Dyna’s foot thumped against the floor in repeated, nervous taps. Her fingers pressed into her temple while her thumb threatened to gouge a hole into the edge of her jaw. Her other hand gently rubbed against the eye-shaped pendant she bought at a thrift store. She didn’t see anything. Her eyes were closed, so some might assume that to be natural. But the others all saw things with their eyes closed.

It was just her.

“Miss Graves, your answer?”

Dyna gnawed on her lip. She couldn’t delay more than she already had. Not unless she wanted a penalty.

Shuddering at the thought, she opened her eyes, staring at the man with the thick beard in front of her. What, after twenty-nine consecutive failures, would he hide behind the cardboard screen?

Once again, her mind came up blank.

It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know the guy. He was some authorized tester, sent by who-knew-who. She didn’t know his name, his favorite color, whether he was married or not, or anything else about him.

Literally nothing, the previous exam segment questioning his past had shown that much.

The clock between them slowly ticked down. Dyna eyed it, gaze flicking between the clock, the man, and the tall piece of cardboard that hid some kind of fruit. Was it the bunch of grapes again? He had used that three times in a row now. Or maybe the strawberry? He hadn’t used that one at all, but using it now on the last attempt felt too obvious. The second hand ticked on. Three… Two… One…

“Apple,” Dyna said right as the clock buzzed.

The bearded man took in a deep breath and let out a small sigh.

That was enough for Dyna. She grimaced, pinching the bridge of her nose. As much as she didn’t need to see her failure, curiosity forced her to watch as the man slid aside the cardboard.

“Pineapple,” he said, revealing the prickly fruit complete with tall green leaves poking out the top.

Dyna actually perked up at seeing the tropical fruit. “Hey! That’s close, right? I said apple and that’s a pine-apple,” she said, stressing the latter half of the name.

The exam proctor shook his head with another sigh. “If you had gotten even one of the previous attempts correct, I might have been inclined to give you partial credit. Not a single correct answer across five tests is impressive in its own way.”

Slumping, Dyna buried her face in her hands. That was not the kind of answer she wanted to hear.

“If anything, I almost wonder if you don’t have some kind of ability to give only incorrect responses to unknown information.”

“Is that actually a thing?” It didn’t sound like a good thing, but it did sound better than nothing at all.

The man opposite to her didn’t give any definite response. He just shrugged as if it wasn’t his problem at all. “Really, you should have gotten at least one out of twenty correct in the coin flip test. I mean, statistically speaking, you should have gotten ten correct, but…” He shrugged again. “I’ll mention it to your instructors. Perhaps they’ll try to investigate further, though I wouldn’t pin your hopes on it. There are many psychics at the Carroll Institute and not enough researchers to devote each the time they need.”

Dyna shuddered at his phrasing. She had heard that before. Too often, in fact. “As long as they don’t go back to electroshock tests,” she mumbled, trying to avoid the subject. “I don’t think frying my brain helped at all.”

“Not up to me, I’m afraid. Now, I would tell you to look forward to your results over a text tomorrow afternoon, but I doubt you’re looking forward to them.”

“You must be psychic,” Dyna said, tone utterly flat.

The man put on a smile behind his thick beard. “Alert examinee nine-one-eight-one, a Miss Harris, that I will be ready for her in fifteen minutes.”

“I bet she already knows,” Dyna mumbled, more to herself. If the proctor heard her, he didn’t make a show of it. He was too busy getting everything reset for the next test. With a shake of her head, she stood, left her desk behind, and headed to the door. There she stopped for just a moment to slap her own cheeks. Not hard, not enough to leave marks. Just enough to reset a bit. To shake out the glum murk from the back of her mind.

Adopting a smile that she didn’t feel anywhere inside, Dyna pushed open the door and entered the halls of the Carroll Institute. She picked up her feet, walking along the speckled white, black, and gray tile without shuffling or dragging herself along.

Not that it really mattered. The halls were empty, with everyone either in exams or relaxing in the dormitories. Even if people were in the halls, they would probably know her feelings without any need for signs from her. That was just the kind of place the Carroll Institute was.

Dyna didn’t bother finding the Harris person. She didn’t recognize the name and knew that everyone received an alert through their phones when their tests were ready. Besides that, if someone in this place needed her to alert them, they would probably do about as well on the tests as she had done.

