“Uh-huh,” he mumbles with his mouth full.
I notice he still looks only at his plate and does not look up or around the room. Even for blissful loner Gordie that’s kind of abnormal.
“Wanna tell me how you got that big bruise on your face?” I say. “You never told me yesterday what happened to you.”
“It’s no big deal.”
“Oh yeah? Just tell me.”
“This guy and I argued in Combat. It was something stupid. He hit me, I hit him back. The Instructors told us to cut it out. . . . It’s over.”
I turn my head to the side, looking at him. “Wait, I thought it happened in Agility, not Combat. And is it? Over, I mean?”
“Yeah. . . . Agility, Combat, one of these two, whatever. And yeah, it’s over.” But Gordie does not meet my eyes.
“So how come you’re acting kind of weird? And don’t even try to pretend, I know you too well, Gee Three. You’re avoiding something or someone.”
In that moment, two guys with blue tokens, carrying trays with dinner leftovers, pass by our table. One of them looks to be Gordie’s age, a freshman with brown hair, and the other is slightly older with darker hair. The brown-haired kid slaps our table with one hand and glares at Gordie. “We’re not done, loser,” he says, leaning in.
Gordie looks up, and his already pale face goes perfectly still.
The second older kid stares with a hard expression. And then he says a crude obscenity.
“Hey!” I set down my fork and look at them with a frown.
“What, you got your Yellow girlfriend here to fight for you, coward loser?” the freshman says.
Gordie opens his mouth and starts to get up. I grab his arm and push him back down, barely holding him with all my strength.
“You guys want to get Disqualified right now?” I say to the other two. “Because they have cameras on us.”
“Shut up, bitch.” The freshman turns away from Gordie and is now glaring at me.
For some reason I am not particularly fazed. “Disqualification,” I repeat a single word in a loud voice, meeting his crazy look calmly. And then I add, “Oh, and all those pissed off Atlantean Correctors are all over this RQC, interrogating—pardon me, interviewing people. Just give them a reason! They’d love to have a one-on-one chat with you. Hey, I think I see one now, over there, at the doors. Or maybe that’s just another surveillance camera pointing at us.”
My words seem to have their intended effect. The two guys frown and give Gordie mean stares, but then decide to move along.
Only after they exit the cafeteria does Gordie exhale in some relief.
I find I’m still holding his arm. And it occurs to me, that was weird, I just talked down two mean jerks and wasn’t scared one tiny bit. What’s happening to me?
“Wow,” I say, releasing Gordie. “That was really ugly.”
Gordie mutters something incomprehensible, and I notice his face is flushing now, a funny delayed stress reaction.
“Gordie, you’re gonna be okay. Stay safe by being reasonable.” I look at my poor brother. “Remember why we’re here. This is not summer camp, and screw the bullies. I’ve got some of my own, and now that I think about it, it’s . . . well . . . okay.”
Gordie looks at me, and his angry flush is still there, but it’s going down. He picks up his fork again and begins shoveling meatloaf and mashed potatoes in his mouth.
I smile; I cannot help it. “You know, there’s a good chance those guys will still try to beat the crap out of you,” I say with rueful amusement.
“Oh, yeah.” Gordie nods, chewing, but this time he’s grinning too.
“Just don’t make it easy for them. Be smart, kiddo. As smart as you always are. After all, you’re in Blue, the Smart Kids Quadrant.”
“So are they.”
“They? Oh, phooey!” I bite my lip. “Nobody beats a Lark when it comes to brain power. Right, Gee Three? Keep that in mind!”
“Okay!” Suddenly Gordie pauses eating, chortles with his mouth full, and says, “Talking about brain power—I heard that some girl in a Yellow Dorm did this really cool thing yesterday in Combat class. Everybody’s talking about it, they call her ‘shoelace girl!’ Supposedly, when they ran out of their net and cord weapons, she ended up without one. And so she pulled out her own shoelaces and tied them together into a cord before the Instructors could catch her and give her a demerit—”
“Gordie,” I say, and now my mind is kind of reeling. “Okay, wow. . . . That was me. I’m Shoelace Girl. I had no idea that people are talking about this outside my dorm.”
