Today marked the tenth annual elite recruitment drive, and every graduating student at Keystone Middle School was gathered in the gymnasium, awaiting the arrival of the elites and the medicine that would decide their futures.
The elites were the idols of the Aethel Republic, superhumans with magical abilities awakened by the very Prodigy Injection the students were about to receive.
None of the miners' children had ever seen one in person, save for the Mayor who gave speeches a few times a year. For months, the only thing anyone could talk about was the thrill of having real elites visit their school.
One could imagine their disappointment, then, when a group of grim-faced military personnel, not a famous celebrity, arrived to administer the injections.
But while these weren't the singers or movie stars they all knew from television, it was no secret that these military elites were the saviors of the nation, protecting them from hostile armies and the ever-present threat of magical beasts. The televisions in the town café and the lessons from their teachers had made that much clear.
Though they had never seen a real elite, they had seen magical beasts often enough. Earth mice skittered through the alleys of the mining town, and for generations, nearby farmers had raised monstrous boars for slaughter.
Until recently, only the power of technology and the holy magic of the church’s High Clerics could keep the wilder beasts at bay.
When the more powerful monsters came, however, you hid, or you died.
This was the way of life for the people of the Aethel Republic, and indeed, for most of humanity across the world.
Leo fidgeted in his seat, waiting for the nurse to reach his row.
Today was the most important day of a young student's life. They would be administered the Prodigy Awakening Serum, known more reverently as the Prodigy Serum, and would discover whether they possessed the potential to change their lives, or if they were destined to remain common laborers in a lithium mining town forever.
This was also Leo's last day at the government-run school. He would either begin working full-time in the mines or, with a flicker of impossible luck, leave this decrepit town behind. If he was compatible with the Serum, he would be on a train to the Sterling Elite Academy by nightfall, ready to train as a defender of the Sterling Republic.
They had already endured an hour of speeches from the Principal, reminding them of their duty to the nation, the glory of the Elites, and the gravity of the opportunity they were being given. After all, they were just the children of common miners, dirt-floor poor and with little hope of becoming anything more.
Leo closed his eyes as the nurse rolled a cart beside him, an open briefcase resting on top. A sharp, violent pain shot up his arm, and the world went blank. Agony bloomed in every cell, a feeling like being torn apart from the inside. Blood seemed to clog his lungs, and he was drowning while sitting bolt upright in a metal folding chair.
This was wrong. The shot was only supposed to sting for a moment, not… this.
As his consciousness frayed, Leo realized he must be the one in a hundred—the rare fatal reaction that sorted the nation’s defenders from the common masses.
But after a few seconds, his breathing cleared. The pain began to recede, and his eyes fluttered open. A moment later, Leo regained a fragile hold on his senses, the agony still a thrumming current in his veins. The nurse’s deep crimson eyes, a common side effect of her own Serum injection, stared directly into his. A faint smile touched her lips.
"There you are. We thought we’d lost you for a moment. It’s a good sign. Zero casualties at a stop always means there’s a powerful one in the bunch."
The woman stepped back, and Leo took in her smartly pressed green military uniform, complete with a pencil skirt and heels. It all seemed familiar, yet fundamentally wrong. Had the injection stolen some of his memories? Or was something wrong with his eyes? On second thought, something was definitely wrong with his eyes; the world was a blurry mess when he wasn't focused on a single person.
He flinched as his head began to pound, a new wave of pain wracking his body. The military woman with the strange red eyes seemed unconcerned. She moved to a chubby girl nearby, drawing a large needle full of a glowing golden liquid from the briefcase on her cart. Without a word of warning, she jabbed it into the girl’s arm. The girl fainted instantly, then slowly regained her composure.
A quick glance at his own hands showed Leo a familiar bronze tan, but the network of scars and peeling skin from a childhood spent working in the mines after school was mostly gone. In its place was a deep red mark that looked like three long claw marks running the length of his forearm.
