It took ten minutes before Ryan reached the front desk and handed over his papers. The lady seated behind the desk took the papers in her hands, checked his name, then stamped the papers with bright red ink. "Seat F9," she responded, adding his registration sheet to a large pile behind her. Ryan nodded and proceeded into the gym.

It didn't take him long to find his seat. The desks were organized in lettered columns and numbered rows, like a game of Battleship. On his desk was the exam booklet, placed face-down, a bubble sheet, a 2B pencil, and an eraser. Taped to the front of his desk was a sheet of paper with 'F9' in bold, black letters.

The wait until the test time was agonizing. Ryan could see Jimmy a few rows to his right, and Evan was towards the back of the gym. Jimmy still looked chipper, but hints of worry showed as he kept tapping his foot against the floor and fiddling with his hair. He noticed Ryan's gaze and gave a thumbs up. Evan's head was buried in his hands as if in silent prayer. 

The man who'd welcomed them shut the gym door behind two stragglers, then glanced at his watch. "The written test ends in an hour. You may begin."

Ryan picked up his pencil and turned over his exam, mimicking the hundred other students in the gym. He filled in his name at the top, then glanced at the first question. The answer came to mind immediately, and he filled in the appropriate answer before going to the next.

By the time he was halfway through, he was starting to feel suspicious. Only twenty minutes had passed, and he hadn't encountered any particularly difficult questions.  He flipped back to check his answers, and felt certain of every single one.

Ryan went back to the question on hand and tapped the end of his pencil against his mouth. He supposed if he knew the answers, it bode well for him. He finished filling in answers within forty minutes, then spent five minutes double-checking that he'd done everything correctly. He stood up and walked to the front to hand in his papers, ignoring the inquisitive and amazed eyes of other exam takers as he did.

The man at the front raised an eyebrow when he approached. Ryan was the first to hand in his exam, and they still had forty minutes left. "Are you done?" he asked. Ryan nodded. "Okay." The man's voice hinted that he didn't quite believe Ryan, but he took the paper in his hands. He reached up a hand and tapped the device at his ear, waiting a few moments for it to connect.

"Marcy? I've got one for you." They waited for a moment before a blonde-haired woman appeared. She gave Ryan a scrutinizing glance, then waved for him to follow her.

"Come on," she urged when Ryan wasn't fast enough. He quickened his pace to match hers and exited the gym. Marcy led them towards one of the classrooms, opening the door in one smooth motion. The classroom was empty, save for the virtual reality gear in the middle of the room. The VR machine was a tall windowless cylinder, though the door was open to reveal the interior. The darkened inside had a cushioned seat with a pair of goggles and gloves placed on top. Ryan knew that the walls contained hundreds of motion sensors and cameras that would track his every movement within the confined space.

"Take a seat," Marcy ordered, gesturing towards the virtual reality machine. Ryan obeyed. He sat in the chair and reached for the gear. The gloves were a little bit big for his hands, but if he pulled on them enough, they just about fit. He slipped on the goggles and his vision was instantly extinguished. 

"This is the second portion of the examination," Marcy said. Her voice echoed around him, emanating from hidden speakers.  "Once done, you are free to leave. However, you are expressly forbidden from revealing what happens in this room. If we believe you are cheating in any way, a note will be made on your record and you will never be allowed to take this exam again. Is that clear?"

Ryan nodded, flexing his hands. Before him, the outlines of a cockpit filled his vision. Beyond the cockpit was endless space, stars glittering in the pitch black. Glancing down, he saw the controls for the ship and he wrapped his hands around them. The gloves responded accordingly, and he could feel the joystick in his grasp.

Marcy gave him directions on what he was supposed to demonstrate. Ryan started off with turning his ship, then proceeded to dock it. He took off moments later, and he felt completely at ease as he maneuvered the starfighter ship through space. It was like an extension of his own body.

It shouldn't have felt so natural, seeing as he'd only touched the simulation four times in his life, but it felt right. He felt at home in this ship, as if it was an old friend.

The simulation programmed a few stray meteoroids to head towards the ship, but Ryan directed his ship around them, pushing his joystick down, then to the left to avoid damaging his ship's wing. He dodged the slow-moving rocks with ease, watching them tumble past the ship. The starry backdrop displayed distant planets as he continued with the exam. 

