Chapter 3: Karma
Valentine doesn't remember much else of his early 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 knows that most of the others who went first didn't make it, and he still might not.
There's whispered conversations over his head while his dressings are changed and he's only half conscious, 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 thinks, I don't want to die.
Eventually he's released back to the dorms and they're much less crowded than the last time he was there. His arms and legs are weak and shaky and feel like they belong to someone else, his coordination and responsiveness gone to shit. He sleeps and sleeps and is prodded awake to eat bland rations and shuffle around the exercise yard with the others who have managed to survive their own procedures so far. He has check ins with a nurse who clucks disapprovingly at how slow he is healing. She has an oppressively long list of tests to see if any of his augmentations have kicked in yet.
The other children are frightened by his scars and his lethargy and thousand yard stare. They keep their distance and it might upset him if only he could muster the energy or will to care.
He recovers enough to receive his class assignment. He's never had any traditional schooling so he's in a remedial group until he's learned how to read and write and perform basic math. From there he'll be switched to regular classes which will prepare him for his future role as a Paranormal Investigator.
Even though he's far behind the other children Valentine finds himself catching up with alarming speed. His memory is incredible; he can recall anything after seeing it once and he learns to read almost overnight. It's like a whole new world has opened up to him where he understands so much more than he ever did before. There's signs all over the facility that he can now read and while most of them are plans for emergency exits or notices of being recorded or that a door's got an alarm on it, it's all new information to him. He could read his chart now, see what they haven't told him. He could read the other children's charts. He could potentially learn what's in store for them all, assuming someone wrote down the master plan for DEXO and he somehow managed to access it.
He's given a battered and scuffed tablet that's seen better days. It comes 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's all pretty dry reading but he speeds through it all the same, voracious for new information. He hates DEXO, the people and the program, fears what they'll make him into, but he loves learning.
In his classes he's 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 can occur, what are common causes, what steps should be taken. It's a game of sorts to him, figuring out these puzzles and learning to recognize patterns and it's something he's really good at.
It furthers the divide between him and his peers when he makes connections and draws conclusions that they cannot. Almost all of them have gone through the first round of enhancement procedures by now and with excellent results 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 is much smaller than his classmates and his scarring is extensive. He serves as a constant uncomfortable reminder to his classmates of what could have all too easily happened to them as well. They are being cultivated as the pinnacle of all humanity has to offer; he is something that crawled out of the reject pile.
And yet despite all this, he is the cleverest of them all by far. He's subjected to a number of tests and evaluations to determine if his level of intelligence is something replicable or if it is uniquely his. He never sees the results.
Years pass. There are more procedures, some medical some not. On one memorable occasion he spends an afternoon with a fortune teller so that they can determine if he has a particular affinity for any of the spiritual disciplines. There's cards and bones and sticks and tea leaves and he finds the process fascinating if incomprehensible. The fortune teller on the other hand grows progressively more agitated throughout their session, unable to get a clear reading. Valentine asks if he can just study a bit of everything; he likes to learn so it'd hardly be a chore. The fortune teller just glares at him, then hands him a sheet of paper and a pencil and tells him to draw a series of dashed lines.
His results end up being inconclusive so while his classmates are split up into specialization groups for an hour each day, he is granted a study hall of sorts to independently pursue whatever strikes his fancy. He's not sure what he enjoys more, being able to learn as much as he's able to glean from the provided texts or the luxury of having a guaranteed hour a day all to himself.
He knows that he should make an effort to connect with his classmates and his teachers certainly try to encourage them to all make friends but he really just doesn't know how. People are impermanent fixtures in his life, there one minute and gone the next so it hardly seems worth the effort.
He learns to make talismans and how to store power within an object.
He learns prayers and poems and how to channel power through the words he speaks, how to calm angry spirits, how to lay them to rest.
He learns engineering and basic ship repair, how to troubleshoot different makes of life support systems. He studies the history of mankind's achievements from fire and the wheel to the fusion reactors and the first microchip.
The facility is an oddly liminal sort of space. The weather is temperate enough that the seasons all blend together and there's a purposeful distinct lack of clocks and calendars. Classes and days run long and he learns so much but there don't seem to be any definitive educational milestones to meet or an end date so time just goes on and on.
