There was a hole the size of Mari's keycard to the barracks in her back, and a hole in her left hand the size of a bottle cap.

In the infirmary, those holes became scars with the wonderful new nanotechnology the Empire had stolen re-purposed from the Galactic Federation.

Mari wobbled into the infirmary with the sword, set it on the closest table to the entrance, and laid down on a stretcher. When the attending nurse tried to find her heartbeat, and there wasn't any, she tried checking different appendages.

By then Mari was starting to lose blood so the nurse did what any fully trained health android would do. She assumed Mari had no pulse because she was either dead, an android, or a cyborg with a mechanic heart. Mari was still responsive so she was not dead. And if Mari were an android she would have sent her a wireless connection to what software or hardware problems she had.

Therefore the android came to the conclusion that Mari is in fact a cyborg.

While keeping a friendly smile as to not scare her patients, Android Rena sent out an alert signal to the nearest cyborg repair android. Androd Cera came over and scanned Mari with his retina display, and she was in fact, not a cyborg. One by one distress calls were pinged across the infirmary to solve the case of the missing heart.

Eric was taking Bahram to the infirmary when he saw the circus. A smiling android continued to "help" while its victim patient continued to scream in pain. A few other androids surrounded Rena and they were all trying to diagnose Mari as she bled out on the stretcher, but all they kept pinging each other were error codes.

Eric was confused because no one else in the room was stopping them. He stopped a doctor to ask for help but once he saw his face, he knew.

All of the infirmary staff were androids. He didn't understand why he didn't notice until just then. It was possibly because Eric rarely got injured or felt pain so he had no reason to visit the infirmary frequently.

He left Bahram on a stretcher and then tried to pull android Rena away from Mari, but the moment his hands met her shoulders, all of the androids in the room stooped.

They paused, and turned their heads uncannily into the direction of Eric, some even going a full 180 degrees.

His left eye as they all pinged him various messages and he sighed. Bahram watched as Eric took the sword from a nearby table, walked over to Mari and thrust it into her chest. The sword slowly receded into her chest, being swallowed by a bright light, and Eric glared at android Rena when he was done. Suddenly a pulse was found and the androids went back to tend to the other patients, no longer twittering over Mari.

Rena brought over a medical cart, took out a tube of paste, and applied it over the hole in Mari's hand. She next flipped her over on her stomach and did the same. A bag of blood was hooked into her arm when everything was said and done. The nano-bots in the blood sped up her healing process and the past over her exposed flesh would help her grow new skin cells within a few days.

"Thank you for visiting the infirmary! Please scan the QR code on the way out and let us know how we did," Rena told Mari.

Mari weakly nodded as Rena made her way for her next victim, Bahram. Bahram's whiskers twitched when Rena scanned his body, and the entire circus started all over again.

After that day, Bahram decided that the military was not for him.

----------------------------------------

The muscles on Mari's lower back were still soft and tender. She had to spend most of the next few days on her stomach until another android, just happy to help, cleared her to go back to work. Mari objected, she could still feel pieces of flesh still growing and the android reassured her that she would be fine. He gave her a new shirt, a red shirt for her "great work at passing the third test," and Mari wondered what the first and second were.

With a heavy sigh, she got dressed for another test.

She and all the others in her group met up at the southern part of the base, near Parking Lot A. In her new specific group, everyone wore a red shirt with the insignia of the Empire's logo on the left side. With Bahram and a few others gone, there were now roughly 34 people left in Mari's group. They loitered around and got to know each other while waiting for the shuttle to arrive, and started to prepare each other on what to do in case of another 'kidnapping'.

"These shirts are genius," Eric told Mari.

"This is just a regular shirt," she replied.

"No, look. The insignia of the Empire is on the left side. Closer to our hearts! The enemy will be so happy to have a target right over the most important part of us!"

Everyone in the group laughed, and Mari's back started to ache from the recent memory of the 'shooting range'. She looked around for more familiar faces, and then she realized in a sea of red shirts that she was alone.

She was the only girl.

"Did they ever tell us what the type of group we're supposed to be in is," she asked Eric. "What did I miss the few days I was away?"

"Well you missed seeing Lt. Orro getting his head bitten off for shooting you," Eric laughed. "The bosses worried about 'bad optics' if the Hero of Fadeno was killed at work!"

Mari was pleased that someone else was suffering and gave a smug smile as Eric recounted how Lt. Orro's bosses yelled at him for so long and so loud it was heard up and down the hallways.

"They didn't tell us what this group is about, but I think it's pretty clear," he told her. "I think they're trying to creating a special team."

"What gives you that idea," she asked.

Eric pointed to a young man sitting on the curb, more interested in his fingernails than the social interaction. He was a Kuraga with grey hair and purple eyes, and was ridiculously tall.

"See him? Weaver," Eric announced. "And that guy too. Weaver."

Eric pointed at five different people in the group, all Weavers, all with odd looks and facial features.

"How do you know they're Weavers? People don't go around announcing it," she asked.

"Can't you tell? Just by standing next to someone, or looking," he replied.

"No. And how would our bosses know they're Weavers if they didn't tell anyone?"

"Very few are born into it and never know, their paths dormant. Most people have to find the paths on their own, but you can tell when someone has an affinity for it."

Mari sat down on the curb, looked at all the men in the group, and then touched her heart. It was pounding fast again from another dose of fear as her mind slowly connected the dots.

"Everyone here is a Weaver," Mari whispered. "Everyone."

"And," Eric shrugged.

"Why not just tell us," Mari asked. "They put us together to get rid of us."

"Mari don't be silly, Weavers would make the Empire stronger!"

"So then why are they trying to stop them all from living freely," she asked him.

He didn't answer because the shuttle had arrived to pick them all up. He took Mari to the back of line and tried to think up a reason to leave but it would be plain desertion.

"What do we do," she asked him.

"Just...just get in. We'll be fine."

Eric scratched his left ear, and his small studded earring blinked twice when it turned on.