I found myself zoning out as the rest of the combined group got genetically tested. The vast majority of them were pretty boring as it was. Most of them were like Clodias or Octavena, modified, but only slightly. Enough to give an advantage over Imperators from lesser families, but not enough to make them outright sterile even with their level of wealth. They might be slightly taller or faster or stronger or smarter, but nothing crazy or shocking. It was rare that you would get people like myself, Aurelia and the Fulvion clones. When Caesia and Kato got called through, they got the same special treatment that Antonias did from the Medicus as their purity excited her.

While the whole process went on, I thought about my results. I had not expected Servus genes to still be there. I guessed then that the ring had not been a complete erasure of my former identity and that some things remained behind. I wondered what traits those genes encoded for. Old Thaekyrian genes had been as shocking to hear as the person who had them as it had been for the rest of the candidates, I had to say. Old Thaekyria was the primary nation state of the Imperators and the heart of the Old Thaekyrian Empire that had ruled Terra before the rise of the Dominium. It had last existed over twelve thousand years ago as a distinct entity. Claiming to have direct descent from Old Thaekyria strong enough to show up in a genetic test was a lot like claiming to be royalty amongst Imperators. It was a pedigree that few shared out of select Terran Houses and the fact that I was out here in the Apollo system would be confusing for everyone that heard it.

No doubt many were wondering if I had been sent from Terra to infiltrate or something else wild like that. Clodias kept looking over at me and examining me like I was a puzzle he wanted to crack, and Antonias looked like he was having a religious revelation while he was staring at me. Frankly, it was making me uncomfortable. Lastly, Doctor Lakion had said I had… Campeador-like dna that had been heavily rewritten and that she thought I should have a Red Halo in my eyes. The Campeador part was a mystery for me. Campeadors’ geneline advantages were their height, weight and brute strength. It made sense that Andarias Fulvion was eight feet tall if he had the DNA of the Champion subspecies, but me? I was ordinary sized for an Imperator and the body scan had not picked up irregularities. Surely if I had something reminiscent of a Campeador in my bloodline, I would at least have denser muscle tissue or gigantism or an enlarged heart or something.

On the matter of not having a Red Halo when it seemed by the expert opinion of a medical practitioner like Lakion I definitely should have one, I did not have much to say besides it either had something to do with the strangeness of my new grandfather, Tavias, or it had to do with the unnatural transformation caused by the ring. One or the other. Truth be told I’m not sure it mattered. It was just one more thing that made me strange to these people, one more thing I could not explain in full detail to them without giving away too much information, assuming they would even believe me if I actually gave them the facts from beginning to end.

When everyone had gone through the process of having their fingers pricked and the Medicus going through their bloodline data, the doors unlocked and we pushed each other forward as one big pack. I hoped the facilities were ready for us to descend on them like a hungry swarm of locusts.

We entered a room filled with row after row of square poles with straps to tie a person into on each side.

“What’s this test, monitor?” I asked my wristwatch.

“This is the vertigo test. Four candidates to each pillar will strap themselves in and the pillar will spin at high speed then abruptly stop. The restraints will automatically come undone, and the candidates will be required to attempt to stand without falling or stepping forward or losing their balance.” The machine said.

Antonias, Kato, Caesia followed me to a pillar and we all strapped ourselves in. I looked to the ceiling for any cameras or sensors that would observe our attempts to stand after being spun, but I did not see any. Perhaps there was detection equipment hidden under the floor.

The square sided pillar started to spin, picking up more and speed in its rotation as it turned each complete cycle and my body pressed tightly against the straps of the restraints as the forces involved threatened to tear me through the straps and send me flying outwards. The pillar stopped on a dime, flinging me to the side and then slamming me back into the metal, causing a Imperator shaped dent in it. The restraints unbuckled on their own and retracted, leaving me to take a single step off the platform and try my best to stand without falling on my ass or my face as my head span.

I heard Caesia and Antonias fall to their hands and knees and vomit as many around us were also doing. Kato and I managed to keep standing, though I heard him take a staggering step to keep from falling. I maintained a resolute footing, staring straight ahead and holding my bile down. After a minute, my head and inner ear stabilized.

“Candidate Lucion, you have earned the ranking of Exceeds Expectations.” My monitor said.