“That was you? No way!” Gordie’s jaw drops and now he looks totally impressed.
I laugh, seeing his expression. And then I add, “Hey, see, there you go! That just goes to show what I’m talking about here—Lark brain power! We’ve got it!”
Gordie looks at me with an expression that approaches normal.
He then tells me proudly that he got to shoot a real gun in Combat class. “It takes brain power too, I guess. We had to shoot at a target fifty feet away, and I hit right near the center at least four times!”
I smile and shake my head at my brother. “Gee Three, you with a gun? Holy moly, amazing! See, Gordie, that’s what I’m telling you!”
At last I can see that Gordie relaxes completely, because he’s got the dopey grin as he looks at me.
We finish up eating uneventfully, even take time to scarf down that cherry pie, and then I leave Gordie to his “homework”—which is basically him hiding in the corner of the dorm lounge with his nose in his sketch notebook as he pretends to look over notes and instead draws something—and off I go to wander the compound in search of Gracie and George.
An hour later, after checking both the Arena Commons super structure and Green Dorm Eleven at the edge of the RQC compound, and finding neither of my two other siblings, I decide to head back. Short of going inside every dorm, there’s no way I am going to find them before first curfew.
Gracie had better not be hanging out with Daniel Tover, lord knows where, I think. Only, I have a very grim idea that it’s exactly what she’s doing.
Chapter 19
The next morning I wake up to the now familiar 7:00 AM alarm claxons, and I remember that I’ve forgotten to do my running homework the night before.
Ugh, great. . . .
Everyone’s groaning in the dormitory, girls on all sides of me complain, as we start getting out of beds and checking our blisters and pulled muscles.
I turn and look at Laronda who stretches her arms, yawning widely.
“Ready for another day of hell camp?”
“Bring it on!” Laronda replies, with another huge yawn.
On the other side of me, I see the brown-haired girl in the other bed next to mine whose name I still don’t know. She looks very sad and kind of sickly. And she is not moving out of bed.
I decide to remedy the situation by introducing myself. “Hi, there,” I say. “Good morning! It’s funny that we’ve been neighbors for like four nights now, but I don’t think I know your name. I’m Gwen—Gwen Lark.”
“Hi,” she says, and her voice sounds grainy with sleep. “Sorry—my English is not great—my name is Hasmik Tigranian.”
“Oh, yeah?” Laronda says on the other side of me. “Hasmik, that’s a pretty name. What kind of name is it?”
“I’m Armenian,” the girl says.
“Oh, really? That’s pretty cool. I’m Laronda Aimes.”
“Wow,” I say. “Armenia is such an amazing ancient country! I read about it some, it used to be a huge empire at the time of Babylon and earlier, probably all the way back to the time of the original Atlantis, I wouldn’t be surprised. It used to be where Mount Ararat is now, the same famous mountain from the Bible where Noah’s Ark landed after the Flood—”
“Yes,” Hasmik says, pulling back her blanket, and sits up. “But now I am from Boston.” And she gives me a weak smile.
“So, how you surviving this Qu
alification nightmare?” Laronda is now up and messing around her own makeshift clothesline of hand-washed underwear stuffed around the edges of her mattress that she’s copied from me.
Hasmik sighs then swings her legs out of bed. I see skinny feet sticking out from under her long flannel nightgown. One of her ankles has an ugly bruise and swelling.
“Hey, you should go see a doctor,” I say, pointing to her ankle. “That doesn’t look too good.”
“I know,” she says, then winces as her foot touches the floor. “I’ve already go to doctor. He say I need to rest, but I can’t do that. He gave me medicine, and so I take it. The swelling goes down, but after Combat and Agility class, it hurts my foot again. No time to heal.”
Laronda pauses to stare at Hasmik with sympathy. “That’s awful, girl! You must be in crazy pain all the time!”
“Ayoh, shat tsavumeh . . . I mean, oh, yes.” The girl nods, and now I can see why she looks so pale and sickly. She must be living in agony.
Laronda and I stare at her, pretty much stunned.
