Malencia "Cia" Vale

Quick Facts

Sixteen-year-old protagonist and first-person narrator of The Testing. A recent graduate of the remote Five Lakes Colony, she stands five foot two with unruly light-brown hair and favors sturdy, practical clothing (pants, boots) that matches her hands-on skills. First appears at her graduation ceremony. Core relationships shape her choices: a childhood bond with Tomas, a guiding (and haunting) warning from her father, wary mentorships with adults in Tosu City, and deadly rivalries with fellow candidates.

Who She Is

Boldly curious yet deeply principled, Malencia “Cia” Vale is the series’ conscience—an idealist forced to survive in a system built to strip away ideals. Her story is a classic Coming of Age and Loss of Innocence: each test pushes her to balance compassion with calculation, and empathy with self-preservation. Cia sees the world like a machine—broken, but fixable—which makes her a symbol of repair in a future that prefers destruction. She is the rare candidate determined not just to win, but to remain worthy of winning, embodying the fight for Morality in a Corrupt System.

Personality & Traits

Cia’s voice blends warmth and rigor: she is the teammate who carries people when they stumble and the engineer who anticipates the flaw before it triggers. Her defining tension is between her instinct to help and the Testing’s demand to harm.

• Intelligent, mechanically inclined: She troubleshoots and builds—repairing school generators back home and diagnosing a broken fountain pump during the fourth test, then improvising methods and materials to fix it. Her mechanical mindset mirrors her larger talent: diagnosing the Commonwealth’s “design” and spotting where it has been rigged to fail its people.
• Compassionate and loyal: Despite her father’s “trust no one,” she arranges care for Daileen before leaving, mourns candidates like Ryme Reynald and Malachi Rourke, and refuses to abandon Tomas even when doing so jeopardizes her chances. Her loyalty is not naïveté but a deliberate refusal to let the Testing define her ethics.
• Observant and cautious: She notices micro-details—the skimmer’s hidden camera, the listening devices in the ID bracelets—proving early that she can navigate Deception and Manipulation by Authority. Small, quiet observations become life-preserving decisions.
• Resilient and determined: Cia endures poisonings, traps, and infection, yet keeps moving. Even after she’s forced into violence, the psychological toll doesn’t hollow her out; it forces her to articulate lines she won’t cross—and to pay the cost of keeping them.

Character Journey

Cia begins as a hopeful graduate dreaming of the University and ends as a wary survivor who understands the price of leadership. Her father’s warning reframes her excitement into vigilance; the early deaths of peers strip away any illusion that merit alone determines success. In the wilderness test, when she kills mutated humans to survive, she confronts the gap between her upbringing and the Testing’s engineered brutality—an initiation into Survival in a High-Stakes Competition. By the end, her memories are erased, but she engineers a way to remember: a recording that restores the truth. That final act shifts her from passive candidate to active resistor—someone ready not just to pass tests, but to redesign the system that created them.

Key Relationships

• Tomas Endress: Childhood friend turned ally and love interest. Their relationship is built on shared history and mutual competence—repairing, planning, and surviving together. But secrets (including what he knows about Zandri’s death) complicate trust, forcing Cia to distinguish between loyalty and blind faith.
• Cia's Father: Her moral lodestar and the architect of her caution. His fragmented recollections—warnings without full explanations—both save her life and burden her with fear, leaving her to interpret and apply lessons he can’t openly teach.
• Michal Gallen: The escort who quietly signals that not everyone within the system serves it blindly. His subtle help and measured praise suggest a hidden resistance and give Cia a model for ethical action from within.
• Will: A friendly façade concealing ruthless ambition. His betrayal during the fourth test crystallizes the theme of The Price of Success: advancement demands choices that deform character, and Cia’s refusal to become like him defines her.
• Dr. Jedidiah Barnes: The Testing’s chilling embodiment of utilitarian order. His calm rationalizations of candidate deaths teach Cia that the cruelty isn’t a glitch—it’s the system doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Defining Moments

Cia’s arc is punctuated by decisions that fuse intellect with conscience—moments where she chooses who she will be, not just whether she will live.

• Her father’s warning: Before leaving, he confesses broken memories and tells her to “trust no one.” Why it matters: It becomes her inner algorithm—she tests data, double-checks motives, and survives because she learns to verify rather than assume.
• Discovering the surveillance: On the skimmer, she spots the hidden camera and thinks, “The Testing has already begun.” Why it matters: Her awareness shifts from student to operative; she starts performing every action with an audience (and consequences) in mind.
• Team test sabotage: She deduces her teammate Roman Fry has set a trap and refuses to follow the group’s faulty plan. Why it matters: Cia asserts independent leadership and shows that collaboration without trust and logic is a liability.
• Saving Tomas: After an explosion wounds him, she cauterizes his injury with a heated knife and later drags him across the finish line. Why it matters: She chooses humanity over rankings, proving that her success will never be measured only by points.
• The final discovery: After passing—and being memory-wiped—she finds the message she recorded on her brother Zeen’s communicator, recovering what was stolen and confronting Memory and Identity. Why it matters: She engineers a countermeasure to state control, transforming from test subject into truth-seeker.

Essential Quotes

“You’re going to get up and face whatever comes. I’ll be proud of you no matter what today brings.”
“Even if I don’t get accepted for The Testing?”
“Especially if you don’t get accepted for The Testing.”

• This exchange frames Cia’s values before the system tries to rewrite them. Pride is linked to character, not achievement—an ethic that Cia will protect even when achievement demands she abandon it.

We are being watched. By Michal or does this camera broadcast farther? Has The Testing already begun? I shiver at the thought of my face being seen on some unknown television.

• Cia’s quick leap from detail to implication shows her tactical mind. The shiver is both fear and awakening: she understands that visibility is a weapon, and she adjusts accordingly.

My heart pounds as I look at Brick. His calm demeanor and poor performance on the practice problems take on a sinister tone. Does he know about Roman’s plan? Did they plot this together? … Shame. Hot. Deep. Oily, stomach-churning embarrassment fills me. My thoughts make me no better than the person I believe Roman to be.

• Even in danger, Cia scrutinizes her own reasoning. The shame signals her refusal to let suspicion turn her into what she fears—paranoia without evidence is its own moral failure.

I know I am tired and scared and in pain, but at this moment all I can feel is rage. It is white and hot and powerful. I look at each face and vow to make them pay for Ryme and Malachi and all the others.

• A rare look at Cia’s fury. The vow tempts her toward the Testing’s logic—retribution—but the broader arc shows her channeling rage into protection and truth, not revenge.

I blink as the small room fills with a voice that sounds like my own and listen as the voice speaks words I don’t want to believe.

• The recorded message collapses the gap between who she is and who the Testing wants her to be. Hearing herself restores agency: memory becomes a tool she can build and wield, just like any machine she repairs.