And now, Blayne has proven me wrong, and I am so full of “happy” that I am ready to burst.
I start to edge toward him, and wave my hand enthusiastically, but Blayne does not see me through the crowd. And besides, Laronda pulls me on the uniform sleeve, because the Section Leader is telling us important stuff and I should be paying attention.
“Listen up, everyone!” Carlos continues. “You are all here because you have proved yourself capable of basic survival. And now the final stage begins where you train twice as hard to prove that you meet the advanced criteria for Qualification. Let me warn you in advance, it’s going to be brutal. The Finals will take place four weeks from now, at an undisclosed location, and in that time you will have continued your training in Combat, Agility, Atlantis Culture, Atlantis Tech, and a fifth additional track which will involve Water Survival and Swimming.”
Waves of stressed whispers travel the crowded space, as Candidates take in this latest news. I can hear people around me start to groan.
“Oh, no . . .” Hasmik says. “I cannot swim very well!”
“You’re not alone, girl,” Tremaine mutters. “I think this brother’s gonna sink.”
“Come on, man, don’t say that,” Jai replies. “We’re gonna learn, we’ll get better, we have four weeks!” I glance at Jai and notice that his ever-present smile has been toned down recently. Jai looks existentially tired these days, and I think I like him better that way. No more jolly smiling serial killer vibe.
Carlos Villa turns to another Section Leader. This one is Shontae Smith, an older brown-skinned teen with a do-rag on his head, who picks up and continues: “You will attend five classes every day. And yeah, your schedules will be scanned every morning as previously. But the big difference is, this time you’re all working in teams. Let me repeat that, you will be divided into teams for a lot of the stuff you have to do! There will be some tasks you do on your own, but others will be counted as group tasks. So yeah, that means that there will be group credit and individual credit. Now, you might wonder what kind of teams I’m talking about. Wonder no more—your Section is your Team! Let me repeat that—your Section, Section Fourteen is your Team! Congratulations, you are now officially Yellow Quadrant Team Fourteen!”
“Great.” Laronda looks at us and rolls her eyes. “I always wanted to be drafted.”
“Furthermore,” Shontae says, “you all will be assigned points. Each one of you gets one hundred starting points. In order to pass the Finals, you will need to have over one hundred points at the end of the Finals Day.”
Carlos speaks again. “Now, let me explain points. Starting today, every Candidate is assigned points that can be reduced with demerits, or increased with credits, at the discretion of your Instructors, for the four weeks of training. You can check your points total every day when you get your ID tokens scanned. That sum total is what you take with you into the Finals. And you will have the chance to earn additional points during the actual Finals competition. However, during the Finals, your accumulated points become your personal property. You can decide to keep them all in order to Qualify. Or, you can share them with others—let’s say, if you have more than enough. For example, a portion of your points, or the entirety, can be transferred to the team as a whole or to other individual team members.”
Hands shoot up. “What does that mean, exactly?” a boy asks.
“It means, that during Finals, your remaining points are to do with as you please. More details will be given on the day. But for now you need to be aware how important these points are. And you also need to know that your fellow team members and their Qualification chances are important too, and there is a team score that will make a final difference to your fate.”
“Sounds insanely complicated,” Dawn whispers to us.
Laronda again rolls her eyes and puts up her hand. “Girl, don’t even begin. I am trying to tune out most of this baloney right now before I go craaaaay-zee.”
Section Leader Gina Curtis—our own former DL—picks up where the others leave off. “Okay, now we need to talk about Water Survival and Swimming, or Water SAS for short as we’ve come to call it. There are three huge, twice as long as sports competition-size and extra-wide swimming pools located in each of the Common Area structures. Your Water SAS classes will be held there, and during Homework Hour you may practice swimming there. You may also practice swimming in the smaller pools that are located in all the dorms—up to you, first come, first served. Your Instructors will give you more info on that in class. If you have any questions, come talk to any one of us later, individually. And now, we’re done! Please get your ID tokens scanned for your daily schedules. Your first class starts in fifteen minutes!”
