[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify

by Vera Nazarian

  And he does.

  “Gwen!”

  I start, coming apart from Logan, because I think we’ve managed to sort of embrace while upright in the water, our hands all over each other, without making it too obvious what we’re doing.

  “What?” I say to Laronda.

  “Stop petting, and look!”

  I splash-turn to where she’s pointing and Dawn swims up to us in the same moment to mutter, “Hey, look, Gwen, it’s your Atlantean a-hole, Phoebos! Isn’t that him, over there?”

  “Wow,” Hasmik says. “He’s—”

  “Amazing!” Laronda finishes.

  I stare . . . and my gut does this weird thing where my heart kind of lurches then dips down into my other internal organs and then hammers against my diaphragm or lungs or whatever—it feels like an internal war is going on inside me, and there’s this crazy drum-beat. . . .

  Aeson Kass is walking along the distant opposite side of the pool. He is wearing nothing but swim shorts, and his long sun-metal hair is pulled back into a segmented tail, the kind of hair fashion that other Atlanteans use when swimming.

  His body is perfect . . . just as I suspected. His skin is tanned to a deep-bronzed sheen, or maybe it is the natural coloration of his body. Wide shoulders and chest tapering into a slender waist, tight hips encased in shorts, gorgeous defined abdomen, powerful legs, muscular arms.

  And he still wears the black armband around one bicep.

  Aeson turns his head and says something to a couple of other Atlanteans walking behind him. I recognize them immediately as our RQC Combat Instructors, Oalla Keigeri and Keruvat Ruo, also wearing standard issue swimming gear and showing off spectacular bodies. Oalla laughs, and Keruvat leans in to say something else, at which point Oalla shoves him back lightly with her hand, followed by more laughter.

  In that same moment Aeson takes a step to the edge and dives into the pool. His body hits the water like an arrow, and he disappears under the surface. I blink and moments later I see him surface many feet away, and then begin moving with powerful effortless strokes that hardly break the water, as he swims laps in one of the farther lanes.

  At some point he passes by us, six lanes away, and he never breaks his stride. I freeze and hold my breath in suspense, but I don’t think he even sees me. . . .

  So, it occurs to me, Command Pilot Kass decided to take that break after all.

  Twenty minutes later—during which I find I am absolutely distracted and unable to hold a proper conversation with my friends, as I am constantly hyper-aware of his presence wherever he moves in the pool, even when I am intentionally looking away and pretending to be interested in the people around me—twenty minutes later, Aeson Kass gets out of the water.

  He walks along the side of the pool, slick and dripping, his golden hair plastered to his scalp, and heads for the lockers.

  At some point, he passes by where a bunch of us tread water, and never looks at me. I catch a glimpse of his striking face, the dark shadowed blue eyes outlined by such a perfect sharp line of kohl, the proud angles of his jaw as he observes the panorama of all of us Candidates in the water. He is straight-backed, tall, and infuriatingly confident.

  “Stop drooling!” Dawn punches Laronda on the arm as they both watch the Atlantean walk by.

  Logan gives me a long scrutiny as I maintain—what I believe—a perfectly casual expression at the exact moment that Aeson Kass moves past.

  “You know,” I say—seemingly to no one in particular—staring in his wake, and feeling a little crazy and still worked up just then, so that my voice carries. “What is it with Atlanteans and eyeliner? They must use waterproof or permanent eye makeup that it doesn’t get smudged in the water, even after all that swimming. Talk about vanity!”

  “Good point,” Laronda says.

  “And what’s up with all that ridiculous metallic hair dye?” I continue. “So okay, it doesn’t run in the water. But really, eventually it would—wouldn’t you think?”

  “I bet they probably need to re-apply touch-ups every time they wash their hair,” Dawn says. “That kind of metallic hue must be really difficult to make permanent.”

  I watch Aeson’s retreating back, and somehow, weirdly, have a feeling he heard me. How do I know this? Did he stiffen momentarily?

  I am not sure. . . .

  But in that moment I know that someone else definitely heard. Oalla Keigeri, also dripping wet, walks by, and turns at the sound of my voice. She raises one brow and then gives me a peculiar intense look before she too moves away in the direction of the lockers.

