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Today was the day.

Vander had been working at the Charris Facility for six months now as a low-grade technician, and he longed to do more than constantly logging and testing samples. It had taken three years of training and banal, menial jobs, but his patience had finally paid off. There would be no processing today. In fifteen minutes, he was being trusted to go in and collect the samples.

Even the preparation had taken longer than he’d thought he could bear, and been exhaustive to the point of tedium. He certainly knew the drill inside out from endless repetition and had lost count of how many times he had practised stripping to his underwear, putting on the bio suit, opening the door and showering in the suit before giving the final door a lingering look and reversing the routine. Today was the first time he got to go through that door. Today it was real.

Normally, he had a steady hand, but now, when he most needed to remain collected, his fingers shook as he took a large gulp of coffee. It scalded his mouth and splashed on his white coat. It was outrageously wasteful, but he tipped the rest away before it did more damage and revealed his nerves. It wouldn’t take much for them to change their minds and declare him unfit to be in charge of a syringe.

To calm himself, he went to the observation screen for one final look at the room and its occupant, both so tantalisingly near now. Mary was typically still. There wasn’t much to look at, really. A young-looking teenager sitting on a chair in a basic white room. It was a similar size to his bedroom in the communal blocks where he lived, but a whole lot cleaner and much, much whiter. Clinical. It was hard to believe that someone so small was the source of so many specimens.

‘That’s her, then.’

Vander glanced at his older colleague. He had been a few years ahead of him at the training centre and, like him, had grown up in the Girin Child Bank. All the staff had come from there originally, but he remembered this one. He had always had a heartless self-interest. You were his friend until he got a better deal.

‘Not much to look at, eh?’

Although it was exactly what he’d been thinking, Vander felt that the comment was crass, but not having anything to counteract it, he didn’t reply.

His companion pressed on, keen to demonstrate that he had more experience than Vander. ‘She looks like a girl, but she’s not. She’s a blank.’

Vander knew if he rose to the bait and got angry, he might lose this opportunity to go in. He took a deep breath. ‘I know.’

‘It messes with your head. The way she looks, and how you think she’ll be. You can’t know that until you go into that room. I’m just saying. She walks; she talks; but there’s nothing in there. The lights are on, but nobody’s home, if you know what I mean.’

Vander was annoyed by this need to state again what had been drummed into him since day one. But worse, he didn’t really understand why this idea annoyed him so much. And he was annoyed that his older colleague could see he was annoyed.

‘Of course, she wasn’t always like that.’

Despite his irritation, Vander’s curiosity was piqued. ‘What do you mean?’

His colleague looked smug, and Vander rubbed his tongue on the roof of his sore mouth to stop himself snapping out a smart response. He shrugged to show he wasn’t going to beg for the information and went to turn.

As expected, his colleague was not ready to lose his audience yet. ‘At the start, they thought they’d throw in a few extra tests for good measure – test for intellectual impact, not just the biological stuff.’

Vander allowed himself to raise an eyebrow, aware a comment would expose his desperation to know more.

His colleague pressed on, impressed by his own authority. ‘She learned to talk, was given regular cognitive tests. It’s all logged. If you make it through the probationary period, you might get to read the reports.’

‘So why did it stop?’

‘Got too wily. Tried to convince a member of staff to take her home. Nearly succeeded. When it didn’t happen, she got violent. Had to be suppressed with a chemical cocktail. Totally screwed up the testing for several years and set back the primary focus. They learned from that. Took her back to the beginning. A blank.’

They both looked at the girl again.

Vander was glad he no longer had the scalding coffee in his hand. Throwing it over his colleague would definitely have cancelled his session.

He turned away to get ready. His mood would be less obvious once he was changed, as no one could see him properly in his bio suit, and besides, it was time.

It was considered essential to maintain Mary’s rigid routine. Nutrition at the same time, samples taken on the dot, and lights out at eight o’clock without fail. A regular little machine. Except she was a blank, not a machine, which meant that she had flesh, and blood, which he needed to draw out with a needle.

They had practised on each other in training; now it was time to do it for real.

He tried to focus on his preparations rather than his anger, going through the motions of dressing. Once he was done, he walked the final steps for the first time. He held his arm against the pad, and it registered the chip under his skin and released the catch. The door swung open and he stepped inside. He heard it close behind him. Mary did not move, but he felt that she was watching him without making it obvious.

