Standing in front of the gleaming white door I folded my arms across my chest and stared at the group of people in front of me, refusing to move an inch until I get some answers. Lynette sighed next to me and the clipboard woman, whose name is Heather started crossing and scribbling furiously, no doubt trying to rearrange the schedule now that Lynette was running late, again.

“Abigail, please be reasonable.” Lynette said, casting a glance at the two lab-coats clade people next to us; those two doctors were whispering furiously with each other and I grimaced. They both appeared to be in their forties, the man was called Dr. Hobbs and the woman Dr. Evans. Almost as soon as we had arrived these two doctors introduced themselves and began pouncing on me; then the lot of them herded me over here, on the while shielding me from everyone else passing by. I was tired of being treated like a new toy that might explode, so now here I was taking a stand demanding them tell me everything I wanted to know before I agree to any of these tests.

“If I am not reasonable, I wouldn’t even be standing here right now.” I said, shifting my weight from one foot to another. “I just want some answers and if I don’t get them I am not going to do anything.” I deadpanned.

“Fine, but one question and we are going in.” Lynette warned and I did a triumphant dance inside my head. This meant that these tests are very important and it’s something that I could leverage for more answers.

“Where are my friends now?” I asked, Tom’s face foremost in my mind. I hoped that wherever he was he would be alright, knowing him he was probably trying to find out where I was but even I didn’t have a clue myself.

“They are safe.” Lynette said and I raised my eyebrow at her. Seriously, did she think that I would just let it slide with that? “They are now transferred to Almaty Citybase north-west of Himalayas. They would be given a temporary post there until they decide for themselves what they want to do.”

Almaty… I have absolutely no idea where that is. Sighing internally I hoped Tom would not be stupid and do something irrational that would drag him further away from me. Our future together was hard enough as it was.

Entering those annoying white doors I was pushed down an equally gleaming white corridor. There were doors either side that was set equidistant from one another and I felt a little sick wondering if there were people locked up in there. I had to remind myself that Lynette had promised that experiments on POE and human are only conducted on a voluntary basis in de Silver family.

“Please come in.” One of the doctors said, waving me into a room that looked nothing like what I expected. Despite the beeping monitors and machines set on desks, the place was actually lined with dark brown bricks with several gym equipment and weights set on the other end. The female doctor immediately sat down in front of a computer and began tapping away whilst the rest settled down on several old leather armchairs scattered a small distance from the machines.

 Sitting down too, I crossed my arms and waited for the doctor to say something. They were busy typing into one of the computer and another one was jotting down something on a clipboard.

“Miss Abigail.” Dr. Evans came towards me with the clipboard and asked me a few basic questions and slowly dived deeper, basically making me retell my life story. Despite the fact that I had already told Lynette the whole story, she was sitting next to us listening attentively as well.

I tried not to get too agitated as they made me recount every single every single detail in my life. All the while in my mind I was trying to gauge how many questions I could get away with asking this time.

“You are saying that you learned how to control your power on your own?” Dr. Evans asked, and I could see Dr. Hobbs’ back tensed in his position in front of the computer. I cocked my head to the side and considered it in my mind.

“I wouldn’t say I learned to control it per sec.” I answered, my eyes narrowed as I tried to remember my school years in London Citybase that seemed like a life-time ago. “I just learned how to use it for small purposes and it grew from there.”

Dr. Evans and D. Hobbs quickly exchanged a look and the later started typing even more furiously on the keyboard. It was a good question to ask, one that I wasn’t even sure of myself; it just sort of occurred to me, like the mind sensory thing.

“Let’s move on to physical tests.” Dr. Evans said, lowering the clipboard and looked at Lynette expectantly. I immediately crossed my arms in front of my chest and Lynette sighed.

“What is it this time?” She asked warily and I stifled a smile.

“Do you know anything about the people that were captured in Himalaya?” I asked, my heart held in suspension awaiting a respond from Lynette. It has been more than a month since the incident; surely they would have found some information.

“We are not sure yet.” Lynette said and my face fell. “However we are quite certain that most of them are unharmed after the initial battle.”

“What about where they are now?” I chased up quickly, the doctors cast a look at Lynette who straightened up a little in her seat.