Fifteen minutes later, I am standing at the edge of a truly immense and long pool located inside the CA-3 structure. Yeah, lucky me, I got Water SAS as my first class, and none of my friends did. . . .
The pool is rippling gently, throwing off pale aqua shadows against tiles, and the enclosed roof overhead is a translucent ceiling many feet above, letting in a diluted amount of sunshine through tempered shaded glass.
About forty more Candidates are gathered here, and we are all wearing unisex swimming trunks, with the addition of tank tops for the girls. No pretty swimsuits or bikinis here. We grab whatever we’re given in the back of the hall at the showers and lockers section. And what we’re given is this plain grey colored stuff, probably made of the same orichalcum fabric as our regular uniforms.
Our Instructor is a tall willowy Atlantean with the usual metallic gold hair who introduces himself as Qurume Ateni. However, his blond mane is gathered behind him in a tight multi-segmented ponytail that resembles a loose braid.
“Good morning!” he tells us in a pleasant tenor voice, getting right down to business. “First thing you must do is put your hair up if it’s long. Tie it, braid it, do whatever you need to get it out of your face. Otherwise you will end up tangled in your own seaweed.”
So, I think, the guy has a sense of humor. That’s a first.
“What about swimming caps?” a younger girl with long blond waves asks.
Qurume glances at her and raises one dark brow. “What about them? There are a few swimming caps available in the back, but not for people with hair as long as yours. Get it tied, or better yet, get it shaved. In fact, shave every square inch of your body, and then come back here when you’re sufficiently aerodynamic.”
“No!” the girl exclaims with a frightened look.
“Relax,” the Atlantean says. “You can do absolutely nothing and still take this class.” And then he winks at her with a shadow smile.
Yes, this guy definitely has a sense of humor.
“First thing we’ll do today is discover how well you can swim. You will simply do a lap all the way down the length of this pool. The pool stretches for one hundred meters, so there’s plenty of time for you to collapse and drown and clear out a lane for the next person.”
“Jeez, what a jerk . . .” someone whispers behind me.
I turn and there’s Zoe! She’s standing right behind me, and smiling. I instantly flash back to Los Angeles, and my mouth parts, and my jaw probably drops.
I am so insanely glad to see her. . . . But because I pause and freeze like a dork, Zoe cranes her head and whispers, “Gwen! Remember me, Zoe? It’s Zoe Blatt!”
“Zoe!” I whisper back. “Of course! I am so glad you’re okay, you made it!”
“Yeah, me too!”
Meanwhile the Instructor continues talking, ignoring our loud whispers even though I am pretty sure he heard us. “As you can see, there are twelve lanes. You will enter the pool twelve people at a time, so please line up before each starting block.” He pauses, and this time he throws Zoe and me a sarcastic glance, then moves on to extend the disdain to the rest of us.
“As far as swimming stroke,” he continues, “do whatever you can. Use whatever style you feel most comfortable with. Or don’t. I am just as interested in observ
ing you at your worst stroke possible, even if it is your only one. Which is to say, I am not interested at all, but here we are. . . . You must swim and I must teach you.”
The Atlantean’s mouth quivers and he maintains his deadpan expression.
A few minutes later we’re all splashing in the water.
And then for the rest of the hour we do some long, boring freestyle laps to build endurance. Qurume walks along the edges of the pool, back and forth, and looks at us closely, giving occasional form and breathing advice and comments, which turn out to be very astute.
This guy definitely knows what he’s doing.
Good thing I don’t suck at swimming. Because there’s plenty of homework laps to do later, and that takes strength and a huge amount of resources.
Meanwhile, there are still four other classes to go, and I am already exhausted.
Chapter 44
The rest of the day at the NQC is not particularly different from the RQC Semi-Finals training, except for the difference in location, scope, and individual Instructors. Suffice it to say that by the time dinner hour comes around, I am tired and starving.
