I ignored the annoying shop door. Opting to go through the narrow alley to the rickety wooden steps that led up to the small apartment we lived in. After I grabbed a few things, I could use the small stairwell in the back to get into the shop.

  My mind was on what all I needed to grab, and whether I wanted to bring food with me or just forgo dinner altogether. Which was probably why I didn’t register that the lights were already on and that I wasn’t alone until I nearly walked into my mother.

  Feet tripping over each other, I rushed to avoid her. Sure, my slamming into her wasn’t going to do anything, not with her strength. But that didn’t mean I wanted to smash my face into hers.

  I was barely a finger taller than her. Not that you would know it given how she carried herself. The woman filled the room with her personality. And that was before you considered her power.

  While it wasn’t one of the flashy abilities that caught the attention of everyone, it was more like she could read the room. From the layout of a space to the people inside. It also allowed her to feel the flow of mana and how it interacted with the various things in the area.

  This made her a decent, though limited, scout. Something that she once did for my father and their party back in the day. Now, though, it made her a magnificent magitech technician.

  “Hey, honey.” Her hands reached out, holding me in place as she got a good look at me. She must have noticed something because her face dropped a fraction. “Did the test go that badly?”

  I shrugged as I played off the results and tried to not think about what had happened with Bert. “It wasn’t like I expected anything.”

  “Oh,” my father's voice boomed from the kitchen. The man scooted away from the stove enough to get a look at the two of us. “Did you get your results? Any offers?”

  “Hush, Henry.” While her words weren’t harsh, they stopped my father from asking any more questions. “I am sure that whatever our little Eli got, one of the options will be perfect for him.”

  “Mooom.” I rolled my eyes. Here I was, just about as tall as her, and she still called me little. Still, somehow it felt nice. Almost right. Too bad I was going to have to shatter their happiness by telling them I received no offers.

  They were going to be disappointed. Mostly at me, but knowing my mother, she would somehow think it was her fault. That she didn’t teach me everything I needed to know to do better. Hell, if I wasn’t so distracted by Bert’s words, I might have felt the same way.

  Sadly, there was no way I could distract them or change the subject. This was one of those things they were going to hound me about until I told them. So, with a sigh, I answered their question. “I got nothing.” No offers. No information. No timeline or even guarantee that there would be anything when they did release it to me.

  At first, they said nothing. My mother’s eyes narrowed as she played back what I had said. Probably to make sure that she had heard me right. My father was the first to speak up. “What do you mean nothing? Surely there was at least an offer from the military. They are always accepting recruits.”

  With a tug, I pulled out my pad to pull up the results, yet they were not there. All the way home, I had been seeing people comparing their scores and talking about their options. Yet here I was without a single message to share with anyone.

  A hand covered the pad as my mother finally spoke. “I am sure that your results were not that bad. Maybe spend the next year training. That way you can do better next time.”

  Eyes closed, I let out a sigh as I put my pad away. “I’m not going to try again. I think I am going to focus on the garage work for now.” My voice dropped to little more than a whisper as I continued. “At least there I know what I am doing.”

  A pair of arms pulled me into a comforting embrace. “Both your father and I will support your decision, but don’t you want to see more of the world before you settle down?”

  “And what about Bert?” My father’s words caused me to flinch. “Surely you two will want to stay together?” Other than the occasional stirring of whatever was on the stove, the apartment dropped into silence.

  My mother was the first to break the quiet. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing. Not if this is how you are acting.”

  The events of the last test played out in my head yet again. “I don’t want to talk about it.” My words were broken and my throat started to close up as the feelings I had been trying to bottle up started to boil through.

  “Okay,” her arms tightened. “But we are here for you when you are ready to talk. Dinner should be about done anyway. Maybe you can tell us about the tests they had this year?”

  Her acceptance and words did more to help me than any of the thinking I had done since leaving the school. My arms lifted enough to return her hug as a few silent tears soaked into her hair.

  By the time she pulled away, I managed to push my emotions back down. “Give me a hand setting the table.” Going through the motions helped me center myself more than I thought it would. By the time the table was set and the food was dished out onto our plates, I almost felt normal.

  “It has been a while since I made this,” my dad looked hopeful. “I hope you both like it.”

