[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify

by Vera Nazarian

  “The guys? What guys? Tell me!” I shake her, hissing in her ear, while glancing before us where up ahead the girls are still walking and laughing and talking loudly. They didn’t notice yet that we’re lagging behind.

  “The guys were from Red, they were some kind of rebel group, and they were doing all these crazy secret things to get back at Atlanteans and to steal their secrets. . . . And I thought I might be cool if I did something wild like that, and Daniel might think I am—”

  “Daniel?” I am filled with sudden rage. “Is it Daniel Tover? Did he put you up to this, Gracie?”

  “No!” Gracie whimpers. “No, not Daniel! He had nothing to do with those guys, he is not one of them, I swear! But—but I didn’t know it at the time! I thought he was, and I thought I would do this one awesome thing for them and he might notice me and—”

  “Oh, Gracie!”

  “I screwed up, okay! I had no idea! I didn’t want to hurt anyone either! And turns out, Daniel is not even one of them, even though he hangs out with many of them—that’s why I thought he was with Terra Patria, but he’s not—”

  “Hush!” I hiss again, and look around, wondering what kind of surveillance cameras and maybe audio surveillance they might have in this compound.

  And then I take a deep breath and force my voice to calm down as I speak to my little idiot sister. “Gracie, listen to me. You have to keep your voice down. This is bad, you cannot be screaming all this loudly.”

  “Okay. . . .”

  “Now . . . I am not going to tell you now that you did something stupid, idiotic, and horrible that could have gotten you and all of us Disqualified, hurt, punished, and possibly killed. You already know all this. What I want to know is why didn’t you tell me—or George—any of this earlier? Have you any idea what kind of position you’ve put so many people in?”

  Gracie scrunches her face and big fat tears roll down her cheek. “I am sorry! I am so sorry! I was scared! I wanted to tell you, and I kind of tried to, before, but I just couldn’t! And then, when they took Laronda away and then locked you up, it was too late! I didn’t know what to do! And now—I still don’t know what to do, what if they find out? Will they Disqualify me and lock me up? And what about you guys—”

  I squeeze Gracie’s shoulders again. “Look at me. . . . Stop. You did the right thing telling me. And now, just hush, okay? Let me think. . . . We need to figure out what we need to do. Okay? Stop crying! Okay? It will be okay!”

  And then I hug Gracie, and I feel her completely shaking and falling apart into a weeping mess in my arms. Might as well let her cry it out, and then she’ll get a grip. Eventually. I hope. . . .

  “What’s going on here?” Laronda and the others have backtracked and now look at Gracie crying and me hugging her. “Is she okay?”

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “She’s having a delayed-reaction nervous breakdown, I think. The Semi-Finals—she remembered bad stuff that happened then, and it’s getting to her.” And I pat Gracie’s hair gently while she quiets her sobs and wipes her nose on her sleeve.

  “Oh, poor baby,” Laronda says to Gracie. “Here. . . . Girl, let me give you a hug too!”

  Of course at that, guilty Gracie weeps even harder, since it’s Laronda she wronged in the first place. And me, in second. And herself, ultimately.

  My poor fool baby sister!

  I tactfully let everyone do their hug thing, and then change the subject.

  For the rest of the day, Gracie follows me around—continues following me like a puppy, wherever we go.

  And now I know why.

  She’s not just feeling vulnerable, and lost, and clingy-dependent on me after our hell experience in Los Angeles, as I originally thought. No, she’s also one helluva guilty puppy.

  I continue to think about what Gracie told me all evening, and wake up the next morning and it hits me hard, like a bucket of cold water.

  Gracie can get in huge trouble because of this. If anyone finds out, she can and likely will be Disqualified—and probably worse.

  I feel sick to my stomach as I go to breakfast with the people I know from the Pennsylvania RQC-3, Yellow Quadrant—including some guys who I am glad to see, such as Mateo and Jai and Tremaine—and then I go to look for my brother George, who needs to be told as soon as possible.

  Instead I run into Logan.