And frankly, given that it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in terms of her score, Dyna wasn’t at all sure why she even bothered to show up.

Instead of searching for someone—which, now that she thought about it, might have been a stealthy sixth test to see how fast she could find them—Dyna headed back to the dormitory wing of the school, exiting the main school building and crossing a wide and grassy courtyard that led to the student living center.

The main school building looked like any modern school. A large glass front entrance with a jagged roof that served no purpose other than impressing anyone who saw it and justifying paying some architect more than they probably deserved. Concrete walls dotted with windows spread out on either side, providing wings for classrooms and lecture halls.

The dormitories, on the other hand, looked more like a high-rise apartment complex complete with smooth walls, glass-covered balconies, and several floors. Which was fitting given that the actual rooms were essentially miniature apartments. They had kitchens, living rooms, and even private bedrooms for each of the two occupants assigned to each.

She passed by the lounge area on the ground floor without stopping. There weren’t any dormitories down here, but there were people here, some simply sitting and chatting in the large leather seats, others played a guessing game that had grown in popularity among the psychics. The sound of bowling pins echoed down one side hall and electronic noises from the arcade came from another, for those with more traditional hobbies.

Without meeting anyone’s eyes, she reached the elevator, took the lift to the third floor, headed down to the third corridor, and stopped at the third door on the right. She opened her door just a crack, stiffened, and slammed the door shut again. After a glance up and down the corridor to make sure that it was empty, Dyna opened it just enough to squeeze inside.

“Why are you—”

Dyna cut herself off upon seeing her roommate, lounging on the top of the living room couch with a book open in front of her face. She wore a plain brown shirt and matching pants, which almost matched her skin tone, but were just a bit darker. Odd.

“Sorry,” Dyna said, rubbing the back of her head. “Didn’t mean to snap. Thought you weren’t wearing anything at all. Must be more stressed than I thought.”

“You’re not wrong,” Melanie said, clothes flickering out of existence for a few seconds as if to prove that face. “You just think I’m wearing clothes.”

Dyna squeezed her eyes shut, counted backward from three, then glared at her roommate. She stalked over and stared down. Now that she was looking closer, the ‘clothes’ were clearly anything but. They had no texture to them, no threads or seams. Just featureless clothes a few shades off from Melanie’s natural skin tone. It was probably easier to whip up an illusion like that the closer it was to reality.

Not that Dyna would know about such things.

Now that she was paying attention, she could feel the slight intrusion in the back of her mind. A sign that someone was mucking about with her perception of reality. Dyna considered fighting against it for a moment, only to decide against it. That would probably result in her roommate appearing naked again.

The girl on the couch didn’t even look up at her approach. Her nose was fully in her book. With just a slight curiosity, Dyna reached down and pressed her hand flat against Melanie’s stomach.

The illusion did not extend to the sensation of touch.

“Your hands are freezing,” Melanie said, squirming under the hand and disrupting the illusion as she did so.

Dyna quickly pulled back. “You didn’t even lock the door.”

“So what? I bet half the students have already undressed me in their minds.”

“Yes, but you don’t need to prove the imagination wrong of anyone who walks by.”

“Imagination?”

Dyna stared down at her roommate’s brown eyes, blinking in confusion for just a moment before she realized what Melanie meant. With a groan, she backed up to the chair, sat down, then slumped against the back.

“I hate this place.” When Melanie didn’t respond, Dyna looked up. Apparently her roommate had decided the illusion was just too much work to maintain because she had absolutely nothing on. “Is nudism a fad among the students these days or just a you thing?”

Melanie looked away from her book long enough to roll her eyes. “I’m not a nudist. I’m just doing laundry today and decided I wanted to wash the clothes I was wearing.”

That almost sounded reasonable. Almost. “You walked through the lounge from the laundry room to the elevator? Naked?”

“Anyone who looked at me saw me clothed. It isn’t a big deal.”

Dyna wasn’t sure if she should point out that everyone at Carroll was taught to detect and see through illusions. Melanie knew it because she had gone through those lessons. She wasn’t the airhead type either, so she simply didn’t care?

“I hate this place,” Dyna said again. “Why am I here?”

“A recruiter saw something special in you, asked if you wanted to come, and you agreed.”

“I meant why am I still here,” Dyna said with a glower. “I should have been kicked out a long time ago. I failed every test. Zero questions correct. Not even one on accident.”

