I took stock of my new companions while we waited for the gate to finish deciding our fate.
Max Donman I'd already clocked. Tall, built like someone who'd trained for this rather than just survived it, a small scar running down from his left eye like a signature.
He had the kind of posture that said 'I'm in charge here' without actually saying anything. Leader energy. The kind you either grow into or are born with. His was probably both.
The youngest boy couldn't have been more than sixteen. Messy hair that had given up on a style and just committed to chaos, and the kind of face that defaulted to grinning regardless of context. I appreciated that. Optimism outside the walls was either a gift or a disorder, and on him it looked genuine.
The third boy was shorter, stocky, serious in the way of someone who had decided that expressions were a finite resource and he wasn't wasting them. He stood with his arms crossed and surveyed the gate like he was personally evaluating its construction quality.
Then the two girls. The blonde one had a sword at her back, which I respected immediately and without reservation. She had Max's jaw, Max's eyes, the same quality of stillness he carried. Obviously siblings. The resemblance was not subtle.
The other girl was brunette, short hair, and I registered that she was objectively beautiful in the same detached way I might register that a building was tall. What I actually noticed was how close she stood to Max.
Not touching, but in that orbit. The kind of proximity that means something. She was also, I noticed, the only one in the group who looked like she was managing something internally, jaw set, eyes forward, working very hard at appearing calm.
The six of us watched the gate begin to open. I had dreamed about this. Not in the romantic sense. In the literal sense, the kind of dream you have when your brain is sorting through the things it wants and the things it knows it can't have. The gate opening. The walls parting. I had imagined it probably two thousand times. It looked exactly like I thought it would and nothing like I was prepared for.
"Sherry, relax." Max said it quietly, to the brunette girl, without looking at her. "Just relax. Remember everything I told you."
'Interesting,' I filed away.
Twelve soldiers came out of the gate in full black armor, crisp and coordinated, "Guardians of the Walls" printed across their chests in clean white letters. Black masks. No readable faces. They moved like people who had done this exact thing many times and felt nothing about it either way.
The one at the front removed his mask. Middle-aged. Black, with a grey-streaked beard trimmed close. He had the face of a man who had seen enough that very little surprised him anymore, which I recognized because I was many years younger and already developing the same face.
"Congratulations on reaching the walls," he said. His voice was level. Not warm, not cold. Professionally neutral. "I know it's tough out there."
Yes, it is.
"My name is Bala. And I welcome you inside."
Inside. Just inside. Not a name. Not a title. Like the place was so self-evidently the only place worth being that naming it would have been redundant.
"But first," he said, and his eyes moved across all of us with the efficiency of a man cataloguing inventory, landing briefly on me before moving on, "we'll be conducting an ability assessment. All of you." He paused. "I'm confident none of you are infected, given that you passed through the life layer. But protocol is protocol."
He put his mask back on and walked inside without asking a single name. I watched him go.
'We are not as important as we think we are,' I noted. Which was fine. I'd never been important. I was used to the shape of that.
One of the remaining soldiers placed a rod into the ground. It hummed once, and then a blue screen projected from it into the air, solid and clean and impossible looking, the most advanced thing I had seen in my entire life. Which, to be fair, was a low bar. My entire life had been the plain.
"State your name," the masked soldier said, "and walk through the screen."
Max went first. Of course he did.
"Max Donman."
He stepped through the screen like he'd done it before.
"Telekinesis. Level eight." The machine analyzed.
I watched the other four cycle through.
Danny Stam. The serious stocky one. "Density control, level five." He received this information like a quarterly report he had already anticipated.
Rebecca Donman. The blonde with the sword. Max's sister, confirmed. "Material transmutation, level six." She nodded once and stepped aside, and I noticed she immediately looked back at Sherry.
Ernesto Mela. The youngest. He stepped through grinning like it was a carnival attraction. "Portal creation, level six." He pumped his fist with the subtlety of a sixteen year old who had just been told he was excellent, which, fair enough.
I was watching Sherry. I couldn't tell what she had. She was good at keeping her face still, but her hands weren't. I could see it. Small movements. Fingers pressing together, releasing. The particular tension of someone preparing for a result they weren't sure about.
On an impulse I didn't fully think through, I reached over and tapped her shoulder. It wasn't going to recharge me, but I had to start from somewhere.
She turned and looked at me with an expression that said 'what in the entire world do you think you're doing?' with remarkable precision for a glance. Then she stepped forward.
"Sherry Vayne."
She walked through the screen, and I watched Max's shoulders drop about half an inch in something that looked like relief.
"Healer. Level four."
She exhaled. Just barely. The kind of exhale that has been held for a while. I stepped forward.
"Abram Nadez."
I walked through the screen and stood on the other side and waited.
The machine was quiet for longer than it had been for anyone else. Not long. Maybe three seconds. But three seconds is a very specific kind of long when six people are watching you and twelve soldiers in black armor are standing nearby.
"Charger. Level one."
"What?" One of the soldiers said it out loud. Just like that. Not a question. An involuntary response, like his professionalism had briefly lost its footing.
I looked at him. 'Am I in trouble?'
He was already reaching for his communication device. "Lord Bala." His voice was carefully neutral now, overcorrecting. "We have a charger."
The silence that followed was short and loaded. Bala came back through the gate.
He looked at the soldier. "Are you certain?"
"Level one, sir."
Bala was quiet for a moment. "It doesn't matter," he said, in the tone of someone deciding something. "Does it." It wasn't a question. He looked at the group. "Who?"
They pointed at me. Bala walked over and looked at me the way you look at something you weren't expecting to find. Not hostile. More like a man recalibrating.
"Son," he said. "What is your name?"
"Abram Nadez."
"Would you mind going through the screen once more?"
I have a feeling, I thought, that level one is either very bad or very good and I genuinely cannot tell which.