The weeks began to fly by as Charles sat through his classes. Each week, each student began to fine-tune their skills with The Minds, each one piggybacking on the strength that they found within themselves. It didn’t take very long before Charles realized that he had a special knack for tracking. He was too old to be a bounty hunter. He assumed he would be an outcast.

  The academy had him work a job as an analyst as part of his training. With more money than he had seen in his life, he now could do things he didn’t even think were possible. He spent his afternoons drinking expensive wine and dining at fancy establishments. He felt relaxed and comfortable with his life.

  He found that this was nothing like what he remembered of school, as it was more of a luxury. Nothing was hard about the work that he did. The Minds did most of the work for him. There was one thing that did make him nervous, and that was training day. His mentors assured him that there was no reason to be nervous, as the assessment was purely meant to see how well he had built up The Minds. But he was nervous nonetheless. He had no idea what it was that he wanted to do. What if they put him somewhere he didn’t want to go?

  Charles decided to take this problem to Dr. Ingles, who often stayed late, opting to spend most of his days reading outside his office. When he saw Charles approach him, his face lit up. He had become very fond of Charles; it was something about their similarities in age that comforted him.

  “How are you?” he asked, looking up at Charles. He was sitting on a bench outside his office. The light starkly contrasted his face as it illuminated the book that he was reading.

  Charlie shook his hand before sitting down next to him, “Troubled, what are you reading there?” Charles pointed to the book.

  Dr. Ingles turned it over in his hands, “History of Franklin Richards. He was a scientist from before the creation of The Minds. He was trying to study something known at that time as chaos intelligence. It was a form of intelligence that is created spontaneously, not derived from any one thing.”

  ”Was that how The Minds were created?” Charles said, scratching his head.

  ”Well, the current notion was that The Minds had a creator who founded CelTec, but no one truly knows. According to Franklin Richards, he might have believed that the minds arose not from us but because of us. But enough nonsense, I don’t want to spin your head off. What’s bothering you, my friend?”

  Charles looked out of the window. A storm was approaching that was changing the sky to dark and hideous colors.

  "It's about training day. I’m worried that I won’t do well.” Charlie shook his head.

  Dr. Ingles leaned in on him. ”Well, the assessment isn’t meant to be a trick or stressful. It’s meant to help you figure out what you and The Minds are best at.” He looked out at the sky.

  ”But what if it's not what I want to do with the rest of my life?”

  Dr. Ingles took a long pause, perplexed by the question and Charles's own perplexity. The Minds offered Dr. Ingles little help. They could pull out a lot of information, but could not read another person's mind.

  “Well,” the mentor eventually said. “You don’t have to follow what the assessment comes out to, but most people usually do. It’s the easiest way to live your life. You will be handed whichever job pays you the most money.” The mentor paused again. “What is it that you liked to do when you were younger?”

  Charles looked at his mentor with a blank stare before saying, “If I’m being honest, I don’t remember much of my childhood or much of my youth at all. It’s never relevant to me.”

  Dr. Ingles nodded, “I also only remember small bits of my childhood. I was hoping that it would give us an inkling into what you might be interested in.”

  Charles looked longingly out past the windows. “There are a couple of things that I remember from my past. When I was younger, my father would lay out these little clues for me that would eventually come together into something. For my birthday one year, I spent hours trying to piece together the puzzle pieces that my father had hidden around the house. I had to follow his clues to find all of them.”

  ”Was your father big in your life?” Ingles asked?

  ”He was always there, although I didn’t see him much when I was growing up; he worked hard for me. Came home late, exhausted, but still managed to play games with us and help us with what was important. Homework, those kinds of things.” There was a roaring thunder that startled Charles.

  “Is your father still around?” He asked.

  “No, he actually passed a year after my sixteenth birthday. He and my mom, actually. We were in a nasty crash. My mom was killed instantly, but they kept my dad alive for about a month before he succumbed to his injuries. I was put into a coma for a little over a year. My spinal cord was partially severed. When I came out of it, the doctors informed me what had happened.”

