The sound of a second chair creaking in the room brought Val back to consciousness. She blinked her bleary eyes as the room slowly came back into focus. The unfamiliar surroundings disoriented her for a moment before the days’ events came rushing back in.

Right. Achieved my career goal of becoming a User. Almost destroyed my nanosystem in the process. Guildmasters watched my breakdown and want to strip my status already. Val sat still for a moment before running through a quick scan of her body. Somewhat surprisingly, she felt absolutely fine physically, but absolutely drained mentally. Rez, you still here?

Indeed, Valriya. Normally I would upload back to the mainframe after the power transfer, but in your case, it was determined that the best course of action was to maintain your stability.

Makes sense. Glad to have you onboard for a little while longer. Turning her attention outward, Val quickly identified the source of the sound that woke her. Fynn sat in one of the chairs that had been pushed off to the side with the rest of the medical equipment that usually occupied the room. He was leaning slightly forward, elbows on his knees and gaze focused on the ground in front of him.

“Anything particularly interesting about that floor tile, Fynn?” He started slightly as she broke him out of his thoughts. His head came up to look at her. Ah, shit. The red rings around his eyes made it clear that he was taking her situation hard too. “Sorry to rain on our parade like this, buddy.”

Fynn shook his head vehemently, keeping his eyes locked firmly on hers. “Don’t even start to apologize, Val. Are you OK?”

Val sat up slowly from her chair, keeping a close eye on her condition. Feeling nothing out of place, she swung her legs over the side and turned to face Fynn. Leaning forward and copying his posture, she replied, “I think so. There were definitely some… hiccups there. And I think there are some long-term consequences to deal with. But in the short-term, I think everything is OK.”

Fynn watched her like a hawk with a look of consternation on his face, his brown eyes boring into her for several long seconds. He nodded slowly, seeming to come to the conclusion that she wasn’t hiding anything more serious. Letting out a deep breath, he sat back heavily in his chair. He covered his eyes with the heels of his palms for a moment before sliding his hands back through his short black hair, staring up at the ceiling.

“How long have I been out?” asked Val.

“Well, I think my assessment took about an hour and a half, and I’ve only been in here for a few minutes. Chatter I picked up in the hall suggested shit went down in here about an hour into the assessment, so only about thirty to forty minutes?”

Val nodded. “How’d your assessment go?”

“Well, much less eventful than yours, that’s for sure. Got through all the stages fine. Started at about 3% sync, got up to 6% before the neural rewiring. No issues with that or the power transfer.” His tone got more and more excited as he kept talking, finally culminating in his trademark goofy grin. He caught her gaze again, but this time there was a twinkle in his eye. “We freaking did it, Val. I told you I believed in us!”

His final statement was punctuated with a couple emphatic fist pumps. Val laughed at his antics, although she declined to join in the fist pumps. Suddenly the events of the afternoon didn’t feel quite as heavy. This has always been Fynn’s superpower. Limitless faith and optimism.

Val was not like Fynn. Where Fynn had blind faith that things would work out, Val saw every pitfall and possible failure. While Fynn charged out immediately, Val made a series of contingency plans. But they brought out the best in each other. Fynn’s bluntness was tempered by Val’s tactics, but his need to act kept her from making endless plans.

Val’s grin faded slightly. It was the same here. Fynn had restored some of her confidence that she could get through this tough situation. But now it fell to her to figure out how she was going to do that. She just needed time to fig–

A soft ding interrupted her thoughts as a message indication popped up on her superimposed display. With a frown, she opened the message.

Please report to the main arena floor in fifteen minutes for final User assessment, including Daemon and Guild assignment.

Oh for Gaia’s sake. “Uhh, Fynn do you know anything about this? Final assessment and assignments?”

