follow me, please,” the man impatiently said.
Annie nodded, stuffing the last piece of bread into her mouth as she stood up, and brushed the crumbs off of her now incredibly dirty uniform. This man was not as talkative as some of the other administrators had been. Annie followed him silently. She didn’t mind not talking. In fact, she preferred it. In the hallway, they passed by another administrator and one of Annie’s classmates. Her name was Mia, and she was crying silently, her arms wrapped around her muddy body. As they passed, Mia wouldn’t even make eye contact with her. Annie watched her over her shoulder as she turned the corner and disappeared from sight. She must have just done the obstacle course. Annie had wanted to cry towards the end of it as well.
The administrator led her into another small room that looked very similar to the first test room Annie had experienced. This time, there was no desk. Just a chair in the center, surrounded by four blank, dingy walls, and a closed door on the other side. The chair had restraints hanging off both armrests. Annie stood by the door, her eyes wide. The administrator nudged her forward a little bit. “What is this?” Annie asked. She had to admit that she was a little relieved that this was another task where she would get to sit down.