  Logan is standing outside the Red Quadrant Dorm structure in a small crowd of Candidates from all Four Quadrants, near what looks to be a news media van and truck lineup. Compound guards pace idly, blocking off most of the area, while a portable platform has been erected right on the street. A major network news channel crew of holo-projection techs and cameramen is arranging a brightly lit interview area. A familiar news anchor’s hologram has been projected directly from their studio into one of the chairs to interview selected Candidates about their Semi-Finals experience.

  Someone is occupying the other chair, a brown-haired boy I’ve never seen before, with a cool manner. He is talking while a sound tech moves a studio microphone in his face.

  “Logan!” I say in a loud whisper, waving and leaning in toward him past a guard who blocks my approach. “What’s going on?”

  Logan hears me, glances in my direction, and nods with an immediate light smile. He then raises one hand and mouths “ten minutes” to me. And so I wait at the periphery with a few other gawking passerby Candies, while he in turn gets briefly interviewed about his experience in New York, climbing cables and scaling the side of a tall building.

  I watch Logan take a seat easily, lean back in his chair and speak with effortless confidence into the cameras, and I realize he was born for this—calm yet outgoing, composed, friendly, making great eye contact.

  “And really,” he concludes with a self-depreciating bittersweet laugh, looking directly at the various media feed cameras. “It was a tough marathon and I am glad it’s over—at least this Semi-Finals phase. We may never forget how many of us got hurt, and yeah, many teens died out there. Manhattan is a floating graveyard for so many. But at least they died trying, having hope, up to the last second. And I am hardly the only one who managed to make some rather lucky and solid decisions that helped me survive.”

  He pauses, and his gaze suddenly searches the surrounding audience and settles on me. “For example, right here is a Candidate who is far more interesting than me and should really be interviewed, if you want to get the best of us here in this chair. You all know her from the Los Angeles live feeds. I believe some have used the term ‘Shoelace Girl’. . . .”

  My mouth falls open as everyone turns to look in my direction. The hologram anchor stares at me, and suddenly his expression lights up with recognition. “Oh, my, that’s right! How incredibly lucky we are, there she is! My dear, you are Los Angeles Shoelace Girl, the clever amazing girl who commandeered hoverboards, rode the drones, and then created the flying contraption with the shoes!”

  He waves energetically toward me. Two techs approach, and suddenly I am directed past guards onto the brightly lit media platform. Logan sleekly moves aside and gives my hand a quick squeeze, while I am seated in the interview chair, and the microphones point at me.

  “We are absolutely privileged to have you with us, Shoelace Girl!” says the anchor. “Which is of course, not your real name, I realize—so what is your name, dear, for our audience? The nation wants to know!”

  “Gwen . . .” I say, in a breathless voice. “Gwen Lark.”

  “And where are you from?”

  “Highgate Waters, Vermont.”

  “Fantastic achievement, Gwen—may I call you Gwen? And may I be the first to congratulate you on passing the arduous Semi-Finals! Now, how did you ever come up with all those incredible clever ideas?”

  My mind is going into a light version of deer-in-the-headlights panic and my temples pound. What is this? What can I say? I don’t know anything! Logan, how could you do this to me?

  Instead I say, “Well, I just got really desperate, I guess.”
/>   “Is that so?” The anchor prompts me encouragingly with a smile. “Go on, tell us. How was it that you survived the brutality of the attacks and obstacles that left many of your fellow Candidates helpless and even worse, dead? I am sure everyone remembers the way you managed to carry on with the horrible army of explosive drones—”

  I flash back to the fallen Blue girl underneath a freeway overpass, her shattered body . . . Sarah Thornwald’s perfectly still glass eyes as she lies on the grass of the Huntington. . . .

  “I don’t know,” I say in a wooden voice. “I don’t know how I managed. I think no one knows, not when it’s happening. You just do what you can, that’s all.”

  “Brave words of wisdom, Gwen, very well said.” The anchor nods. “And yet, the question remains for many of our viewers—how is it that you came up with so many clever solutions to what seemed to be impossible problems?”