“Including the coin flip test?”

“Including the coin flip test.”

“That seems… unlikely.”

“Yeah. No kidding. I don’t understa—”

A series of high pitched beeps came from the phone on the coffee table between the couch and the chair. Its owner silenced it with a tap, set down her book, and practically catapulted off the couch and onto her feet. “Laundry’s done,” she explained, phone in hand as she walked to the door. “Good luck with your moping or whatever.”

“You’re going out like that?”

Melanie looked down at herself, rolled her eyes, and walked out of the room with the fake clothes wrapped around her.

“I hate this place,” Dyna said, draping her legs over one armrest while hanging her head over the other.

Strangely enough, she didn’t even find the nudity all that weird. This place was filled with weirdos who did far weirder things on the regular. No. It was the bare feet. This was a school. Sure, Carroll had a custodial staff, but that didn’t magically make everything better.

Dyna’s eyes flicked over to the couch. The black fabric made it difficult to tell if there was any dirt and grime stained. Maybe if she got closer, she would be able to get a better look, but as it was, Dyna was too lethargic to get up and take a closer look.

Besides that, having a roommate like Melanie made it nearly impossible to tell if what she was seeing was real unless she paid close attention. The woman could project images directly into other people’s brains. For all Dyna knew, she had never actually seen her roommate’s real face. Her roommate might not have left the room at all or might not have even been naked. Or maybe she hadn’t been here in the first place.

That was pure paranoia. The reality was that Melanie was an intensely apathetic person who would never go to such absurd lengths or efforts for no reason.

Frankly, knowing her roommate’s personality—or having come to learn it—was about the only reason Dyna would ever trust such a person. Even then, it was less that Dyna trusted Melanie to not mess with her senses and more that she trusted in her inability to work up enough effort to care to do so.

At least it was only illusions.

A mind controller could be the nicest person in the world who would never use their abilities to devious ends, and yet there would always be that niggle of doubt in the back of her mind that such a person only seemed nice because that was what they wanted her to think.

Dyna shuddered at the thought. Having absolutely no such talents herself, she didn’t even have a proper way to defend herself. All students received training to detect mental intrusions, but that wouldn’t do a whole lot of good if she were a puppet dancing to someone else’s strings.

Sometimes she wished she could go back to before. Before she knew that espers and psychics were real. Sure, someone on the street could have been messing with her mind. It wasn’t likely given the theoretical number of espers in existence—Carroll only had a few hundred students and it was allegedly the only such institution in the States—but she wouldn’t have known.

A knock at her door interrupted Dyna’s thoughts. For a long few moments, she didn’t move. Knocking simply wasn’t something done. The door wasn’t locked and Melanie had her key if it was. Nobody ever visited their room.

Until now?

Realizing that someone was probably standing about outside the room, waiting for a response, Dyna quickly jumped to her feet and half-ran to the door.

“Sorry, I—” Dyna cut herself off as she saw just who was on the other side. “Walter?”

Tall, dark, and handsome. A stereotypical descriptor, but an accurate one nonetheless. Though somewhat dorky as well. He wore a white shirt and black vest with a solid red tie underneath. Dyna had never seen him wearing anything else. Even though he was indoors, he also wore a pair of those silly little sunglasses that pinched onto the nose. The kind that only people in movies wore.

Movies and Walter.

“Dyna,” he said, voice deep and gravely as was fitting with his image. “Walk with me.”

He turned and started down the hall, not even waiting for her to give a proper response. Dyna might have thought he was upset with something if this wasn’t how every encounter with him had gone. So she simply slipped into her shoes—she never untied them when taking them off—and raced down the corridor until she caught up with his long strides.

The button for the elevator opened the doors with no delay. He stepped inside and Dyna quickly followed. As soon as she took her place beside him, he pressed the button for the ground floor.

“I heard how your test went,” he said after the elevator doors closed.

“Oh. Already?” It had only been ten minutes tops. Maybe fifteen. “Am I getting kicked out of the institute?”

He looked down, though she couldn’t see any real expression behind his lenses. His mouth certainly didn’t change. “Is that hope in your tone?”

“No… I mean, maybe?” Dyna let out a long sigh. “I mean, I’ve been here for six months and… well, you heard about my test. The lectures and practical lessons have been going exactly as well as the test. I just can’t help but feel like I’m wasting my time here. And yours and everyone else’s as well.”