  “What happened to you after you came out of the coma?” Ingles asked, and he realized that Charlie was talking about it confidently. It had been a long time since for him.

  ”Well, shortly after the accident, I was put in a recovery program to get most of my neural functioning back. The recovery program worked well, but it drained the last little bit of money that my family had saved up. After the treatment was done, I was thrown out onto the streets.”

  ”Did you not have a home to go back to?”

  Charles looked back at Ingles. “No, they ended up auctioning off the house while I was in a coma. What made things worse was that I had severe amnesia and couldn’t contact anyone. I eventually tried to go back and find out if I had any other family or friends. But I couldn’t find anything, and no one reached out to me. I was stuck and alone.”

  ”What did you eventually end up doing?” It had begun to rain heavily outside.

  “I did what I had to do to survive. Scraped together what money and food I could find for a month or so. I would hang around an area called Guss Street. The people who went through there were a healthy mix of people. Some were very rich while others were very poor. There was this woman, her name was Mary. She came from a wealthy family somewhere up north. She used to eat at a cafe every week. Right outside the alleyway where I was camped out. It was actually a pretty nice spot, clean, and I never bothered anyone, so I was able to hang around.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “How long were you there?” Ingles shifted his weight to one side of his body, and the book on his lap slid onto the bench.

  ”I can’t exactly remember, but it felt like a while. I was still having bad amnesia at this point. But this woman, Mary, eventually noticed me. She would buy me snacks and different things and tell me about her life. She had always had an aspiration about becoming a dentist, but without The Minds. She couldn’t use the new equipment. I actually think she did end up working in a dentist's office, but I don’t think he ever developed the mind. Or at least as far as I could tell.

  ”You lost contact with her?” The mentor asked

  “Well,” Charles paused. “I did because I robbed her. She had this purse that she would always bring to the cafe every single time. Eventually, I got curious enough to ask about it. She told me that the purse was something that had been passed down to her by her mother. It had some kind of fancy Italian name, one that I can’t remember. She would never leave her bag anywhere; it was always attached to her arm like it was glued on. Then one day, she came rushing into the cafe. Her father had died. She was distraught, her face was flustered and full of tears. I did the best I could to console her as much as possible, but I could tell she was in pain. Eventually, she decided that she needed to go to the washroom to clean up. It was the first and only time that she had ever parted with her bag. She just left it on the table while she left to go clean up.”

  “So what did you do?” The mentor asked?

  ”I took the bag, and I ran off. Hopped on a bus that was leaving nearby. I took that bus for as long as I possibly could before I hopped onto a couple other buses, riding them for as long as I could until I didn’t even know where I was.”

  “Did anyone ever come after you?” the mentor asked.

  Charles shrugged, “I always thought that someone would. But then, I wasn’t anyone. I barely had a name, and I didn’t have any address. I ended up selling that purse, and with that money, I was able to buy myself a little apartment. I cleaned myself up pretty well, and then within a couple of months, I was working at a general store. I worked myself all the way up to a manager. I hated that job. I worked there all the way up until I got The Minds. Now I have a real chance to change my life. But I don’t know if I deserve it.”

  ”Did you ever regret stealing from Mary?” Ingles asked.

  ”I always told myself I didn’t have a choice. I wouldn’t have gotten to where I am now without that purse.” Charles rubbed his palms together nervously.

  ”Maybe you don’t have a choice this time either.” Dr. Ingles said, grabbing his raincoat. “Things are more connected than you realize. It's not by chance that you got into this academy. Just as you were destined to steal from Mary. I reckon you will be fine.

  Training Day rapidly approached. The whole thing would be over in seven hours and thirty minutes. With the additional brakes needed. The Minds were encouraged to be utilized as much as possible. The room that they brought Charles into was cold; the walls were made of solid metal. The instructor told him that he would have to wait for a while to let The Minds desensitize themselves from the surroundings. The room was completely cut off from the world, meaning they could only carry with them The Minds that they had trained. The instructors then closed the door behind him, leaving Charles staring at the blank metal wall in front of him. The room was stripped to the bones, nothing but a chair and a desk. Charles didn’t move a muscle. He lost track of time pretty fast, unsure if it had been ten minutes or an hour.

