A Long Time Ago . . .

Twelve months before his conclave was destroyed, Poire was sitting in the lobby of the testing facility, staring at his shoes and bouncing his legs so hard that his whole body shook.

A current from the air vent jostled the leaves of the Dracaena and Monstera plants that burst their green foliage over the whitewashed room. The lights, the floors, even the seats were white, as if all this sterile emptiness would somehow help him relax. It didn’t.

The windows were filled with midday light from the false sun, the main source of lumens this far underground. Outside, he could see the others in his cohort playing down in the Circle. There were two teams of them and a cluster of cultivars watching from afar. Constructs roamed the borders of their makeshift playing field.

He wanted to be out there. Or anywhere but here.

He moved his feet, and his shoes squeaked on the hard tile floor. Soon, he’d have to take his shoes off, along with everything else. They’d make him stand for a full ten minutes in the cold, wearing nothing. Because that’s how the test always started.

He could still remember his first test five years ago—how nervous and excited he’d been, his body racked by shivers. If only he’d known how bad it could get.

“Poire.” Harrison’s voice snapped his attention away from the windows. His hard jaw was dusted with just the right amount of facial hair. “It’s time.”

Poire’s heart dropped through his stomach. It only got worse from here.

But he stood up anyway, clenching and unclenching his fists. This is the year, he told himself. This is the one.

Harrison led him back through the hallways with the confidence all adults seemed to have. Hundreds of years of life would give that to a person. A silver line, embedded in his skin, ran across the back of his neck and shone in the overhead lights. All the adults, even Director Yovan, had it. Of course, they never told him what that implant was for.

Inside the testing lab, Xiaoyun greeted Poire with a warm smile, though Poire thought he could see the sadness in her eyes.

Matsuka, who was sitting at the controls, didn’t even bother to look up from his console. All three of them were wearing full gear: face masks, gloves, and suits that protected every inch of their skin.

“Get ready,” Harrison said tersely.

A flimsy screen blocked off the corner of the room, a pathetic excuse for privacy. But Poire went behind it anyway and began to strip.

“Are you done?”

“Yes,” Poire answered.

“OK, ten minutes,” Harrison said. “Starting now.”

“Breathe,” Xiaoyun said. “And don’t stop. In. And in. And out.”

Maybe it was the tone in her voice. Soft and caring, like he was still a child. That, more than anything else, set his resolve.

“We don’t have to wait,” Poire said with all the insulted swagger a fifteen-year-old can muster. “I’m ready now.”

“Poire, I can hear you shivering.”

“So? It’s not like it changes anything.”

Harrison raised his eyebrows at the others. Matsuka shrugged. Xiaoyun hesitated.

“I said I’m ready.”

Poire stepped out from the screen, covering himself with his hands. It didn’t really matter; these were his cultivars. They had seen every inch of him since before he was born, and they were responsible for monitoring every minute change of his physiology. But still, it was hard to overcome the feeling of vulnerability.

In the center of the lab, a table floated. Pure, cold, liquid metal. Dozens of semicircular rings hovered underneath it, perfectly still and aligned with each other. These were modified versions of the rings that surrounded the off-world gate. These were patchwork metal etched with extremely complicated algorithmically generated designs, all infused with Light. The designs glowed and slowly leaked a gray, shimmering mist.

Poire lay down on the table, gasping as the cold metal sank into his back. Because it was liquid, it flexed under his body, conforming to his figure.

“Remember to let go, Poire,” Xiaoyun said. “Be brave and let go.”

He nodded as if he understood. But like everything else about the test, it was easier said than done.

“OK,” Matsuka said, still not looking up from his console screens spread before him. “Today, we’re looking for something round. The size of a golf ball. You know what that is?”

“Golf?” Poire asked. He was still tensing his muscles against the cold, but his body was starting to warm the metal.

“You don’t know golf? What about table tennis?”

“Sure,” Poire nodded. An ancient sport, he’d seen it a few times in their history lessons, those virtual tours of humanity’s past. “I know it.”

“OK. Bring it back. That’s all you have to do.”

Poire pressed his lips together, nodding to show he understood.

“Good luck,” Harrison said.

And maybe he even meant it.

Harrison had always been the most intense of Poire’s cultivars. Always pushing, always asking for more. But after last year’s failure, Harrison had grown distant. Poire had heard him talking to the directors about ‘getting a new ward, one that actually has a chance.’

“Countdown has begun.”

The rings around the bed hummed as they spread and began to slowly spiral around the table. He could feel his heart racing, and his wrist implant vibrated its warning: Pulse level elevated.

“Breathe slowly,” Matsuka warned. As if a simple breathing exercise was enough to overcome the magnificent pain he was about to endure. It wasn’t fair. Poire had heard some in his cohort didn’t feel anything when they went through. It wasn’t fair.

“Remember your walls, Poire. Remember how safe you are,” Xiaoyun said. Maybe she still treated him like a child, and maybe that made him mad. But she was only trying to help. And loath as he was to admit it, thinking of his mind like a fortress with impenetrable walls really did seem to help.