“I have answered one question, now please do the tests.” Lynette said and the corner of my mouth tugged down. It wasn’t as if telling me things would affect them; they practically have me locked underground in god knows where, and I had made a point not to ask where we were so they knew that I was willing to cooperate, to a degree anyway.

“Fine, what do you want me to do?” I asked, standing up and wiping my hands on my trousers. I made a mental note to ask for new cloths after this. And a shower. Oh what I would do for a shower right now.

“Please go to the other side of the room.” Dr. Evans said, flipping a sheet off her clipboard and began scribbling onto the next. Gingerly I made my way across some kind of arbitrary barrier to the side where all the sport equipment and beeping machines were located. Dr. Evans quickly followed me and began attaching bits and bobs to my body. I tried not to flinch when the cold metal sticky tabs touched my forehead and the needle she jabbed into my left arm.

“All set.” Dr. Evans said as she migrated back to the sofas and in a shimmer, some kind of barrier appeared between them and me. I raised an eyebrow at my grandmother and looked around trying to figure out what it was.

It was some kind of force-field, invisible if not for the occasional shimmer and weaver that would give it away. For a second I wondered if they were generated by POE, it sure did looked a lot like the one Nate would generate; but I quickly realized it was from a machine either end that resembled laser emitter.

A little astounded by the level of technology they had, I wondered into the middle of the room and waited for further instructions.

“Please get on the treadmill.” Dr. Evans said and came over to attach a few monitors on my forehead, arm and slightly above me chest. For the next few hours I was asked to perform various physical tasks. Jogging, running, weight lifting; basically they were putting me through a fitness test.

“Thank you, that’s all for now.” Dr. Evans said, and handed me a bottle of water. Plopping myself down back onto the soft coach I looked expectantly at Lynette.

“Alright.” She said after a few seconds, “What do you want to know this time?”

“What is happening at POE Academy?” I asked and I saw blank expression on Dr. Hobbs and Dr. Evans’ faces. Heather remained as professional as ever, not giving me any hint.

“I am afraid we don’t know any more than you do.” Lynette replied after a few moments of deliberation. “The Academy refused any kind of contact with us, since we are potentially the enemy. But after running into you we can now confirmed that the Apocalypse are behind it. Other than that the only fact we know is that about half of the students are captured during the tests and no one has seen them ever since. They retreated from the Ruin citybase very quickly, the association are still trying to get them to open up.”

I sighed, that was almost the same as what I heard from Nirmal. The only thing I don’t understand was why Mr. Andrewson would just close the Academy off like that. He was a mind reader; surely he could work out who is telling the truth.

“And you know absolutely nothing?” I asked again and Lynette shook her head. Defeated I drained the rest of the water in the bottle and waited for further instructions.

“We are going to move on to testing your powers, do you want anything to eat first?” Dr. Evans asked and I nodded, suddenly realizing how tired and hungry I was. Lynette frowned at me, studying me carefully; I took another sip of water and waited for her to speak.

“What have you done with your hair?” She asked and I glanced down at the blond locks curling around my shoulder.

“It was a way to disguise my identity.” I answered, not exactly a fan of this colour either.

“And your cloths.” Lynette said, as if she was finally aware of what I was wearing. i shrugged, did she expect me to keep my cloths clean after half a year in the wilderness?

“Heather.” Lynette said and the silent assistant nodded and spoke into her earpiece. I found their silent communication very fascinating.

“We will get you fitting clothings, and an appointment to the hairdressers.” Lynette said and Heather spoke into the headphone some more. After a while there was a knock at the door and Heather quickly slipped outside the door and came back in with my lunch.

I eyed the box of food eagerly as Heather set it in front of me and handed me a set of cutlery. Noting that it was a steak and kidney pie I dug into it without giving it a second thought. Normally I hated it but I had come to appreciate hot food to a whole new level now.

As I was eating my lunch, the two doctors had been busy going through whatever data they just collected on the computer and discussing in a hushed tone.

“When you are ready.” Dr. Evans said as I finished up, gesturing for me to return to the other side of the room.

