“Happy?” the Ruler asked.

“Very,” I replied.

He looked away from me, his hands resting calmly behind his back. “I didn’t think you’ll pass the Culling when I first read about you. I must say, you’ve surprised me. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the time here at my school.”

I followed my eyes to the door where he was looking and nodded even though I knew he couldn’t see me. We waited silently for a minute, both of us eyeing the door, waiting for Vera to finish her interview with the Seer. At least I was. After what felt like an eternity of waiting, in a room with a man I would one day kill, the door opened and a dejected Vera walked through it.

“What?” I asked her, though I already knew what. We both grew up knowing that we were special and God chose us. It wasn’t a question, but a fact that was repeatedly proven by the powers we used every day. Every mind I read made me feel different; special. I knew that Vera felt similarly. For the Seer who represented the absolute to tell us that the facts that we knew were lies…

“They lied to us,” Vera whispered. “The church, the orphanage– us. We lied to ourselves, Kira,” she begged, both an accusation and a plea.

“I get it–” I tried, but Vera interrupted me before I could finish.

“No, Kira, you don’t,” she said almost angrily. I could feel the air around the room begin to move of its own accord and begin to heat up. The culprit of the phenomenon stared heatedly at me, unaware of what her Gift was doing around her. I could see from the peripheral the Ruler watching imperturbably from the corner of the room. “This whole time, I believed that we would be able to succeed because we were chosen. You might not care for the church, but I do. I prayed every day Kira. Every. Single. Day.”

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She punctuated each word with an unconscious pulse of air. She paused herself and all the air in the room settled. I readied my Gift and prepared to read through her mind but she stopped me. “Don’t, Kira. I don’t want you to read my mind. You’ll say all the right things. Just let me be mad.”

I nodded and deactivated my Gift though I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want me to calm her down. “I won’t,” I said firmly.

She took a few seconds to compose herself. I could feel her heartbeat steady as she took deep breaths in and out. She smiled. “I got in,” she said.

I smiled back. “Same. I’m happy for you.”

For the first time since Vera entered the room, she took a moment to take in her surroundings. Her eyes slowly trailed down the paints and she followed the expensive furniture with a cautious gaze. She laughed nervously. “I wouldn’t have had to pay for all of this if I broke it right?”

The Ruler spoke startling the both of us. “You won’t be able to break anything while you’re in my domain.”

“So,” Vera began, apparently forgetting her previous early mid-life crisis and completely ignoring the Ruler, “what do you think happened to Christopher and everyone else who failed the Culling.”

I paused and thought for a moment. “How are you so calm about eliminating Christopher?” I asked. “I get not caring about everyone else, but he was our teammate.”

Vera took in my question calmly. “I think I should be asking you. You read my mind after he got eliminated, didn’t you? You already know the answer to your question.”

I did. Because if he got to go through the Culling, then one of us wouldn’t have. It was a simple calculation for Vera. Plus, we hadn’t even known him for that long and it wasn’t like he wasn’t trying his best to beat us.

“Same reason as you, I guess,” I said.

She smiled as if I had just conceded a point to her. “See,” she said and I didn’t. She shook her head. “So, what do you think happened to them.”

They were probably escorted outside of the Academy and left to live their lives. I was just about to say that when the door began to open. I closed my open mouth and craned my neck to see who was about to enter. Then I froze.