For a moment, at least.

The rings were spinning so quickly he couldn’t see them. He only felt the crawling, prickling on his skin, deep in his bones, and in his screaming throat as he was taken apart, atom by atom . . .

***

If there was ground, his feet could not find it. One dragged through the air, which felt like a torrential stream of burning water. The other was stuck in a thick substance that his brain told him was mud.

There is no pain, he told himself. And as long as he said it, it was true. But then Poire made the mistake of looking down at his body, and he could not make sense of the gaping void where his chest should be. And his arms . . . What is that?

Millions of cube-shaped bubbles were growing and frothing and bursting their refracted light across his skin, moving in ways his mind couldn’t interpret.

Walls, Poire thought. All this is outside the walls. That’s all.

But he was already slipping. His mantra became a nonsense rhyme that he couldn’t stop himself from singing: Walls, so tall. A ball. Bouncing off the wall. And as he sang it inside his head, so the world answered. A sphere that he thought was a sun fell from the sky and crashed to the unfathomable ground. It was like his thoughts were spilling out of his head.

And don’t you dare touch your head.

Poire tried to take a step forward. Now, one of his legs had changed into a skittering mass of jointed lines while he wasn’t looking, and the other was cemented in place. Poire fell, face forward, his arms wheeling, and all this incomprehensible landscape turned with him.

He fell. Remember your walls. Remember—

And fell.

And so the world changed shape. Towering structures at first looked like trees became monolithic bridges that touched the horizon. The farther he fell, the more they stretched, until they intersected the glittering mountains and twisted oceans that should’ve been dozens of miles away.

Pain.

It ripped at his mental walls, claws tearing through his thoughts. Trying to rip chunks out of his mind.

He grabbed at shadows with both hands, trying to hold himself in place. Trying to latch on to anything that would stop this world from moving. He saw the fizzing cubes froth around his skin, and suddenly all his fingers and joints became straight lines that ran into infinity. When he blinked, the lines multiplied and vibrated with all the colors he had not known existed.

This was how Poire crawled through the test: refusing to blink, screaming through what was left of his mouth. Making a sound that was nowhere near human. His hands got in each other’s way, pulling at shapes that squirmed and squished until they became dry and hard and biting.

A wall! A ball. That’s all! A wall. A ball! That’s . . .

His arms split open, becoming a part of the nonsensical scenery. It felt like his skin was rupturing open and melting at the same time. Light and shapes and sizes and distance all flickered and warped wildly around him.

And there it was.

A ball.

He couldn’t tell if it was floating in space or resting on the ground. He reached out and grabbed at it. Only the ball was thousands of miles away. But his fingers touched infinity, so he reached for it. Touched it.

It was cool, not cold. Firm, but too smooth for his fingers to grip. The ball rolled down a hill. Or up a hill. Or through the thing that was not really a hill but a prismatic wave whose colors crashed into themselves and split into millions more waves, each one larger than the first.

Poire tried to run after it. His footsteps made the universe shudder. His bones became spears that pierced through his skin, and all those cube-shaped bubbles were like teeth, ripping his body open. There was no word for this agony, and if he didn’t get the ball soon—

The ball hit a foot. The only still thing in the whole world. A shining, lattice pattern crisscrossed the foot and the leg it was attached to. And the cloak that billowed behind the figure who bent down to pick up the ball.

All the world seemed to bend around this figure. As if there was no world, only this being, hidden by its own shapeless cloak made of light.

As the figure moved, the mutant dreams of this impossible landscape shifted around its movement. It dropped the ball in Poire’s open hand.

But he was nothing now. Nothing but an endless scream.

A wall. He tried. The ball.

He tried so damn hard to take it. His body was frothing and convulsing and making all the world froth and convulse with it. Only the figure remained unmoved.

His fingers closed around something, and his mind froze on a single phrase: Don’t let go. Don’t let go.

Don’t . . . let . . .

***

Ear-piercing sirens brought him back to life.

Matsuka was standing up at the console, furiously refreshing and shutting things down and whispering, “Come on, come on.”

Xiaoyun had the defib in both hands, her eyes wide with fear. Ready to throw herself into the action.

In the corner, Harrison was leaning casually against the wall, shaking his head.

Poire gasped and coughed until he vomited off the table. No, he had already vomited, and now he was churning up the last of his bile. Tears stung his eyes, and his whole body shivered violently enough to knock his skull against the metal table.

“He’s back!” Matsuka announced triumphantly, and Xiaoyun dropped the defib and rushed to Poire’s side. Even through the tinted face mask of her pressurized suit, he could see the terrified concern on her face. She wiped the vomit from his mouth, whispering softly to him.

“Did you do it?” she asked.

Don’t let go.

It took everything he had to unclench his hand. A pile of black, glittering dust poured through his fingers.

“I told you,” Harrison said. “This one’s a failure.”