Orphaned Powers

Chapter Two: The Assessment Games

The morning air was always sharp at St. Lucien, no matter how many days you spent here pretending it didn’t matter. The corridors smelled of antiseptic, polished wood, and the faint, ever-present anxiety that clung to everyone like a second skin. By now, I had learned to move like a ghost: present, but unnoticed; compliant, but calculating. The art of survival, I realized, was partly hiding, partly pretending, partly waiting for the right moment to twist the rules in your favor.

I had been summoned to the assessment wing, a section of the orphanage that was less like a school and more like a laboratory of discomfort. There were tables with wires, chairs that looked like they could restrain a small horse, and devices that hummed with the precision of a surgeon. The kind of precision that did not heal, but measured, manipulated, and cataloged.

The head assessor, Dr. Vantier, was a tall, lean man with gray eyes that reflected nothing human. He smiled once and it didn’t reach his eyes—a smile that promised civility but delivered scrutiny. “Welcome back, Subject 14,” he said, as though my name was a number, a product code stamped on the catalog of children.

I nodded politely. “Good morning, Dr. Vantier,” I said, though I knew the greeting was meaningless. He didn’t care if it was polite; he only cared if it betrayed hesitation, fear, or weakness. And I had learned well.

The assessments, I soon realized, were games designed to break us in subtle ways. They called it “skill evaluation,” “potential mapping,” “developmental benchmarking.” I called it what it was: a parade of experiments dressed up in civility, designed to amuse the rich, the indifferent, the bored. Each exercise tested our limits, measured our reactions, and sometimes injected chemicals that were supposed to “enhance our abilities.”

Today, they began with telekinesis drills. A series of objects—books, pens, small chairs—were placed before me. I was instructed to move them from one side of the table to the other, while monitors recorded muscle tension, eye movement, heart rate, and, I assumed, some metric of obedience. My hands hovered over the objects, and I let my mind extend beyond my body, guiding them, nudging them, making them dance. The pen floated gracefully, a book shifted precisely, and the chair lifted slightly before I let it fall softly onto the mat.

Dr. Vantier raised an eyebrow. “Your control is improving,” he noted, voice neutral, eyes calculating. “Have you been practicing outside of designated hours?”

I smiled, as if the idea of “practice” were innocent. “Yes, sir,” I said. A lie, a half-truth, a careful omission.

The real challenge came next: the ethical dilemma simulation. They presented a scenario in which a simulated child would be “at risk,” and I had to choose whether to save them, follow orders, or prioritize the safety of the experiment itself. The purpose, I later learned, was to measure how much of my morality was pliable, and how much was fixed. It was a test of conscience as much as power.

I made my choice quickly, instinctively. I saved the simulated child. The simulation flickered and fizzled, and the monitors hummed approvingly. Dr. Vantier scribbled notes, probably marking down something like “unpredictable empathy” or “uncontrollable impulse,” neither of which he would admit aloud. But I understood: here, empathy was dangerous. Compassion was a variable that could not be quantified, and if it existed, it would be used against me.

After the session, I returned to my room, which smelled faintly of lavender and despair. Liora was there, sprawled on her bed with a book in one hand and a mischievous smile plastered across her face. “How was the circus today?” she asked, flipping a page with theatrical boredom.

I sat beside her, letting the chair squeak under my weight. “Predictable,” I said. “Though I may have made them reconsider their idea of control.”

She laughed, a short, sharp sound that felt like rebellion in itself. “Do you know what I did today?” she asked, eyes glinting. “I nudged the electro-simulator so that the readings were off by three percent. They didn’t notice. Yet.”

I grinned. There it was: our tiny, subtle war. The invisible defiance that left no fingerprints but spoke louder than words. Each act, no matter how small, was a reminder that we were not entirely theirs.

As we lay there whispering, planning, and laughing quietly, I felt something else stirring in me: a sense of longing, dangerous and warm, that had nothing to do with rebellion or power. It was attraction, unspoken yet insistent, aimed at someone who might understand, who might be another spark in the dark. I realized, with sudden clarity, that survival alone would not suffice. To endure, to truly resist, we needed connection.

That evening, during the so-called recreation hour, I watched her from across the courtyard. Her movements were deliberate, a graceful defiance even in something as mundane as walking or stretching. She caught my gaze for a moment, and the faintest smile crossed her lips. A small, insignificant gesture to anyone else, but to me, it was a signal. A recognition. A promise.

And then the nurse barked an order, and the spell broke. We returned to our routines: the clean, controlled chaos of St. Lucien, with its endless corridors, harsh rules, and silent observers. I felt the weight of the walls, the heaviness of compliance, the invisible chains of social expectation and authority. And yet, beneath all that, the spark persisted. The quiet rebellion, the secret knowledge that we were not entirely powerless, remained alive.

Night fell, and I lay awake, thinking. Each test, each injection, each monitor, was a lesson in manipulation, a satire of the world beyond these walls. Society’s obsession with control, efficiency, and profit had trickled down here, wrapped in labels like “care,” “education,” and “protection.” We were proof of their arrogance, their hubris, their belief that children could be molded, bought, and cataloged without consequence.

I reached out with my mind again, small, deliberate, testing the edges of my power in the darkness. A pencil rolled across the desk, a curtain shifted, a feather from the old book floated briefly above my palm. The actions were insignificant, but they were mine. No one had given them to me; no one could take them away, not completely.

And in the quiet, in the stillness of my small room, I made a vow. I would learn. I would grow. I would resist. And when the time came, I would turn their own games, their own systems, against them. But not yet. Patience, strategy, subtlety. That was the only way.

Liora stirred beside me. “Dreaming of chaos again?” she whispered.

I smiled. “Always.”

And so it began: the quiet war of minds, the unrecorded victories, the stolen moments of rebellion. St. Lucien was more than an orphanage; it was a theater of power, a satire of society, a proving ground for the rich and the arrogant. And we, the children they thought they could control, were already rewriting the script.

The day would come when the walls would not hold us, when the needles, the monitors, the rules, and the spreadsheets could not contain us. But that day was still distant. Tonight, we practiced, we whispered, we plotted—and we survived.

And that, I thought as my eyes closed, was already a kind of victory.