[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify

by Vera Nazarian

We float just above street level but not high enough to engage any of the hot zone firepower that gets activated whenever we rise too high in the air.

  “Where to now?” Jared asks, while Zoe just holds on to my back with one hand and the board with the other. I can feel her shaking.

  I know just the place. A few miles northwest of here, beautiful and appropriate, in San Marino.

  I suppose I could just set Sarah down on the first decent suburb lawn somewhere in the next block. In fact, I probably should do it, the smart thing to do.

  And San Marino is a little out of the way.

  But something crazy inside me makes me proceed. Because I can see the body of the Blue girl lying on the ground, short brown hair, ordinary features, and yet, unforgettable, fixed in my mind’s eye, permanently.

  I killed her. She was going to kill us all. And she killed Sarah.

  It happened because I tipped her board. Had I not done that—

  The thought goes around in my mind in an endless circle.

  At least I can make this one other thing right—for Sarah—as right as it can be.

  “We’re going to the Huntington,” I say through my teeth. “They have beautiful botanical gardens and rose gardens and a Japanese garden and a library.”

  “Wait, that’s too far north!” Jared says. “That’s out of our way, and crazy! Why? Let’s just put the poor girl down over there, in that grass, it’s decent enough—”

  “Shut up,” I say in a hard voice. “We’re going to the Huntington.”

  We start flying just above street level along smaller streets of suburbia in a direction that vaguely follows the 210 Freeway as it’s moving west in the direction of Pasadena—it’s the only way I know to approach the Huntington.

  To be honest, I have no clear sense of what I’m doing, where we’re going. The last time I was here at the Huntington Library, Gallery, and Botanical Gardens, I was a little girl with my parents and George. I remember running through the amazing structured gardens, with manicured lawns, sudden twists and turns framed by artful plants and trees among Grecian statuary, roses and cactus gardens and natural wonder. . . . I remember looking at stern, dark-brown, faded portraits in the Gallery.

  It was all so long ago. . . .

  My insides are numb, starting from my gut and outward, and my circulation seems sluggish, while my extremities are cold.

  “We’re wasting time, this is all wrong,” Jared says periodically. “We should just leave her body somewhere and go on our way. There’s nothing we can do, it’s not like it would make any difference for her.”

  Stubbornly I say nothing, looking straight ahead, with the dry wind in my face. The automatic firearm that I got from the Blue girl’s body slaps against my side whenever I make an abrupt motion.

  “Look, I get it,” Jared says. “She seemed—no, she was cool. A good person. Too bad we didn’t get to know her any better. I wish I did. I’m really sorry, okay. I am sorry she died. This sucks. But we have no time! We need to just leave her and go.”

  “Ten minutes,” I say, turning my head around to glare at him fiercely. “Give me just ten minutes. We’re almost there. Okay? If not, we’ll turn back, I promise.”

  “Okay,” he grumbles.

  All the while, Zoe remains silent behind me.

  I sing to keep us moving forward at a quick but more even pace, hoping that as we get through this neighborhood—El Monte? Temple City?—wherever we are, we’ll eventually hit San Marino and Huntington Drive where the landmark gardens and art gallery are located.

  There I will leave Sarah lying, on one of the green lawns maybe, or near the glorious rose garden arched walkway. . . .

  I am insane.

  Jared is right, we have no time for this. And I have no right to force them to go along with me on a selfish sentimental whim. This is just me being nuts, unable to deal, to let go . . . to just let this person whom I barely know, go in peace. . . . Because I’m feeling guilt about the other dead person. . . .

  Up ahead is some large intersection.

  As I consider whether to make our two hoverboards rise another ten feet higher so that we can safely clear the busy traffic intersection, or to turn along a smaller street—or maybe to just turn around altogether and give up on this—there’s a rumbling noise. It is both deep and high-pitched at the same time, like a hurricane rising. Or a tornado.

  It’s coming from the south, from behind us in the distance of what seems like many miles.

