Cia's Father

Quick Facts

• Role: University-trained botanist from Five Lakes Colony; survivor of The Testing; father to Malencia "Cia" Vale
• First appearance: Chapter 1, on the morning of Cia’s graduation
• Occupation: Botanist who engineered crops to thrive in blighted soil
• Key relationships: Cia (daughter), Cia’s mother (wife), Zeen (eldest son), former Testing peers (Geoff and Mina)

Who They Are

Cia’s Father is the novel’s quiet whistleblower—loving, brilliant, and permanently scarred. His public identity is a respected botanist whose innovations sustain Five Lakes; his private reality is a man stitched together by missing memories and recurring nightmares of The Testing. He reframes the ceremony Cia longs for into a mortal contest, seeding the book’s core tensions around Trust and Betrayal and Deception and Manipulation by Authority. The few physical notes we get—his height, the eyes that twinkle in peace but darken with “shadows” when the past presses in—underline a presence at once warm and wary: a father who must love by teaching suspicion.

Personality & Traits

He is defined less by change than by choice: choosing to protect his children with truth, even when truth is dangerous. His intellect powers both his scientific breakthroughs and his careful strategy—what he says, when he says it, and what he withholds are as deliberate as the genomes he edits.

• Loving and protective: He is palpably relieved when his sons aren’t chosen and terrified when Cia is. He risks punishment by sharing what he remembers and culminates his guidance in a final, life-preserving command: “trust no one.”
• Haunted and traumatized: Though his Testing memories were wiped, nightmares leak through—Geoff’s thumbs-up across a sterile room, Mina’s scream, a red-numbered clock counting down. His eyes “filled with shadows” and his hesitations around the topic make trauma visible even when memory is not.
• Intelligent and resourceful: As a University graduate, he adapts plants to poisoned soil and fine-tunes Five Lakes’ agricultural success. That same problem-solving instinct governs his disclosure: he chooses the garden at night, meters out information, and equips Cia with questions rather than answers so she can think under surveillance.
• Cautious and pragmatic: He reads the United Commonwealth as ruthless. His advice—“question everything you see and everyone you meet”—models strategic skepticism rather than open rebellion, the kind that keeps a person alive.
• Ethically complex: He publicly downplays Zeen’s discovery of a new potato strain to keep his son off Tosu City’s radar, revealing a father willing to sacrifice recognition for safety.

Character Journey

Cia’s father does not transform; he reveals. Introduced as a supportive, successful parent, he becomes a tragic witness when, in the garden, he confesses the erased weeks and the nightmares that remain. That confession shifts The Testing from a prestigious honor to a rigged, lethal sieve, making him the story’s moral barometer. His arc is a slow, deliberate breach of imposed silence: he breaks the rules of amnesia to pass on a survival ethic, embodying the cost of truth under a regime that edits memory. In doing so, he becomes a living argument about Memory and Identity: memory may be stolen, but identity persists in scars, habits of caution, and the choices one makes to protect others.

Key Relationships

• Malencia “Cia” Vale: With Cia, he is mentor, confidant, and alarm bell. The tenderness of their bond heightens the severity of his warnings: his trust in her judgment paradoxically takes the form of “trust no one,” pushing her toward independence rather than obedience. He passes her a compass, not a map—urging her to read people and systems for herself.

• Cia’s Mother: Their marriage is affectionate but divided by strategy. While Cia’s mother forbids Testing talk, he threads the needle—supporting Cia’s ambition while quietly preparing her for danger. He shields his wife from the worst of his nightmares, a choice that protects her yet leaves him isolated with the trauma.

• Zeen: He admires Zeen’s brilliance but suppresses public acknowledgment of it, calculating that visibility equals vulnerability. This protective subterfuge shows the family’s reality: in a system that preys on talent, safety often requires erasing one’s shine.

Defining Moments

His presence crystallizes in a handful of scenes that turn parental advice into survival doctrine.

• The Pre-Graduation Warning (Chapter 1): He pulls Cia aside and hints that “The Testing isn’t always fair, and it isn’t always right.”

  • Why it matters: This punctures the myth of meritocracy at the story’s start, preparing readers—and Cia—to watch for rigged rules beneath the ceremony.

• The Confession in the Garden (Chapter 3): In darkness and secrecy, he reveals the wiped weeks and the nightmares of Mina and Geoff, images too visceral to be mere dreams.

  • Why it matters: His testimony reframes the novel’s stakes. The Testing becomes a memory-proofed machine of selection by elimination, and his fear authenticates the danger more than any rumor could.

• Publicly Downplaying Zeen’s Breakthrough (early chapters): He minimizes his son’s role in a major agricultural advance.

  • Why it matters: It’s a case study in his pragmatism—he chooses obscurity over acclaim to keep his children out of the regime’s sightlines.

• The Final Farewell (Chapter 4): As Cia departs for Tosu City, he leaves her with the mantra that defines her approach.

  • Why it matters: “Cia, trust no one” becomes both a survival strategy and a thematic lens, guiding Cia’s choices and testing her ability to balance caution with compassion.

Essential Quotes

“The Testing isn’t always fair, and it isn’t always right.” This line collapses the official narrative of honor into a warning about institutional rot. Coming from a celebrated graduate, it signals that success in this world may require surviving injustice, not earning reward.

“They tell me The Testing for my class took four weeks. I don’t remember a single day. Sixteen of us were chosen to move on. The head of the Testing committee said Testing memories are wiped clean after the process is complete to ensure confidentiality.” His matter-of-fact report exposes the system’s core tactic: enforced forgetting cloaked as “confidentiality.” The clinical tone—numbers, duration, committee—chills precisely because it normalizes the erasure of self.

“In the light of day I began to remember the dreams. Just flashes at first. Geoff giving me a thumbs-up from across a white room with black desks. A large red-numbered clock counting down the time as my fingers manipulated three blue wires. A girl screaming.” The sensory shards—color, number, motion—feel like trauma breaking through a dam. Naming Geoff and an unnamed “girl” personalizes the cost; these aren’t abstract casualties but friends and competitors turned ghosts.

“Better that you go to Tosu City prepared to question everything you see and everyone you meet. That might be the difference between success or failure.” He defines success not as scoring highest but as perceiving correctly under deception. His advice centers process—observation, doubt, judgment—over answers, training Cia to survive fluid moral terrain.

“Cia, trust no one.” This whispered imperative condenses his love and fear into five words. It’s both shield and burden, forcing Cia to guard herself without losing her humanity—a line she will navigate for the rest of the novel.