Hasmik meanwhile opens a small plastic bag and out comes a medical bandage of sorts. She bends down and starts wrapping her ankle in the bandage, and her face is turning green with pain. Finally she is done, the ankle is secured as much as possible. Hasmik opens a pill bottle and pops one. She then smiles at us. “Okay now.”
“Oh, man, how long can you keep this up?” Laronda shakes her head.
Hasmik sighs again, shrugs. “Don’t worry, I keep going,” she says softly in a steady voice. And amazingly she gets up, without even limping, picks up a change of clothing and heads to the bathroom. “We go to breakfast, okay?” she adds, glancing back at us.
Speechless, we follow her.
After a quick breakfast downstairs with Laronda and Hasmik, we return to the Common Area lounge to get our daily class schedules scanned.
Dorm Leader Mark Foster passes the hand scanner over our tokens and reads our schedules. Weird, but apparently we all have second period Combat together and it’s going to be held in the Arena Commons building.
“That’s interesting,” Laronda says. “Seems like everyone’s in the same Combat class today.”
“Actually, yes.” Mark Foster looks up at her, and his face is serious. “The entire Yellow Quadrant is going to have Combat together today, in the large Arena. Which means, Yellow Dorms Four, Eight, and Twelve.”
“Three dorms together, wow. . . . How come?” I say.
“Ask your Instructors,” Mark says curtly. “Today, from what we’re told, they are doing some kind of hardcore mass Combat training. First period, Blue Quadrant, second period, you guys in Yellow. Then Red and Green. Everyone has to go to the Arena for this mandatory thing. Don’t be late to that one. . . .”
“I don’t like the sound of that.” Laronda bites her lip nervously and looks at us as we step away and let Mark continue scanning other people.
“Yeah, I don’t either,” I mutter.
Hasmik just sighs.
I sit next to Dawn Williams in Atlantis Culture class. To be honest, this morning the stress level is so high that I have trouble concentrating and hardly remember what the lecture is about, despite the compelling nature of the Instructor’s usual Storyteller voice.
This morning Nefir Mekei talks much about something innocuous, such as the kind of food they eat on Atlantis. The main takeaway is that because of the abundance of amazingly rich soil for crop production, Atlanteans have evolved to be mostly vegetarian and vegan, consuming a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, and vegetable-based protein, especially the upper class citizens.
It is true, Nefir tells us, the non-citizens in the coastal regions of Atlantis consume some locally obtained seafood, but it is done with some distaste and from poverty. Those who can afford it definitely prefer the vegetable-based healthy proteins. And the wealthy citizens have access to fancy and delicious vegetable protein-based meat substitutes that are practically indistinguishable from what we Earthlings might consider premium quality animal meat.
Furthermore, vegetable protein is considered to be the ethical food choice. To kill an animal for sport is a strictly punishable crime. Even to kill as a necessity is looked down upon.
Derek Sunder raises his hand. “So, the big question remains, does that Atlantis veggie meat of yours taste like chicken?”
Snickers are heard around the classroom.
Nefir Mekei pauses and looks at Derek with his slightly creepy unblinking stare. And when I say “creepy unblinking stare,” I mean Nefir, because Derek also has his own creepy stare, except that this time he is getting “out-creeped.”
There is a long pause during which I get the satisfaction of seeing Derek blink first and squirm in his seat.
“Your question is not something I can answer,” Nefir says at last. “I don’t know the taste of your chicken.”
A few more giggles sound and are quickly stifled. A few teens hold hands over their mouths.
But the Atlantean does not smile. “If your chicken is a living creature, then you should not take pride in knowing its taste.”
“It’s just a dumb bird,” Derek says.
“And so are you, turkey . . .” Dawn whispers next to me, without looking up. Her face remains deadpan serious.
I fight very hard to keep my expression neutral, but my lips are quivering. Way to go, Dawn!
Derek must’ve heard, because he turns around and glares in our direction, but ignores Dawn and gives me a long evil stare.
I get a sudden jolt of familiar cold fear and no longer feel like laughing.
But Nefir says, “For the most part, we believe it is neither honorable nor fair to make fun of those who are helpless, or take advantage of those who are weak—regardless of what living species they are.”