He heard Marcy grumble something under her breath, and suddenly, he was no longer staring into dark space. The scene filled with the sounds of gunfire and ships hell-bent on ripping his ship to smithereens. He was hit twice before he pulled away, jamming on the accelerator to make his way out of the fray. A blinking red bar at the bottom showed the amount of damage his ship had taken.

Marcy's voice cut through the din. "Try to last for as long as possible," she ordered. Ryan waited for more instructions, but no more came. The ship shook as he was hit, and he gripped the controls tighter, gaze focusing on the scene before him. From the number of enemy fighters on the screen, he didn't think he stood a chance of getting out alive. He still had to try.

Ryan flicked his fingers at his controls, but where he expected a trigger, there was none. He glanced down to see that there were no trigger buttons for him to press. He swore and dove to avoid enemy fire.

He gritted his teeth and made a new plan. Ryan steered his ship towards the enemy, then darted away before they could get too close. He kept going before veering sharply. A quick turn told him his plan had worked — two of the enemy starfighters had collided into each other, creating an explosion. Ryan grinned at his success and pulled off the same maneuver twice more.

A glance at his ship's stats told him that his starfighter wouldn't hold out for much longer. The first onslaught of their fire had done the most damage to his ship, and his tactics had left his fuel dangerously low. He gripped the controls with newfound determination and gave it his all, taking down enemies two by two before his health gauge dropped to nothing. The screen blacked out before him and noise crackled in his ear.

"Get out," Marcy ordered. Ryan slipped off the goggles and gloves, then promptly exited the virtual reality machine and stepped back into the fluorescent light of the classroom. Marcy's expression was thunderous, but all she said was, "Stay here." Ryan watched her slam the door behind her, confused. As far as he knew, he'd done nothing out of order. He'd obeyed instructions and he hadn't even spoken a word to Marcy.

Ryan watched the clock at the front of the classroom as minutes ticked by. After fifteen minutes of standing, he sat back in the machine, his eyes trained on the door. Something nagged at his mind, a feeling of caution and of something forgotten, but whenever he tried to put his thumb on it, it slipped out of his grasp. He kept rerunning through his time on the simulation, trying to find out what was wrong. Ryan closed his eyes to concentrate.

His procedures had been correct. He'd called out everything that was needed and had parked his ship with precision. He'd given the appropriate signals and calls before taking off. The battle portion of the simulation had been a mess of him doing his best to get rid of enemy fighters, but he thought he'd done fairly well. Ryan thought perhaps his failure had been in forgetting to call for back-up. His face fell at the thought, but surely one mistake wouldn't overshadow the rest of his performance.

Ryan jumped at the jiggling of the door handle. He looked at Marcy's face and pressed his lips into a thin line when he saw how dark her expression was. A glance at the clock told him that he'd been waiting for over half an hour.

"Come with me," she said. Ryan stood and followed her out the door and down the hallway. He was expecting them to enter another classroom, but instead, she lead him outside. They stood at the curb and from Marcy's frequent scanning of the road, Ryan deduced they were waiting for an arriving car. He knew exactly when the awaited person had arrived — the shiny black car that streaked into the parking lot drove right up to them and parked across three of the open spots.

From the passenger's seat emerged a woman in a crisp navy uniform. She had black hair in a pixie cut and her hazel eyes burned with intensity when she stared at Ryan. The weight of her expression was palpable and Ryan swallowed hard under her scrutiny.

"General," he noted, standing a tad straighter. Guinevere Espinoza raised an eyebrow at him but didn't say a word, instead turning to Marcy.

Marcy snapped to attention. "Suspected cheating," she said, getting straight to the point. Ryan's eyes widened with shock.

"What? I didn't cheat!" he protested. The two words that Marcy uttered cut right to the bone, filling him with fear and the terrible sense of failure. Guinevere shot a glare at him and Ryan shut up, knowing instinctively that saying anything else would worsen his situation.

Marcy looked annoyed by his outburst. "I think it's best if you saw for yourself." Marcy turned her shoulders to head back to the simulation room, and Ryan followed after Guinevere.

