Our new room was in a one-story building sitting near a row of identical silver-sided flat-roofed barns. Through the long rows of windows, I saw people in white coats working inside, their heads covered with blue paper caps. I assumed they were scientists of some level, perhaps the very team working on UniKind, splicing DNA into composites like Cistine. Outside each barn sat a squat silver tank with a yellow hose running from the top through a porthole in a door marked Do Not Enter.
Ms. Hardin gathered all thirty of us in the lounge, where we sat on carpeted crates arranged in a square. There was another blank television in one corner.
“Congratulations on your advancement.” Our teacher sat on a crate and smiled directly and me and Esme. “Your official role as cadets is to learn as much a
