What May Come

Level Zero

There was little about this room that Nura could bring herself to like. It was cold, bare, and small. Crowded, as well. With the man and woman administering the tests looming over her, it felt too enclosed by half.

The woman was Talarian. Her scales were a deep green color, and she didn't possess a single spine on her head. Nura had never heard of a crestless Talarian before today. Her name was Dhorl, and she was bare to the waist.

Nura kept trying to remind herself that Talarians didn't possess the same differences between genders as Threshpanians or similar cultural norms regarding clothing, but it was still shocking to see in person. Just shy of fifteen years old, Nura had rarely been exposed to foreign cultures, and more often than not, she found the sheer alienness of other sapient species to be too much to handle.

When she confessed these concerns to Vanta, her saj assured her that this xenophasia would pass with familiarity. It was nothing to be ashamed of, but it was something to overcome. Being discomforted around another species said nothing of them, only of oneself.

"Anything?" Dhorl asked.

Nura closed her eyes and concentrated. She tried to imagine the room on the other side of the bulkhead, but all she could feel was a growing frustration. Strange, that she wanted to succeed. Nura felt an odd sense of peace here. It was almost as if something within her was missing.

"Nothing," Nura said as she opened her eyes again. "Maybe... a table?"

Dhorl glanced towards the other person in the interview room. The man, a breathtakingly handsome Fey'lin named Valano Vaas, shook his head before resuming his unblinking scrutiny of Nura.

If the Talarian made Nura nervous, the Fey'lin had as different an effect on her as there could be. Valano was exquisite, every bit as beautiful as the actors in vid dramas. His crimson hair hung nearly to his shoulders and glistened with a healthy sheen. Every angle and contour of his face seemed sculpted from the finest marble, his magenta skin was smooth and unblemished, and Nura could drown in his brown eyes.

Nura had been taken aback when Valano first entered into the room, and it'd been supremely difficult to keep herself from just staring at him. How could someone not be entranced by Aytheric species? They came so close to the holy ideal of a mortal body.

She recognized that her immediate infatuation was silly. However, that didn't keep Nura from trying her hardest on these tests. Perhaps if she did well, he might favor her with a smile. She longed for him to smile at her.

The Talarian consulted her datapad then typed a few lines. "I've heard enough. Remote viewing is a negative."

It was a curious mixture of relief and disappointment that Nura felt. Certainly, there was no reason for her to hope that her Psy-Agency screening would name her a psychic— about fifty dozen for her to hope it wouldn't— but she didn't savor the notion that there were abilities beyond her.

"What's next?" Nura asked.

"Nothing is next," Dhorl said as she began gathering her datacards. "That will conclude the screening."

"Not yet," Valano said in a deathly soft voice. He'd yet to speak more than five words strung together and never in a tone much louder than a whisper. "There were inconsistencies."

The Talarian looked at her associate and then to Nura. Dhorl's green eyes felt like they could see right through her, which wasn't very surprising, really. Being an Agent, she probably could.

"What would you recommend, Agent Vaas?" Dhorl asked.

"Registration," Valano replied. It came immediate and without hesitation, the order to shackle Nura's mind forever.