Qualify

  “What happened next?”

  “I got to him . . . got him out of the chair, dragged him outside.”

  The Corrector leans forward closer to me across the table. “Are you saying that you, a slender girl with no muscle mass, was able to carry a tall muscular young man almost twice your size, and then get him down the stairs on your own, in a matter of minutes?”

  “Yes!” I gasp, while tears begin running down my face, and suddenly everything is swimming in my field of vision, and the world blurs, like rain outside the window. . . . “And no, I did not carry him, I dragged him! Do not—do not put words in my mouth! I pulled and dragged him outside the best I could, yes! And he was heavy, yes, but I wasn’t going to just leave him—”

  In that moment the door opens and Aeson Kass storms into the room.

  “Enough,” he says in a hard voice, looking at the Correctors. “Outside, both of you, now. I will handle the rest of this interview.”

  There is a pause. The Correctors then incline their heads in acquiescence and depart the room.

  As soon as the door shuts behind them, Aeson turns to me. He places both hands on the table, slamming them down, and he stands, looking at me like a demon.

  I tremble. . . . Tears are now pouring down my face in a torrent, and I take a few shuddering gasps of air.

  “Tell me exactly what you did.”

  His voice—it is soft and precise and devastating.

  I look up at him, my eyes held wide and motionless by sheer willpower. I raise one hand, still clenched into a white-knuckled fist, to wipe my red running nose and cheeks with the back of it.

  “What I did?” I say and my voice breaks. “I hauled your damn, bloody, passed-out ass out of that burning shuttle, is what I did!”

  He watches me and does not blink. Several seconds pass.

  “Tell me how you found me. Where was I in the shuttle?”

  “You were in a chair. In some kind of harness. You were slumped over.”

  “And how was I hurt?”

  I stare at him, and my gaze automatically slides to the place on the side of his head where I remember seeing all that blood. “Your head. It was on that side, and there was a lot of blood.”

  “Where? Show me. . . .”

  I hesitate.

  His hand slams the table, hard. “Show me!”

  I partially rise from my seat and extend my right hand, moving my trembling fingers to point to the spot. His metallic hair, it is falling forward as he leans over me . . . and so I touch it lightly, feeling its strange alien texture.

  “Here . . .” I say. “And here. . . . There was so much blood, and it stained all of your face, and your hair too.”

  He blinks. Just once, at the lightest touch of my fingers against the blond tendrils. . . . But his lips are held in an implacable line.

  “Why should I believe you?” he says suddenly. “Why should anything you tell me exonerate you?”

  “Because it’s the truth!”

  His eyes narrow in fury. “Oh, it’s truth, you claim? How well you are playing me even now—have been playing me all along, with your little innocent act!”

  I stop sniffling and my mouth falls open as anger rises to drown out the despair and the fear.

  But he continues, and his face hovers above mine as he leans in yet closer, full of dark sarcasm. “It becomes clear now, how you’ve insinuated yourself with all the Instructors. . . . Such a clever little teacher’s pet! So creative, so many bright ideas! Sweet little girl with such pretty earnest eyes . . . such sweet rosy lips . . . except when they’re spouting pure bullshit!”

  I make a stifled sound, in a helpless mix of outrage and terror. Both wild horrible feelings are warring inside me, and it’s like I am temporarily set on “pause” until I can resolve what emotion is uppermost.

  Meanwhile, he steps around the table and suddenly pulls me up out of my chair. His grip on my bare wrist is painful, and my jacket slides down and ends up halfway off my shoulders as he holds me there with his other hand, scalding fingers digging into my bare skin, bruising my shoulder.

  I stumble backwards, and he pushes me hard against the wall, breathing into my face. “Tell me, Gwen Lark, what group are you affiliated with? Terra Patria or the Sunset Alliance? Or wait, let me guess, neither—for you are far too clever to be a pawn of such narrow-minded small-scale idiots. So I am guessing you are working with some bigger fish. So tell me, which is it?”

