Adrian woke expecting his face to hurt more.
It didn't.
That was the first good thing about the morning.
The second was breakfast.
The third was that nobody mentioned yesterday.
Nessa had examined his cheek after they'd returned to the CSA office, declared that nothing appeared broken, asked him several questions about dizziness and nausea, and made him follow one finger with his eyes for longer than seemed necessary.
Then he'd eaten.
A lot.
Again.
After that, there hadn't been much left of the day.
Bruno hadn't returned to the subject of the fight. Adrian hadn't volunteered to.
He'd gone to bed early, slept almost nine hours, and woken with a fading bruise, sore knuckles, and the uncomfortable certainty that somewhere in Bellwick there was now a police report describing how an unidentified white Aniel had gotten into a fight with a drunk construction worker.
Not his finest work.
By the time he finished breakfast, he'd almost convinced himself Bruno had moved on.
Then Bruno appeared in the doorway.
"Assessment."
Right.
Adrian lowered his spoon.
"Morning to you too."
"Good morning."
Bruno waited.
Adrian looked at the bowl.
Then at Bruno.
There was still something awkward sitting between them.
Possibly only on Adrian's side.
Probably only on Adrian's side.
His ears shifted backward anyway.
"About yesterday—"
Bruno closed his eyes.
Not for long.
Just long enough.
Then one enormous hand lifted.
A small motion.
Stop.
Adrian stopped.
Bruno opened his eyes again.
"We discussed yesterday."
"Yeah."
"I don't want to discuss yesterday again."
"Oh."
"Do you?"
"No."
"Good."
That was apparently that.
Bruno turned toward the corridor.
Adrian stared after him for a moment.
"Are you coming?"
"Yeah."
He got up.
His tail moved behind him, considerably less tense than it had been a few seconds earlier.
Apparently Bruno wasn't going to give him another lecture.
Good.
Adrian hadn't been looking forward to finding out whether bears could sigh someone to death.
He followed.
***
The assessment room was not what Adrian had expected.
That helped.
No white laboratory walls.
No restraints.
No examination table beneath bright lights.
Instead, Bruno led him through the rear of the CSA building and into a broad rectangular hall that looked like someone had combined a small gym, a medical testing facility, and a warehouse.
The floor was covered in sections of dark impact material. Colored lines marked distances and lanes. One wall held padded targets, grip devices, and equipment Adrian couldn't identify. Another had several recessed scanners and two workstations behind transparent screens.
Large windows ran along the upper part of the opposite wall.
Morning sunlight came through them.
Adrian noticed that immediately.
There were three people waiting.
Nessa was one.
That wasn't surprising.
The second was a human man in his forties with close-cropped dark hair and a grey CSA shirt.
The third—
Adrian stared.
He knew he was staring.
He also suspected stopping now wouldn't make it less obvious.
The woman was roughly human in shape, though several details argued strongly against leaving the description there. Smooth green-brown plates covered her forearms, shoulders, and parts of her throat. Two fine antennae rose from her forehead above large, dark eyes whose surface caught the overhead lights in a way Adrian couldn't quite follow.
She also had four arms.
The upper pair were close to human apart from the segmented plating. One hand held a tablet.
The smaller lower pair rested loosely against her torso.
Adrian's eyes went back to them.
One of the smaller hands waved.
Just once.
He looked up.
The woman was smiling.
"Sorry."
"No, you're not."
"I was trying not to stare."
"You weren't doing very well."
"No."
Her antennae shifted slightly.
"Don't worry. I moved to Western Rovenmark eight years ago. I've had time to develop a scoring system."
Adrian blinked.
"For staring?"
"Seven out of ten."
"That high?"
"You recovered quickly."
One of the smaller hands tapped something onto the tablet.
Adrian narrowed his eyes.
"Did you actually write that down?"
Her smile widened.
"No."
He wasn't completely convinced.
"What are you?"
The question escaped before he could improve it.
Sera laughed.
Not offended. If anything, she seemed pleased he'd finally asked.
"Mantid Aniel."
"Mantis."
"Mantid."
"Right."
Adrian looked at her again, this time with permission.
The chitin. The antennae. The additional arms.
"Are there many of you around here?"
"In Bellwick?" She glanced around the room as if checking. "One."
"Oh."
"Western Rovenmark isn't exactly our preferred climate."
That made sense.
Probably.
