“Oh, he definitely came in to check up on you. I don’t think he even noticed me.”
“Well, yeah.” George pats me on the arm again. “She’s his special project with the super duper voice.”
“Teacher’s pet,” Gordie teases.
“He’s not my teacher, and I am definitely not his pet,” I say, raising my voice and finding it steady for the first time. My irritation apparently gives me strength. “I think I’m like an investment of some sort. Besides, he can’t stand me.”
George raises one brow meaningfully and looks away.
“Hey!” I say, slapping the covers with one hand. “What’s that eyebrow thing supposed to mean, Gee One?”
“Nothing.” George shrugs. “I don’t know, whatever.”
“Just, well, you know,” Gracie says. “He does seem to spend an awful amount of time dealing with you, considering he’s one of their top VIPs.”
“I told you, he’s invested in my voice,” I mutter angrily. “They need my voice for whatever reason. So he’s keeping tabs on me. Furthermore, I am still under major suspicion for that shuttle sabotage incident—or have you guys forgotten? These Atlanteans are not just going to let it slide, there is going to be permanent surveillance and inquests until they find the real guilty party.”
“Yeah, you’re right, sorry.” Gracie looks down on the bed covers near my arm and smoothes the edges of the sheet. “Didn’t mean to tease you. Besides, the guy’s too intense and scary to joke about.”
“It’s okay, Gee Four. And yeah, well, he’s just military. I actually don’t blame him for being suspicious, it’s his job.”
We talk some more about other things, speculate about what’s to come in the next four weeks, and who else survived the Semi-Finals. Meanwhile I feel my strength slowly coming back. . . . By the end of the hour when the Atlantean med tech comes to remove my IV line, I am strong enough to sit up in bed and have some yogurt and ginger ale.
Just before ten PM lights-out, Logan Sangre comes to see me. My brothers and Gracie tactfully make themselves scarce and leave us alone in the room, exchanging little smiles.
Logan stands before me, pausing momentarily near the privacy curtain. The low light falls on the lean hollow planes of his cheeks and jaw, highlighting every perfect feature. My heart once again constricts painfully at the sight of him, the fall of his super-dark brown hair, the way his warm hazel eyes seem to be full of sweet honey as he looks at me. . . .
And then comes his heart-stopping smile.
“Logan!” I exclaim, and almost drop my cup of ginger ale.
Thankfully he moves in, just in time to intercept me, takes the cup out of my trembling fingers and sets it aside. He then puts his strong hands around me in an embrace that is hard and gentle at the same time. With a kind of wonder he sweeps my messed-up hair aside, strokes my cheek, and suddenly he is kissing me. . . .
And all at once, I am bursting with wildness. . . . My pulse is racing, and warm electricity mixed with languid weakness fills me as I sink back against the pillow and let him touch me, let him do to me whatever it is we’re doing that makes me forget where I am and who I am and why.
We come apart gasping for air, our lips bruised and sweet and desperate for more.
“That’s enough. . . . You need some rest, Gwen,” he whispers in my ear, then ruins the effect of his own words and kisses me deeply again, on the lips, then on the neck, rubs his face against me, skin to skin, his faint stubble sending more electric pangs coursing through me.
He is breathing fast and his eyes are very, very dark when he finally moves away while I lie trembling, like a puddle of flesh and no bones.
“I didn’t know what I’d do if you didn’t make the Semi-Finals,” he says, looking into my eyes.
“Same here,” I whisper. “But then, I always knew you’d make it.”
He smiles, shakes his head slightly. “You always have such amazing faith in me.”
“How was New York? I heard it was pretty bad.”
“Oh yeah, terrifying.” He makes a short tired laugh sound. “Same goes for L.A., I hear. I also hear stories about a certain Shoelace Girl saving the day multiple times. They say, if it hadn’t been for you, most of the California Candies in La La Land would not have passed the hot zones or the Semi-Finals.”
I make a sound that’s halfway between a snort and a cough. At least it gets my mind off Logan’s sensual proximity.
“How do you feel?” he says.
