Second test: the interview.

Mine was scheduled in one of the Biology rooms where we did our simulated dissections. I didn't appreciate the irony. I wiped my palms on my jumpsuit for the third time as I waited in the corridor and tried to pretend I was Jake. He'd gone for ninety-seven thousand credits last year on his verbal and management ranks alone. I'd joked that he should have started paying me, but even nine months after his Auctioning, I was still earning almost double his salary. ANRON's five-generation bonus was just that hefty. It was almost a pity I was about to break it.

The door opened. A HARLIN boy staggered out, his face pale. He was halfway down the hall before I could ask him how it went. I knew it was psychological, but as he passed, my implants caught the faintest whiff of simulated rat feces and puke. Suddenly, I wanted to vomit myself.

"Come in," someone said.

They'd folded away the dissection screens, leaving the room too open and too white. I tried not to slink in like a criminal. "Hi," I said, cringing almost immediately. My smile felt too wide. "My name's Madeline. It's a pleasure to meet you."

The interviewer smiled back. She wore the same uniform my parents did: the cardigan and black pants of ANRON's administration staff, the DNA helix brand proudly embroidered into her shirt. I had the sudden, horrifying feeling that I was being interviewed by my mother. It must have shown on my face, because the next moment she leaned back like I was about to be sick all over her boots. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I lied. I sat down and tried to look comfortable. Confident. I failed.

"Well then," the interviewer said with a smile, crossing her legs, "let's get started. Tell me about yourself."

I took a deep breath and tried to think of Jake. We'd practiced in the weeks leading up to this. What was I supposed to say? The image of my mother had thrown me; I scrambled through a suddenly blank brain. The seconds trickled agonizingly by.

"Uh, well," I stuttered, once the silence got too much, "I'm really good at modding. I mean, I like it. Fixing things, I mean." I tried to laugh. "I'm a bit of a mech-head."

The interviewer nodded encouragingly, her face so practiced that I panicked. A half-remembered sentence that I was meant to have memorized floated up, and I blurted it out without thinking. "That's why I would love to go to MERCE and help fix up Unilox."

She blinked. I flushed hard enough that my scalp felt hot. "Uh, I mean . . . well . . . look, MERCE is amazing. I-I think it's important to help design hardware for the next generation."

She wasn't looking at me anymore. Her gaze had slipped away to the left of my shoulder, and I knew that she was making notes on her screen. I cringed. "Thank you for that, Madeline," she said sweetly. "Now, can you give me an example of when you showed leadership?"

* * *

I walked out from the interview room feeling like I'd just spent the last half hour watching my stock price in freefall. The bell rang as I wandered away, dazed. Lunchtime. I made my way to the canteen. Eleika and I looked at each other once, and then bought everything we could eat without getting sick. I dumped the Nutritubs on the table, horribly conscious of the third space between us where Carly normally sat. Bright-eyed, pink-haired Carly, who had grown up with us and then left for Entertainment Limited. Her parents had held a permanent private sale when she was nine, so she hadn't had to attend school for the last three weeks. If I didn't like her so much, I would have choked her-or myself-with envy a long time ago. Without her, Eleika and I were just scraping against each other's edges, a mass of matching nerves.

Eleika snapped first. "How much do you think you'll go for?" she asked. She'd left her sensors programmed on PERCO's ChocMousse Delight. She scraped out the remnants of her third Nutritub like it was her last meal.

"I just want to get to MERCE and survive the argument with my parents," I said. I'd gone straight for PERCO's DoubleCheese Pizza without even bothering to check my account. Simulated salt tingled on my tongue. "I don't care how much I go for."

Eleika looked at me for a moment, and then laughed. It wasn't a happy laugh. "Don't lie, Maddie."

I looked away. "What do you want me to say?" I muttered, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. Pathetic, the both of us. "You know my parents are expecting a century. Not that I'll get it, after that interview." I finished my Nutritub with a savage bite. "I guess I'll just have to settle for being a double disappointment."

She shook her head. "You were probably brilliant," she said morosely. "I tried to tell a joke. He didn't laugh."

"I think my interviewer thought I was a joke," I said. "Anyway, how about you? What do you want?"