Adrian realized he had absolutely no idea what climate a mantis preferred.
Sera shifted the tablet into one of her lower hands and stepped forward, offering one of the upper ones.
"I'm Sera. I'll handle the physical assessment."
Adrian shook it.
One of her lower hands was already moving across the tablet.
That was going to take some getting used to.
"Nessa is here because you were injured yesterday, and Daven will handle the arcane scan afterward."
The human man at the workstation raised two fingers without looking away from his screen.
Sera released Adrian's hand.
"Nothing today is pass or fail. If something hurts, you stop. If you're uncomfortable, you stop. If you don't understand an instruction, ask."
Adrian nodded.
"No restraints?"
Sera looked briefly confused.
Bruno answered before she could.
"No restraints."
Right.
They'd already established that.
"Okay."
Sera studied him for another second, then apparently decided not to ask.
"Shoes off."
Adrian looked down.
That hadn't been expected either.
"Why?"
"Grip and balance measurements."
"Oh."
He removed them.
The floor felt strange beneath his feet.
Not unpleasant.
Detailed.
He could feel slight changes in texture that he doubted he would have noticed before.
Sera pointed toward a marked section of floor.
"We'll start simple."
Good.
Simple sounded excellent.
***
Simple lasted approximately four minutes.
Height.
Weight.
Reach.
Resting pulse.
Grip strength.
Basic flexibility.
None of it was particularly exciting.
Adrian discovered that he was shorter than he'd estimated from mirrors and other people.
One hundred and sixty-seven centimeters.
That number bothered him more than it reasonably should have.
He stared at the display.
"Problem?" Sera asked.
"No."
He had lost almost twenty centimeters.
Apparently he'd known that conceptually.
Seeing a number was different.
Weight came next.
Fifty-eight point four kilograms.
Adrian stared at that one too.
Then at Bruno.
Bruno stared back.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Sera made a note.
Grip strength was more interesting.
"Again."
Adrian squeezed the device.
Numbers climbed.
Stopped.
Sera checked the screen.
"Other hand."
He repeated it.
"Again."
He did.
"Is that bad?"
"No."
"Good?"
"Average."
Adrian frowned.
"For what?"
"Your size and morphology, approximately."
Approximately.
That seemed to be doing considerable work.
"So I'm average."
"In grip strength."
Adrian looked at his hands.
The same hands that had barely moved a drunk man with a punch.
That tracked.
Sera moved on.
Balance was stranger.
She had him stand on one leg.
Easy.
Close his eyes.
Still easy.
Turn his head.
Easy.
Stand on a narrow raised surface.
Easy.
Walk along it.
Also easy.
Then she asked him to turn quickly at the end.
Adrian thought about where his feet needed to go.
His tail moved the opposite direction.
His hips corrected.
His brain attempted to correct the correction.
He stepped directly off the beam.
Sera caught his arm before he hit the floor.
Adrian stared at the mat.
"I did that."
"Yes."
"I was doing fine."
"Yes."
"Then I thought about it."
Sera released him.
"Yes."
Adrian looked at her.
"You're enjoying this."
"A little."
From behind them, Nessa coughed.
Adrian suspected it concealed a laugh.
Sera tapped something into her tablet.
"Your passive balance is excellent."
"My active balance isn't."
"Your active balance is also excellent."
"I just fell off."
"Because you interfered with it."
Adrian frowned.
"With my own balance."
"That's what it looks like."
Wonderful.
Sera pointed back to the beam.
"Again. Don't think about your tail."
That was like telling someone not to think about breathing.
Adrian stepped up.
He walked.
Turned.
His tail shifted.
His body followed.
Perfectly.
He stopped.
"Oh."
Sera made another note.
"Interesting."
Adrian was beginning to dislike that word.
***
Reaction testing went better.
Much better.
Lights appeared across a vertical panel.
Touch the light as soon as it appeared.
Simple.
The first flashed.
Adrian hit it.
Another.
Hit.
Another.
Another.
Another.
The sequence accelerated.
Adrian stopped thinking.
His hands moved.
Left.
Right.
High.
Low.
Across.
For several seconds there was nothing except light and movement.
Then the panel went dark.
Adrian waited.
Sera was looking at the results.
Daven had finally looked away from his workstation.
Nessa was staring at Adrian.
Bruno wasn't.
Bruno was watching the screen.
Adrian lowered his hands.
