Chapter 402:Interview.

Chapter 402: 402:Interview.

Room Seven was considerably smaller than Antony expected.

He had expected the final phase of the entrance examination to take place somewhere equally intimidating.

Instead, there was a table, three officers sitting behind it, one chair waiting on Antony’s side, a camera occupying the upper corner of the room, and a large screen on the wall displaying his candidate profile.

ANTONY BRAILLE

CANDIDATE 1472

SOUL CAPACITY: 13

CONTRACTOR RANK: 2

ABILITY: GENDERLESS TRANSFORMATION

DAY ONE STATUS: QUALIFIED

DAY TWO STATUS: PENDING FINAL EVALUATION

He stood in the doorway not knowing how to proceed without getting penalised. One of the officers looked up at him before speaking.

"Candidate Braille."

"Yes, sir."

"Close the door."

He did.

"Sit."

He sat.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Antony looked at the three officers.

The officer in the middle was an older man with short grey hair and several insignias Antony didn’t recognize. The woman on his left looked younger but somehow considerably less friendly.

A third man sat on the right with a tablet in front of him, scrolling through what he suspected was a disturbingly complete record of everything he’d done for the last two days.

The silence continued.

Antony resisted the urge to fill it, that was very difficult.

Finally the grey-haired officer spoke.

"You’re unusually quiet."

He looked at the man, confusion taking over his features.

"Was I supposed to talk?" He asked.

"No."

"Then I made the correct decision."

The woman glanced at the older officer. The man with the tablet almost smiled.

Antony relaxed slightly.

The older officer didn’t.

"Candidate Braille, do you know what this phase evaluates?"

"Whether I can answer questions while desperately wanting a shower?"

The woman spoke for the first time.

"Would you like to try again?"

He immediately straightened.

"Judgment, sir. Or ma’am. Probably whether the decisions we made during the previous examinations were deliberate or accidental."

The older officer nodded.

"Better."

He touched the control beside him. The wall display changed and footage appeared.

Antony recognized himself from Day One at pressure stage thirteen.

His face looked terrible.

He watched himself manipulate the three disks while maintaining his energy coating.

The footage changed to pressure fifteen. He dropped to one knee, then forced himself back up.

The officer paused the recording.

"Your registered Soul Capacity is thirteen."

"Yes, sir."

"You remained operational under equivalent pressure fifteen."

"Briefly."

"Why?"

Antony frowned.

"I don’t understand the question."

"Some candidates with Soul Capacity fifteen failed at pressure eleven. You remained functional above your registered capacity. Why?"

He thought before answering.

"Control, probably. I stopped trying to overpower the pressure."

"Probably?" The officer said.

He nodded.

"At first I treated it like something I needed to resist physically. The harder the pressure became, the more power I wanted to pull from my core. Then I noticed that doing that made controlling everything else harder. So I reduced my output and concentrated on keeping it stable."

The officer nodded.

"Good."

The woman touched her screen.

"At pressure fifteen you transformed."

"Yes, ma’am."

"Why?"

"The first task required strength, so I remained male. The next required reaction and movement, so female configuration offered a larger advantage."

"Why not transform earlier?"

"Because changing forms costs energy."

She looked at him.

"Yet records show three transformations during Day One that evaluators marked as unnecessary."

His expression changed.

They really had recorded everything.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I was using my ability badly."

That answer made the man on the right look up.

The woman continued.

"Explain."

Antony rubbed the back of his neck.

"I’ve always thought of the transformation as two options. If strength is useful, male. If speed is useful, female. So whenever one was slightly better than the other, I’d switch."

"And what’s wrong with that?"

"The transformation itself costs core energy. I was spending power to solve problems that didn’t actually require it. The examiner at verification pointed it out before the first test."

The older officer leaned back.

"And did you learn?"

He smiled slightly.

"I think so."

"We’ll determine that."

The display changed.

Day One combat course. He watched himself run through the artificial district.

The footage skipped to the one civilian trapped beneath debris who Antony freed and carried him to the evacuation marker.

The older officer asked, "Your primary objective?"

"Reach Checkpoint Delta."

"Did rescuing that civilian help you reach Delta?"

"No."

"Then why did you do it?"

Antony thought.

"Because he needed help."

"That’s not sufficient."

He frowned.

The officer continued.

"You’re operating under a mission clock. You have limited energy, ammunition and incomplete information. ’Someone needed help’ does not automatically justify abandoning or delaying an objective."

Antony slowly nodded.

Fair.

He thought again,more carefully this time before responding.

"I had time."

The officer waited as he wrote a few things down.

"I’d already worked out roughly how far Delta was. The civilian wasn’t far enough off my route to threaten the objective, and freeing him didn’t require much ammunition or energy. I decided the delay was acceptable."

The officer nodded slightly.

"And if you had five minutes remaining?"

"I would’ve left him."

The woman looked up.

"Quick answer."

Antony met her eyes.

"Because five minutes changes the situation."

"Even if he begged?"

"If the mission was important enough that I had forty minutes to complete it and I had five minutes left, then stopping might mean both of us fail. If it were a real operation, I’d report his location if possible and continue."

The woman studied him.

"So compassion has a time limit?" She asked.

Antony frowned.

"No. Resources do."

Silence filled the room.

The man on the right finally looked up fully. Antony wasn’t sure whether he’d answered well.

The footage changed again to two beasts attacking each other while Antony escaped.

"Why didn’t you kill them?"

"Because they were busy killing each other."

"Could you have?"

"Probably."

"Then why not?"

Antony stared at the officer.

"The objective was Delta."

A faint smile appeared on the older man’s face.

"Good."

The screen changed to Day Two.

It showed squad Seventeen and Gareth Holler assuming command.

The woman spoke.

"Candidate Gareth Holler possessed the highest Soul Capacity in your squad."

"Yes."

"Fifteen."

"Yes."

"You allowed him to assume leadership."

Antony noticed the wording.

"I agreed to it."

"Why?"