As he stared silently at the mark, it seemed to grow more pronounced, more vivid, as if the flesh had just been torn open. Yet when he touched it, the skin beneath his fingers was smooth and unbroken.
After a few minutes, the frightened murmuring of the children died down. Leo looked up to the front of the room where an officer in a formal military uniform stood behind a podium, waiting patiently for the process to conclude.
The red-eyed woman and six men in doctor’s coats joined him at the front before he began to speak.
"Thank you for your cooperation. This year's choosing trial is now complete. Those of you without a mark may return to your classes."
"But for the rest of you, congratulations. You have been chosen as the prodigies of the Sterling Republic's new generation. You are the Gifted, who will lead us to victory over our enemies with the supernatural powers bestowed by the Prodigy Serum."
Soldiers poured into the gymnasium, two for every marked child, and a cold panic began to grip Leo. His mind still hadn't grasped it. He was one of the fortunate ones, compatible with the artificially induced superpowers. He could become a mage, a mighty warrior capable of splitting a mountain, or even a legendary healer who could raise the dead.
At first, the children resisted being grabbed and led away by soldiers, especially those who had failed the choosing. But the newly awakened were so weak from the injection they needed help to even walk. The situation only deepened Leo’s confusion, but he didn’t dare ask what was happening to his body, terrified they might decide something had gone wrong and dispose of him.
Or worse, send him back to the mines.
According to the lessons he’d been taught, he should be a mighty hero by now, not a scrawny, below-average-sized teenager wracked with pain and too weak to stand up from his chair.
"You look a little out of it, kid," a soldier said, stepping up beside him. "Just let us carry you. You'll be right as rain after a few days of sleep. Just don't forget to do your homework before we arrive."
And that was how he found himself being carried into a luxurious train car and placed in a private room, complete with its own desk and a call button on the wall marked "Room Service."
Unfortunately for his plan to understand why the process was so agonizing, the moment his head hit the pillow, Leo was fast asleep.
He had no idea how long he was out, but when he finally awoke, a stack of papers and a small textbook sat waiting for him on the desk.
[Prodigy's Primer] was the title of the book. Its cartoonish cover made it clear it was aimed at children.
Not that he was old—he was turning fourteen this year—but being the last in his class to hit puberty, he looked much younger than he was. The only thing he had going for him was a handsome face, and even that had earned him a beating or two.
But now, with the Prodigy Serum on his side, all of that would change.
Slowly, he opened the textbook.
[Prodigy's Primer. Congratulations, and welcome to the upper echelon of society, the elite five percent found compatible with the awakening serum. This serum will soon activate the latent magical powers in your bloodline, passed down from the time of our Nation's founding by the Founder Sterling itself. Though you have learned about this in class, there are a few things you don't yet know. First, your powers won't fully awaken until you use the first skill related to your specialty. Follow the guidelines in this text, and you will discover the primary awakening method for your abilities. Once you have finished that most basic task, you can begin the homework assignment.]
Leo read the first page three times before turning it. The next section listed the different marks that appeared on the awakened, and most seemed self-explanatory. Ice shards, fire, blades, shields, paws, bows, and even an ornate fan were all detailed with page numbers leading to their respective awakening methods.
But there was nothing that resembled three simple claw marks.
Hoping for answers, he turned to the homework assignment instead. It was even more useless. It was a questionnaire about the student's abilities: their strength, a description, activation times, speed, energy usage, side effects. In short, it was impossible for him to fill out.
All the other marks seemed so obvious. Even a pair of axes surrounded by a red aura was clearly a berserker in Leo’s mind. But the claw marks made no sense.
There was a similar one, an animal paw, which the book described as some sort of druid shaman, but nothing as simple and confusing as his own. Was he meant to be a punching bag for monsters? That couldn't be right. The book said these marks represented superpowers.
After a few hours, he was no closer to an answer. It was time to call one of the soldiers and get some clarification before the train reached its destination.