"What?"
Sera looked at him.
"Again."
The second run was faster.
Adrian knew because this time he could feel the machine trying to catch him out.
False flashes.
Two lights nearly simultaneous.
Changes in height.
He missed one.
Then another.
Hit the rest.
The panel went dark.
Sera checked the result again.
"Have you done reaction training?"
"No."
"Combat training?"
"No."
"Competitive sport?"
"No."
"Anything?"
"I work in an office."
Silence.
Adrian realized what he'd said.
His stomach tightened.
Sera looked at him.
Bruno did too.
Shit.
"I mean..."
He searched for somewhere to put the sentence.
Nothing presented itself.
"I think I did."
Sera's expression changed.
The curiosity softened.
"All right."
She didn't push.
Neither did Bruno.
Adrian looked away.
That had been careless.
Very careless.
Sera tapped the tablet.
"Reaction time is significantly above baseline."
"For an Aniel?"
"For most people."
Oh.
Adrian looked back at the panel.
That was new.
Something small and embarrassingly childish stirred in his chest.
"How much above?"
Sera looked at him.
"We'll finish first."
Right.
Apparently assessors hadn't changed much.
***
Speed came next.
The lane ran nearly the length of the hall.
Thirty meters.
Sensors at both ends.
Sera explained that she wanted three runs.
First at a comfortable pace.
Second fast.
Third maximum effort if Adrian felt safe doing it.
Adrian looked down the lane.
Thirty meters wasn't far.
Yesterday he'd crossed something like twenty before he'd understood he'd started moving.
Today there were no falling panels.
No one to save.
Just a line.
"Whenever you're ready."
Adrian positioned himself.
Badly, probably.
He wasn't a sprinter.
He leaned forward.
Ran.
The first attempt felt almost disappointing.
Fast, certainly.
But controlled.
He slowed at the far end and turned.
Sera checked the display.
Her eyebrows rose slightly.
That felt promising.
"Again. Faster."
Adrian walked back.
The second time he pushed.
His first step bit into the floor.
Then the hall compressed.
Not literally.
It simply felt as though the far wall had suddenly become much closer than it had any right to be.
His legs moved faster.
Stride.
Push.
Stride.
Tail behind him.
He crossed the final sensor and immediately discovered a problem.
Stopping.
"Oh, shit."
His feet scrambled.
His upper body went forward.
His tail snapped sideways.
Adrian somehow remained upright.
Barely.
He turned.
Everyone was looking at him.
"That was intentional."
"No, it wasn't," Nessa said.
"Thank you, Nessa."
Sera was staring at the display.
"Do you want the third run?"
Adrian looked back down the lane.
His heart was beating faster now.
Not from exhaustion.
Excitement.
He shouldn't have been enjoying this.
Probably.
Yesterday he'd learned that he couldn't hit particularly hard and couldn't take a punch.
Today he'd just crossed thirty meters fast enough that the room had briefly felt too small.
"Yes."
Sera nodded.
"Maximum effort. But start slowing before the end marker. The system can calculate through the final segment."
"Good idea."
Adrian walked back.
Something moved beyond one of the lower windows near the far wall.
Grey.
He stopped.
No.
A cat jumped onto the outside ledge.
Grey fur.
White chest.
One nicked ear.
Adrian stared.
The cat stared back.
There was absolutely no reason that should be surprising.
Bellwick wasn't large.
Cats walked.
Still.
"You."
Sera looked toward him.
"Me?"
"No."
The cat sat down.
**Slow.**
Adrian narrowed his eyes.
"I know."
Sera glanced at Bruno.
Bruno glanced at the window.
"The cat?"
"Yes."
Bruno looked back at Adrian.
Adrian waited for the obvious question.
It didn't come.
Apparently Bruno had decided there were limits to how many new problems he was willing to acquire before lunch.
"Can we continue?" Sera asked.
Adrian looked at the cat.
It licked one paw.
"Absolutely."
He faced the lane.
Maximum effort.
Fine.
He lowered himself.
Waited.
"Go."
Adrian pushed.
For the first few steps, everything worked.
Then something clicked.
Not magic.
Not consciously.
His posture changed.
His body lowered slightly.
His stride lengthened.
His arms found a rhythm he hadn't taught them.
The floor vanished beneath him in pieces.
One.
Two.
Three.
The end rushed closer.
Too fast.
