“You can do this.”

Dyna slammed her fist into thick leather. She ducked under an imaginary fist before returning two quick jabs with her left hand followed by a hefty right hook.

“Stay positive.”

After a quick strike, Dyna clamped her hands on the punching bag and brought up a knee.

“Have confidence.”

Panting and sweating, Dyna tugged the headphones from her ears. She let them hang loose while matting her face with a towel. It was exhausting work, tiring both physically and mentally. A year ago, she never would have expected that she would spend every other day boxing of all things.

It wasn’t that bad. Between it and some general exercising that she had taken up lately, Dyna actually felt fairly good about herself, both from a physical standpoint as well as a mental one. Someone like Emerald or Ruby would still beat her any day of the week, but Dyna could at least fight back a little bit. Against people who trained less than Emerald or against people who couldn’t simply ignore physical damage like Ruby, Dyna felt she stood in a marginally better place.

That helped her confidence as a side effect. At least a little.

At least, it did after she got past the first month. At the time, every workout session left her feeling more like she wanted to die and less like she would be able to fight off a particularly aggressive toddler.

After a brief series of stretches that Dyna used mostly to pass time, she slipped through the showers and came out the other side feeling generally refreshed.

Next on her schedule for the day…

Dyna headed down through Psychodynamics to a new section that she hadn’t visited before. Most areas of Psychodynamics were labeled fairly exactly. From Artifact Compatibility to the Behavioral Analytics Laboratory, it was fairly easy to guess what any given room was for.

The Special Projects Laboratory, on the other hand, could be for just about anything. Waking up and finding a request on her phone to show up later in the morning with no other information, Dyna wasn’t sure what to expect.

A retina reader outside the labeled door spoke of a bit of extra security. Assuming she had been entered into the system given the request for her presence, Dyna went ahead and put her eye up to the small hole. After a bright flash of light, which made her blink several times, the door slid aside with a small chime.

The room beyond did not look like it belonged in Psychodynamics. Everything in Psychodynamics had a style to it. A fairly classy style. Lots of wood, lots of golden-colored metal, and lots of tile. A very warm, aesthetic.

This room had concrete floor, concrete walls, and a ceiling that exposed dozens of pipes, cables, and support frames. Haphazard blue paint along the concrete walls made it look like some effort had been put into making the area livable, but only the bare minimum effort. Workbenches were strewn with tools, a terminal covered in grease stains hung askew from wires over a desk, and shelves had large cases strapped down to them as if someone had worried that an earthquake might send it all to the ground.

It looked unfinished. Or hastily constructed. Both options, perhaps, were not mutually exclusive.

The only thing in the room that actually looked like something finished was a large… object in the center of the room. A large sphere, one mostly made from chrome metal except for the domed front, which was transparent and likely psionically shielded glass. Wires and cables hung down from the ceiling, attaching to various points along its exterior. Its interior was empty for the most part. A few more cables and wires looped down from the top, but didn’t seem to interact with anything before going back up into the shell of the machine.

“You’re late.”

Dyna, blinking, looked to her side to find an older man standing in a white onesie with a hood. Only his face was visible. A full white beard hung below a pair of large square eyeglasses. Goggles with black lenses dangled from his neck. He looked like he was about to chop up Mike Teavee into a million tiny pieces.

“The message said eleven,” Dyna said, checking her phone. The clock hadn’t quite struck the hour yet, though it was close.

“It said we would start at eleven. There is plenty of preliminary work to be done.”

“Then you should have said that we would start earlier. What exactly are we starting, anyway? The message was… lacking detail.”

“Your psych report suggested you might not appear at all if told.”

Dyna stared for a long moment before slowly looking back toward the door. “Well, it’s been nice, uh… Doctor?”

“Gibbs Livermore,” the man said. “And you are not free to leave.”

“Well that is incredibly debatable—”

“Your natural psychic talents have been going entirely ignored,” Livermore said. “Not unexpectedly. Doctor Cross is overly focused on artifacts and Walter devotes his time to… other matters.” His voice carried a note of distaste. “I am especially interested in the subject of artificers, their natural ability, and changes the binding of artifacts might cause to said abilities. You are in the not wholly unique yet still abnormal position of having been bound to two different artifacts. And you failed to provide a baseline psychic stress test between the bindings or decoupling, which is going to cause a lot of work for me.”

Dyna, finally understanding what was going on here, rubbed the back of her head and sighed. “Probably not that much work. I don’t have a natural ability.”

“Nonsense.”