“Yeah, well, here on Earth we raise chickens for food and eggs—what else would you call them? Dumbass birds, useless for anything else,” Derek says in an abrasive voice intended to provoke the Atlantean.
Nefir does not take the bait, only watches Derek calmly. “You might consider a living creature a ‘dumb bird.’ On Atlantis, we think differently.” And he does not elaborate.
An older teen girl raises her hand. “Okay, do you have tea and coffee on Atlantis? What do you guys drink? What about soda and carbonated stuff?”
Nefir nods. “Yes, we have similar hot and cold brewed drinks that are made from various plants native to Atlantis. They are not an exact equivalent, but very close. There’s even a cocoa-like plant that is similar to Earth chocolate.”
“What about alcohol? You know, beer, wine, hard cider, that kind of stuff?”
Nefir glances at her, and his expression relaxes slightly. “What do you think? We are human, after all.”
Snickers travel around the classroom once again, and a few guys clap and say, “Yeah!”
Class ends eventually, and we all head downstairs and then outside, toward the Arena Commons building.
I walk in a big crowd of Yellow Quadrant Candidates next to Dawn, and we manage to pick up Laronda and Hasmik along the way, plus Jai and Mateo and a few other guys we know. I look around, squinting from the morning sun, and see Blayne Dubois rolling along in his wheelchair, just a few steps behind us. The muscles of his arms strain as he quickly turns the wheels of his chair and keeps up with the flow of the crowd. Everyone’s tokens are lit up yellow, and everyone’s way more nervous than usual.
As we approach the AC building, blinking in the sunlight, the ranks of Yellow Candidates swell, as two more dorms join the crowd. At the doors, we see an oncoming opposite stream of Candidates with blue tokens, as they exit the building, making room for us. They look sweaty, dejected, and beaten down after a hard workout. Even the tougher guys among them look worn down. That must’ve been one helluva Combat class. . . .
“This is going to be super duper bad, with a cherry on top,” Laronda mutters.
I glance at Hasmik who’s walking next to me, and she looks pained but quietly
determined.
Inside, the stadium portion of the building has been cleared of most of the equipment in the middle, to make room for the Candidates.
Already, double rows are forming, facing each other, stretching from one end of the track to the other. When they come to the end, a new iteration of double rows begins, and then a third one—that’s how many Candidates are present.
“Okay, this is huge!” Jai Bhagat exclaims.
We file in place, and stand somewhere in the middle of the second double row.
“I don’t want to spar with you guys, cause I don’t want to hit you,” Laronda says. “So why don’t we all just stand in this row next to each other, instead of across from each other? That way we would be partnered with someone else to beat and kick around.”
“Good idea,” I say.
“I really don’t want to ‘beat and kick around’ anyone,” Dawn says matter-of-factly, looking almost sleepy. “Sparring would be okay, though.”
“Shut up, girl!” Laronda laughs then punches her in the arm.
“Hey, save it for the actual class,” Mateo says, three persons down the line.
As we talk, other people we don’t know line up across from us. I end up facing some skinny blond girl my age with a perky short haircut.
Moments later, a familiar whistle blows, and we turn in that direction.
Far down the line, on the other end of the Arena, four Atlanteans stand, dressed in the usual grey uniforms. First is Oalla Keigeri, and her long metallic gold hair shines sun-bright. Next to her is Keruvat Ruo, his own closely-cropped head a golden halo, in contrast with raven-haired Xelio Vekahat who stands next to them.
The fourth one is Aeson Kass. He stands with his arms folded at his chest, watching us with a seemingly casual demeanor. And yet, everything about his posture whispers danger.
I feel an immediate twinge of nerves at the sight of him. I don’t know what it is precisely, alarm or terror or something else impossible to define. But immediately I am flashing back to that moment two nights ago . . . his stark bloodied face with its chiseled angles . . . lowered eyelids outlined in kohl, pale gold hair stained with soot and more blood . . . a striking profile backlit by the flames . . . the feel of his hard, muscular body against mine, as I desperately drag him down the rung stairs of the shuttle. . . .
[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify Page 26