“You getting in ?”

Leigh jerked at the sound of a nasal voice. It belonged to a boy sitting close to the shuttle’s entrance. His bright white eyes were staring straight at her, so intently that Leigh felt he could see right down to her marrow. Swallowing, and feeling more than a tad uncomfortable, Leigh nodded and stepped into the shuttle. The moment her feet were through the threshold, the energy-matter sealed into place behind her, like a guillotine severing her from the point of no return. The sudden deafening silence that detached them from the world only hammered it in further.

“You going to sit down?” the strange kid spoke up again in the same exact bored tone, apparently oblivious to the imperial silence that reigned.

Reluctantly, Leigh made her way to her Rank-assigned seat right next to him. She tried to get a read on him, but his eyes and face gave nothing away. Resorting to his records she found him to be Arthur LeMakovien, Ranked 988th. His athletic and interpersonal stats explained his relatively ‘low’ score. Most of his scores were lower than even hers by quite a bit. However, when it came to physics, biology, chemistry, and particularly programming, the guy was a genius. Out of curiosity, Leigh brought up the stats on her parents when they were her age and was shocked to see that they were on the same level as Arthur’s. He was going to be one of the geniuses of her generation… and she’d pretty much ignored him… twice.

Leigh sighed in resignation, Rank or no Rank, she was already making a mess of things. She took a seat, and only then did it dawn on her that she wasn’t Ranked last on the ship; there was a girl sitting to her left as well, she was Ranked 1000th. Leigh couldn’t help but feel relieved that she wasn’t the only one of the ‘frauds’ on the ship, and she tried not to think about how glad she was not to be Ranked last after all.

Once she’d adjusted herself into her seat, the constricting silence returned with a vehemence. Curious as to whom the bald heads and blank stares that surrounded her belonged to, Leigh spent the next five minutes going through everyone’s stats. Her CHIP told her that her perusal of their stats would be known to them, but after checking and seeing that her own stats had been picked over by dozens of others, she shrugged and did the same. Knowledge hadn’t been private in a very, very long time. Scrolling through stats and information, she wasn’t surprised by the exemplary performance in all of their files. She’d already encountered most names at one time or another over the years, so looking them up served more as a reminder than a full-blown investigation. If she really wanted to make it on-planet, she had her work cut out for her, there was no way she could even begin to compete with some of the scores.

“Are you feeling sick?” Arthur suddenly asked via private virtual chat, “the rising glucose levels in your bloodstream are indicative of stress.”

Leigh raised an eyebrow at him until she remembered the gesture was useless without the eyebrows actually there to express it.

“No, I’m fine,” she said, “just… been a long day.”

“Yes, I agree,” he said. “However, if it makes you feel any better, it still only has twenty-four hours in it, just like all the ones before and the ones still to come.”

Leigh smiled and shook her head, not knowing if she was comforted or irritated by his words. Looking him straight in the eyes, Leigh couldn’t detect any malice, so she decided to go with comforting.

“I guess that does make me feel a bit better,” Leigh said with a laugh, not wanting to lose her chance to fix his first impression of her. “I’m Leigh, by the way.”

“Yeah…” the boy said, giving her a confused look. “You’re labeled… just like I assume I am.”

She glanced at the label he referred to.

“Yeah…” Leigh said, “I just figured it’d be polite to introduce myself.”

“I think it’s more polite for you not to waste our time,” the boy said. “The UEF is investing a lot of valuable resources into us, the most valuable of which is time, so let’s not waste it.”

Leigh bit her lip, trying not to be annoyed by his matter-of-factness. She wanted to retort with something snappy, but the more she thought about it, the more he was right. All the functions the CHIP had given them were time-saving. So much knowledge would have to be crammed into them over the next three years, that it was no surprise that introduction speeches, ceremonies, and greetings were skipped. There was a reason the UEF didn’t have a salute, but merely a CHIP ping.

“Yeah,” Leigh said. “I guess you’re right.”

“It’s not a guess,” Arthur said.