She’s a blank, he told himself. You’re making this a bigger deal than it is.

He crossed to the hatch in the wall to collect the tray of syringes, which he carried over and placed on her table. As he reached for her arm, she shifted away. Vander thought of the observers and how they were assessing him, so, quietly fuming, he reached again, took her arm and tied the tourniquet before she could move again.

Mary was curious about this new Tester. She could sense that he was younger, more nervous, less distant.

‘Stay still, please, Mary.’

Of course, the ‘just a little scratch’ still hurt, but she thought maybe he cared that it hurt, which most of them didn’t. He tried to be gentle with the needle despite her little game.

As he reached to adjust the tourniquet on her arm before taking another sample, she turned to move it further out of reach again so he had to lean closer to her.

She put a hand out and touched the table. ‘What colour is this?’

Vander nearly dropped the needle in his hand.

He knew she had functional speech, but this was more human than he’d expected.

No one had briefed him on the protocol for actual conversational interaction. His chest tightened, and he found himself taking shallow, fast breaths, making his visor begin to steam up. What should he do? Ignore her? Interact?

‘What colour is the table?’

It was hard to hear her through the suit, as it was not designed for communicating. However, she seemed used to speaking loudly and clearly.

Vander cleared his throat. ‘White.’

‘What colour is this?’ She spoke as if talking to a slow toddler and touched her suit in an exaggerated gesture.

Vander became aware that he was probably causing a stir behind the monitors. His first contact with the main research, and he was messing it up. ‘White.’

‘But they are not the same.’ She held her unrolled sleeve over the table to show him. ‘They are different.’

‘Well, I guess one is brighter than the other,’ he muttered.

‘Brighter?’

‘Sharper, cleaner.’

She let him draw the blood sample while she thought about this.

He was already pulling away, reaching out to gather the equipment and trying to leave.

She could not explain why she did what she did next. She never touched the Testers. They touched, prodded, poked and hurt her all the time, but she did not respond. As the Tester stood, she jumped up and grabbed his helmet in both hands. She pulled until her nose was against the visor and she could see his face inside. His mouth and eyes were open wide. His eyes. His eyes … were not white. A bit around the outside was, and there was dark in the middle. But around the dark …

He was gently pushing her away.

‘Is there a problem?’ The voice blared from the speaker by the electronic eye up in the ceiling.

‘I’m just leaving.’

‘Is there a problem?’

Mary released his helmet and moved away.

The Tester turned to the electronic eye. ‘No problem. I’m just coming out.’

‘Your eyes. What colour are your eyes?’

He bent to gather up the tourniquet, which had come loose and fallen on the floor.

‘Blue.’

‘Are my eyes blue?’

‘No.’ Big creases appeared across his forehead. ‘Your eyes are green.’ And then he turned quickly and was gone.

Vander was really rattled. As he showered and shed his bio suit, his mind was racing. She was a blank. A blank. But she hadn’t seemed that blank to him. He concentrated as he stepped through into the second changing area and quickly dressed in his lab clothes. His supervisor pounced on him as soon as he opened the door to leave the clearing room.

‘What was that all about?’

‘What?’

‘The head holding. What did she do?’

Vander forced himself to sound casual and in control. ‘You saw. She grabbed me.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. She let go.’ Vander looked away, trying not to look his supervisor in the face.

‘She said something,’ the supervisor pressed.

‘You were listening in.’

‘She took us by surprise. We heard the questions about the table and clothes. She’s obsessed with colour. But she said something very quietly. We didn’t catch it. What did she say?’

‘Nothing important.’

The supervisor looked hard at the young man in front of him. ‘You are new. You don’t get to decide what is important. This isn’t a game, and you are not working alone. What we do here could save us all from another plague.’

‘I know.’

‘So don’t agitate the blank.’

Vander looked up angrily. ‘I didn’t do anything. You never told me she talks like that.’

The supervisor shook his head in exasperation. ‘Of course she talks. How can she tell us about how she’s feeling, otherwise? Complete your report and write down anything, anything, the blank says or does other than sit, shit or sleep. The three Ss. Do you understand?’

‘Yes. I understand.’

‘So go and do it now while you remember.’

Vander went back to the lab and pulled out a report sheet and a pen. There was no point in denying she had grabbed him. He stopped and remembered those green eyes as they stared into his.