  “I am not!” I gasp, half-turning my face away as his warm breath washes over my cheek, my neck. “I am not working with anyone!”

  In answer, his grip on my shoulder hardens, at the same time as he squeezes my wrist until I cry out in pain. . . . Like a serpent his voice hisses in my ear. “Who trained you?”

  “No one! No one trained me! Stop it! Let go of me!”

  Just as suddenly, he releases his hold and steps back away from me. He is breathing hard, and his eyes are strangely dilated, dark pupils overtaking the blue.

  But in seconds he composes himself. His body straightens and he is again remote, and cold as ice, as he stands watching me.

  I, too, strand up straight, move away from the wall, and pull up my jacket back over my T-shirt and my bare arms. I glare at him.

  “What can I say to make you believe I did nothing wrong?” I say in despair. “What kind of proof do you need?”

  “There is nothing you can do or tell me now that I will believe ever again,” he says. “Not until I can discover hard undeniable facts that point otherwise. Can you give me such facts?”

  “I—I don’t know. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Ah. . . . Then, keep playing,” he says softly.

  “Holy lord!”

  But he shakes his head in disgust.

  My hands form into fists. “What are you going to do to me? Am I Disqualified?”

  But he says nothing and starts to turn from me.

  “Wait!” I exclaim. “What is going to happen?”

  “You are going to be questioned continually until we have the information you are withholding.”

  “You mean, interrogated until I ‘confess’ to something?”

  “Yes. You will remain here in custody until you do.”

  I begin shuddering again as another wave of emotion strikes me, overwhelming with cold.

  He starts to go, then pauses for some reason, and turns again to look back at me. “Tell me one thing at least,” he says. “When you got me out of the shuttle chair, how did you release me from the flight harness?”

  “What?” I frown. “The what? Oh—there was a weird button. I squeezed it together, and it collapsed the harness.”

  He cranes his neck slightly and his gaze stills on me. “Thank you—for telling me at least one honest thing.”

  And then he leaves me alone in the sterile chamber.

  Moments later two guards return and I am taken outside into the empty hallway, and made to walk about fifty feet to another door. A guard opens it, and I am pushed inside.

  This room is a replica of the first, an exact square, except it has a narrow cot against one wall, topped only with a thin mattress, a pillow and blanket. A toilet stands in the corner.

  The door shuts behind me.

  Oh, great, this is my first actual, honest-to-goodness real prison cell. Congratulations, Gwen Lark, terrorist conspirator and Criminal Mastermind—at last, you’ve arrived. So, looks like I am going to be here for a while.

  I sit down on the cot and stare at the four walls around me. I rub the back of my hand across my nose and wipe the sticky residue of drying tears and yeah, snot. So not attractive.

  Then, it occurs to me, pretty soon, at some point, I am going to have to pee. In the presence of surveillance cameras. . . . Ugh.

  I have no idea how much time passes, but it feels like at least an hour.

  All along, my thoughts race deliriously, and I think of my brothers and Gracie, and Mom and
Dad. . . . I guess I’ll be going home now. Or, maybe not—Disqualification is only one of my current problems; I might be greeting the asteroid apocalypse in a prison cell.

  Or worse—depending on the severity of the Atlantean criminal system and corresponding punishment for my alleged crimes, I might not even live long enough to see it.

  Shivering, I get up, trying to shake off the despair. I stand, stomp my feet, move around, sit back down again. There are absolutely no sounds outside the long hallway corridor, not even rare footsteps.

  What feels like another hour passes. Or maybe it’s only been fifteen minutes. I have no idea—it’s all hell.

  At last there are footsteps and someone comes to the door.

  The door opens, and a guard walks in, followed by my brother George. “You have ten minutes,” he says, then steps outside again, locking us both in.

  George looks nervous and very grim, as he immediately moves toward me.

  “George!” I exclaim. And then my tears start pouring again, like a gusher.