  “They weren’t, not really . . . clever, I mean. They were actually kind of crazy and not even well thought out. Stupid, you might say.” I pause, feeling like a fool before an audience of millions. “But—with all factors put together, they worked—for the circumstances. It’s like—you know that old myth about the bee? That, according to ‘physics,’ a bumblebee is not ‘aerodynamic’ enough, is not supposed to be able to fly—it just does because it doesn’t know any better? Well, that’s all nonsense. A bumblebee flies just fine! It flies according to physical laws, only different ones, because it itself is different, using other complex variables for its flight method—for example, something called ‘dynamic stall’ comes into play. . . . Anyway, what I did wasn’t clever but kind of all over the place, using everything at my disposal . . . like the bee. It’s like—if you move fast enough and just the right way—if you do some things quickly and desperately enough, hoping they don’t have time to fall apart on you—you can make the seemingly impossible happen. And it’s not ‘before it knows any better.’ It’s before the whole unstable construct falls apart. Move fast enough and you can walk on water. . . .”

  The anchor claps his hands, nodding at me with a brilliant smile. I’ve just babbled him to death, but he is loving it.

  “Gwen Lark, I had no idea you’re such a wonderful science geek! Whatever you just said there—wow! You must get straight A’s at school, am I right?”

  I blush, feeling my cheeks start to burn. “Yeah, mostly,” I mutter.

  “Aha!” the anchor exclaims. “No wonder you came up with all these wild solutions! Tell me, and our audience, do you think these are the exact specific qualities that the Atlanteans are looking for? Because it’s still the big question—what do the Atlanteans want? Someone like you? A clever bright young lady who can solve tough problems?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But I think they want people who don’t give up. Because that’s the only way to Qualify. And if you give up—you don’t.”

  The anchor asks me a couple more specific questions and I answer. And then, “Well, Gwen, I must say it was a delight, so glad we caught up with you here at the National Qualification Center. Your parents must be so proud! I’m sure they’re watching. Would you like to say something to them before you go?”

  My heart, my breath, my pulse, everything goes into overdrive. I gulp, and a lump begins to gather in my throat. “Yes!” I say in a mad rush of joy. “Mom, Dad, we are all okay! Gracie, George, Gordie, we are here and we made it! Please stay safe! Love you always!”

  And then I am done.

  I get off the media platform and Logan waits for me. I am shaking slightly from the nerves, the emotional overload, so he takes my hand, and we walk away down the street where I lean over the side of a building to get a grip on things.

  “Okay,” I say. “Logan, thank you. Admittedly, I wanted to kill you at first, for putting me on the spot. But then I got it, I know why you did it. . . . It gave me a chance to say something to my parents, something that might actually get to them. At least now they’ll know we’re okay, at least for the moment!”

  He smiles lightly, and his fingers run up my wrist and arm. “You’re welcome. I figured this was a good opportunity for you.”

  And then I tell him about Gracie.

  Immediately our light mood changes.

  “Come on, let’s walk,” he says.

  And once we’re on the move, we discuss, in quiet careful voices.

  In a nutshell, Logan tells me to keep it quiet. Not a word to anyone else.

  “Not even George?” I ask, with a grim expression.

  He shakes his head. “If George knows nothing, he can be perfectly honest if he ever has to deny something—if he gets questioned.”

  “Do you think that might happen again? Didn’t they question all of us like half a dozen times?”

  Logan’s hazel eyes watch me seriously. “Anything can happen. Incidentally, have you seen Command Pilot Aeson Kass recently?”

  “Not since the Semi-Finals.”

  “If you see him again—which I have a feeling you will—be very careful. Because now you are in a position to lie. Your sister’s unfortunate confession has just made you a knowing party to her actions.”

  “I don’t care about that,” I say. “I care about Gracie and keeping her safe!”

  “I know you do. But what I’m saying is, you will now have to lie, and he will see right through you.”

  I frown.

  “Gwen,” he says gently. “You are not the best liar. . . .”

  “And you are?”

  “Better than you.” And suddenly he smiles cockily at me.

  I punch his arm with a loose fist. But he catches it, and holds my fingers, stroking them until a jolt of warm electricity travels down my arm.