“Yeah, I agree. I mean, all these other people get special abilities, but I’m just—”

“No.” Livermore turned to the suspended terminal and in a single keystroke, pulled up a series of graphs. He must have prepared everything well in advance. “When you first arrived at the Carroll Institute, your tests came back… average. Perfectly average, as if we had just pulled any random individual off the streets to take the test.”

Dyna nodded. “I started to get discouraged, but most of the doctors suggested that a lot of new initiates start out like that. But then it just got worse and worse.”

“Worse?” Livermore clicked through to the next graph, one showing a steady downward progression in the level of the bars. “Not true. You started testing more and more toward zero. At the start, that might have been nearly imperceptible, but from day one to day sixty, the difference is stark. And then you tested steadily at or near zero for the remainder of your time attending the topside courses.”

A series of utterly flat graphs that might as well have been blank pages appeared on the screen.

“This,” Livermore continued, “might look depressing to you, but the fact that those idiots upstairs ignored this is simply tragic. I have already submitted a formal complaint with the administrators.”

“Oh. Thanks, I guess. But—”

“You show a clear development. Not in the expected direction, but this is high indicator of psychic ability.”

Dyna took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. A few months ago, she would have been thrilled to be in this position. Someone finally was paying attention to her regular psionic ability? Great. Splendid. That was all she ever wanted.

But now, she had so much else to worry about. Trainings with Walter, Ruby, and Emerald. Development of her artificer abilities—which had actually been coming along well ever since her artifact started properly producing emissions. And then her own private investigations into her past to try to figure out which memories were not what they should be.

Developing a psychic power on top of all that? It was a bit much. Not to mention, her uncanny ability to be wrong about everything didn’t exactly seem like an ability that she wanted to develop.

Apparently failing to notice her reticence, Livermore twisted a large knob on the top of the desk. A loud hiss of air rushed into the sphere as seals between the metal and glass broke. A few amber warning lights started spinning and a loud alarm blared.

“Amplification chamber opening. Stand clear. Stand clear.”

A robotic arm attached to the top of the glass dome swung out, pulling the curved glass away from the rest of the sphere and up toward the ceiling.

“This is a device of my own design,” Livermore said. “Its power draw makes it unfeasible for general use, but it has come in handy when an ability is less obvious. It is an amplification chamber. A clairvoyant who can only see blurry shadows in the distance will see fully-formed images. An empath taking in surface emotions might gain deep understanding of others. A precognitive only able to see three seconds into the future could gain perfect clarity of the next three days.”

“Someone who makes incorrect guesses will… make extra incorrect guesses?”

Livermore did not look amused.

“You would probably get better results sending that precognitive into the machine and asking him how well I would do.”

“Precogs are finicky and unreliable,” Livermore mumbled, turning aside to fiddle with a control panel.

“Even in your machine?”

“Step inside, please. You’ll notice a crown-like device hanging from the ceiling. Please pull it down and center it on your head.”

Shrugging her shoulders, Dyna complied. She apparently wasn’t getting out of this. With her artifact working and under far more control, Dyna would rather spend her time working with it. Especially if this was going to give her more bad news.

Shaking her head, she stepped up into the sphere. “Is there an emergency escape hatch? Just in case?”

“The large lever in the upper right when facing the opening. Don’t pull it, please.”

Flicking her eyes to the lever labeled Manual Release, Dyna nodded and focused on the directions. Those cables she had spotted from the outside did loop back, but she had missed the small silver… It wasn’t a crown. More like a few thin strips of sheet metal. One horizontal band obviously went around her head while two other strips formed a cross over the top of her head. Attached to rails, it could only move up or down in its position.

Once she got into place, Livermore stepped around the side and ensured that the crown was seated properly.

“I will be just outside,” he said. “Instructions will come in through the speakers.”

“Right,” Dyna said. Livermore stepped away and disappeared around the side of the machine, leaving her standing there, unable to move comfortably with the device around her head.

After a moment, the amber warning lights started spinning again.

“Amplification chamber closing. Stand clear. Stand clear.”

The heavy robotic arm jerked into motion and slowly lowered the glass dome back into place around the opening of the small sphere. It took a moment, but the pressure of the chamber changed as the dome settled into place. She could feel cutoff from the outside world. Unless that was just her imagination.

Dyna’s eyes flicked back to the release lever, just to make sure it hadn’t sprouted legs and disappeared on her.

“Ah hem. Can you hear me? Test, test.”

“Yes, I hear you.”

“Excellent. Then let us begin. You will see a series of images projected on the glass in front of you. These images will stimulate certain regions of your brain. This is used for calibration only. You do not need to react or otherwise do anything unusual at this time.”

“Okay.”