Fynn’s eyebrows raised. “Yea, they’ve been taking people to the arena as they finish up over here. Mine’s scheduled in about five minutes. From what I’ve heard, you sit down with the Guildmasters from your three rotations. There’s an informal matching process where you first decide on a Guild and then get paired up with a potential Daemon partner. All preliminary, of course, but from what my mom told me, the first choice usually sticks and it’s all… sort of… a formality…”

Fynn enthusiasm dimmed and he trailed off weakly as he saw Val’s expression darken. Great. Fifteen minutes to figure out how to convince the most important Users in the city, who personally had to hold me down less than an hour ago, that I should still be a User. She gritted her teeth in frustration. Better get to it then.

The pounding in her chest refused to relent as she made her way through the darkened hallway below the stands towards the arena floor. She had run through a few scenarios with Fynn. After he wasted two of her precious fifteen minutes in shock over her high sync stats, they had settled on her initial argument: the benefits of her strong neural link with a Daemon outweighed her now-defective nanosystem.

None of her planning made this moment any more comfortable though. She stepped out onto the arena, squinting against the change in lighting before her adjustment subroutines kicked in. And almost immediately stumbled as she saw not three, but all seven Guildmasters waiting on the field for her.

Like Hav’s speech, they had dispensed with all of the possible formality. Simple stone stools had been extruded from the ground in a circle, the seven of them slightly closer together than the one stool left for Val. Her eyes flicked to Lukas, the Engineer Guildmaster, who was almost certainly behind the stools. Forming objects from external matter with nano was a typical Engineer skill set, after all.

Deciding to take the initiative, Val spoke up as she took a seat. “Well, there’s a few more of you here than I was told to expect.” Vivian, the Merchant Guildmaster, shot Val a reproachful glare, but Val shrugged it off. It wouldn't help to be too disrespectful to the group that controlled her fate, but she needed to give the impression of strength. Plus, I never liked Vivian anyway. Too political.

Mae cleared her throat and leaned forward, taking control of the conversation. “After the… situation earlier, Hav and Zyra decided they wanted to weigh in on the matter.”

The matter being my future. Great.

Vivian sniffed imperiously. “It wouldn’t do to have such important decisions made without the entirety of the Council.”

Lukas winked at Val. “What she means is Vivian and I were feeling a little left out, so we decided to crash the party.”

Val gave Lukas a tight grin, but her mind was racing. Convincing seven was much harder than convincing three.

Mae reasserted herself in the conversation. “Yes, well, that’s more or less the state of things. Depending on how this conversation goes, their input may not be needed at all.”

Val raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so this is still a conversation?” Mae’s brow furrowed slightly before she took on a neutral facial expression. Alright, that’s probably about as far as I can push, got it.

“Yes this is still a conversation, although I’ll point out that you’ll do well to take our recommendations seriously.” Val winced lightly – maybe she had gone just a little too far after all. Seeing Val was taking her seriously, Mae continued, “I’ll start with the normal options first. All three of us – Celedon of the Scouts, Mylar of the Guardians, and myself with the Technicians – would gladly take you in our Guild.”

Val’s breath caught for a moment. Not the offer I was expecting. She suspected very few of the finalists got offers from all three Guilds. Mulling over Mae’s words in her mind, she realized there was something critically important missing from that offer. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Mae. The woman nodded slightly, encouraging Val to speak.

“As a User.”

“No.” Mae’s refusal was blunt and expected, but it still cut into her deeply.

“What are my other options?”

Mae’s eyebrows raised slightly. “Before we move on, I should warn you that we all agree this is the safest option for you. Your high sync would be a massive boon to any Technician research or information gathering work with the Scouts. We don’t normally discuss other selections, but Fynn has joined with the Guardians. You could stay paired with him and we expect you would drastically raise the efficiency of your squad.”

Val nodded sharply. “All good points, but I’d still like to know all my options.”

Hav replied this time, causing Val to shift her head over to the other half of the circle. “I’ll be blunt with you, girl. There is no future for you as a standard User. You show great promise, but we have no idea when your core will give out. That is a risk I would never allow in my Guild under any circumstances. An inconsistent User is worse than useless.”

Val’s heart sank as she listened to Hav. The fact that every statement was true only made it worse. Before she could sink any further into misery, Vivian interjected. “I disagree. We should put Val’s… talents to use for as long as possible. Strategies can be taken to minimize our risk exposure.”