“Candidate Haelion, you have earned the ranking of Satisfactory.” I heard Kato’s wristwatch tell him.

Caesia and Antonias’s devices told them they had gotten “Underachieving.”

Personally, I was a little angry. I had stood perfectly! How could you do better than what I had done? Surely, I should have gotten better than Exceeds Expectations.

“Monitor, how do you get a better score than mine?” I demanded of the machine, but it did not answer me.

I shook it, annoyed.

“Whatever.” I muttered.

“Candidate Lucion, please proceed to the poisoning test.” It told me.

I looked to the others. “You guys okay? Antonias? Caesia? Kato?” I asked them, with a little worry in my voice.

Antonias groaned but he looked at me. Caesia was lying on her side, breathing heavily. Kato gave me a weak thumbs up and then started staggering towards the next test. I helped Antonias and Caesia to their feet and then set off too.

Taking a seat at a drinking bar-like construction, I reached my arm across the bar to let a Medicus stab a needle designed to pierce Bronze Imperator flesh to reach a vein.

“In the poisoning test, this monitoring unit will observe the level of the poison injected into your veins over time as your body processes it out. The speed of such will be measured and rated.”

I sighed as a dark green fluid was injected into me. It felt kind of “spicy” as strange as it was to describe it that way and it made my arm tingle. I did not have a game plan for this one. There was not really a way I knew for me to increase the rate of my organs detoxifying the poison leeching into my bloodstream. I merely had to wait. The poison darkened my vision and gave me a migraine as it surged through me but that all passed in time.

The Medicus removed the needle and the line partway through and the hole in my arm immediately sealed up so that you could not even tell a puncture mark had been there a moment ago when it had been inside me.

I was not surprised when my monitor finally spoke three minutes and ten seconds in and gave me the answer I expected.

“Candidate Lucion, your rating is Satisfactory.” The machine voice informed me.

I hoped the next one would be something I could either outsmart, trick, muscle through or endure with freakish pain tolerance.

“What is next, monitor?” I said.

“The gravity test. You will enter Room Sixteen and undergo gradually increased gravity until you either submit, fall unconscious or fall.”

I smiled. “That’s more like it.”

I reached the door marked sixteen and it slid downwards to admit me. I stepped in.

“Please announce when you are ready, Candidate Lucion.” The monitor said.

“I’m ready.” I said confidently.

I barely felt it at first, but it steadily increased and picked up as it went along. It felt like I was becoming heavier, my feet, shins, and legs hurt and the flesh on my body dragged downwards. I breathed in and out meditatively, keeping my cool, focused on my balance. The floor trembled under my artificially generated weight and my legs swelled with blood as the fluid in my veins found it harder and harder to circulate fully than as if it was under a normal Terran constant of gravitational pull. I felt lightheaded but I just picked a spot to stare at on the wall and kept my stance.

“Would you like to end the test?” The monitor on my wrist asked when I was beginning to struggle to take in air into my lungs.

“No.” I said in reply.

“Would you like to end the test?” It asked when I could no longer keep my head straight up and it bent painfully towards the floor.

“No.” I said firmly.

“Would you like to end the test?” The device said when I began the agonizing pattern of the bones in my feet and legs repeatedly breaking and cracking and my healing factor sealing them back together moments later only for them to internally fracture over and over right after.

“N-no.” I said, weaker than the last time.

“Would you like to end the test?” It said when my feet were turning to crushed paste and my back was threatening to snap as I hunched over.

“…n…n…n-no…” I said, finding the ability to speak fleeting and a grave strain to accomplish at all.

“Would you like to end the test?” The monitor asked when my shoulders dislocated as they were yanked downwards and the blood in my legs rushed out of my body as it found a structural weak point in my feet and pooled around me.

I was unable to reply. One of my eyes was on the verge of popping out.

“A verbal response is required.”

Using the full power of my muscular superstrength I forced oxygen into my lungs to speak.

“No!” I shouted.

The test did not end until both of my legs finally snapped in a dozen different places and I smashed into the ground.

After fifteen minutes of regeneration time, I looked to the watch and spoke.

“What did I get?”

“Abnormal Primacy: Third Class.”

I had gotten the best time on record, but had only slightly beat out the previous contender.

I tried to smile, but all I could do was groan and push myself to my feet for the next task ahead of me.