Leigh was about to roll her eyes at him for taking her literally, but then she saw the glint of amusement in his white eyes and knew he was just making fun of her. She smiled back at him, happy she’d met someone in the ship who didn’t immediately hate her like the rest probably did. Leigh already felt subjected to steely, angered looks and even some outright glares. The seats were grouped in fives so that there were always two groups of five seats facing each other. Leigh hadn’t spoken a word to anyone but Arthur, yet it seemed she’d garnered unfavorable interest from the entire assembled cast before her. Arthur seemed to be thinking the same thing because it wasn’t too long before he spoke again.

“Seems like they don’t like you,” he said in private.

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” she said with her best yeah-no-shit smile.

“It’s quite shortsighted of them really.”

“How so?” Leigh asked carefully, wondering where he was going with this.

“Well, the way I see it, they should be thinking along the lines of ‘the more lower-ranked people, the better.’ Easy competition.”

“Ahm…” Leigh said carefully, trying not to tread on the land-mine Arthur had just placed, the last thing she wanted to do was talk about her Rank or how she came about it. “Soo… That gives you, oh master of reasoning and deduction, a grand total of two to look down upon,” she said, motioning virtually between herself and Aru’bal, the girl next to her.

They laughed and exchanged quips for the next couple minutes, giving Leigh the first real outlet for emotion in what seemed like days. Arthur’s no-bullshit attitude was more comforting than she could fathom. Then, the shuttle came to a sudden halt which Leigh only became aware of through her CHIP, she’d thought that her stop had been the last. She hadn’t been paying attention to the scenery out of the windows. The new CHIP functions were still too overwhelming and she still wasn’t able to process everything thrown at her in real time. While she reviewed the location of their stop, the shuttle walls melted away to reveal the exit. The last four Selects of their ship were waiting for them and they walked in one after the other to take their seats. Leigh’s mouth fell open when she saw the last one walk in. She wouldn’t have recognized him without the CHIP, but there he was, Nathan Kies. How had she missed his name in her search?

“It’s weird, right?” Nathan said when he caught Leigh staring.

Clamping her mouth shut in embarrassment, Leigh shook her head and asked in what she hoped was a calm-sounding voice, “I’m sorry… what is?”

“The eyebrows,” Nathan said, rubbing at his naked forehead.

“Oh, yea… you’re right,” Leigh said and started rubbing her own forehead awkwardly.

She looked to her side and saw Arthur rubbing his too, the three of them stayed there rubbing their naked eyebrows until they made eye contact. A moment of uncertain and uncomfortable silence followed, where Leigh and Arthur sat there with Nathan standing in front of them, all three of them were still with a hand to their foreheads. Leigh bit her lip not to laugh. It wasn’t the right time or place to laugh, but the scene struck her as so ridiculous that she simply couldn’t hold it in for long and was soon cracking up until tears rolled down her face. At some point, the other two must have joined in, but by the time Leigh noticed, a girl was already complaining in virtual public social.

“Children,” she said with a tone of contempt.

Being the center of attention of the whole ship immediately sobered Leigh up. She didn’t have to see anyone’s eyes to know who they were looking at, and she fought the urge to slump her shoulders. Weakness was bait.

Leigh glanced aside at Monique LaKur. Monique was the third-ranked Select of the ship, so it was possible the girl merely thought Leigh and everyone else below her notice, but Leigh suspected the almond-eyed girl had always behaved in that way. Monique’s IQ was off the charts but her interpersonal scores were lower than even Arthur’s. For that to be the case, she would have to have displayed this kind of behavior her whole life. She was probably the kind of person who thought human relations to be a waste of time, especially when humans were fighting for their survival.

“Sorry about that,” Leigh said automatically, relying on the years of forced politeness that the rank system had instilled.

Monique glanced her way, flashed her an annoyed glare through narrowed eyes and said, “Yeah, whatever. Just keep it down.”

Leigh nodded, but the cackles still coming from the two boys beside her made anything she said or did seem quite insincere. Monique gave her a pointed look. Leigh shrugged helplessly, trying to convey the message ‘boys will be boys’. Monique rolled her eyes in response and everyone got back to the business of ignoring everyone else. That is, everyone except the girl across from Leigh, who was now staring naked daggers into her soul. Leigh didn’t need eyebrows or irises to tell her that.