She gripped her spoon with white hands. "Anyone but DRAYTH." It sounded like a mantra. I grimaced and understood. Her parents were both DRAYTH. They'd sold everything to set up the sale of her eighteen-year license to ANRON. "I'd rather jump in the river."

I winced. "Hey, don't . . . don't talk like that. It'll be fine. We'll be fine."

I wanted to say something else comforting, like Jake might have been able to. Something stupid like Carly, to make her laugh. But in the end I was only myself, and so I said nothing else until the bell rang and it was time for our next tests.

* * *

Strength: we lifted weights until our muscles gave out and the Testers made notes on their screens. Dexterity: we shot down virtual masked soldiers with old-style controllers rather than linking in through our UConns. And finally, endurance. I rolled my eyes as kids from MERCE and PERCO gaped at the rows and rows of treadmills we Experimentals saw every day for an hour. Maybe they'd looked intimidating once, but now I was more worried about getting bored. When I'd first started the longer runs, at eight years old, I used to compulsively check the time. That was when I realized how agonizingly long a minute actually was. So now I just ran until the program stopped me: head splayed out, heart pumping, harsh breaths ripping through my lungs.

We swung ourselves up and synced with the machines. The tread started beneath me. For a moment, the world lurched, but then I fell into the familiar rhythm. Low music sobbed through my ear implants. I turned it up with my UConn to drown out the sounds of a hundred and ninety-nine other pairs of feet drumming away around me. Eleika read, I knew. Carly used to play games or watch Ads. I got dizzy doing any of that, so I listened to music and ran through landscapes and remembered the exercises my parents had taught me, things they'd learned back when they couldn't use their UConns because the Testers were afraid they would interfere with the scans.

One foot in front of the other. Time stretched and stood still. It felt like I'd been running for hours when, below me, the treadmill suddenly bucked like an animal. The speed ramped up with a keening whine. I gasped and tried to follow. I'd picked the Varaha desert simulation, mapped to match the real one outside the Wall. Normally I loved feeling like an explorer in an alien world, but today each sand dune looked exactly the same, like I was running in place. Stuck. Trapped. My knees hurt. My throat rasped. Running for an hour every day made you fit, but it didn't make it any easier. I still wanted to get off the damn treadmill. It had tilted back even further; I felt like I was running into space. My body was screaming at me to get off, to stagger into a corner and huddle in a fetal position until I could breathe without my lungs feeling like they were going to suck out of my chest. But I couldn't. So I looked for the next rise, and just like my mother had taught me, I thought about something I wanted.

It was easy to do today. I pictured the smooth walls of MERCE Tower and the nano-sculptures inside that came alive when you passed. I imagined walking onto the Auctioning stage with the numbers soaring over a century and the Auctioneer banging the hammer. Sold! The distance melted underneath me. I hit the rise. And then I was at the apex looking down at the desert below: empty and so full of promise.

But before I could take the next step, the world unraveled before my eyes.

I blinked. Dr. Yulisa stood in front of me, each button of her lab coat done up to her umber throat. She mouthed something. I killed my music with a swipe. And then, as the real world shivered back, I realized I was alone. One hundred and ninety-nine empty treadmills stared back at me. They looked bluish-grey through the flickering scans still running over my body. I looked at Dr. Yulisa, confused.

"That's enough," she said. She tapped something into her UConn. The scans melted away and the treadmill slowed. I grasped the bar as I tried to match the pace, my legs suddenly like rubber. Red numbers blinked back at me, brighter than blood. I'd been going for over two hours. I stared at the clock, and then back at her. Something was wrong. First the two injections. Now this. "What's . . . going . . . on?" I gasped.

She wasn't looking at me. She was squinting at the screen of her UConn, her eyes scanning through numbers I didn't understand. "Nothing's wrong," she said impatiently. "The program was meant to push you to your limit. You just kept going."

I opened my mouth to argue and that was when the rest of my brain caught up with me. The Auctioning had started fifteen minutes ago!

Dr. Yulisa was still speaking. "Once you're cleaned up," she said, "I need you to go to room 538. I've left your evening dose with Dr. Morrow."

"Sure," I said. "Whatever." I grabbed a towel with shaky hands, stumbled off the treadmill, and ran.