Testing Hall Three was large, quiet, and painfully white.
The walls curved slightly inward, fitted with long strips of sterile lighting that made the entire room feel colder than it probably was. tal cabinets lined one side of the hall while examination beds and monitoring equipnt occupied the other.
Near the center of the hall stood the largest machine in the room.
One of the many versions of the Heckman Classifier.
A bulky scanning device built around a reclining examination chair, surrounded by suspended sensors and rotating tal fras. Thick cables connected it to several monitors nearby where brain activity and classification data would be displayed.
Soft blue lights blinked steadily along its surface.
Every child in the South had seen one before. The machine that scanned your brain and determined your Class.
Above the nearby monitor, the system display remained idle.
Yesu sat on one of the examination tables nearby, swinging one leg lightly.
She had been there for almost an hour and nobody had co in to check on her.
Yesu stared at the massive machine from across the hall. Then yawned.
For sothing society treated with near religious importance, it honestly looked pretty ugly.
At this point ,she was beginning to get bored. Still, the bright side was that she no longer had to see MacKayden's face.
There was a long chart at the far end of the hall covered in bright colours and diagrams. Probably the only interesting thing in the room.
Yesu left the examination table and wandered over to it.
The chart displayed the five recognized system classifications.
Physical Class focused on internal enhancent. Strength, speed, reflexes, endurance and heightened senses.
Elental Class covered the manipulation of natural elents such as fire, water, air, earth and lightning.
ntal Class dealt with cognitive influence. Illusions, emotion manipulation, telekinesis and psychic abilitiThe advanced classClass consisted of evolved forms or combinations of lower-class abilities.
Rare Class contained the rarest and most unpredictable recognized abilities.
At the bottom of the chart, written boldly beneath all five categories, were the words:
ALL ABILITIES CAN BE CLASSIFIED.
The Hall doors swung open.
"Quite sothing, isn't it?" A voice ca.
Yesu turned to see Doctor Heckman standing next to the examination table, arms a skinny-looking looking man with a twinkle in his eyes, the kind of twinkle little children have before the world disillusions them.
He studied Yesu for a mont then smiled fully. "So you're the anomaly."
"Yesuin Kaelitha." Yesu said. "But I prefer being called Yesu."
Doctor Heckman seed pleased. "Straight to introductions. Wonderful. Most people spend the first five minutes looking terrified."
He walked briskly towards her, took her hand and shook it vigorously. "Nice to et you, Yesu. I'm Doctor Hugo Heckman. But I prefer being called Heck." He released her hand abruptly.
"Get it? Heck in Heckman." He asked. "Like, 'What the Heck?' " He laughed hard at his joke, wiping away a tear.
Yesu stared blankly.
He stopped laughing. "You don't get it?"
Yesu shook her head slightly. "Well.."
He frowned, a bit puzzled. "Why doesn't anyone ever get it?" Then he straightened up like nothing had just happened.
"Co on, we have work to do." He said, leading the way back to the examination table.
Doctor Heckman didn't start the Classifier. That alone made the room feel slightly wrong.
Instead, he sat beside a terminal table, elbows resting casually as he pulled up her file. Multiple screens lit up across the hall, each one filled with fragnts of Yesu's recorded history.
He humd softly as he read. "Mm… interesting."
Yesu sat back on the examination table, swinging her legs again. "Is this going to take long?"
"Depends," Heckman said without looking up. "On whether you are bored or not."
"I don't feel like I am."
"Good." He turned a page of digital records. "Boring subjects are exhausting."
He tapped the screen. Fire incident. Three years ago.
"Hm. Sole survivor of a full structural ignition event." He tilted his head slightly. "Statistically improbable, but not unheard of."
He glanced at her. "People survive fires. People don't usually walk out of them like they misplaced their bus stop."
Yesu blinked. "I woke up afterward."
"Convenient summary."
He kept scrolling.
Backyard incident report, overheated steam exposure, no injury recorded.
School record, repeated high-temperature exposure tolerance.
Hospital entry, trauma recovery rate abnormal.
Gerry's Pizza incident, direct contact with boiling equipnt, no burns sustained.
He leaned back slightly. "Now this is where things beco less boring."
Yesu shifted slightly. "Less boring is good?"
"For , yes."
He stood and walked toward her cast. "Let's test sothing." He tapped the cast lightly. "Remove it."
Yesu tilted her head. "Why?"
"Because I said so."
"That's not a reason."
He smiled faintly. "Fair point. Because I'm curious."
She removed it without hesitation. The leg beneath was not fully healed. Bone alignnt was still slightly off. But she stood anyway, placing weight on it as if checking a thought rather than a limb.
"…Hm." Heckman crouched slightly. "That should hurt."
"It doesn't."
"That's not a normal answer."
"I know."
He circled her slowly. "Regeneration?" he muttered. "Possibly accelerated tissue correction… but inconsistent structural restoration…"
He moved to headbanddage next. "Remove it."
Yesu did.
The wound was not gone. The fracture line was still faintly visible beneath partially closed tissue.
He narrowed his eyes. "So you are not regenerating properly."
A pause.
"That's disappointing."
Yesu blinked. "For who?"
"For science."
He smiled again, lighter now. "Let's try another angle."
He pressed a sensor against her arm. The machine pulsed softly. "Pain threshold test."
A small electric impulse ran through her skin.
Nothing.
He increased it. Still nothing.
He studied her carefully. "You don't feel pain."
"I did," Yesu said after a mont. "A while ago."
"A while ago?"
"Not anymore."
He nodded slowly, like that confird sothing he didn't like. "Interesting." He flipped through another file.
Gerry's Pizza.
"Ah. Steaming pot exposure."
He looked up. "You held a boiling tray without reaction?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"I don't know. I've done it for a while."
He stared at her. "You don't rember the pain?"
"Not really."
He exhaled softly, almost amused. "Alright. Now I'm annoyed." He gestured toward the Classifier. "Let's see what your brain thinks you are."
The helt lowered. Lights activated. The Classifier humd. Then stopped.
Doctor Heckman frowned. "Dorothy!" He yelled.
A technician rushed in. "Yes, Doctor."
"Run it."
The Classifier repeated. Silence. Then the monitor flickered.
Physical… Elental… ntal… Advanced… Rare…
Error.
Null… Rejected
UNIDENTIFIED VARIANCE – recalculating…
The system stalled.
Heckman leaned forward slightly. "…That's new." He ran it a third ti himself. Sa result.
"Run a baseline comparison," he ordered.
An hour later, a child in a plain blue uniform was brought in and scanned. Clean result. Classified instantly.
Doctor Heckman nodded once. "Good. System intact." He turned back to Yesu. "Again."
The scanner finished processing. No class appeared. Just a single line blinking at the bottom of the monitor.
UNCLASSIFIED
The room stayed quiet. The technician laughed nervously.
Doctor Heckman didn't. He just stared at the screen.
Because for the first ti since building the machine, the system had returned a result it was never designed to give.
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