Her attendant came back for her after the physician, Hunter, had released her.

Hunter had talked the entire time. His mood was big enough that she almost believed she could feel him in the aether. Even if she was fooling herself, the stimulation was enough to pull her back into the moment, to stitch her footing into the place and time she was meant to be. She found a sense of gratitude in the drawn out ritual of health checks he performed — though there seemed to be little cohesion to what he was doing based on her experience in the wildlands. It seemed as if whatever they thought affected her had taken all of her — her heart, her mind, her blood, her muscles. When he was done, Hunter had rolled her authentication page back to a cylindrical shape and tapped it against the portal until he was met with a resounding beep.

"We'll see you again tomorrow afternoon for the — testing," He tapped himself on the temple before saying the final word.

It took her a beat to realize that he was talking about her senses. She blinked and turned away as soon as she caught it — of course.

She'd not exactly understood when her attendant had explained that she was a "Mystic," that the direction of her "intake" was not a set course, that everything was dependent on test results. She caught on quickly and resolved to keep quiet about her seeming loss of senses, to relax into the feeling that Hunter's good mood felt like a face pressed up against a steamy window. She understood that these people were interested in her because she could access the aether. And without that ready access she wasn't sure where she stood at the moment.

Her attendant was on the other side of the door that slid open again by some unseen mechanism as Hunter placed the cylinder back in her hand.

It closed abruptly after her and she glanced back at it, wondering after the nature of the mechanism. But her thoughts were interrupted by an intrusive feeling of doom. She spun around to see the blank stare of her attendant watching her closely, the flutter of a fan kicked on in the machine mounted to the side of his face.

She moved to hand him the document, but he shook his head. "You'll keep that until tomorrow's appointment." He made a motion to open the loose drape of his over jacket and pointed to a narrow pocket sewn into the breast of the garment.

She nodded and opened her own jacket, finding that the cylindrical scroll fit perfectly in the little pocket.

They got to the end of the hall, to what seemed to be the main branch of the building's throughways, and she turned toward what she remembered to be the route to the lift. But a few steps in, she realized that her attendant was no longer walking next to her.

She turned back and saw him standing at the corner of the entrance to the main hallway, people stepped around her, around him. It was much busier than it had been when they'd come down for the appointment. He was standing straight-backed and staring ahead, his posture as perfect as a tree growing straight out of the heart of an open meadow.

She cleared her throat as she turned to him. "Excuse me, attendant?"

She could hear the machine on his neck whirring, alive with mechanical crackling, sounds she'd only heard in the worst context before. And she couldn't help but shiver in response to the sound — she supposed that the people in the city were so far removed from the wildlands, from the dangers it held. Her body was screaming "butcher" as she listened to the machine cycling through its myriad sounds. While she watched him and waited for a response, she pretended her feet were roots that they grew deep into the dirt and all of the energy of the soil pulsed against them, grounding her — a techniques her mother had taught her to keep her senses grounded.

After a few moments of nothing, she felt someone bump into the back of her. She turned and was face to face with a man no taller than her. He was delicately built with prominent, high-placed cheekbones and wide, deep brown eyes. His dark hair was cut close to his scalp, his face as bare as his head, revealing a clear complexion of warm toned dusky brown skin.

"I'm sorry, miss, busy walkway," He spoke as if he was reciting a remembered line. He bowed his head briefly and moved to step around her.

"I'm sorry to bother you," She answered. "But can you maybe help me?"

He'd gotten a few steps past her but turned back. His stare was intense, lit by a curiosity that suddenly seemed insatiable. "Excuse me?" He was intensely scanning her face, her hair. "You are —" He motioned to his own head, as if he was grasping at a thread of hair that wasn't there.

She glanced back at her attendant who was still staring blankly and realized that he was half shorn with the underside of his hair shaved. The hallway was largely full of people with closely shaved heads. She realized that aside from Hunter — who'd long dark hair pulled back into an elaborate braid — everyone else had been cleanly cut.

She touched a strand from her ponytail lightly. She tried to communicate what she thought he was asking. "I-I am in 'intake' and my, um, my 'attendant' has stopped responding."

He seemed barely able to peel his eyes off of her to regard the silent attendant — a behemoth compared to almost everyone in the hall — stuck in place.

The next thing he said made no sense to her, "But you're a woman."

She glanced down the hallway. Plenty of the people milling about her appeared to be women. They all wore the same loose gray uniform but some were shaped in ways that could not hide the curves of their body. "Yes, there are many women here." She motioned to someone across the hallway that was very obviously female.

He did not tear his eyes from her. He again spoke in that very robotic way, "They are of the crowd, they were born here, they were not spared from the wilds through intake. Why are you special?"

She could not answer him. She looked up to her attendant again and then back at him, a desperate feeling growing within her.