“Better. Definitely. And I have hands and arms.” I smile. “And you—you look perfect, as always.”
“Oh, boy. . . .” He cringes slightly and I find that he is actually blushing. “No, I had a few scratches—nothing serious that some Atlantean meds wouldn’t fix. They have some amazing tech there, you know? Very interesting stuff.”
And I am momentarily reminded that Logan has his eyes on things in his clandestine ops capacity.
We talk some more, but the mood is gone because I am suddenly very tired.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he tells me at last, seeing my drooping eyelids. “Now, sleep!”
And with a brush of his hand against my cheek he is gone.
In the morning I am up early, after a great night of sleep. I am issued a fresh new uniform and armband, receive back my yellow ID token, and Gracie is there to see me as I am discharged from the hospital building.
“Come on, I’ll take you to your Yellow Quadrant dorm, you’ll need to check in,” she tells me, as we walk through the long sterile corridors of the building with pastel walls and medical personnel wearing grey uniforms and Atlantean four-color armbands.
Outside, the skies are cornflower blue and the morning air crisp. The wind blows in from the plains, and I stand staring at the sheer immensity of the compound I am in.
When George called it a whole city, he wasn’t kidding. Large buildings stretch for blocks in all directions, all multi-story, each bearing a color square designation of some sort. I see rows and rows of connected mall-like structures marked with squares that are color solids. And each long structure is interspersed by another that is designated as common area by its four-color square logo.
Candidates, guards, and other compound workers are everywhere, walking from building to building. There are even occasional vehicles that look like patrol cars or delivery vans. The Candies are all mostly aimless like myself and Gracie, wandering around, staring in curiosity around them, while the guards and workers move with a purpose. There are far more Atlanteans in this NQC compound than back at our Pennsylvania RQC-3.
“You’re gonna need a map,” Gracie tells me, taking my arm, as I stand gaping. “Don’t worry, it’s pretty overwhelming, I know, plus you are still a little woozy.”
“No, I’m not,” I retort, with a light smile. “I am just taking it all in.”
“Okay, see how this whole row of linked buildings is all marked with a square red logo?” Gracie points. “That’s the Red Quadrant Dorm. That whole thing. It stretches at least two miles down the line.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, I know. . . . And next you get the building row with the rainbow logo, the one with the hospital we just left, that’s the Common Area number One—one of three such. After it, you’ll see yet another long dorm, that’s the Blue. Then another CA, number Two, then the Green dorm, and another CA, number Three, and finally, your Yellow Dorm. Each one is like two miles long. It kind of blows your mind.”
I shake my head, snorting.
“Every teen in the United States of America who will Qualify is being housed in this place right now,” Gracie exclaims. “Isn’t it wild? And they say every country in the world has a similar NQC for their Candies. Though I bet ours is bigger.”
“Not as big as China’s, I bet,” I say. “Or even United Industan.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re right.” Gracie giggles. “They must have four or five times as many people as we do. . . .”
As Gracie continues to chatter with a mix of nerv
es and excitement, we walk along the wide thoroughfare street area between buildings, until we reach a glassed-in walkway inside the CA-1 structure. The walkway allows us to cut in perpendicularly through the miles-long structure, since there is no easy way of walking around it, and we end up on the next street and across from the next dorm structure which is Blue Quadrant Dorm.
We repeat this several times, crossing the street, finding a glassed walkway, going through, until we reach Yellow Quadrant Dorm, which is last.
Gracie enters first, and takes me directly to an info desk near the doors. We’re in a very large hotel-like lobby that stretches along the entire first floor like an airport terminal. It is filled with noise and teens, mostly all Yellow Candies such as myself.
The official at the desk scans my token and informs me I am on the third floor, which is all girls’ dormitory space, in Section Fourteen, bed #172.
“Your personal belongings from your RQC have been brought over by freight shuttle last evening together with all the others who passed Semi-Finals, after the end of the event. Your belongings are now waiting for you next to your bed,” he tells me, handing me a small check-in packet that includes a paper map of the complex and a general conduct and instructions checklist. “Be sure to locate and introduce yourself to your Section Leader who will give you the next instructions and answer any questions. Good luck, Candidate.”