  Chapter 43

  That night I dream about being seven or eight years old again. It’s a warm spring day and our parents have taken George and me to the Huntington Gardens in San Marino, California. Little Gordie and Gracie are with a babysitter, while we get to spend the day walking through amazing gardens and staring at paintings in the gallery.

  As dream logic goes, I wander and somehow end up alone in the gallery room that houses the two most famous paintings at the Huntington. “Pinkie” painted by Thomas Lawrence hangs in a great hall directly facing, on the opposite wall, “The Blue Boy” by Thomas Gainsborough. The two Thomases painted their unrelated subjects years apart, and yet they seem to have a magical emotional connection, and fit together like a mated pair. . . .

  I know, I am just a kid. . . . But that’s the kind of kid I was—staring at art was fun, and I remember being in awe at the fact that I was in the same room with them, like being in the presence of two classical celebrities.

  And now, in this dream, I look up, and Pinkie, whose real name is Sarah Barrett Moulton, looks down at me from the distance of the eighteenth century. Only, her face changes and now she is a different Sarah . . . she is Sarah Thornwald and her open eyes are stilled in death and accusation. . . . And when I turn around in sudden terror, feeling a ghostly prickling on my back, there’s The Blue Boy—only now he’s the Blue girl whom I killed, and the Blue girl is watching me, looking at me with an absence of life, of sight, an empty vacuum that is somehow more terrifying than intensity. . . .

  The morning claxon alarms peal and I am torn away from the terror—I wake up, and it is 7:00 AM, the first day of training here at the NQC, and I am lying in a cot, and somewhere out there an asteroid is blazing through space on its way to end the world.

  The horrible dream is gone, only its ugly sickening residue remains.

  And the grim reality.

  The Candidates assigned to Section Fourteen—both from the girls’ and boys’ dormitory floors—are called to gather on the first floor in a lounge area that’s similar to the Pennsylvania RQC-3. Except this so-called common lounge is just one small part of the miles-long “airport terminal” portion of the huge Yellow Quadrant Dorm structure.

  Our Section Leaders stand ready to explain our final four-week training here at the NQ
C. I recognize only some of them as Dorm Leaders from the other Yellow Dorms, but feel relief to see two out of three of our own Yellow Dorm Eight DLs, Gina Curtis and Mark Foster. However, the third DL, John Nicolard, is not here, because apparently he did not make it through the Semi-Finals. . . . The sobering news hits home again, a reminder of the precariousness of all our positions here.

  Section Leader Carlos Villa blows the whistle to call us to order—and at the same time we hear numerous other such whistles going off all through the endless lounge terminals, as other Sections get ready to be briefed.

  “Attention, Section Fourteen!” Carlos says in a loud strong voice. He is a large muscular guy with dark hair and prominent biceps. We crowd around him and the other Section Fourteen Leaders, at the same time as we throw nervous glances at each other, to see who else of us is here, who made it, whom do we recognize. . . .

  Who, from Pennsylvania RQC-3, is still left in the running.

  I stand next to Dawn, Hasmik, Laronda, and the guys—Tremaine, Mateo, Jai. Looking around, I see several other familiar faces of Yellows. Yes, there’s Claudia, and unfortunately I see the familiar tattooed thick neck belonging to creepy Derek Sunder, before he turns around and notices me and gives me a cynical stare. So, Derek, the A-list a-hole, made it. And so did Wade Ruthers apparently, and a few others of the alpha bullies.

  On the other hand, I see in the back of our Section crowd the familiar wheelchair, and then get a glimpse of sloppy dark brown hair mostly covering a boy’s eyes.

  Blayne! Blayne Dubois made it!

  I am stunned. . . . I am also so unbelievably happy all of a sudden, as if a dark burden has lifted from me, one I didn’t even know was there. It occurs to me that, despite all the time spent together, all the hours of specialized training, and seeing how well he was progressing, I never quite had enough faith in Blayne, never expected him to make it this far. And the ugly doubt had been there in the back of my mind, causing my time with him to seem surreal and doomed—in my own stupid head.