Monique’s use of public social, coupled with Nathan’s arrival, had the unfortunate consequence of liberating the until-then mutes.

“Isn’t that Kies?” a person in the high 200s asked in public virtual.

“Did you see that guy’s scores?”

“Yeah, he’s like 5% ahead of any Select in our Year… 7% of anyone here.”

“Still not as good as McMann.”

Leigh tensed.

“You kidding me? Haven’t you seen his latest submissions? He’s crushed McMann in everything.”

“No, McMann is still better at tactical and…”

“Fram, that’s his sister.”

“He has a sister?! And she’s here!?”

“Cog, man! She’s so low!”

“If it hadn’t been for that attack she wouldn’t even be here…”

Leigh’s face reddened as her profile was suddenly plastered all over social and all heads turned her way. The girl in front of Leigh grinned maliciously at Leigh’s discomfort, but Leigh refused to look away. Her hands balled into fists, but she refused to show any other kind of outwardly emotion immediately closing down her public profile, lest someone see her stress indicators again. Why hadn’t she done it earlier? It was too late to worry about it now.

Seeing the commotion, Nathan looked like he was reaching out a hand to comfort her, but before Leigh even noticed his intentions, he was already gone. He headed toward his seat at the other end of the shuttle; he was Ranked first.

“Looks like he’s too good for us,” Arthur joked in private.

Leigh could tell by his awkward tone that he was attempting to comfort and distract her from the fact that she was still the number one discussion in social. Gritting her teeth Leigh watched as social broke down into separate channels, with everyone talking all over each other. Suddenly, Leigh knew what had felt so strange about the shuttle ride until that very moment.

It had been too quiet, like the calm before the storm. And though it remained so outwardly, chaos now reigned in social.

“Oh please,” Leigh heard a girl say derisively, “she only got in because of her brother.”

“I don’t think that’s how Ranks work though…” a deep voice replied.

“It’s not…” another baritone replied.

“Then how do you explain the fact that they shifted hundreds of millions of Ranks? Has that ever happened before?” The girl spoke up again, it was the same one who was staring daggers at Leigh, as if daring her to contest what she was saying.

“No…”

“But neither has a terrorist attack…” another voice chimed in.

Leigh wiped her sweaty palms against her suit when more and more people started joining the channel.

“Oh please, you know how the UEF operates.”

“What do you mean?”

The glaring girl, Shi’estna SaTafan, Ranked 222nd, was stringing them along beautifully, and apparently had it out for Leigh.

“Any other year,” Shi’estna said, motioning vaguely at Leigh, but her meaning was clear, “and they never would have shifted Ranks. It not only undermines our entire social structure, but it also strips the victims of the respect they deserve.”

Leigh avoided direct eye contact as she went over the girl’s file, not taking any new information from it so that Shi’estna wouldn’t notice what Leigh was doing. She was trying to find a reason for the resentful girl to bear such animosity towards her, but nothing in the files gave anything away. They’d never even been in the same quadrant until today. Confused, Leigh continued to track the conversation, there had to be a reason for such hatred.

“I don’t think—” someone began to speak, and Leigh was surprised to see how many people were actually willing to speak up for her, she thought the majority would be thinking along the same lines Shi’estna was currently advocating.

“Because of some people,” Shi’estna said, completely disregarding what Leigh’s spokesperson had tried to say, “the victims of our Year will permanently be removed from history.”

“I think that’s a bit extreme…” the spokesperson tried again.

“Oh yeah?” Shi’estna asked, “And how would you feel if they stripped your Rank away? Ranks define who we are… or at least should…”

Shi’estna crossed her arms and said, “ “But some of us are apparently exempt…” looking in Leigh’s and Aru’bal’s direction.

Leigh tried not to recoil under the attention they were getting. It was her worst nightmare come to life. Biting the inside of her lip in a nervous gesture, Leigh tried to come up with an appropriate rebuttal.

“Want me to say something?” Nathan asked, surprising her in private chat.

Before Leigh had a chance to process his unexpected offer though, someone was already speaking, completely dominating the channel.