  Chapter 48

  We get out of the pool eventually, cutting it too close to ten PM lights-out curfew. Dripping wet, we pull on our clothes and race back to our dorms, laughing. At the entrance to Section Fourteen, Yellow Quadrant Dorm, I squeeze Logan’s hand as he turns to me with another lingering look before heading back to his own Red Quadrant Dorm.

  “I’ll look in on Gracie for you,” he says.

  “Thanks!” And I smile at him as he goes.

  “Hurry, hurry, gotta hop in bed in five minutes,” Laronda says, as other late Candidates all around us race up the stairs to our sleeping floors.

  I run after her and Hasmik, and as we hit the bathrooms, there’s a minor stampede and a decent line. That’s because Claudia Grito cuts right in front of us with a sneer, together with a few other alpha girls.

  Dawn gives Claudia a withering look, but it’s no use.

  “Gotta pee, gotta pee,” Laronda sing-songs to us, shifting from one foot to the other. And then she pulls my sleeve. “So, Gwen, I had no idea that Aeson Kass guy is so red-hot—as in, sexy, on a purely physical level. Must’ve been fun—”

  “What?” I bite my lip and start to frown at her.

  “You know—fun to have that special voice training thing you had to attend back in Pennsylvania.”

  It occurs to me, I didn’t mention to Laronda that I am still doing the voice training.

  “Yeah, well,” I mutter. “He’s mostly kind of scary. . . .”

  Laronda shines me a wicked smile. “But it didn’t stop you from drooling all over him back at the pool, just now. Cause, yeah, I saw that!”

  I am suddenly angry and agitated. “You saw what? What are you talking about?”

  But now Dawn raises one brow and nods. “Uh-huh . . . I noticed it too.”

  “Wha-a-a-at?” My mouth falls open at them both.

  “Come on, even with your sweetie Logan there, and right after the two of you were messing around, even so, the moment the Atlantean VIP showed up, you went all weird. You changed.”

  I stand, lips parted in outrage, shaking my head at them. “But—that’s just crazy! You guys are seeing things! How did I go ‘weird’ and change? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, you were flirting with Logan more loudly than normal. Less like a normal you, and more ‘fakey’ and exaggerated. And whenever Kass swam by, you, I dunno—you kind of acted different, kind of hyper.”

  I stare at everybody, and even Hasmik is nodding now.

  As all of this is being said, I feel my head, my cheeks, flushing. . . .

  Oh, no. . . .

  But now I am angry for real. I shake my head, as if to shake off this stupid stuff they’re saying, and I roll my eyes at them.

  Fortunately I am saved from further embarrassment and need to explain, or even think, by the vacancies in the next few bathroom stalls.

  In the morning, the first thing I remember when the claxon alarms go off is that I do, sort of, have a half-baked plan to get Gracie’s points built up. It involves asking a whole bunch of people to sacrifice just a few of their points on her behalf, when the time comes for the Finals.

  Now, how will I ever convince them to agree to this thing, is still a big question mark.

  The second thing I remember is what happened at the pool last night. An uncalled-for image of Aeson Kass, dripping wet and toned and beautiful, walking at the side of the pool, haunts me a
s I get dressed, get down to breakfast, and put some unidentified food in my mouth while my friends talk at me—and apparently, past me.

  Okay, this needs to stop. . . .

  I don’t know what it is that is happening to me, but when I see him later tonight, I will deal with it.

  The classes and the rest of the day are generally tedious and uneventful. We swim, do extensive Combat sparring and practice Er-Du Forms over at the large CA-3 Training Gym. Later, a new Atlantean Culture Instructor gives us a lesson on Atlantean early history, including the original colony establishment on the planet later called Atlantis. And finally a Tech Instructor, this one also an Atlantean, unlike Mr. Warrenson, teaches us some new tone sequences for controlling orichalcum—basic stuff that I know already from my voice training with Aeson Kass.