  I turn around quickly, and so do Zoe and Jared. We stare at what appears to be a dark flock of birds approaching rapidly, filling the sky behind us. There is also a hollow advance sound of rushing high wind that precedes them.

  “What the hell is that?” Jared raises one hand to shield his eyes as he looks intently.

  “How weird. . . . Are those birds? Okay, no, that can’t be just wind. Even I know the Santa Anas are not that bad,” Zoe mutters.

  And then we see them closer up, and it’s definitely not birds.

  It’s Candidates riding hoverboards, dozens of them, flying crazy-fast.

  They are being pursued.

  And what’s behind them is not a flock of black birds either but an array of shuttles.

  They are small, compact, near-black, the smallest Atlantean aircraft I’ve seen yet. There are so many that they appear as a dark speckle of dots, enough to black out the sky from a distance. They fly soundlessly, but because they are moving so fast through the atmosphere, they cut the air around them, rending it apart so that a dull hurricane roar is produced. . . .

  Meanwhile, the vanguard of the Candidates on hoverboards reaches us. As we hover on our two boards, levitating in place before the intersection, the boards and riders go whooshing by, some at street level like us, others higher up, and many others yet riding above the trees, and causing the hot zone firing systems to activate as they go by.

  “Drones behind us! Move! Get away!” one Candidate on a board yells at us as she passes by, going too fast for us to see her face.

  My heartbeat goes into overdrive. I sing the forward hover sequence and immediately our two boards lurch forward, picking up speed.

  Zoe grabs my belt from behind silently, so as not to fall, and Jared cusses, taking hold of the board on his end, the best he can. The board carrying Sarah’s body moves silently alongside us. I sing us ten feet higher, so that we can safely cross the intersection where the cross-traffic is fortunately stopped due to a red light.

  We plunge forward and become one with the speeding army of hoverboard riders.

  I don’t dare look around too much, since I am concentrating on the way ahead and any street-level obstacles that might pop up, such as stop signs and light poles. But I can see enough with my peripheral vision. . . .

  Most of the other Candidates are riding standing up, balancing on two feet the way the Atlanteans taught us. However, there are quite a few who are also straddling the boards while seated, or even lying flat on their bellies and hugging the boards so as not to fall off. However we’re the only “crew” of more than one person riding a single board. So, others give us looks—or is it, they’re looking at Sarah’s body on the other board? Whatever it is, most people are going faster, so eventually they pass us.

  “Hey, dude, what are these drone things after us? How come we’re all running away?” Jared yells out to the nearest boy atop a board, who’s balancing in a loosely hunched snowboarder stance.

  “You wanna stay back and find out?” the boy yells back.

  “Killer drones!” a girl cries, gasping from the force of wind resistance, somewhere several feet above our heads. “They come from the south . . . as soon as you get close to the inner end of this hot zone, the boundary fence activates them. . . .”

  “How do you know they’re dangerous?” Zoe cries out.

  “Because I saw them fry at least three people!” the same girl answers. “They fire these flaming lasers or something, just trust me, they are bad!”

  “Y
eah, they incinerate you completely, so only the board remains and eventually it drops down with your ashes,” the boy adds.

  “All I know is, we need to get out of this hot zone,” the girl says. “And since they cut us off from the south, we have to backtrack.”

  “Hey,” I yell out to the girl. “When did the drones first appear?”

  “No idea.”

  “Does anyone know? I mean, at what point specifically? Where do you have to be inside the zone to activate those drones?”

  But the girl shrugs, and the boy is already many feet ahead of us.

  And so we keep going.

  Whether we like it or not, we are now going the wrong way, away from our destination downtown and north toward San Marino.

  Toward the Huntington.

  Chapter 36

  “What time is it?” I say a few minutes later, as we approach what looks to be a large intersection, and just might be Huntington Drive. The hurricane roar is almost directly behind us. “I don’t have anything with a clock app, and no phone.”