Walter hummed, looking straight forward once again. “You think I made a mistake in bringing you here?”

“No,” Dyna said instantly, only to shake her head. “Or yes? All I know is that I can’t—”

The elevator’s loud ding cut her off. The doors opened to the ground floor a second after. Walter immediately started walking and Dyna followed.

Only to stop after five steps.

“This!” she shouted, waving both hands around the lounge. “I can’t do this.”

The lounge was empty. The leather chairs looked brand new, like nobody had ever sat in them before. No one was sitting in them now. The dart boards along the one wall were still there, but nobody was using them. The televisions were off, the barista behind the little café’s counter wasn’t there, and neither the common sounds of the bowling alley or the arcade could be heard.

“Where did everyone go? This place was full fifteen minutes ago and now it is empty? The lounge is never empty. Were the other students even real? Am I the only real person here? Am I a real person?”

Walter, stopped several steps ahead and half turned so that he could face her by turning his head to his shoulder, simply stared from behind his mirrored sunglasses. The stare continued long enough for Dyna to shift in discomfort.

“I hate this place,” she whispered to herself, staring at the floor as she walked up to him. Louder, she said, “Sorry. Sometimes I just feel like I’m going a little crazy.”

“You aren’t crazy,” Walter said with a deep chuckle.

“But you’re still not going to explain all this?” Dyna asked, knowing the question would be rhetorical.

“You feel as if you do not fit in. But I will tell you that my eyes are never wrong.”

“Yeah, well… Apparently I’m always wrong. So maybe my always-wrongness made your eyes wrong too.”

“If that is the case, then my eyes are still not wrong. Besides, you aren’t always wrong. I’ve seen your transcripts from your old high school. You were above average.”

“Is that even comparable to what we do here?”

Walter stopped walking at the doors to the student center. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a coin.

Dyna rolled her eyes. Nevertheless, when he flipped it, she lazily called out, “Heads,” not caring one way or another.

He held out the coin, letting her see that she was, for the first time today, correct about something.

“That would mean a whole lot more if I could trust my eyes in this place,” Dyna grumbled with a glare back at the lounge, earning another low chuckle from Walter.

“Sometimes, bad luck is merely bad luck.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been having some pretty bad luck since I came here.”

“Which is why we are going to try something different.” He turned and resumed his walk outside, heading across the campus toward the administration offices, leaving Dyna to sulk after him. “There are a great many espers in the Carroll Institute. They can often be divided up into broad categories, but everyone’s mind is slightly different which may cause their abilities to manifest in varying manners. Different abilities require different training.”

Dyna hummed as she followed along. That wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. “Precogs train their prescience. Mind readers train their mind reading.” For the last six months, Dyna had been bouncing around between all the courses, taking far more than anyone else in an effort to figure out where she should focus her time. And she had absolutely nothing to show for it.

“There are many different types of precogs. Some experience their prescience through living visions. Others through dreams. Some don’t see anything in their mind, but are able to draw depictions of future events. Then there is the topic of the content of their visions. A large portion only see the future as it pertains to them or only from their own perspective. Other visions may be of far off events—perhaps large, world-changing incidents or smaller more localized happenstances. Some may receive visions regarding certain concepts. Death is common, but so is birth.”

Not seeing any end to his lecture, Dyna interrupted as they reached the administration building. “I’ve sat through several lessons. This is like first day of school kind of stuff.”

The administration building, set in the center of the expansive campus, was a tall office building covered in glass. A modern, sleek skyscraper except it only went up about six stories. Like a giant snow globe set on top, a dome contained a fairly expansive arboretum filled with trees, grass, park benches, and all manner of other outdoorsy things.

Open to the students, Dyna spent a good deal of time up there. It was a good place to get away from the rest of Carroll’s insanity. It was the one place that she didn’t complain about, if only because it was a common spot for students to relax rather than train.

“Indeed,” Walter continued, drawing Dyna’s gaze back down as they entered the building. “My point is that while many precogs can be grouped together for training that will progress all their abilities, select others may need different methods. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every mind is different. Some are too different.”