  My older brother puts his arms around me and I smell the sweat and faint aftershave from his familiar clothes as I bury my face against his jacket front.

  “Okay, Gee Two, what the hell is going on?” he mutters. “What have you done? Or better to say, what did you get yourself into?”

  “Nothing! Nothing!” I say, moving back to wipe my face again with both hands. And then I grab George by the jacket front and hold on for several breaths until I regain my ability to speak instead of blubbering like an absolute wreck.

  “What’s that on your cheek?” He frowns, examining the side of my face with its dark bruise. “Did they do this to you?”

  I shake my head. “No, it’s just from sparring in Combat. It’s nothing. Just stupid—”

  “Okay, let’s breathe. . . . And tell me.”

  We take deep breaths. Or I take deep breaths and George just stands there and lets me recover. Then we both sit down on my cot.

  “Okay, listen. . . . I did absolutely nothing wrong. But—but—they think I am a terrorist of some kind, because they matched my voice to—to—”

  “To what?” George stares at me in confused worry. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, and when your dorm friends came running to get me, they weren’t making much sense either, except that you got arrested somehow. And now Gracie’s freaking out—she’s back at her dorm and swears she cannot deal—you know how she can be, total drama queen. But anyway, right now, we’re all here, your friends, Gordie, everyone’s outside the building. . . . We wanna see if there’s anything we can do to help. But—but you need to explain what happened, okay? Why on earth would they arrest you? Surely not for mouthing off to their big shot VIP, or whatever you did in that Combat class to get you disciplinary action? Is that it?”

  “No . . . no, it’s not.” I move in closer to George and speak in a high whisper. I don’t know why I am bothering to whisper, since every movement, every sound is being observed and recorded. But it just feels better somehow to speak that way, a weird illusion of privacy, maybe?

  “Okay, I have to tell you something,” I begin. “On the night of the shuttle incident, I was—I was there.”

  “What?” George’s eyes widen. He slants his head and stares hard at me.

  I start talking. I am babbling, but somehow I manage to tell him the entirety of the incident.

  “Wait, you sang and the shuttle levitated?” His jaw drops. “You sang? No way, that’s crazy! How can it do that? How’s that even possible?”

  “I know it’s crazy,” I mutter hurriedly. “I know, I still can’t believe it when I think back, but it was a split-second reaction—it just came out!”

  “But how did you make it hover? That ship must weigh a ton! It’s not like some skinny hoverboard! I mean—how loud did you even sing? You must have been really loud—”

  “Top-of-my-voice loud! I started out screaming, like I just told you, and then I just flipped it around into a note. . . .”

  “But you—” George hesitates at this point. “But you don’t sing. . . .”

  “I know.”

  “You haven’t sung for ages! Not since Mom—”

  “Yeah. I didn’t even know what I sounded like any more. It was like someone else’s voice. It was unreal—”

  As I recall and describe the moments, I feel a gathering of something painful in my throat, as a lump returns to choke me. I shake my head and put my palm flat against his jacket again in a gesture to make him stop.

  George nods, understanding me immediately.

  “Okay,” he says gently. “Enough of that. So then what next?”

  I tell him how I got Aeson Kass out of the shuttle. When I am done, my brother remains silent, thoughtful, as though considering what to say.

  “Gwen,” he says. “You saved his life. And this is his crazy way of thanking you? He should be giving you a medal or something!”

  I bite my lip and shake my head. “There’s more. . . .”

  And I tell him about Laronda’s arrest and the missing chip that was found in her pocket.

  “So, wait, how does that connect to you?”

  “Her dorm bed is right next to mine. And we’re friends. We hang out together a lot.”

  “So? Could still be a coincidence. Only remotely suspicious.”

  I shrug. “I am guessing that anything suspicious is enough for them to connect the dots. And you must admit, it does look kind of bad. Even I get that.”