Adrian remembered Sera's instruction.
Slow before the marker.
He tried.
His body disagreed.
His right foot landed slightly wrong.
His tail snapped left.
Adrian corrected right.
Then consciously realized he was correcting right and attempted to correct that.
This was a mistake.
He hit the mat shoulder-first, rolled once, and ended flat on his back.
Silence.
Adrian stared at the ceiling.
Nothing seemed broken.
Good start.
From the window:
**Stupid.**
Adrian closed his eyes.
"Fuck you."
Somewhere nearby, Sera made a choking sound.
Adrian lifted his head.
The cat was washing its paw.
Bruno looked from Adrian to the window.
Then back.
"Are you arguing with the cat?"
"No."
The cat stopped washing.
Looked directly at him.
**Liar.**
Adrian let his head fall back onto the mat.
"Can we please continue the assessment?"
This time Nessa definitely laughed.
***
The third run was still recorded.
Apparently falling after crossing the relevant sensor did not invalidate the useful portion.
Adrian sat on the edge of the mat while Sera reviewed the numbers.
His shoulder hurt slightly.
Nessa checked it.
No damage.
His dignity was less fortunate.
The cat had disappeared from the window.
Good.
Probably.
Sera crouched in front of him.
"Your acceleration is exceptional."
Adrian's attention returned immediately.
"Exceptional sounds better than average."
"It generally is."
"How exceptional?"
"For someone without known movement training, enough that I ran the calculation twice."
That childish feeling returned.
Stronger this time.
Adrian tried not to smile.
Failed slightly.
"Okay."
"Your stopping technique is terrible."
The smile disappeared.
"Okay."
"Your conscious movement control doesn't match your physical capability."
"Also okay."
"Your body knows how to move."
Adrian looked at her.
"I don't."
"No."
That was becoming increasingly obvious.
The remaining physical tests built the same picture.
Jumping was absurd.
Landing was less so.
His standing vertical surprised everyone except, apparently, his legs.
His running jump surprised Adrian enough that he nearly forgot to prepare for the landing.
His flexibility was good.
His coordination became dramatically better whenever he stopped consciously micromanaging himself.
His hearing test had to be recalibrated once.
His ability to identify the direction of sounds was even better.
Smell was harder to quantify with the equipment available, but clearly enhanced.
Strength remained almost disappointingly ordinary.
Not weak.
Not impressive.
Endurance was difficult to establish because Nessa refused to let them push him hard while his ankle was still recovering.
Durability wasn't tested directly.
Adrian considered that a sensible policy.
He already had recent data.
One punch.
Floor.
Good enough.
By the time Sera finished, Adrian was sweating lightly and hungry again.
Of course he was.
Sera stood beside the workstation while the physical profile assembled on the screen.
No game-like numbers.
No convenient bars.
Ranges.
Comparisons.
Notes.
Estimated categories.
Adrian read what he could.
High acceleration.
Exceptional reflex response.
Exceptional balance potential.
High auditory perception.
Above-average lower-body power.
Moderate upper-body strength.
Untrained movement pattern.
Low confidence in durability estimate.
Coordination discrepancy: instinctive versus conscious.
He read that line twice.
It was strange seeing himself reduced to measurements again.
Familiar.
And not.
He'd done this before.
Not this exact battery, but close enough.
School screening.
Youth aptitude testing.
Later assessments.
Machines measuring what he could do and finding very little worth discussing.
No measurable magical affinity.
Negligible arcane capacity.
Unremarkable physical profile.
No unusual traits.
No recommended specialization.
Adrian Voss had always been extraordinarily easy to assess.
The machines had looked at him, considered the matter briefly, and returned the magical equivalent of:
Fine.
He'd never cared much.
His father had been the one with a respectable service record and a C-rank classification.
Mara had restorative affinity.
His mother could warm a pan without touching the controls if she concentrated.
Adrian had been Adrian.
He'd gone home afterward and continued being entirely ordinary.
Sera dismissed the physical display.
"Arcane next."
Adrian looked toward the other side of the hall.
Daven was waiting beside one of the recessed scanners.
For the first time that morning, Adrian felt genuinely nervous.
And genuinely curious.
That was new too.
***
The arcane scanner looked disappointingly familiar.
Technology had changed since Adrian's last formal assessment, but apparently there were only so many ways to build a machine around a person.
A standing platform.
Sensor frame.