  Even as my mother thanked him, my mouth practically salivated at the food. Meat. Real meat was hard to come by. Mostly due to how much land was required for a proper herd. Land that couldn’t be used for much of anything else. Every bit of which had to be defended against anything and everything. Add in the random mutation in the herds, and it was a luxury outside of most budgets.

  Yet my parents had bought enough for lasagna. Something we haven’t had since I earned my magitech mechanic certification. That was about the same time my mother was let go from her government job keeping the shields in a constantly ready state. Something about the next mana wave not being for another decade.

  The moment my mouth closed on the first bite, I let out an involuntary groan. Don’t judge me. My dad was the cook of the house for a reason.

  Each of us stayed silent, enjoying the food for a bit, but nothing lasts forever. “So, your father and I got an offer to help set up an outpost.”

  “Oh?” Helping could mean a ton of different things. “What will you both be doing?”

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  “They want your mother to work on tying the system to the mana network.” My dad’s smile was a bit gross thanks to the various pieces of food stuck to his teeth. “As for me, I will be keeping the entire team safe.” He made it sound like he was going to be doing most of the work and not working on a team. I also noticed how he made it sound like he was going regardless of what my mother decided.

  “Sounds pretty easy.” I wasn’t going to say safe because there was nowhere outside the wall that wasn’t safe. Especially when a group made a ton of noise yet stayed in that spot. Ever-increasing waves of creatures were going to converge on that spot until the region thinned out.

  “It should be.” My mother said as she scooped up another forkful of food. “We should only be gone a few weeks at most. If we agree to the job, that is.”

  “Why haven’t you?”

  She took a second to chew before answering. “We were hoping to send you off to one of the academies or help you settle into your trade school before we left.” Something that wasn’t likely to happen now.

  But I didn’t want them to throw this opportunity to make connections and do something that mattered, all because I didn’t get offered shit. So, I scoffed. “If I left, who would take care of the garage while you are gone? All those jobs aren’t going to complete themselves. Let alone any new work that might come in. Mrs. Peterbilts’ monitoring system will need work soon. And we all know how hard it was to get her to trust us. I doubt she can find someone to do the work before the entire system fails.”

  “Good point.” My dad nodded as he spoke with his mouth full. Only to get reprimanded by my mother. He took a second to swallow. “Sorry, sorry. Do you think you can handle the system on your own this time?”

  “It shouldn’t be so bad.”

  “You think you are ready to take on an interconnected and networked system of magic circuitry?” While my mother wasn’t looking at me, I knew she was watching for my reaction. “We won't be there to double-check your work. Any issue…”

  “And the whole system will fail,” I repeated the warning she gave me every time we worked similar systems. “I will be careful.”

  “I don’t want you to be careful.”

  “Well, we want you to be careful.” My dad interjected.

  She let out a sigh, “I don’t want you to be just careful. I want you to be paranoid. To double-check everything. Triple check. Hell, check it over and over until you can guarantee the system will work.” She seemed to shudder at something.

  “Hah,” my dad’s laugh filled the space. “You were just remembering Lambardi’s test, weren’t you?”

  Surprisingly, this was the first time I was hearing about this. “What test?”

  Before my mother could stop him, my father started to tell the story. “So, your mother and I were in the same class. Magic circuitry design, fabrication, and repair. She was there for obvious reasons. Me, I was chasing after this girl I had a crush on.” Ugh, I did not need to hear about their love life. I saw enough of it as it was. “For our midterm test, we were split into groups of four.”

  “And I got lucky enough to get stuck with this oaf.” She cut in.

  “Hey,” he countered. “I was better than Brit or Yusef.”

  “Only because you actually paid attention to everything during our tutor sessions. Which is more than I can say for those two, given how often they had their tongues down each other's throats.” And now we were talking about their classmates' love lives.

  Thankfully, he tilted his head in acquiescence as he returned to the story. “Being the smartest one in the group, your mother was supposed to design the circuit. I was to fabricate it. While the other two were supposed to check over it and repair it after the teacher damaged it. Or, at least, that was what we all agreed on.”

  Plate empty, I put down my fork and focused on him. “What happened?”

  “While she and I did our jobs correctly…”

  A soft thwack filled the room. “Don’t you dare lie to him!”

  “Okay, okay, don’t hit me.” His cry was fake as his hand covered a spot on his arm. It lasted all of a couple of seconds before the cringeworthy scene vanished, and he continued the story. “While her circuits were absolutely perfect, my fabrication was flawed.”