  After dinner, when I finally take a deep breath and knock on the door of Office #7, Aeson Kass acts as though nothing happened the previous time I was here. . . . However, he is possibly even more remote and reserved than usual. For half an hour we go over the exact tonal sequence to restructure orichalcum on the quantum level. In the process, Aeson “fries” at least three more chunks of the metal, showing me how it’s done, and I am still unable to replicate it.

  “We’ll continue tomorrow,” he tells me dryly, without meeting my eyes.

  And then I am again dismissed.

  I get back to my dorm and go to bed with a dismal feeling of peculiarity, and always, underneath, is the undercurrent of despair. I think of Gracie with a nervous sick feeling in my gut, and then George, Gordie, and Logan, and the rest of the people I care about, and how Finals will affect all of us. . . .

  The unseasonal heat wave continues, and I fall asleep all sticky with sweat. Then I dream of strange old paintings at the Huntington, with Sarah as Pinkie watching me with glassy dead eyes, and opposite her, the broken Blue girl. . . .

  The fact that I took a life—was responsible, however indirectly, for killing not one but two people in Los Angeles—is haunting me subtly in that vulnerable time between waking and sleep. It’s the only time I let it get to me, since the rest of my time is occupied with stress and exertion and usual despair.

  Then, for the next two weeks, maybe three, time blurs. All I know is, we’re deep in the middle of May, and days are flying by in a flurry of training activity. There is so much and yet so little to tell. We, as Candidates at the National Qualification Center, continue our arduous classes. But for some reason—maybe because it’s become such an ingrained part of our lives—it seems less unbearable and more routine.

  My sister Gracie manages to do as well as I had hoped in all her training classes, and she has been slowly earning back the points that had been stripped from her. The rest of us Larks each have more than the baseline 100 points required to Qualify. I get scanned each morning and I find I have at least one or two more credits every day, mostly from Culture and Tech where I get to display my geek brains as opposed to physical prowess.

  By the middle of week four at the NQC, with only four days remaining before the official day of Finals, my cumulative points average stands at 157. George has earned 179, and Gordie eclipsed us all by scoring a whopping 213 points. Meanwhile Gracie has 67 points, which puts her more than halfway in the right direction.

  “Hey, Gee Four can totally have like a whole hundred of my points,” Gordie announces with a proud crooked smile, pushing his glasses up his nose.

  “You are awesome, bro!” I tell him. And George nods and even abstains from trying to finger-snap his little brother’s forehead, or calling him a monkey.

  In short, we think we have this whole points dilemma figured out, for the most part.

  Now, all we have to do for the rest of the time before Finals is actually keep up our strength and endurance, and then, Qualify.

  Meanwhile, Logan and I continue to meet up wherever we can, and yeah, we do a lot of homework running and witty clever banter during which I learn how truly smart and clever Logan is. But mostly, we cannot keep our hands off each other. Only, it’s all brief, stolen touches . . . a few squeezes . . . and once, a hungry kiss while pressed between a shadowy door and a wall that blocks us from the nearest surveillance camera.

  Not once does Logan bring up again the fact that he does not approve of my meeting Aeson Kass on a daily basis for my voice training. We basically treat it as an untouchable subject, an unspoken prickly-weird thing between us.

  And as for Command Pilot Kass—I honestly don’t know what it is, what happens every time I enter his office. We are both on pins and needles, and there is a strange explosive atmosphere of charged electricity and ragged wild energy that builds and builds . . . and yes, there’s a whole lot of repressed anger and frustration.

  At least that’s what I think it is.

  I believe Aeson Kass actively dislikes me on a personal level. He definitely regards me with the greatest disdain. . . . And I in turn find him irritating, frustrating, annoying, rigid and pompous, and more often than not, a smug a-hole, especially when he is right about something and knows it.

  Not to mention, he’s overbearing and ruthless and implacable.

  But I strongly believe he is the only one here who can teach me the full extent of what I need to know to use my Logos voice.

  And so, I deal with it.

  At some point, with only three days left before the Finals, I suddenly realize that tomorrow is my birthday.

  Holy lord, I am turning seventeen!