And the official turns away.
I go to find the nearest stairs, and Gracie and I go up to the third floor that resembles another airport terminal row, except instead of airline terminal check-in areas there are dormitory Sections along an endless hallway. Each Section is the size of an RQC girls’ dorm floor, and has double doors marked by a Section number.
We walk past endless doors and many girls I don’t know moving past us through the hall in both directions, until we come to Section Fourteen.
We enter the dormitory which is another sea of neatly placed rows of cots—most of them slept-in but empty because their occupants are elsewhere—and Gracie helps me find bed #172 that’s somewhere in the back.
My bed is pristine, and my two duffel bags sit on the floor before it.
“There’s your stuff!” Gracie says with excitement. “You might want to check to see it’s all there.”
But I am hardly listening. Instead I glance around the huge room to see who my bed neighbors are, and who else is here.
And that’s when I see Claudia Grito. She’s three beds down from me, her metal piercings glittering in high contrast against her silky black hair, sitting on her cot with her feet up and going through stuff in her bag. As though she senses my presence, she happens to look up in that moment, and our gazes lock.
Oh, great, just great. . . .
Claudia frowns and glares at me. “Look who’s decided to show up, Gwen-baby! Didn’t think I’d ever see your skinny ass again, loser face.”
Gracie immediately turns around and her jaw drops in outrage. “Who the hell do you think you are? Don’t talk to my sister like that!”
“It’s okay, Gracie.” I glance at her. And then I turn back to Claudia. “Sorry to disappoint you.” And then I look away.
Meanwhile, I notice a few other girls in the room, and they all look vaguely familiar. And then . . . the bathroom doors open and I see Laronda! And there’s Dawn behind her, and Hasmik too!
“Girlfriend!” Laronda shrieks, and rushes toward me, and practically jumps in my arms with a huge choking hug. “You’re alive! You look good! Way, way good, compared to yesterday when you were half-dead in the hospital!”
“Hey!” I exclaim. And then the others reach me, and I am hugging Hasmik and Dawn simultaneously, who both look tired and excited and generally healthy except for a kind of slight air of additional gravity and resignation that all of us who’ve passed the Semi-Finals now seem to have. It’s an imprint of tiredness, of suffering, of death, that stamped us all, deep underneath the veneer of “happy.”
“Can you believe, I make it!” Hasmik says in a high-pitched tone, and repeats it. “I, I make it this far? No way, huh? I still don’t believe it! Complete accident!”
“Shut up, girl,” Laronda turns and punches Hasmik lightly on the arm. “Of course you made, it, I told you, you would! Good thing you picked Dallas, too—no big deal, just an obstacle course in the middle of burning oil wells! I picked New York like an idiot and got to climb ledges and fall down from skyscrapers like some kind of caped comic book heroine—ugh!”
“New York, eh?” I say with a grin. “Yeah, I heard the horror stories.”
“Yeah, another New York here,” Dawn says in her usual calm deadpan manner. “Though Los Angeles was pretty rotten too, eh? What was it, you crazy Wild West cowboys rode explosive drones? Whose bright idea was it?”
“Oh, well,” I say in a somewhat flustered voice. “I didn’t really want to actually, it was the only thing we could do, to get over the—”
“Hey, hey, whoa! Kidding you.” Dawn rolls her eyes at me, with a quick, sly smile. “It was a brilliant thing to do. Color me way impressed . . . Shoelace Girl.”
“Oh, crap. . . .” But now I’m the one grinning and rolling my eyes.
We chatter back and forth, and it turns out, Section Fourteen is basically all the girls from our Pennsylvania RQC-3’s Yellow Quadrant, so no wonder everyone’s here, and no wonder the girls in the room look familiar.