I meet up with Laronda, Dawn, Hasmik, Zoe, and a few others to eat in one of the ten cafeterias scattered throughout the first floor terminal area of our Yellow Quadrant dorm. Zoe is in Section Thirty-Nine, so she would have to make a minor hike to meet us at our own nearest cafeteria. We decide to compromise and aim for a cafeteria that’s halfway between our Section and hers.
As we mill around downstairs below Fourteen, waiting for a few more people before we head out to eat, I see Blayne’s wheelchair roll out of an elevator.
“I’ll be right back!” I say to Dawn, and then quickly walk toward him.
“Blayne!” I say, stopping before him. “Hey! Good to see you made it!”
The boy tosses his hair back out of his face and looks up. “Hey yourself, Lark. You’re alive. . . . Obviously.” But he has a lively expression. Since our training sessions with Aeson Kass, Blayne has taken on Aeson’s way of addressing me by my last name, and I find it kind of comforting.
“Yeah, it was touch and go there toward the end.” I make a snorting sound. “L.A. almost killed me. So, what city did you do yours in?”
“My personal hell was in Denver,” Blayne says calmly. “I chose it figuring I’d get mountains and heights, and hence more chance of flying at high altitude as opposed to being on foot. Which would have been the end of it for me.”
“Wow. I can imagine. . . .”
“Well, no, you probably can’t imagine it, not really, but I’ll humor you.” He gives me a crooked smile.
“So how was it?”
“Peaches and cream. No, it blew chunks the size of the Rockies. Literally. We were taken to the mountains and had to contend with sonic-boom-induced man-made avalanches. Yeah, those damn Atlanteans and their sound tech. . . . Overall, after hearing what kind of obstacles they had in the other cities, I still think I made the right choice—I’m here, aren’t I? By the way, I did beat out three guys for one hoverboard, using, amazingly enough, the LM Forms. Happened right at the get-go when they unloaded us from the shuttles and suddenly it was all ‘Lord of the Flies’ meets the Battle for Helm’s Deep. Not even five minutes in, I think they ate a guy. . . . Anyway, if I hadn’t, I’d be screwed. The hoverboard saved my ass . . . and the rest of me.”
“That’s so cool you made it!”
“Yeah, amazing.” He smirks. “I’m pretty stoked about it myself.”
Is there just a hint of sarcasm there? I never know, with Blayne. The boy oozes sarcasm and dry commentary, so probably, yeah.
We pause, and there’s one awkward moment during which I want to say more things, while he just kind of looks at the wall or the people walking by.
“A bunch of us—we’re going to eat at Cafeteria Five,” I say at last. “I’d ask you to come with, but not sure you want to deal with rolling all that extra distance. Do you? Wanna come? Cause that would be great, if you like—”
Blayne cranes his neck slightly. His expression is slightly closed up, proud, calm, as he considers me. “Maybe another time, Lark. But—thanks for the invite.”
And with that he turns away and starts rotating the wheels with his hands in his quick easy manner. I notice he’s bulked up even more and his strong arms show it.
I sigh and return to where Dawn and Laronda are waiting for Hasmik and Tremaine to show.
In that moment I hear someone yelling my name. I turn and there’s a petite brown-haired girl with a red token running toward me, whom I vaguely recognize as Mia Weston from Red Dorm Five back in Pennsylvania—she hung out with Gracie.
“Gwen . . . Gwen Lark!” she barely manages to gasp out, and I see she’s struggling for breath. “Your sister! Oh my God! You need to come! Grace has been arrested! These Correctors showed up and took her away just now! She was just—she was—she told me to run and get you—”
Mia stops, then bends over to catch her breath, while I suddenly grow very, very cold and my own breath stops.
It just cuts off. . . .
And then my heart restarts with a crazy lurch. Temples start pounding, and I breathe in with a shudder and exclaim, “What? Where? Where is she?”