Taking a deep breath I walked over to the lone chair on the other side and allow Dr. Evans to put the weird monitor tabs on me again. I tried not to move as I watched Dr. Evans walked back and turned the shield back on. With a press of a button several squares of the floor rotated in front of me and some dumbbells appeared.

“Can you please lift the objects with your mind one by one from left to right.” Dr. Evans instructed and I scanned my targets. There were seven dumbbells ranging from half a kilogram to 3.5 kilogram. This shouldn’t be hard.

With control, I lifted the dumbbells one by one to my eyelevel before setting them back down gently. Dr. Hobbs was busy running a simultaneous analysis on the computer whilst Dr. Evans kept her eye on my progress.

“Thank you.” She said pressing another button and the dumbbells disappeared. My mind was itching to sense the mechanism behind the flipping floorboards but with the sensor attached it would be a bad idea.

Although I didn’t know what my limit of lifting is, I do know that I was able to keep a person suspend in the air, which should be about sixty to seventy kilograms. To be honest, with the limited study time I had in POE Academy I wasn’t sure whether or not it was average or not. Although no one seemed surprised that I was able to do it back when we played dungeons and dragons.

So by the time a seventy kilogram dumbbell appeared, I figure I would know sooner or later whether I was in the normal range or not.

Lifting and putting a dumbbell down meant that I wasn’t really holding it in the air for that long, so I was doing fairly okay until I got to about three times my body weight. Dr. Evans nodded as though it was normal and I sighed in relieve inside. I didn’t want to be special.

“We are going to test your reaction time next.” Dr. Evans explained as she pressed a few buttons that miraculously transformed the room, clearing it of any furniture and a few holes appeared on the two sides of the wall, with a square hole about one cubic meter size in the wall directly facing me.

“Tennis balls will be fire out and you need to collect as many of them as you can into that hole.” Dr. Evans explained and I nodded, closing my eyes and relaxed, expanding my mind out to the entire room. I could hear the beeping of the machinery, not doubt monitoring my brain activities and Dr. Evans began to count down.

As soon as she finished I could feel tennis balls being fired out of the walls on both sides. Spreading my mind out into several tentacles I began flicking the tennis balls into the hole.

At first it was relatively easy; I was able to simultaneously deflect three to five tennis balls at a time from both sides but as the numbers ejecting out increases, it became harder for me to keep track and I immediately created a mind wall at the lowest firing hole so the tennis ball would never drop on the floor and created a funneling mind wall at the top towards the target destination. With the new barrier in place, I now concentrated on collecting large bulks of tennis ball and sending them in the general direction, relying on the mind walls to direct them into the square like a funnel.

I was concentrating on achieving the goal so hard that I didn’t even knew how long had past when the test finally ceased; I was relieved to see that whilst I didn’t get every ball in at first go, at the end of the test all of them were in the hole.

“Well done.” Dr. Evans said, giving me a rare smile which was slightly alarming considering she didn’t show any sign of being able to produce facial expressions.

“We will carry on with the telepathic tests tomorrow.” Lynette announced as she studied me carefully. “She needs some rest.”

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Hey everyone, sorry for the long update - my term had been absolute hell so far. Third year is really no joke :(( I had managed to finish this chapter - which is NOT edited, but I know that I had kept you guys waiting too long.

On that note though, I will be away for the next 11 days on a field trip and then when I am back I have reports to do so I can't promise any uploads for a while, although I would try my best to keep my lazy butt moving and get on with Gail's adventure with her newfound family.

A lot of you are probably wondering what happen to the people that were kidnapped at the end of Evolution, what the heck is going on with POE Academy, where are Tom and what happen to those who got separated from them during the ambush. All I can say is that I haven't forgotten about ANY of them (there are more subplots with people that had made an appearance in Evolution who will come back and you will NEVER guess who they are, which I am super excited to see your reaction when the time has come to reveal it), and everything will unfold with time, most of them at the end of Selection as well, with the shocking new revealations leading onto the third book :D

P.S. I have little idea about how many chapters I am going to write, we could be near the end, or not even at the middle with my jumbled thoughts! Butt I am hoping to wrap it up by the end of September so I can get started on the third book and the Dark Ages.