  “So their machine recognized your voice, and your BFF was found with the chip.” George exhales loudly and shifts around in place, making the flimsy cot underneath us creak. He puts his head down and runs his fingers through his messy dark hair, then looks up at me again. “Yeah, this is bad,” he says. “But there’s got to be something we can do. Find whoever’s really responsible. . . .”

  I sit with my hands digging into the blanket on both sides of me. I am numb and there is really nothing that comes to mind. But seeing George of all people look this crestfallen and glum, I have to at least pretend.

  “Yeah, there has to be something. And if there is, I will find a way, Gee One,” I say, putting one hand on his shoulder and squeezing. “Meanwhile, you tell Gracie and Gordie I’m okay. Tell Gordie—tell him we have matching shiners now, he’ll love it. It’s kind of funny!”

  Moments later the guard returns to take my brother away.

  And again, I am all alone, with the four walls closing in on me.

  Chapter 26

  I have no idea how much more time passes, and I am getting hungry and thirsty. And yeah, I manage to use the toilet while awkwardly covering myself up with my jacket.

  Eventually I lie down on the cot, on top of the blanket, and stare up at the ceiling.

  At some point, the door opens again, and guards come to escort me outside.

  This time I am led back through the corridor toward the front portion of the building. We pass the cubicle farm, where again every office worker stares at me, this time with reproach. Or at least it seems that way, from what I see in their eyes. We go through the glass double doors and outside into the very front portion, and then the lobby.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask, but the guards do not reply, only propel me by the arms, onward, and out through the main glass doors of the building.

  Outside it is late afternoon. There is no sign of the morning overcast and drizzle, and except for a few patchy clouds, the sky is bright blue and turning to gold on the western horizon. Looks like I’ve been detained for most of the day.

  As I look around, I see a bunch of people I know milling around. Both my brothers stand propped against the walls, and there’s Dawn and Laronda sitting on a ledge nearby. Hasmik is sitting down on the floor concrete slab with her feet stretched out before her next to Janice Quinn. Jai, Mateo and Tremaine and even Jack Carell are standing up talking in a semi-circle. My heart lurches because there’s Logan, next to my brothers, and some other gu
y and a few girls I barely know are with them, many of them sitting all along the side of the building with their backs to the wall.

  Laronda sees me first. “Gwen! Oh, my God, are you okay?” She springs up, followed by Dawn and pretty much everyone else. They turn toward me, people scrambling to get closer.

  But the guards stand between them and me, and they continue propelling me forward. “I’m okay, guys!” I say hastily, glancing back at everyone.

  “Hey, where are you taking her?” George says loudly to the guards. “That’s my sister, where are you taking her? We have a right to know what’s happening!”

  “I don’t know!” I cry back. “They won’t tell me—”

  “No talking,” says one guard. “Keep moving. The rest of you, please stay back.”

  But my brothers and my friends are now walking alongside us, and behind, keeping a short distance but keeping up—all of them, everyone’s coming along. In fact, other Candidates who are outside are beginning to stare. Some are starting to follow along also.

  We walk past several buildings at a rapid pace, so that I almost stumble a few times to keep up with the guards, and each time it happens my brothers’ voices are heard from the back, “Hey! Slow down, don’t push her!”

  Way to go, George and Gordie! I think gratefully, wanting to bear-hug them. But then I think of where I might be going, and my gut grows numb with cold.

  We pass one more building, and there’s the airfield.

  About a hundred feet into it, in the middle of the clearing, an Atlantean shuttle sits on the ground.

  I stare, and there’s a group of people gathered around it. Some of them are clearly Atlanteans, judging by the radiant metallic hair that shines from this distance in the setting sun.

  Before the guards even direct me toward the shuttle, I start to get an inkling of what might be going on here.

  We enter the airfield that has been swept clean and pristine of any earlier debris from the disaster of a few days ago. “Keep going,” one guard tells me, propelling me firmly toward the grouping of individuals around the shuttle.