Mae gestured sharply with her hand, cutting off the other Guildmasters from jumping in. “As you can see, we are divided on what to do with you. Actually, put to a vote, we decided 4 – 3 to not give you any options past the three Guild offers you’ve already received.”

Val’s gaze bounced frantically back and forth between the Guildmasters, looking for any nonverbal cues to gain some additional insight. Unsurprisingly, they had all shut down, giving her nothing but neutral expressions. This is another test, Val realized. How badly do I want to be a User? Will I back down when given no outs? If that was the case, there was only one option.

Val gulped nervously. “We seem to still be having this conversation, so what tipped the balance?” She felt the mood shift as she seemingly passed the unspoken test. Celedon, Vivian, and Lukas all seemed pleased, Hav and Mylar clearly disapproved, while Mae and Zyra just seemed… sad and resigned.

“The Daemons. As you know, Users value their Daemon partners very highly. A certain Daemon has slipped information about your assessment to the collective, and the Daemons as a whole are extremely excited to see your potential progress. They usually don’t factor into Council decisions like this because they are often fractured, but we have no choice but to take them into account when they are mostly united.”

Gaia bless you, Rez. She felt amusement and pride over the neural link. “OK, so it’s a tie then. Wait, was this an official Council vote?” That was not good. The seven Guildmasters together made up the city’s Council, and their word was law. Official Council votes happened only when the outcome could impact Peakpoint on a large scale. If she thought convincing seven people was bad before, this was much, much worse.

Mae apparently disliked the situation as well, judging from her pursed lips. “Since we can’t reach a conclusive decision and this is the fate of a promising young candidate, it’s been decided that the final decision lies with you.”

Val just sat in stunned silence. That was the best possible outcome of this whole discussion, and it was just being offered to her?

“Before you get too excited, you have to understand the severity of the other option. There’s a reason this was a Council vote. I won’t lie to you, Val. Very few people would willingly choose this option. You’ll get a Daemon partner, but you won’t be part of the standard Users. You’ll be part of a flexible task force of Irregular Users that undertake missions with higher risk levels.”

Gaia, please stop this emotional roller coaster before I suffer permanent mental whiplash. Val knew the group Mae was talking about. And yes, she would technically be a User. But it definitely was not the future she had envisioned. “You’re talking about the Defects.”

“That’s not an officially sanctioned term,” said Vivian. “They are a group of talented but irregular Users that have much to offer Peakpoint. In fact, they are a crucial line of our defense forces.”

“That’s a nice way to say you throw them at dangerous problems first so that your rank-and-file Users don’t get killed,” protested Val.

Mae sighed, clearly getting tired of playing mediator. “You are both oversimplifying the situation, but there’s an element of truth to your comments, Val. Like I said, this is not a decision to be made lightly. Life expectancy is short among the Irregulars. Those of us who voted to let you have this option hope you can find a way to overcome your strained nanosystem and bring to bear that powerful neural link of yours. Those who voted against want to guarantee you a safe life where you can still be productive. But ultimately, the choice is yours.”

Val sat back, mind whirling. Mae was right. As much as her gut instinct before was to immediately accept the User offer, doing so would radically change her life forever. And for shorter, probably. “Do I have to decide right now?”

Mae glanced at the other Guildmasters before responding. “Normally we like to wrap these things up today, but we all realize this is not an easy decision to make. Take tonight and think it over, and give us your decision before noon tomorrow. Celedon and I plan to make ourselves available to you if you want to talk, and I’m sure you’ll want to talk things over with Fynn.”

Val also noticed Mae’s gaze had paused for a moment on Zyra as well. Interesting. Guilt over her familial obligation finally reaching a tipping point? Val shook her head. Can’t get distracted now, think about it later.

Val stood up and looked around the circle. “Alright I’ll think it over. Thank you all for the opportunity. I promise I won’t make this decision lightly.” With a final nod, she turned and walked back to the entrance. She didn’t need Rez’s heightened senses to tell her that seven intense gazes stared at her the entire way.