  “I don’t either,” Zoe says. “No smart jewelry.”

  “Doesn’t matter, just keep going!” Jared is looking around constantly at the sky full of drones that are stretched out in a mathematically perfect array, approaching us with a terrible inevitability. “There’s gotta be an end to this evil hot zone.”

  “So we get out of the hot zone,” I mutter. “And then what? We’ll just be back where we started, only at a different spot in the 30-mile radius around the center of L.A.”

  “I don’t know!” Jared yells at me angrily.

  “We’ll have to go back in again.”

  “So then, what? What do we do? These things will kill us!”

  I think and think, until it hurts. “Okay, look. The Atlanteans didn’t put us down in an impossible scenario. At least I don’t think they did. If there really was no way to cross that hot zone safely, it wouldn’t be in the Semi-Finals.”

  Zoe and Jared stare at me as I glance at them, just before plunging across and just barely above the intersection traffic. Then I move our boards along Oxford Drive, in the wake of a dozen other hoverboard riders. Just ahead of me is an expansive visitor parking area, and beyond it I see the front entrance of the Huntington Library, with the venerable buildings of the Gallery in the distant background.

  “I think we need to land somewhere and hide, or otherwise bypass the drones.”

  “We can’t just stop now!” Jared looks from me to Zoe, for support.

  But I am frustrated, tired, dazed, and my wounded arm is now hurting like hell plus the circulation has been slowed down where the arm is tied, so it’s numb and awful, and I can barely use it to hang on. . . .

  “I’ll find a way,” I mutter. “Give me a minute, I’ll find a place, a safe place to land, to hide, to—”

  There’s an awful scream from behind us. It is followed by the sound of scorching fire that gets cut off immediately.

  About a hundred feet down the street the first of the drones has reached the last of the hoverboard riders, those in the very back of us. I can’t help turning to look. . . .

  A solitary hoverboard in the very back of our lineup floats forward, still moving under its original momentum, but without a rider. Whatever happened to that Candidate must have ended with the scream and the scorching. A single black drone moves directly over the empty board, then rises and returns to its array formation.

  We all stare in horror, as another sleek black drone drops out of formation and descends thirty feet to hover right over a Candidate who’s now the last one of us in the back. He’s balancing on his hoverboard awkwardly, and going slower than everyone else. He looks up desperately, flailing his arms to stay upright, and then we see it happen. . . .

  A bright beam of scalding white fire comes from the base of the drone. The boy is engulfed in bluish flames, his scream cut off in seconds, and his form disappearing into a pile of grey ashes that floats down and around the board.

  Nothing is left behind, not even bones.

  His board floats forward, unoccupied.

  The process repeats. Drone rises and retreats, then another one targets the next person who is now last.

  The girl starts screaming even before she is hit. She cringes, straining to regain balance with her arms, falls on her stomach, then slips off her board and lands on the ground.

  As we flee this, I glance back yet again, mesmerized with the nightmare scenario that’s taking place. However, a peculiar thing happens. The drone that has targeted the girl and her hoverboard now moves along for a few feet directly over the vacant board, then lifts up and retreats without firing at the fallen girl or her board.

  The girl who fell remains on the sidewalk, huddled with her hands over her head, screaming and whimpering, while the drones now ignore her completely and pass by over her without engaging.

  In a flash, I suddenly understand.

  “The drones only target you if you’re on a hoverboard!” I scream, raising my voice to reach as many Candidates around me as I can. “Everybody, get off! Get off your boards now, if you want to live!”

  “What?” Jared yells back. “How do you know? How can you be sure?”

  “Just look at her!” I point to the fallen girl on the street. “She was no longer targeted and left unharmed as soon as she fell off her board.”

  “I don’t know, this is too crazy, we can’t be sure!”

  “Okay, you want to stay on, go ahead, idiot!” I scream. “I’m getting off!”

  “Me too!” Zoe says hurriedly.

  “Oh, crap, crap, crap!” Jared mutters and looks bewildered.