  “You used the one contaminated piece in the entire pile. Of course it was flawed.”

  “Simple bad luck.”

  “Part of the test.” She countered.

  “Potayto, potahto.” He waved his hand. “Brit checked over everything before handing it over to the professor. It passed all of the tests without an issue. Yet when he was supposed to damage it in some way, he refused.”

  “He knew the thing was flawed and that it wouldn’t last through another test.”

  “We know that now. But there was no way any of us knew that. In fact, if I remember right, you were jumping around saying something along the lines of he didn’t want to damage it because of how perfect your design was.”

  “What happened?” I pushed them to continue the story.

  “None of us bothered to check it for any damage.” My father said. “Yusef took the circuit back up to the tester, plugged it in, and pressed the start button.” His voice dropped as he continued. “Within a second, the circuit exploded. Crystal shards and molten metal flew out with enough force to embed into the mana-hardened stone a good thirty feet or so away. It was an honest-to-God miracle that the only injuries were superficial.” With that, they both started to pick up the dishes and left me to my thoughts.

  The story explained why both of them were so adamant on cross-checking everything. It was one thing to tell someone to be careful. Yet another to have them experience the why of the rule. Reminding them of the fact that every rule is written in someone’s blood.

  And given how much force it took to embed anything into mana-hardened stone, it wasn’t something I wanted to experience. Especially as nothing this close to the wall was made of anything more than simple stone. Well, excluding the wall itself, of course. But it was enhanced in a ton of other ways to make sure that nothing could get through.

  Or maybe I should just stick to motors and such while avoiding the circuits until they returned. Actually, what about that circuit I fixed for the test? It had mana circuits in it. Had I gotten lucky, or was there some other factor I wasn’t seeing?

  “So,” I hesitantly started. “One of the tests focused on repairing a circuit.”

  “What kind?”

  “How old?”

  “Damage?”

  “Purpose?”

  Both of them shot question after question at me. The moment I started to answer, they stopped. “It was a holographic projector. One of the early ones that had both mana and electricity.”

  “And you are wondering what would have happened if you didn’t do the repair right?” My mother asked as my father started to scrub the dishes. At my nod, she continued. “Those old circuits were overengineered. Secondary and tertiary pathways. It would take a massive burst of mana to overwhelm the circuit and cause any sort of explosion. Most of the old things failed because some other component failed.”

  “So there was no risk?”

  “No,” she corrected. “The risk was minuscule, but don’t ever assume that there is no risk.” Her words calmed me down. I had been worried that the test was an accident waiting to happen. Maybe that was the reason they chose them for the repair test. If anyone fucked up, it just wouldn’t work. A much better result than it exploding.

  “What other tests did they make you take this year?” My father’s voice carried over the sound of water. “Oh, was the hide and go seek one around this time?”

  “That is the stealth test. And you failed it.” My mother called back at him.

  “But I failed it with style.”

  “Since when is slamming face-first into one of the people looking for you style?” I laughed at their antics. It made me wonder if I would ever see Bert again. A thought that made me realize just what the two of them had been doing. How they were steering the conversation to avoid what was clearly a sore subject. All without saying a word to each other.

  Even with the reminder of something that hurt, their thoughtfulness brought a smile to my face. “In fact, the stealth test this year was one that could be considered that.”

  “Oh?” My father sounded hopeful. “How did you do?”

  “Below standard.”

  “Hah.” My mother laughed. “He did better than you. What was your result again?”

  “I think it was something like absolute failure?” He waved that off. “But everyone knows I am not one to hide. After all, why hide from something when you can just hit it?” For the next hour, we shared stories of the various tests. Some of the ones I took were the same as theirs, others were very different.

  “What do you mean you had to run along the top of the wall?” That sounded like suicide.

  “Treadmills have only recently gotten to the point that they can handle a speedster.”

  “Of which our class had four.” My dad oh so helpfully interjected. “But running on top of the wall was fun. So many things to punch.” Surely he wasn’t talking about punching beasts during a test.

  “There was only one beast, and it was dead before you even got close enough to hit it.” My mother let out a weary sigh. “But enough of that. Your father and I need to get to bed if we are to accept the job. The first meeting is early in the morning.”

  Her words caused me to yawn, “Good Night,” as I made my way toward my bedroom. With those words and the thought of bed, my body started to relax as the fog of sleep rolled in. Taking me under just as my head hit the pillow.