  Eventually, a woman came into the room. She had long dark hair and was wearing a formal suit. She nodded to Charles, who nodded back. The woman was cold to Charles. She didn’t say anything but sat on the other side of him. She placed a bag down by her feet before pulling out a long circular object.

  “Do you still go by Charlie?” The woman asked? She set the long object down in front of him.

  He shook his head, “No, I go by Charles now. My government name.” She nodded, writing it down on the piece of paper she had in front of her. She instructed him to hold the device.

  He grabbed the device, which felt uncomfortable in his hands; it was extremely slippery. He felt dread wash over him as the woman looked up at him, “In a couple of seconds, you are going to feel very disoriented. I need you to try and focus and tell me what is happening.”

  Charles felt the air in his lungs slowly seep out of him. Breathing was difficult as his vision began to twist and contort.

  ”STAY STILL,” the woman said to him, her voice raised. Charles didn’t feel like he was moving, but he must have been. He tried to tense his muscles, but he couldn’t feel them press against his bones. Everything felt like liquid.

  ”I’m trying, it's hard to grasp,” Charles grunted. The Minds seemed to be nowhere in his subconscious.

  Charles looked down at his hand, and the device had vanished.

  The woman leaned in closer to him, “Look in front of you,” the woman said.

  Charles struggled to look forward; black lines crept in his vision, crowding the sides of his eyes. The giant metal wall was replaced by a large screen.

  ”Tell me what you see,” the woman asked calmly.

  Charles grunted, squinting his eyes as he tried to focus on what was in front of him. The image on the screen was green, nauseating with an array of colors all cast in shadows. The colors swooped up to the top of the screen before fizzling out.

  “Grass.” Charles shot out as fast as he could, hoping it would be over soon. He didn’t care about training day anymore; he just wanted it to be over.

  The woman flipped the screen to a different image, once again blurrier than the last. Charles had no idea what this test was trying to find in him. He was disoriented and confused, collard bead dancing around his vision. This went on for what felt like forever. To the point where Charles was sure that he was seeing the same images over and over again.

  Eventually, the women said, “Pay close attention to this last one. Charles realized that the image on the screen was different. Whereas most of the other images had only one main color, there were multiple colors.

  “I’m not sure,” He grunted. “A person, maybe?”

  Suddenly, everything else went back to normal. Charles blinked rapidly to make sure he had shaken everything out of his system. He could see the woman sitting in front of him clearly.

  ”It will only be a moment, and someone else will come in to give you your scores.” The woman swiftly left as fast as she had originally come in. Charles squeezed his hands, watching the color fill back into his white palm.

  The next person to walk into the room was a man. He had wispy hair that lay sprawled across his face.

  ”Good evening,” the man said, his voice almost masked in a thick European accent. Charles assumed the man was not from here. He smiled, “You tested well, I mean, almost no one with The Minds tests poorly, so there was no stress about that. But most people are nervous about taking the test. How did you feel about it?” The man smiled kindly.

  ”It was uncomfortable… at some points I wasn’t able to breathe. What was that about?” Charles asked.

  The man grumbled for a second before masking it in a light-hearted chuckle. “Well, everyone has to go through it, but I’ll make a note that it was uncomfortable.” The man made no effort to write anything down.

  He repositioned himself in his seat before saying, “Well, there were a couple of things that jumped out to us about your test. You seemed to excel at perception, and you have an acute discipline to follow orders. These are great traits that CelTec can make use of.”

  ”I am more curious about what my assignment recommendation is going to be.” Charles asked

  The man gestured towards the door, “As most people are. Follow me.” The man led Charles down to a hallway that opened into a room with a large box stationed in the middle of the room. The box clicked and hissed before what looked like a thin piece of stone popped out. The man grabbed the stone and handed it to Charles.

  “Here’s your assignment. The exit is that way.” The man pointed towards the door before he exited.

  Charles looked down at the tablet made of stone. The letters in the stone were etched and read, “Special Assignment: Headhunter. Officer Rodger Stills.