  Meanwhile I sing the sequence to pause and hover, bringing us down to a foot above street level. Then, as several other Candidates also slow down or keep going, with everyone staring at us, I get off our board and step aside. Then I approach the second board with Sarah’s body and I start untying her, while my numb hands are shaking and my one arm is almost entirely without feeling now. The dratted assault rifle I am still carrying over my shoulder is not helping.

  “Crap, we’re gonna die . . . I’m gonna die,” Jared mutters, but he too is standing well away from the board, next to Zoe. The two of them stare upward, cringing. Zoe looks white and close to fainting from fear.

  “Help me!” I say meanwhile, as I am done untying Sarah. “Help me move her down from this thing, quickly! Please!”

  Jared comes alive and moves in, and together we pull Sarah down—she is cool to the touch and heavy now—and I feel bile or something else rising in my gut, and I am about to retch and cry at the same time—but I don’t. . . . We get her down.

  And then we stand and watch the ocean of drones arriving and passing overhead.

  About half of the Candidates have listened to me, and they too stand, cringing, hoping, while their hoverboards levitate nearby like docked boats.

  The others who continue fleeing on their hoverboards—we hear more screams and more scorching fire, as the rearmost Candidates are eliminated, one by one, as soon as the drones reach them.

  However, we are now living proof that my lucky hunch was right. And eventually more and more of the fleeing riders in the front get the hint and dismount from their boards.

  The drone array flies over the Huntington grounds and beyond, hunting those who are unaware of the means to stay safe.

  For the next ten minutes, we stand listening to distant screams.

  And then the array of drones returns, and passes over us again, as it is heading back to its place of origin at the other end of this hot zone.

  We are ignored completely.

  We carry Sarah’s body through the visitor parking and past the front building into the botanical gardens walkway, and leave her there at the foot of a white lovely statue near a small pond.

  It is green and soft and silent here, only the warm wind moving leaves of the tall trees, and the dappled sunlight on grass. It is so easy just to go still, to space out, close your eyes and
forget what this is, what day this is, and only know the moment of peace, here in a natural spot. . . .

  I sit down for a moment, a few feet away from Sarah as she lies there, her stringy reddish hair mingling with the grass. I tell myself she looks peaceful. We’ve taken off her Green Quadrant weapon, the small armor vest that didn’t protect her from the bullet in the chest—it was never fastened properly. Zoe ends up putting it on and keeping it, since she’s the smallest of us, and it appears to fit her best.

  The two boards hover nearby, while Jared lies on the grass and Zoe sits, her feet tucked sideways under her, and her arms around her knees. The armor vest is loose around her and she does not bother to secure it properly either, so it gaps open on one side. A sheen of sweat covers most of our exposed skin, and more sweat stains our uniforms, as the day is heating up.

  Finally I get up and force myself to put my hand out and gently close Sarah’s eyes with my fingers. Then I turn away from her face with its freckles, think a prayer, or maybe just think peace, and never look at her again.

  “Okay, I am ready to go,” I say softly.

  We start walking back, while I call the two hoverboards to move beside us. We pause at a running fountain and wash our faces, then drink some of the water, cupping it with our hands, not caring how safe or drinkable it is.

  Other Candidates scattered all over the lawn and the grounds, are doing the same thing. They are walking, with their boards moving at their sides like well-trained animals.

  We are all heading south, by foot now.

  It’s a long way to go.

  An older teen who calls himself Ethan Jamerson starts walking with us. He is lanky and tall and skinny, like a beanpole, with dingy pale brown hair, a slightly disjointed nose and a sharp jawline. There’s a green armband around his arm. If he has any Green Quadrant body armor, it’s not visible.

  “Hey, you all are, what, some kind of team or something?” he asks me warily at first. “I saw you get off the board first—smart move. Is it okay if I join you guys?”

  Jared gives him a sideways look. “Hey, as long as you don’t plan to kill us in the next five minutes, yeah, sure.”