Contact plate for one hand.
Several arcane conductor rings embedded around the structure.
No straps.
He checked.
Twice.
Daven noticed.
"Nothing closes."
"I know."
"Just making sure."
Adrian stepped onto the platform.
The material beneath his bare feet was cool.
For one unpleasant second, another surface tried to replace it in his memory.
Metal.
Restraints.
Symbols.
Silver.
Black and blue.
*Baseline confirmed.*
His fingers tightened.
Then he looked through the open frame.
Bruno stood several meters away.
Nessa beside him.
Sera was entering results into her tablet.
Sunlight came through the windows.
The door was open.
Adrian could leave.
This wasn't there.
He placed his hand against the contact plate.
Daven adjusted something on the workstation.
"Ever done one of these?"
Adrian hesitated.
"Something similar."
Bruno's gaze shifted toward him.
Adrian kept looking ahead.
That answer could mean almost anything.
Daven didn't seem interested in the history.
"Don't actively try to do anything. First pass is passive."
That was easy.
Adrian had spent thirty-eight years being extremely talented at not doing magic.
"Ready?"
"Yeah."
The frame activated.
There was no dramatic light.
Only a low vibration beneath his palm and a faint shimmer along the conductor rings.
Adrian waited.
He remembered being fourteen.
A different machine.
His father sitting two chairs away.
A technician repeating the scan because the first result had been so low they'd wanted to confirm the sensors were functioning correctly.
They had been.
Negligible capacity.
No measurable affinity.
Nothing wrong with him.
Nothing special either.
At the time, he'd mostly been annoyed by how long the appointment had taken.
Years later there had been other assessments.
Different equipment.
Same general answer.
Adrian Voss: perfectly functional.
Magically irrelevant.
The memory almost made him smile.
Daven frowned.
Adrian's smile vanished.
"What?"
"Nothing."
That was never good.
Daven touched the screen.
The scanner hummed again.
Longer this time.
Adrian looked toward Bruno.
Bruno was watching Daven.
Not him.
That was worse.
"Is something wrong?"
"Hold still."
"I am holding still."
Daven didn't answer.
Another set of conductors activated.
Adrian felt something then.
Not pain.
Pressure.
A strange internal warmth that started somewhere beneath his ribs and spread outward.
His ears twitched.
His tail lifted slightly.
The scanner chimed.
Daven stared at the display.
Then restarted it.
Adrian looked at Sera.
She shrugged.
"Is repeating tests just what you people do when you don't like the answer?"
"Usually when we don't trust it."
"That's much better."
The second scan finished.
Daven stopped moving.
Bruno noticed.
"What?"
Daven leaned closer to the display.
"Capacity is real."
Adrian blinked.
That sentence shouldn't have mattered.
It did.
"How much?"
"Still calculating."
"Is it low?"
"No."
The answer came immediately.
Adrian stared at him.
No.
Not negligible.
Just—
No.
Something tightened unexpectedly in his chest.
He looked down at his hand against the plate.
Same hand.
Not the same hand.
Daven switched views.
"Output pathway is unusual."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning unusual."
"Helpful."
"Control response is..."
Daven stopped.
Adrian waited.
"Bad?"
"Almost absent."
There it was.
Adrian relaxed slightly.
"That sounds more familiar."
Daven glanced at him.
"You've had control issues before?"
"No. I had magic issues before."
Silence.
Adrian realized, again, that he'd said too much.
Daven frowned.
"Meaning?"
Adrian removed his hand from the plate.
"Nothing."
The scanner immediately complained.
"Hand back."
Adrian put it back.
Daven looked at Bruno.
Bruno's expression remained unreadable.
Nobody pushed.
Not yet.
The scan continued.
Daven brought up another layer.
This one seemed to contain several overlapping curves and branching structures Adrian couldn't interpret.
Sera came closer.
"Affinity?"
"Trying."
"Trying?"
Daven zoomed in.
"There's a coherent pattern. More than one."
Adrian's pulse picked up.
"What does that mean?"
Daven didn't answer immediately.
One section of the display shifted.
He frowned.
"That's reinforcement."
Adrian went very still.
Bruno looked at him.
Daven continued.
"At least part of it is."
Sera leaned closer.
"On an Aniel?"
"Aniels can manifest reinforcement."
"Not what I meant."
"I know."
Adrian listened.
The warmth beneath his ribs seemed stronger now.