“Well, well, well,” a large deep voice said.

Leigh almost groaned when she saw who the voice belonged to: Charlie Delta, Ranked 8th. She didn’t even have to look him up, recognizing him by his ostentatious voice alone. She’d never understood the guy’s popularity, but he was even more well known than Vox’en Dicit, who had held the number one Rank for years before Nathan showed up. Charlie was the most active individual on social, his political skills were through the roof, trumping even her brother’s. Everyone, particularly those of her year, was enamored with him, but personally, the guy had always struck Leigh as a stuck-up jackass.

“Looks like we got ourselves a catfight boys!” he said, confirming her belief.

What kind of name was Charlie Delta anyway?

Some of the other boys cheered, making most of the girls roll their eyes. Before she knew what had happened Charlie was already orchestrating a betting pool, and suddenly even Shi’estna was shirking away from the attention she’d garnered. Apparently, this wasn’t what she’d had in mind with her defamation campaign. The pool kept getting bigger and bigger until all the boys and eventually even some of the girls joined in. Shi’estna made a couple vain attempts to stop it, but once she realized her pleas were only making it worse for herself, she settled down and resumed her one-sided glaring contest with Leigh.

Shaking her head, Leigh leaned back and closed her eyes. How did things like this happen? Yesterday hundreds of millions of people had died and today they were playing stupid games on a shuttle. She sighed. Was she the only one seeing the big picture? Opening her eyes, she found herself being studied by none other than Charlie Delta. She frowned, displaying her displeasure, but he just winked at her, as if he’d just done her a huge favor. She rolled her eyes and wondered how an individual could be so full of themselves.

“You think you can take her?” Arthur asked in private, infringing on her thoughts.

“… Excuse me?” she asked, bewildered. “Not you too!”

“What do you mean ‘me too’? Have you not seen your odds? They’re horrible. Like really, really, really bad. If you can think you can take her, I can make bank.”

Leigh frowned at him.

“What?” he asked, confused. “You want part of the cut?”

Leigh shook her head at the lost cause, and directed her attention back to social where the catastrophe continued to unfurl, she felt sick. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. She was hoping to go by unnoticed until the terrorist attack wasn’t quite so fresh in people’s minds. She glanced at forgotten Aru’bal. This is what happens to those that wish evil onto others. Leigh had counted on Aru’bal as being the main target of their resentment, and this is what she got for it.

“Alright, alright, alright,” Charlie said, once more booming over all the other voices on social. It was annoying how easily he managed to control a crowd by just waving his hands admonishingly.

“Arthur there,” he said pinging Arthur, “is in charge of the bets, so stop bothering me with them.”

Leigh’s eyes widened in shock and she glared at her supposed friend. He didn’t notice, as he was probably too busy processing the stakes. Feeling betrayed, Leigh crossed her arms.

“Having a fight here would be stupid,” he said, purposefully riling up the crowd.

There were some murmurs of disagreement, especially from the guys. The rest of the girls had also joined in at some point. Charlie had that effect on the female population. His roguish smile would get him almost anything he wanted and he knew it, he grinned as if to illustrate the fact. Leigh scrunched her non-existent brows in annoyance, but the booing continued. How he thought he would get her to actually fight Shi’estna she didn’t know.

“I think…” he said suggestively, amongst all the murmurs of disagreement, “we should have them go for it during Initial Eval.”

That’s how.

The announcement shut everyone up, and they waited anxiously for more information. Even Leigh couldn’t help but feel a little intrigue. Not because of the fight, but because of potential information on the Initial Evaluation. First Academy was very secretive about most of its teachings, but a few things had managed to leak into general knowledge here and there. One of these things was the first assessment, but other than there being some kind of bonus, not much was known about it either.

Charlie grinned at the silent attention he’d managed to inspire from the recently rebellious crowd. Leigh shook her head at his childish sense of accomplishment. Manipulative people like him had always rubbed her the wrong way and it irked her that he’d managed to work his magic on her as well. She only wanted to know what the eighth Ranked Select knew about the Initial Eval, she tried to console herself. It had nothing to do with him, she’d be just as interested if it had been anyone else.