Walter pressed the call button for another elevator just past the administration reception area. Like the one in the dormitories, it opened immediately. No waiting for the lift to arrive. Unlike the dormitory elevator, which was the bog-standard metal box, the administration elevator was a grandiose glass cylinder that went all the way up the office complex and to the arboretum observation platform that the school used to impress guests, prospective students, and whoever else they thought was important enough.

However, instead of pressing any of the buttons for the various floors of the building, Walter simply pressed the closed door button.

“White,” he said as he tugged up the sleeve of his shirt, revealing a wristwatch that probably cost more than Dyna had made in her entire life. “Seven-one-four-four.”

The windows of the elevator darkened. A tint so opaque that Dyna couldn’t see the campus on the other side of the glass. A ring on the floor brightened, keeping the elevator from being plunged into total darkness without the sun shining in.

“Agent Walter confirmed.”

Dyna’s head whipped back to the elevator doors, only to realize that they were still the only two inside. Instead, she noticed something she hadn’t ever paid any attention to. A small spherical camera mounted just above the elevator doors, able to pitch, yaw, and roll like it was a ball bearing. She hadn’t realized it could move before. Now, she couldn’t not notice it. Mostly because a bright red light set just beneath the glass protecting the lenses twisted in its mount to aim directly at her.

“Confirm guest.” The feminine voice came from a small grated speaker next to the camera. One that Dyna had also never noticed, or perhaps she had simply thought it was for elevator music and door chimes.

“Dyna Graves, authorized by White,” Walter said.

“Guest Dyna Graves confirmed.”

“Thank you, Beatrice. Take us to Psychodynamics. Anomalous Research.”

“Understood.”

The elevator started moving. Not up. Dyna’s stomach dropped for just an instant before her body caught up with the descending elevator.

“I didn’t know there was a basement here,” she mumbled, more to herself than anyone else. The buttons on the elevator stopped at the ground floor. There never was any reason to think anything odd about it. But if the basement was hidden behind some secret voice commands…

There were legitimate mind readers at Carroll. Unless all of them were in on the secret of this elevator, how had it not become some rumor among the students?

“Should I even ask what we’re doing?” Dyna said, a little louder than before.

“As I said, some people need alternate methods of training to better suit their talents. And a select few have abilities so esoteric that they need… assistance in manifesting them.”

That got Dyna to perk up. Esoteric abilities? She had gone through all the regular courses meant to awaken latent physic abilities, but nothing had come of it. Yet here was Walter insisting that she did have abilities, even if she didn’t feel that way. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, but at the same time, she didn’t really believe him.

But if there were others who had trouble doing anything, others who might have been like she was, then that was good, right? They had experience with people like her. Dyna didn’t think anything was broken with her—if anything it was the rest of the student body of Carroll that had things wrong with them—but if she could be fixed, complaining would be the last thing on her mind.

“So you’re taking me to see a specialist?”

“Not immediately. You might not want to hear it, but there will be a few more tests.”

Dyna immediately slumped. “You can’t just mark them as zeros and skip them?”

“Not those kinds of tests.”

“Oh. Medical tests.” Dyna had undergone a number of physical tests upon enrolling at Carroll. Some were basic health and fitness tests. More than a few involved scanning her brain with just about every piece of equipment in the average hospital and plenty more besides.

Walter didn’t answer. Instead, the elevator doors slid open.

Dyna had actually forgotten, just for a moment, that she had been inside an elevator. Aside from that initial movement, she hadn’t felt any motion. Not even at the end where it should have been slowing down. It had been quite a long ride as well, though looking up, she had to frown. The elevator had a glass ceiling in addition to the glass wall, but it too was tinted to the point of being opaque. She couldn’t see how far they had come.

Looking back down, Dyna had to frown again. The elevator opened into a large open area. About three stories of height with a long open lobby. Several doorways were set into the spacious walls. What really had her frowning was the look of the place. The actual aesthetics. The floor was a white tile, marble probably, while the walls were warm wooden panels with black tile trim at the floor and ceiling. Gold strips formed triangular patterns throughout the wood.

Though it was probably brass or bronze rather than gold.

The place looked fancy. Far fancier than the regular administrative area—which was mostly glass, concrete, and metal to keep with its modern look.

And yet it was secret? Hidden far beneath the administration building?

Hanging from the center of the long entryway was a wood and brass sign that matched the style of the walls.

PSYCHODYNAMICS

ANOMALOUS MATERIAL RESEARCH DIVISION