Reinforcement.
Common.
Especially among humans.
Body strengthening.
Muscles.
Bones.
Tissue.
Nothing exotic.
Nothing that should have made his heart beat this hard.
Daven changed the scan again.
"And there's something else."
A second pattern unfolded.
This one made even Sera stop talking.
Adrian watched their faces.
"Could somebody remember that I'm standing right here?"
Daven glanced at him.
"Your profile doesn't resolve cleanly."
"What does that mean?"
"It means the scanner is identifying structures it expects to belong together and others that it doesn't."
"Is that bad?"
"I don't know."
Adrian stared.
That was his line.
Daven initiated another analysis.
A pale branching pattern appeared across the display.
"There's a lineage component."
"Meaning?"
"Magic associated with inherited Aniel traits. Some lineages have very distinctive affinity structures."
Adrian looked at the screen.
"And mine?"
Daven was quiet for a moment.
"Distinctive."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the answer I can give you."
Sera leaned closer to the display.
"You can't resolve it?"
"I can tell you it's there. I can tell you there are sensory components, probably some form of veiling, and something that reads fire-adjacent." Daven enlarged another section. "I can't tell you why the output structure looks like that."
"Like what?" Adrian asked.
"Wrong."
The word landed strangely.
Grey fur.
A nicked ear.
*Cat. Not-cat. Fox. Wrong.*
Adrian's tail shifted behind him.
"Wrong how?"
Daven shook his head.
"That's where I'm going to stop."
Adrian blinked.
"You're going to stop?"
"Yes."
"That's reassuring."
"It should be." Daven finally looked away from the display. "Guessing outside your field is how bad assessments become official records."
That was annoyingly reasonable.
He indicated the first pattern.
"This part I'm comfortable with. Reinforcement affinity. Physical application, most likely. Measurable arcane capacity. Poor conscious control."
Then he indicated the second.
"This part needs someone who works with your lineage."
Adrian looked down at himself.
"My lineage."
"Whatever it turns out to be."
Sera glanced at Daven.
"You don't have a reference?"
"Not one I'd trust for this."
Bruno had been quiet for most of the exchange.
"What do you need?"
"A lineage specialist. Preferably someone familiar with White-Line Aniels."
Adrian looked at him.
"White Line?"
Daven nodded toward him.
"The phenotype. White hair, white ears, tail, eye structure. It's not exactly subtle."
Adrian touched one ear without meaning to.
"So that's a real thing."
"It's a colloquial thing," Daven said. "And about as far into that subject as I'm willing to go."
"Why?"
"Because I'm an arcane assessment technician in Western Rovenmark."
Adrian waited.
Daven waited back.
"And?"
"And you're apparently a rare Aniel lineage I haven't personally assessed before."
"Oh."
"Which means I'd rather find someone who has."
That was fair.
Probably.
Daven returned to the results.
"Have you ever deliberately reinforced?"
"No."
"Produced magical flame?"
"No."
"Created an illusion?"
"No."
"Veiled your presence?"
"No."
"Enhanced your senses magically?"
"No."
"Any conscious magical technique at all?"
"No."
Daven turned.
"Nothing?"
Adrian met his eyes.
"Nothing."
That answer felt different from all the others.
Because this time he knew exactly what he was saying.
Thirty-eight years.
Nothing.
Daven looked at the screen again.
"That's unusual."
Adrian laughed once.
Quietly.
He couldn't help it.
"What?"
Adrian shook his head.
"Nothing."
Daven looked unconvinced.
The scanner powered down.
Adrian removed his hand.
The warmth faded slowly.
He stepped off the platform.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Sera was reading the results.
Nessa was watching him.
Bruno had that same thoughtful expression Adrian had learned to dislike.
Daven finally leaned back from the workstation.
"I'll clean up the physical and arcane data. But that's as far as I go with the lineage profile."
Bruno nodded.
"Can you send the raw scan?"
"Of course."
"Do that."
Adrian looked between them.
"Send it where?"
Bruno's eyes returned to him.
"To someone who knows what they're looking at."
That wasn't particularly comforting.
Adrian glanced back at the scanner.
The last time anyone had assessed Adrian Voss, the result had been almost aggressively uninteresting.
No affinity.
Negligible capacity.
Nothing unusual.
Nothing worth investigating.
He had spent thirty-eight years being remarkably easy to classify.