“We all know…” he said slowly and teasingly, relishing every moment in the spotlight, “how the Eval takes five criteria into consideration to create our baseline.”

He paused, knowing full well that most people, including Leigh, did not know such a thing. Leigh waited, knowing he would come to it eventually, but others in the crowd were not so patient and she heard some people shouting here and there for more information. Charlie smiled benevolently and continued in the same languish pace.

“The criteria are,” he held up his right thumb, “Logistics.”

He didn’t give any more information.

“Leadership,” he added his forefinger, “Strategics,” his middle finger, “Combat,” his ring finger and finally… “Suit.”

Leigh wondered over the final pause, it hadn’t felt completely intentional, but she was too preoccupied with what he’d revealed to give it much further thought. He’d given them five criteria, but from the names alone Leigh had no idea exactly how she would be tested in each. For ‘Combat’ alone she could think of a thousand different ways. He’d basically said nothing of import, and he was aware of it too because he was already moving on with his spiel before anyone figured it out.

“So direct your attention to my partner there,” he pinged Arthur again meaningfully, “he’ll be taking more detailed bets on the criteria. Since there are five different criteria, you have five different chances to win!”

Leigh frowned, feeling like a bit of a joke prize-fighter when her profile was set up next to Shi’estna’s on social. Charlie was going all out, circling her portrait and name with blue flames and Shi’estna’s with red. Sound effects were being added, of girls shrieking at each other. The stakes were rising, and things were generally getting out of hand. Leigh wanted to get up and scream herself, to tell everyone to just stop, but she knew it would just make it worse. Wiping her face of any expression, she took the backpack she’d been leaning against from behind her back and put it on her lap as a protective shield. It was as retreating a gesture as she would allow herself.

“Ten seconds to the final bet, people,” Charlie suddenly said and the ruckus rose to an all-new level. Leigh closed her eyes in resignation. Technically, the bets wouldn’t be affecting her at all since she would have done the Evaluation anyway, but now the outcome would be picked apart by every single person present. If she didn’t manage to perform well, she could kiss her already meager chances of being Selected by a good leader goodbye.”

“It’s a wrap!” Charlie declared, even cutting some last minute bets off. “A wrap is a wrap,” he said with decisive finality.

A hundred teenagers immediately rebelled, staging a revolt, and if it hadn’t been for an unexpected system announcement, the protests would have gone on for another while.

[YOU ARE NOW LEAVING EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE.]

For most of them, the system announcement came out of nowhere, but Leigh knew Charlie had timed it perfectly, the guy knew how to put on a show. People’s attentions automatically veered outward, looking down at the Earth. Leigh knew that they were heading into space, but for some reason, she’d expected it to take a bit longer, or for there to be more procedure involved. Looking out the window and had her CHIP record a magnified version of the view for when she was homesick in the future. If all went according to plan, she wouldn’t be back on Earth for quite a while, and the planet was magnificent from space. The announcement extinguished the conversations that were being held and every single Select of the shuttle looked out in silence, taking in the blue-and-green planet they lived on as more and more of it appeared. It seemed she wasn’t the only one thinking about if and when they’d ever be back.

Much of the once-blue oceans was now covered with floating plantations and most of the cities were tightly packed together, leaving massive areas for even more plantations between them. Each family was required to grow a portion of their own food, to harvest as much sunlight as possible for the production of calories. All roads had been eliminated in the beginning of the Purge, every square inch of the world was being mapped out and used to its fullest potential. It had been centuries since the UEF took over, maximizing human production so that it would eventually be able to maximize the human population, but the closer humanity got to the inevitable war, the less willing people became to have children. The general consensus was why have children when they would probably end up in a war anyway.

A few minutes later they were hit with another unexpected series of notifications; Leigh didn't even know where to begin.

[WELCOME TO THE FIRST ACADEMY, SELECT!]

[FIRST YEAR CLASSIFIED MATERIAL HAS BEEN UNLOCKED.]

[FIRST ACADEMY CLASSIFIED: TRUESUIT MANUAL AVAILABLE]

[TRUESUIT INITIATION PROCEDURE: 0.00% COMPLETE]