  And when I mention the fact that the next day is May 25, my birthday, Laronda squeals and says, “That’s it, girlfriend, tomorrow we’re giving you a Birthday Party!”

  Chapter 49

  I’m not sure what Laronda was thinking when she thought to throw me a party. I mean, how in the world are we supposed to do that at the NQC? And where, exactly? Surveillance cameras are everywhere. . . . And we’re not supposed to be “fraternizing” too much, even in the platonic friendly meet-ups sense.

  “Don’t worry, Birthday Girl, I’ll take care of everything, you’ll see,” Laronda whispers to me as we sit down for breakfast at the cafeteria on the morning of my birthday. “I’ll get everyone you know to show up, and you’ll see, we’ll even have cake!”

  And she turns to Dawn. “Girlfriend, you’re in charge of dessert-gathering.”

  “Huh?” Dawn says, raising one brow. “You mean, like prehistoric hunter-gathering?”

  “As in, you grab a few pieces from the food bar, now—just whatever they might have, pie, cookies, jello, you name it—whatever can fit in a napkin and in your roomy uniform pocket.”

  “Jello? Hell, no! That’s disgusting.”

  “Okay, whatever, just grab something, Dawny-baby-poo, and tell a couple of people we know to do the same.”

  “Baby-poo?” Dawn punches Laronda on the arm, and Laronda says, “Aww!”

  “You’re serious?” I mutter with a snort.

  “Oh, yeah.” Laronda cackles, rubbing her hands together. “We will have the best, yummiest bunch of asteroid-end-of-the-world-compound-cafeteria yummies gathered in one place.”

  “And what place will that be?”

  “Let me think about it, let me ponder, and I will let you know by lunch!”

  “O-okay,” I say. But I’m shaking my head, because I know how crazy this whole thing is.

  And so, for the rest of the day I am exposed to the “crazy.” Candidates of all Four Quadrants from my own Section Fourteen whisper “Happy Birthday!” as they pass me by in the halls, in the classrooms, outside in the long streets between our dorms, and pretty much wherever I turn.

  I swear, I don’t even know most of these people!

  At one point, just before lunch, when Charlie Venice from Red Quadrant Dorm slides by me on the street and gives me a genuinely painful pinch on my waist, accompanied by a very breathy falsetto “Happy You-know-what, Me-e-ez President!” I’ve had just about enough.

  “Yo, Charlie!” I say. “What’s up with this already? How many people kn
ow about my birthday? Who told you?”

  But Charlie grins widely, and makes a horsey laugh noise, and runs along to wherever the hell he’s going.

  “Little dummy jerk!” I say to his retreating back.

  When I turn around, there’s Logan.

  My heart does a happy jump, and my pulse starts racing as soon as I see his warm hazel eyes and the slow smile.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Logan says, falling in with me as we walk back to my dorm. “Gracie told a couple of people at our dorm about your Fun Day. Oh, and—Happy Birthday.” And with that Logan takes my hand briefly and brushes his fingers against my palm, so that now my pulse is really racing. “I don’t have a present for you here with me, but I will have something for you at the party.”

  I can’t help smiling. “Thanks. As far as presents, don’t be silly, you don’t have to! I mean, where will you get presents? And, yeah, I can’t believe I’m seventeen. Heh. . . . One more year, and I can vote. Not that it means anything. Or, like, who needs a driver’s license these days? Or whatever.”

  “One more year—” He briefly leans near my ear and I can feel his warm breath on my neck. “And you’ll be all grown up. . . .”

  My smile deepens and I look down and bite my lip. “Yeah. . . .”

  And then, with a jolt of sharp clarity, the despair returns.

  One more year, and I will most likely be dead.

  I, and everyone I know and love.

  But I force myself to continue smiling and then we go in through the closest glass walkway to the lobby of Section Fourteen.

  “Okay, girl,” Laronda tells me as we meet up for lunch. “Right after your last class, at five-thirty PM, you need to go to the big Training Gym in CA-3. Got that? That’s where the party is. Don’t be late!”

  “Laronda! How many people are going to be there? This is nuts! What if they catch us?” I shake my head at the girl, but she’s implacable.