“Beginning phase one calibration.”

Laser light danced around on the glass dome. Dyna wasn’t sure if it was projected from somewhere behind her or if it was coming from outside the sphere. Either way, it left holographic trails of indistinct patterns on the glass. Mostly in a teal blue color, though some red and green mixed in at certain points.

As per Livermore’s instructions, Dyna didn’t try to do anything. She just stared at the odd shapes. They were somewhat like inkblot designs. Most patterns the lasers formed were symmetrical shapes, mirrored on either side. They weren’t the Rorschach blots, but Dyna still picked out a distinctly bat-like shape. Clapping goats passed by next. Then a hexagonal bee hive. Dyna didn’t pay too much attention to them.

Until one appeared. One pointed face with dark boxes where the eyes and mouth should be.

“There is no need for you to take actions at this time.”

The image changed, replaced with a waterfall. Dyna grit her teeth and tried to nod along with the instructions, only for the device around her head to keep her still.

These might not be from a proper inkblot test, but that didn’t mean everything she was seeing wasn’t just projection.

A loud hum started vibrating the air inside the chamber. The sudden noise made her jolt. She couldn’t move her head much, but it gave enough to let her take her eyes off the designs.

“The noise you are hearing is the amplification coils warming up. Everything is normal. Please continue observing the calibration images.”

“Sorry.”

“It is fine. I should have warned you.”

Dyna looked back, only to immediately see a wide-brimmed hat. Her eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat, but she clamped down on the feeling of shock as quickly as it came. These were just projections of her own mind onto formless images. Nothing to panic over. It was just…

The next image was seven stick figures. Six small ones and one large one in the center, keeping the mirrored symmetry. The large one’s head was pinched and pulled, giving him the appearance of a hat.

Dyna clenched her teeth and tried to ignore the image without looking away. Was he showing this on purpose? Did he know something? Subconscious projection only went so far. There was no way this was a coincidence.

“Dyna? There is no need for you do take any actions at this time. Please just… What is going—”

The speakers cut off with a crackle as the lasers flickered. Dyna expected a new image, only to see the same one, just modified.

It lost its symmetry. The tall figure remained in the center, but there were three children on one side and only two on the other. This was not a coincidence. Dyna’s eyes flicked up to the lever. It would probably cause damage to the machine, but…

The image changed again. One tall stick figure with a wide-brimmed hat. Two children on either side. Dyna didn’t even get a chance to think about it before it flickered again. Three total children. Then it flickered. One child on either side.

It flickered one more time.

The humming stopped. The lasers faded. Air hissed as the seal of the amplification chamber broke.

“Amplification chamber opening. Stand clear. Stand clear.”

“I am terribly sorry,” Livermore said, stepping into the sphere the moment the glass dome was out of the way. He immediately moved to help lift the crown from Dyna’s head. “Someone has… played a practical joke on me. My files were tampered with. Probably Emerald, honestly that girl…” He sounded genuinely exasperated. “Going to cause me so much paperwork. We are delaying the experiment. Are you alright?”

“Fine. Just fine,” Dyna said, taking a shaky step past him. She really was fine. Physically. She didn’t feel at all hurt, unless one counted a bit of mental trauma and panic. “Why do you think it was Emerald?”

Emerald knew about the kidnapping incident. But why would she do something like that? Assuming the images Dyna had seen were the files changed that Livermore was talking about. If Emerald had something to say, she could have said something herself.

And what was with all the children disappearing? If Emerald discovered that more children had been kidnapped, she could have said something.

Not to mention, she wasn’t even on this side of the planet. Would she have known about this test and set something up in advance?

No…

“Emerald doesn’t like me much. Thinks I pester her about her ability too much.”

“Mhm.” Dyna didn’t believe it was her.

Another spy? Another Harold?

Or something else.

Maybe it was her imagination, but Dyna felt another pair of eyes on her. She turned, ignoring Livermore, to find five lenses of a security camera aimed directly toward her. A small red light burned underneath the assembly.

Beatrice? The computer system would certainly be open to her. Why change files though?

Dyna thought back to the airport and the moment the Aztec calendar broke containment. The odd behavior Beatrice had displayed, saying that she couldn’t advise touching it, but was clearly implying that doing so would be the best option. Was it the same thing again? Beatrice couldn’t do something but was still trying to get word out?

“Can I go… lie down for a bit?”

“Certainly. Certainly. I might need your signature on an incident report, but…” Livermore shook his head.

He started to say more, but Dyna wasn’t paying him much attention. Her mind was focused on that burning red light. If Beatrice really was trying to tell her something, how could she figure out what?