“Come!” Mia cries. “She’s being taken to CA-2 . . . there’s a correctional facility there in the back of CA-2 . . . it’s right near the airfield.”
Which means it’s all the way at the end of the compound, two miles away.
I start running.
As Mia and I—followed by Dawn and Laronda—cut through several huge building structures, then race past the foot traffic along the street that stretches between Green Quadrant Dorm and CA-2, Mia tells me in short gasps what happened.
Gracie was at her girls’ dormitory floor in Red Section Fourteen. She was about to come down to eat with Mia and a few others, when suddenly four Correctors and several guards came in, and there was a Section lockdown. That’s when five people got arrested—three guys, and another girl, and Gracie.
Apparently, after the Semi-Finals, some of the sore loser Candidates who did not advance, went to the Atlantis Central Agency authorities and confessed to being a party to the sabotage of the shuttles at Pennsylvania RQC-3. And they named names.
All names.
Why did they do it? Probably because it was a last-ditch effort to get rescued, a kind of twisted attempt at getting a plea-bargain—information in exchange for Qualification. Or maybe, they were just dumb enough to think that they would be incarcerated on Atlantis, and get to escape the asteroid apocalypse in exchange for life in prison. Or maybe it was just pure malice. . . .
In any case, Gracie was named as one of the secondary conspirators, one of the Candidates who handled and passed one of the navigation chips around.
The Correctors took Grace Lark and Becca Marlin, the other guilty girl, away. At the same time, other Correctors were arresting the three guilty boys, one dorm floor below.
Gracie had barely time to cry out to Mia to get me—or get our brother George—before they took her away in handcuffs.
“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap,” I keep muttering, as I run. “Did they say where exactly she is being held? Or what will they do to her?”
Mia shakes her head, barely keeping up with me. “Not sure—but I think she may be Disqualified.”
Oh, crap!
About twenty minutes later, staggering and gasping for air, we arrive at the end of the long CA-2 building. The glass walkway leads us into a rear portion of the building that is dedicated Atlantean office space on all four floors, while the correctional facility space begins in the very back, its end wall facing the huge airfield.
I burst through the double doors and into the short sterile lobby with a guard behind a glassed-off security area. He stops me with a calm glance away from his computer screen.
“I must see my sister, Grace Lark!” I exclaim. “She was arrested, and I need to talk to someone in charge right now!”
“
Your name?
“Gwen Lark!”
The guard gives me a scrutiny then looks away and checks his console. I hear the keystrokes he makes through the crazy pounding in my head.
A moment later he looks up. “Grace Lark has been detained until tomorrow morning when she will be taken from this compound together with the other Disqualified Candidates.”
“What?”
“I believe her belongings are being picked up right now. Fortunately for her, her charges were secondary, so she will not be prosecuted by the ACA, simply discharged to return home.”
“No!” I exclaim, while my throat starts closing up with the pressure of tears. “No! She cannot be Disqualified! She can’t be! This is just—no! I must talk to someone right now! She is twelve! She’s just a stupid little kid who made a bad mistake! She is not a terrorist, she didn’t even know what she was doing! Look, she was trying to impress a boy! That’s all! Just an idiotic prank! She has no idea about any of this—”
“I am really sorry, Candidate,” the guard interrupts my tirade, and his gaze softens slightly seeing what a mess I am. “But your sister—she has committed a serious criminal act that is punishable. There’s nothing I can do, she broke the law.”
“Is there any—any kind of thing—or process—or anything that exists to—to—”
I find that I am crying. . . .
Tears are running down my face and my nose is full of snot, and suddenly I can’t see anything. . . . Someone’s gentle hand presses against my back lightly—Mia? Laronda?
I stand, taking in deep shuddering breaths while the guard watches me kindly. He might have kids of his own, it occurs to me, he probably knows what it’s like. . . .
“If you want to come and see your sister tomorrow morning around eight AM, before they put her on the shuttle bus, that should be okay,” he says.
[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify Page 54