APTITUDE

Five chambers. One verdict. The rest of your life.

You are Candidate 4471, and today the Placement Exam decides what you will be — permanently. A calm voice called the Overseer walks you through five sealed chambers, each one measuring a different part of you while you're too busy surviving it to lie. A lattice of hexagonal cells is bolted to your forearm, and every cell that ignites is the machine deciding a little more of who you are.

Mark hexes on a timed range. Route glowing cores through a circuit before the clock kills the lights. Cross an unlit void on platforms that drop away beneath you. Return every core the monitors spill while their scan cones sweep the floor. And then, in the chamber the Exam calls a formality, decide what to do about the candidate behind the glass who has already failed.

Every trial has a second solution the Exam never offers. Shoot out the observation glass. Hotwire the maintenance conduit and skip the puzzle entirely. Take the unmarked ledge that isn't part of the examination. Break the lock and let her walk out. None of it is listed — and all of it is recorded, in a column the machine would rather not have.

Reach Assignment and the Overseer reads your lattice aloud: Enforcement, Engineering, Reclamation, Archives, Care, Administration. Seven endings, driven entirely by how you played. Or notice the maintenance door you were never meant to notice, and find out what the machine says when it has no column for you at all.