“All right, we have tonight and tomorrow to relax, before hell resumes,” Laronda says, sticking her finger out to poke my shoulder. “But now, I say we talk trash and gossip while we go have a good look at this huge National Qualification Center! Who’s in? You can tell me all about those flying shoes and drones and other absolutely insane junk you’re single-handedly responsible for, while we walk. Tell me everything, girlfriend!”
Chapter 42
The rest of the free day we spend wandering the immense sprawling compound and learning where everything is—the Quadrant Dorms and the Common Areas, which include more cafeterias, training gyms, classrooms, not one but three arena stadiums with track and sports training equipment, and three double-sports competition-length and extra-wide swimming pools.
“I hear we’ll be doing swimming training in addition to other types of classes,” Dawn says as we walk through yet another glassed-in walkway between building structures to cross to the other street that runs parallel.
“Interesting,” Laronda says. “I wonder why. Does Atlantis have a lot of oceans and water?”
“It could also be their tradition,” I say, “stemming from the Earth’s original continent of Atlantis. So much stuff related to the sea, oceans, water. Like the name of their ancient city, Poseidon, who’s the Ancient Greek god of the sea—though it’s earlier than Greek, we now know, it’s in fact Ancient Atlantean. . . .”
“Glad you’re still such a smarty-pants.” Laronda smiles.
In that moment, Grace—who’s been tagging along with us on the walk, and has been somewhat inseparable from me since the trauma of Semi-Finals—looks up and points.
Four Atlantean shuttles plummet down from the sky, and land somewhere beyond the buildings, their aerial activity generating a sonic boom.
“That way lies a huge airfield,” Dawn says. “Want to go see?”
“Um,” I say, as my expression darkens. “Not sure . . . I think I’ve had enough Atlantean shuttles and airfields to last me a lifetime.”
“No! Don’t say that!” Gracie immediately tugs my sleeve. “If we Qualify, we will have to deal with them all the time.”
“Okay, I know,” I reply tiredly. “But seriously, let’s just—not.”
Dawn shrugs comfortably. “Okay.”
So instead we walk toward the nearest cafeteria to get more free food for as long as they’re still feeding us.
As we stroll down the street between buildings, Gracie pulls me aside for a moment, while Dawn and Laronda and Hasmik walk ahead.
“Gwen . . .” Gracie walks at my side with a strange closed-
up expression and stiff posture, hands nervously clutching the bottom of her uniform shirt. “Gwen, I . . . I have to tell you something.”
Okay, this does not bode well.
“What?” I say, glancing at my sister carefully.
Gracie does not say anything for several long moments.
“Promise—” she says. “Promise me you won’t go crazy when you hear this, okay?”
“How can I promise when I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
Gracie bites her lip, takes a deep breath. “You know that awful night when they found that chip in Laronda’s jacket?”
“Yeah. . . ?” Suddenly I feel cold. And I’m really beginning to dislike what this is leading up to.
Gracie stops and looks up at me. Her face is full of anguish. “I put that chip in her jacket! I am so sorry!”
“What?” I stop also, while cold waves of fear pass through me, one after another, and I am reeling with it.
Gracie grabs my sleeves and her hands are shaking. “Please, don’t freak out, oh, don’t freak out, please!”
“Gracie, what are you saying?” I take hold of her, and my fingers dig into her shoulders, at the same time as my voice grows very hard and very quiet. “Are you telling me you planted that navigation chip on Laronda? Oh my God, what are you involved with? Who gave it to you? Who told you to do something like that? Do you realize what you’ve done? You got so many people in trouble—you—”
“I know! I know it was awful and wrong, now, okay! But at that time I didn’t know what it was, just a stupid little chip! I was supposed to just hide it temporarily, they told me—drop it in someone’s pocket—any person I knew and dealt with casually—and I could get it back later from them, after the Correctors finished searching our dorm. It was supposed to be for one night! That’s why I came over to have dinner with you and went up to your dormitory floor, so I could find a safe spot to hide it overnight. The guys were all passing it around like a game of hot potato, they were saying that was the best way to keep it hidden—” Gracie’s face is red and she is on the verge of tears.
[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify Page 52