Valentine doesn’t remember much else of his earliest days at DEXO. He remembers the ceiling of the medical wing, water stained panels with tiny holes like reverse stars. The rails of the hospital bed, cold to the touch. The weight of blankets and the hot itchy ache of healing incisions. He knew that most of the others who went first didn’t make it, and that his own survival had very much been in question.

There’d been whispered conversations over his head while his dressings were changed and he’d been slipping in and out of consciousness, about whether or not it was right to do such things to children and if it might be best if he didn’t make it through after all. He remembers thinking, I don’t want to die.

Eventually he’d been released back to the dorms and they were much less crowded than the last time he had been there. His arms and legs were weak and shaky and felt like they had belonged to someone else, his coordination and responsiveness gone to shit. He’d slept and slept and had been prodded awake to eat bland rations and shuffle around the exercise yard with the others who had managed to survive their own procedures so far. He had check ins with a nurse who clucked disapprovingly at how slow he was healing. She had an oppressively long list of tests to work through to see if any of his augmentations had kicked in yet.

The other children had been frightened by his scars and his lethargy and thousand yard stare. They’d kept their distance and it might’ve upset him at the time if only he could’ve mustered the energy or the will to care.

He’d eventually recovered enough to receive his class assignment. He’d never had any traditional schooling so he’d been placed in a remedial group where he’d stay until he learned how to read and write and perform basic math. From there he’d be switched to regular classes which would prepare him for his future role as a Paranormal Investigator.

Even though he’d started out far, far behind the other children Valentine had caught up with an alarming speed. Some of the staff was convinced he’d been faking his ignorance the whole time but thankfully they had too many other things to worry about to give him too much grief over it. His memory had become incredible; he could recall anything after seeing it once and he learned to read almost overnight. He remembers the thrill of feeling like a whole new world had opened up to him where he understood so much more than he ever did, ever could before. He could finally read his chart, see what they hadn’t told him. He could read the other children’s charts. He could potentially learn what was in store for them all, assuming someone had written down the master plan for DEXO and he somehow managed to access it.

He was given a battered and scuffed tablet that had seen better days. It came preloaded with texts to study, histories of paranormal events across the world, survivalist guides, how to settle interpersonal disputes, basic engineering and so on. It was all pretty dry reading but he sped through it all the same, voracious for new information. He hated DEXO, the people and the program, was fearful of what they’d make him into, but he loved learning more than anything else he’d experienced in his life so far.

In his classes he was asked to make connections, to not focus on specific naming conventions or regional beliefs but to think critically and categorize: what types of paranormal events could occur, what were common causes, what steps should be taken. It became a game of sorts to him, figuring out those puzzles and learning to recognize patterns and it was something he was really, really good at.

Unfortunately it only furthered the divide between him and his peers when he made connections and drew conclusions that they could not. Almost all of the children that had been brought to the facility around the same time he had been had gone through the first round of enhancement procedures by then. Their results had been better than what was hoped for thanks to the insight gained and changes made after the almost complete failure that was Valentine’s cohort.

Due to poor nutrition from a young age, bad luck with infections, and his high rejection rate of biomechanical components Valentine was much smaller than his classmates and his scarring was extensive. He served as a constant uncomfortable reminder to his classmates of what could have all too easily happened to them as well. They were being cultivated as the pinnacle of all humanity had to offer; he was something that had somehow managed to claw its way out of the reject pile.

He was the cleverest of them all by far. He was subjected to a number of tests and evaluations to determine if his level of intelligence was something that could be replicated or if it was just a fluke. He was never told the results.

Years passed. There were more procedures, some medical some not. On one memorable occasion he spent an afternoon with a fortune teller so that they could determine if he had a particular affinity for any of the spiritual disciplines. There were cards and bones and sticks and tea leaves and he found the process fascinating if incomprehensible. The fortune teller on the other hand had grown progressively more agitated throughout the session, unable to get a clear reading. Valentine had finally asked if he could just study a bit of everything then; he loved to learn so it’d hardly be a chore. The fortune teller had just glared, shoved a piece of paper and a pencil in his direction and snappishly told him to draw a series of dashed lines.

His results ended up being inconclusive so while his classmates were split up into specialization groups for an hour each day, he was granted a study hall of sorts to independently pursue whatever struck his fancy. He wasn’t sure what he enjoyed more, being able to learn as much as he was able to glean from the provided texts or the luxury of having a guaranteed hour a day all to himself.

He knew that he should’ve made an effort to connect with his classmates. His teachers certainly tried to encourage them to all make friends but he really just didn’t know how. People were impermanent fixtures in his life, there one minute and gone the next so it hardly seemed worth the effort.

He taught himself how to make talismans and how to store power within an object.

He memorized prayers and poems and mantras and learned how to channel power through the words he spoke, how to calm angry spirits, how to lay them to rest.

He studied engineering and basic ship repair, how to troubleshoot different makes of life support systems. He studied the history of mankind’s achievements from fire and the wheel to the fusion reactors and the first microchip.

