She had been handed a cylindrical object and was told that it was her identification. Though she did not dare unfurl it, it appeared to be a stiff sort of parchment that had been rolled tightly.

The object had come from he who was not her mother. He called himself her "attendant." He had said that he was responsible to guide her through "intake." He'd meandered through what seemed like endless indecipherable information on her current predicament when she was half awake and making herself dizzy trying to get some read on his consciousness.

When he'd stopped to ask if she had any questions, she didn't know what to say.

His face wore no expression and the aether held no impression of his thoughts, but he'd cocked his head to the side and said. "You'll pass through the program one way or another, we all do."

And something about that felt ominous. She didn't dare ask him why he read flat as a wall, she didn't ask him why the world was quiet, she didn't ask him about her family, her sister.

He handed her the plastic scroll and led her down several similar hallways to a similar room.

The room was another gray concrete chamber with recessed tracks of lights along the ceiling and small, a small portal window with thick, opaque glass that only let through an idea of light. In the new room, there was a row of straight-backed metal chairs chained to the wall.

Though she still felt unsteady on her feet, she wagered she was more comfortable standing than trying to sit on one of them.

She fiddled with her identification but was still troubled with catching the details of the memories that bubbled up, simmering in the chasm of consciousness where she'd once reached through to the infiniteness of the aether. 

She still wasn't sure if it was the utter isolation of her current condition or something else that had untethered her from her senses. It was as if some tie had been cut from her flesh and her own thoughts had burst forth like blood from the wound, obscuring the place where she had once found connection with the larger world.

There were pieces of memory, of feet tearing through the brush, of mountain air heavy with the distinct sounds of arrows snapping, the aether thick with the feeling of life everywhere.

For a brief moment she fell into it. She could hear the swift whisper of a bow seven or eight paces away, its energy echoing the sentiment of its payload.

"Get out of here, Evara," His voice was almost inaudible among the din that rolled through the valley. If she hadn't heard it echoing—

"Forget it," Senya, touched her arm. "He's right, we have to turn it off, let it go, get out of here."

Evara got the vague sense that she had somehow objected but was interrupted by a sudden explosion of pain, of absolute terror. She felt as if she was being ripped limb from limb.

In the new gray room, she blinked against the sudden sensory nightmare of the memory. She fell out of time and back into her body, her physical ears ringing with a rough sound like metal on metal. When she blinked again, she realized there was a door perpendicular to the bank of chairs and it was sliding open slowly. Its metallic scream filled the void of the noise she'd only just cut off.

She felt the depth of the room shift — as if the shadows on the edges of her perception momentarily lifted before dashing back in.

As the door cleared the opening, she could see a small, pasty-faced man in loose gray clothes and long black gloves.

"055-7426B?" He repeated the number that she now understood belonged to her.

She nodded, pressing her nails into the heel of her hand to keep her in the room and out of her memory.

"Are you quite alright?" He spoke with a strange accent unlike any she'd heard in the wildlands. His voice seemed to kick up around the vowels and swoop down like a bird to deliver crisp consonants.

She managed another nod, stooping gracelessly to snag the end of the tube that had dropped to the floor when she'd slipped in and out of memory. She took a few steps toward him and held it out. He nodded and reached out, taking it from her.

"Well then, you'll come on in." He tucked the tube under his arm and stepped to the side of the walkway revealed by the now open door. She led the way into a seemingly endless passage of gray walls, gray ceilings, gray floors and the occasional interruption of dull chrome doors.

He walked a step behind her, she could smell a light herbal scent wafting off of him but other than that he was just another quiet, unremarkable object among the gray surroundings. He wore a tight-fitting gray cap and a gray mask that covered the bottom half of his face. She did not look long into his face, but she remembered that his eyes were likely dark and small, buried under a prominent white brow. The only sense of contrast she had was the easy and straight-legged gait of him in comparison to the crooked bearing of her attendant.

They rounded a bend in the hallway before coming to a door that slowly groaned open as they approached.

"You'll go through," The man stepped up next to her again and motioned through the door same as he had in the waiting room.

She nodded. What other choice did she have?

Inside the room was a small metal table covered with a white cloth and a raised platform that looked like the altar her folk would lay their dead upon. On the far wall, the man approached what looked like the other portal windows she'd seen in the building, but he tapped it with the tube she'd given him and it lit up. He unfurled the tube and ran his eyes over it.

"Please get up on the table." He said, his concentration still on the page.

She glanced momentarily to the metal table but quickly determined that he meant the hunk of gray concrete, so she climbed up and shivered against the chill of the stone as it bit through the thin gray slacks she'd been issued.

The man subjected her to several minutes of engrossed silence before identifying himself. He was still barely able to pull his eyes from the page "Well then, I am Physician 78-224, my common name is Hunter if that is easier for you to remember. And you will again confirm to me your identity?"

She felt her brain jolt as if it was shifting through gears. "Erm, zero-four-five-bee dash zero-zero-two-six." It took her a moment but then it came out of her as if it had been a fact she'd always known.

He nodded. "And your common name?"

"Evara. I'm Evara Greenblade."

He nodded again, "Well then, Greenblade, it seems as if you've recovered bodily from your ordeal with brain fever. But how have you progressed internally?" He raised a black-gloved finger to tap against his temple.

Evara opened her mouth to confess — to tell the truth that she feared she was locked out of the aether, that she could only see shadows, that she was afraid. But as the wind of her breath slipped against her throat, something held her quiet, something outside of herself, something urgent.

What came next was not of her own mind: "I grow stronger every moment, sir."

He broke into a wide smile, his nod progressed to a vigorous bounce. His gloved fingers danced over the surface of the parchment, "I suspected as such and must admit I'm relieve to be vindicated in your case."