Besca dumped her clipboard on the counter, tossed her RISC coat off, and punched out on the tablet. Done. Finished. An entire day in this building talking to every flavor of yokel aspirant and city-slumming, wannabe celebrities. She’d written down the five or six that seemed genuine, and was confident the suits above her would ignore them. Fine. Whatever. She’d be mad about it later; right now all she wanted to do was get her hands on some street food and relax, maybe catch the tail-end of Lucis’s show, or swing by the marina and see if Colm had taken the girls out fishing yet. 

She could do with a beer and a quiet drift on the lake. 

“Doctor Darroh.” One of the employees approached her holding an application. Volunteer tag, not RISC.

[color=gray]“Uh—yep, yeah, no. Doctor Darroh just left, actually. Yeah. Damn, just missed her. If you scan in whatever you got there, though, I’m sure she’ll check it out first thing tomorrow.”[/color]

He gave her an odd look, but when she started walking away, he followed. Damn. 

“There’s uh…we were told to come get you if there were any, uh, [i]weird[/i] things.”

[color=gray]“Weird things.”[/color]

“Just…” he held the sheet out. “Just look at this.”

Besca shut her eyes, tried not to imagine the [i]‘sold out’[/i] signs on all the food carts, and took the sheet. A quick scan didn’t find any problems; no empty fields, decently-sized answers where there ought to be…and where there ought not to be. And, actually on second sight, there [i]were[/i] empty fields, they just had answers in them anyway. 

[i]Date of birth—summer, [b]I think[/b][/i].

[i]Compatibility status—[b]I don’t know what that is.[/b][/i] Yet she’d come to a [i]pilot testing interview.[/i]

Ah, there it was. She’d skimmed it the first time. Age—sixteen. 

“So, uh…what’s the plan? Do I just kick her out?”

[color=gray]“Yeah—no. No, uh…no, I’ll take care of it. Thanks. Room four? Right, good.”[/color] Besca left him there and made her way back down the hall. She knocked, waited, then went in. 

[color=gray]“Quinnlash Loughvein,”[/color] she said, feigning like she was still reading the sheet. The girl sat at the desk inside wasn’t much to look at; she was on the short side, and a tad scrawny. Her hair was long though, and her eyes were exceptionally yellow—oh, wait, no, not [i]eyes.[/i]

Besca tapped her own eyepatch. [color=gray]“Hah. Twinsies,”[/color] she said, and took the seat opposite her. [color=gray]“You know, I gotta say, I’ve been reading a lot of these applications today, and this is definitely the most interesting one we’ve gotten. Really good stuff here, funny, seriously. So what brings you down?”[/color]