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The facility was an oddly liminal sort of space. The weather was temperate enough that the seasons all blended together and there was a purposeful distinct lack of clocks and calendars. Classes and days ran long and he learned so much but there didn’t seem to be any definitive educational milestones to meet or an end date so time just went on and on.

They were insulated from the outside world and whatever news there was of the Ark Project and the continued deterioration of the planet. There were ships taking off at regular intervals, visible from the exercise yard, a reminder of the ultimate goal of DEXO. None of the children had been assigned to them just yet. Their time would come but for now they would train and prepare.

Then the bombings started.

It was launch pads at first. A group named Karma took responsibility. They said that you reap what you sow and that the human race had it coming. Humanity shouldn’t be allowed to inflict itself upon other planets after destroying its own.

No one told the children about this directly of course, they just pieced together snatches of overheard conversations. The whole picture was disturbing. They have very nearly run out of time. Not everyone was going to make it off the planet and to top it off there were terrorist groups that were gaining members exponentially. They said that humanity had its chance, they’e destroyed one planet already and people should just accept their fate instead of fighting each other for a spot on one of the Ark Project ships. They said that people should have come together in their last days and made their exit with grace and acceptance instead of fear and panic.

Governments cracked down and there were no more bombings and while everyone was not precisely at ease there wasn’t any palpable air of concern at the facility, until a ship was destroyed weeks before it was due to launch.

There was an influx of soldiers present on the base, stricter curfews, more staff asked to stop commuting and to start living where they worked. There was definite sense of fear, of being blown up, of not making it out before the ships stopped launching for good. Valentine wondered if he’d actually make it to space or if everything he’d endured so far would come to nothing.

The children were much calmer than the adults, having come to terms with their own mortality through the course of the program. There were too many of them that had never returned from the medical wing at that point; they were all too aware that they had no control over their fate, whatever that might be.

It was decided that several regional facilities would be combined to consolidate personnel and to address increasing security needs. The children were loaded up on buses and Valentine was struck by a wave of déjà vu. The new facility was much the same as the old, just larger and a bit more run down. They did all have beds at least but the dorms were packed. Valentine wasn’t used to all the noise and clutter and the constant brush of other bodies against his own. It had been overwhelming, too much stimulus to process.

Their class rosters were all shuffled and staff reassigned and Valentine found himself lost amongst a sea of strangers. Not that he ever really got to know his classmates, or wanted to for that matter but a hostile familiar face would’ve been slightly more reassuring than the faintly repulsed faces of strangers.

His scars had faded as much as they were ever going to which wasn’t much at all and he was still short for his age, which by his best estimate was anywhere between twelve and fourteen years. Despite all the surgeries and spiritual augmentations he still had a very slight build and weak constitution. Academically he was peerless which had caused quite a bit of debate in regards to his placement at this new facility.

He stuck out like a sore thumb.

After a never ending series of interviews and many hushed discussions amongst the heads of the new facility Valentine ended up being categorized as mid-grade. His life became a waking nightmare as a result.

He was bullied for his intelligence, his size, his overabundance of scars, and his tendency to keep to himself. The other children were careful to not leave any obvious marks but the adults were all busy enough with their own tasks that they were more than willing to look the other way as long as things didn’t get too out of hand. They were trying to save humanity, not run a daycare.

Valentine tried to blend in during classes, only speaking up when directly spoken to but his new teachers quickly learned that he could be depended upon to always have the right answer. They used this to try to motivate the other children in his classes to better apply themselves, to compete with him intellectually but it only resulted in building resentment and making him even more of a target.

Physical training had become part of their regime. Augmentations made it possible for program participants to exceed normal human parameters but muscle building and coordination and flexibility would still all have to be earned the old fashioned way.

Valentine trained in secret on his own, desperate to put on muscle. But no matter how hard he pushed himself he couldn’t overcome the limitations of his body. The bullying continued and while he wished that he could make a show of strength to get them all just to leave him the hell alone his progress was just too slow.

So he switched strategies. He learned all the hiding places, how to dodge and evade and escape. He took pride in becoming uncatchable. Most of his tormentors gave up when it became too much trouble to track him down and they switched to easier, slower and less clever targets.

The remaining few had taken it as a personal challenge to run him down. There was this one kid in particular who had to be at least several years older and was easily twice Valentine’s size and he was middling smart which at a regular sort of school would have served him well enough but amongst the enhanced he was as dumb as a post.

He cornered Valentine at lunch one day and normally the cafeteria was a safe place, closely monitored by a number of adults but on that particular day there had been the threat of more bombings and they were all off getting briefed while a skeleton crew stayed behind.

Valentine booked it as usual the second he twigged to what was happening but thanks to being caught off guard he took a right when he should’ve taken a left and got cornered in front of a door that wouldn’t open.

The next thing he knows he’s waking up in the medical wing. The nurse asks him what in the world he thought he was doing up on the roof. “Roof?” he croaks. He can’t really feel much of anything below his neck, which starts a low grade flutter of panic in his chest.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” they tsk at him, injecting something into his IV. “Fall like that, and the way you landed.”

What fall? Everything fades to black.