They are insulated from the outside world and whatever news there is of the Ark Project and the continued deterioration of the planet. There's ships taking off at regular intervals, visible from the exercise yard, a reminder of the ultimate goal of DEXO. None of the children have been assigned to them just yet. Their time will come but for now they train and prepare.
Then the bombings start.
It's launch pads at first. A group named Karma takes responsibility. They say that you reap what you sow and the human race has had this coming. Humanity shouldn't be allowed to inflict itself upon other planets after destroying its own.
No one tells the children about this directly of course, they just piece together snatches of overheard conversations. The whole picture is disturbing. They've very nearly run out of time. Not everyone is going to make it off the planet and to top it off there's terrorist groups that are gaining members exponentially. They say that humanity has had its chance and their home planet Tellus is done and people should just accept their fate instead of fighting each other for a spot on one of the Ark Project ships. They say that people should come together in their last days and make their exit with grace and peace instead of fear and panic.
Governments crack down and there's no more bombings and while everyone's not precisely at ease there's no palpable air of concern, until a ship is destroyed weeks before it's due to launch.
There's suddenly a lot more soldiers present on the base, stricter curfews, more staff asked to stop commuting and to start living where they work. This time there is a definite sense of fear, of being blown up, of not making it out before the ships stop launching for good. He wonders if he'll actually make it to space or if everything he's endured so far will come to nothing.
The children are much calmer than the adults, having come to terms with their own mortality through the course of the program. There's too many of them that have never returned from the medical wing at this point; they are all too aware that they have no control over their fate, whatever that might be.
It is decided that several regional facilities will be combined to consolidate personnel and to address increasing security needs. The children are loaded up on buses and Valentine is struck by a wave of déjà vu. The new facility is much the same as the old, just slightly larger. They do all have beds this time but the dorms are packed and he's not used to all the noise and clutter and what feels like the constant brush of other bodies against his own. It's overwhelming, too much stimulus to process.
Their class rosters are all shuffled and the staff reassigned and Valentine finds 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 have faded as much as they're ever going to which isn't much at all and he is still short for his age, which has now been estimated to be anywhere between twelve and fourteen years. Despite all the surgeries and spiritual augmentations he's still of a very slight build and weak constitution. Academically he is peerless which presents a bit of a quandary in regards to his placement at this new facility.
He sticks out like a sore thumb.
After a series of interviews and many hushed discussions amongst the heads of the new facility Valentine ends up being categorized as mid-grade. His life becomes a waking nightmare as a result.
He is bullied for his size and overabundance of scars and his tendency to keep to himself. The other children are careful to not leave any obvious marks but the adults are all busy enough that they're more than willing to look the other way as long as things don't get too out of hand. They're trying to save humanity, not run a daycare.
Valentine tries to blend in during classes, only speaking up when directly spoken to but his new teachers quickly learn that he can be depended upon to always have the right answer. They use this to try to motivate the other children in his class to better apply themselves, to compete with him intellectually but it only results in building resentment and making him even more of a target.
Physical training is part of their regime now. Augmentations have made it possible for program participants to exceed normal human parameters but muscle building and coordination and flexibility will still all have to be earned the old fashioned way.
Valentine trains in secret on his own, desperate to put on muscle. But no matter how hard he pushes himself he can't overcome the limitations of his body. The bullying continues and while he wishes that he could make a show of strength to get them to leave him alone his progress is just too slow. So instead he pivots to learning all the hiding places, how to dodge and evade and escape. He takes pride in becoming uncatchable. Most of his tormentors give up when it becomes too much trouble to track him down and they switch to easier, slower and less clever targets.
The remaining few take it as a personal challenge to run him down. There's this one kid in particular, Roberto and he's got to be at least several years older and almost two feet taller than Valentine and he's middling smart which at a regular sort of school would serve him well enough but amongst the enhanced he's as dumb as a post.
He corners Valentine at lunch one day and normally the cafeteria is a safe place, closely monitored by a number of adults but on this day there's been the threat of more bombings and they're all off getting briefed while a skeleton crew stays behind.
Valentine books it as usual the second he twigs to what's happening but thanks to being caught off guard he takes a right when he should take a left and gets cornered in front of a door that won'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.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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