"Do I really have to eat this, doc?" Asked Sullivan as he suspiciously eyed a slimy black orb.

  "I'm actually only a technician, and yes; if you wish to awaken you need to ingest that."

  Sullivan gulped nervously as he looked at the repugnant orb. He took a whiff and instantly regretted it. 'Maybe having to eat this thing is the real reason that girl was crying.' Sullivan joked in his head.

  After swallowing, and then almost throwing up the orb, Sullivan said, "Ok, its gone."

  The technician did a perfunctory glanced up and the went back to his console. Sullivan, waiting for something to happen, inspected the interior of the aptitude testing machine. It was an egg like chamber in which Sullivan had to stand. The inside walls had all kinds of reflective sensors that were about the size of quarters. There were also cords sticking out of the wall that connected to different kinds of sensors attached to Sullivan's chest, back, and head. Suddenly a sound started, like a high-pitched electric sound, and Sullivan felt a heat rush through his body.

  The heat grew greater and greater, and Sullivan heard the Technician say, "Feeling heat is normal. That's the body's natural reaction to awakening."

  Sullivan's body was now covered in perspiration and the heat changes into waves that pulsed through his body. Each new wave became a little more unbearable until he felt his proprioception heighten. Closing his eyes, he located the source of the energy: around his stomach area. The magnitude of the waves kept increasing and increasing until Sullivan felt like he was about to detonate like a stick of dynamite. The sensation of burning up would have made him scream out in pain, but he was incapacitated by the process. Eventually the pulses started to slow down until it became a faint feeling. Sullivan sighed with relief that the ordeal was over, and he could now freely move.

  "My God!" Sullivan heard the technician exclaim. "A+ aptitude?!?"

  Sullivan's jaw dropped. "What did you say?" He incredulously inquired.

  "You have a-a A PLUS aptitude!"

  Sullivan swore for a moment that he was in someone else's dream—possible the technician's.

  The technician picked up a walkie talkie from the console and said "Yeah, call Dr. Hartz down here. We've got an A+ aptitude."

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "A+! confirm A+?"

  "A as in apple. Plus as two plus two equals four. You heard me right, it's a freaking A+"

  Five minutes later a mustachioed man in his sixties wearing a lab coat entered the room with a cool, beautiful woman in her mid-twenties wearing high heels, a pencil skirt, and a blouse.

  "Move, let me see that." Dr. Hartz demanded peremptorily.

  Dr. Hartz looked wide-eyed at the results. He then took a gander at Sullivan who would have felt testy about not being unhooked from all the sensors on his body if not for the fact that he was still in disbelief.

  "Hmmm, let's see... Physical type awakener... affinity for darkness?!?" Dr. Hartz took a suspicious glance at Sullivan before looking back at the console. "Well, go unhook the boy and send him on his way!" Dr. Hartz barked while leaving the room with his hands behind his back.

  Dr. Hartz's secretary minced behind him out of the room and the technician rushed to unhook Sullivan while apologizing for not doing so earlier. The new deferential tone of the technician had a profound effect on Sullivan as his doubts were quickly fading. He was an actual, real-deal, A+ awakener. Even Marty Savage only had A level aptitude.

  After Sullivan donned his shirt and began leaving, right before he was about to exit into the lobby he had come from with the other students, the secretary from earlier waylaid him. Leading him away from the door down a hall, she handed him a card.

  "The director, Dr. Hartz, the man you saw earlier in the awakening room, has invited you to come back to do more precise tests on your aptitude and its affinities. The awakening room you were just in was meant for mass testing and lacks the delicate acuity fit for testing A+ aptitudes. Also, your affinity for darkness—are you familiar with it?"

  "Only with what we learn in school. I know it can allow someone to hide in shadows and do all other kinds of weird stuff like that."

  "Yes, it can do that. But what is especially interesting about the darkness affinity is that unlike other affinities it is actually a conglomeration of finer affinities that aren't known by the public."

  "Secret affinities?"

  "Yes. You've probably heard about extremely rare affinities like those which allow awakeners to tame monsters in dimensional rifts, or those with miraculous healing abilities, but there are also a vast number of rare and unique affinities under the umbrella of either light or darkness that are wholly unknown to the public. You could possible hold a priorly undocumented affinity."

  This information felt almost as shocking as the news that Sullivan had an A+ aptitude.

  "Oh, and some advice. It isn't prudent to disclose to others your awakened affinity for darkness. It would be in your best interest to simply claim to have an unidentified affinity. As for the reason... I'm sure you'll discover why eventually." The secretary said with an enchanting smile that made Sullivan forget to hold her to a definite answer.

  After their quick conversation, the secretary led Sullivan out a different door into a room of agents from different awakener guilds. It seemed they had been tipped off about Sullivan's aptitude as they all quickly crowded around him in the hopes that they might get the credit of recruiting him to their guild.