Guinevere looked annoyed at being bothered for something so trivial. They were in a small town, and cheating could be dealt with without her help. Still, she obliged and followed Marcy. Marcy tapped a few buttons on her tablet, then gestured for Ryan to get into the machine. He did so with worry eating at his veins.

Once he put on the goggles, a similar scene from before was brought to life pixel by pixel. Space swarmed with enemy ships, and they started firing on him immediately. His hands gripped the controls instinctively and he jammed them to the left to avoid getting hit.

Marcy's voice rose above the din. "Same as before. Try to last for as long as possible." Her voice feed went silent and Ryan took that as his cue to start.

Ryan threw his all into taking down the enemy, to the point where he was recklessly skimming past their ships. One moment nearly cost him a wing, but he managed to dodge out of the way and he kept going. His aggressiveness made his fuel deplete faster, and he was dismayed when he saw that his hit count was lower than the previous performance. His screen went black and he moved to take off his gear.

"No." Guinevere's voice cut through the room, sharp and short. "Keep those on." Ryan obeyed and listened to her next words, directed to Marcy. "Give me that." He heard the fumble of the tablet being exchanged between hands, and he tensed. General Guinevere was going to program his simulation. He didn't know if the feeling that coursed through his veins was excitement or dread.

He waited several moments before his vision flashed back to life. The simulation looked the same as before, and after the previous times, he knew to swerve and avoided most of the initial onslaught of damage. He kept flying until Guinevere's harsh voice echoed in his ears.

"Survive."

Ryan didn't need more encouragement. He jammed down hard on the accelerator and pulled up on the controls, spinning hard to avoid getting hit and managing to get three fighters to crash into each other. His starfighter darted in and out of the fray, slowly adding to his counter of defeated enemies. But as that number grew, so too did the amount of enemy ships, to the point that sheer numbers overwhelmed him and his ship crashed, having no where else to go. His vision flickered black for a moment before coming back to life in blues and whites.

He gripped the controls, but glanced down at one obvious difference: the red trigger buttons, previously absent, were present in this sim. Ryan thumbed the trigger and the ship before him exploded before it could shoot. He didn't need Guinevere's instructions to tell him what to do for this test.

Ryan threw himself into the mass of ships, mingling his previous tactics with newfound aggression, causing confusion among the enemy ships and firing whenever they stalled for a moment too long. He kept an eye on the ammunition rounds counter that had appeared in the corner of his vision, and once it ran out, he resorted to his luring scheme from the previous sims. The number of defeated enemies was twice what it was before, and it burned white and red in his eyes before the screen turned black.

"You can come out." Guinevere's voice resonated off the walls. 

He took off the helmet and goggles and climbed out of the machine, watching the faces of the two women and looking for answers. They stared at the tablet before them, their faces showing nothing. Guinevere turned her stony gaze from the screen to Ryan. 

"Do you play the sims often?" she asked, her voice flat and emotionless. "Perhaps in the city?"

Ryan shook his head. "No. I've only played during the mandatory lessons."

"Don't lie." Guinevere's voice hardened, her eyes glittering dangerously. "You must have played more than a handful of times. Maybe you own a VR machine? Or one of your friends? You played the sims together, watching and learning from each other," she surmised.

As she spoke, Ryan felt like he'd been punched in the gut. Instinctively, he jerked his head down, staring at the floor as dread in his stomach. His throat closed up and his stomach twisted itself into knots as his sight filled with the scene of a large room full of high-tech virtual reality machines, teenagers milling about, and a handful of uniformed adults watching over the entire room. There were large screens corresponding to each machine. He drifted over to one which had drawn a small crowd.

The sim was played beautifully and the pilot cleared the simulation with apparent ease. Ryan's gaze dropped from the screen to the machine, and a girl with shoulder-length raven hair stepped out. Their gazes locked, her dark brown eyes drawing him into their depths.

Ryan felt like he'd been thrust under icy water, his skin numb and his entire body seizing with shock. His legs gave out beneath him and he opened his mouth to gasp for air, but none made it to his lungs. Inky tendrils crept at the edges of his vision.

Ryan managed a choked "Guinevere," before the black claimed him and he sank into darkness.

~*~

Hello and thanks for reading! We've reached chapter two — what do you think comes next?

If you enjoyed this chapter, please remember to vote and comment!

Sincerely,
Salem