Qualify

  We approach and sail over the freeway octopus concrete jungle from somewhere in Boyle Heights, with a low-flying bird’s-eye view of the panorama, and the smog-shadowed outlines of the tall buildings downtown well within sight.

  As soon as we’re on the other side, something bad happens.

  Our hoverboards start to fall.

  Or, to be precise, they start coming straight down, as if some giant has pulled them from under us.

  We scream and plummet. And around us, Candidates on drones are also falling.

  Apparently all orichalcum objects are affected.

  The sudden fall is cut short about three feet off the ground. The hoverboards and drones remain, levitating in place.

  And despite our voice commands—yes, even my Logos voice—they remain inert and unresponsive.

  It’s as if some kind of sonic barrier has been erected around them, or maybe we entered a sonic “dead zone”—whatever that might be.

  And now, it looks like we have to abandon our rides and continue on foot.

  “Crap, crap!” Jared starts cussing in all kinds of ways, as he swings his long legs over the board he’s been straddling, gets up and then kicks it for good measure. The board springs back a bit with a small resilient give, but remains inert yet hovering in place.

  “Why do I get the sense the Atlanteans want us to move our lazy asses off these things and walk the rest of the way?” Ethan is just full of tired sarcasm.

  I get up silently, feeling an immediate lightheadedness come over me. The head rush lasts a few seconds. Then I manage to pull myself up straight, and adjust the assault rifle that’s slung over my shoulder. I swear, I don’t even know why I am carrying that damned evil thing that weighs a ton.

  It looks like we’re on some kind of crummy looking street filled with potholes and cracks in the asphalt, in a rundown neighborhood. There’s very little green anywhere, mostly concrete and graffiti-covered walls, and freeway overpasses nearby.

  The fiery SoCal sun is beating down from overhead, and the concrete is radiating heat in short stacks, making the air pulse and warp in waves like a mirage. It’s definitely over ninety degrees Fahrenheit, an average temperature for this time of day, downtown. In the heat the streets stink of old piss. . . .

  Our abandoned hoverboards and drones hover vaguely along the perimeter of the freeway, just a few feet from it. Dozens of Candidates start walking dejectedly in the general direction of the heart of downtown.

  Zoe and Jared walk ahead, followed by Ethan and me. We are soaked in sweat, and sullen and silent. We move at a decent pace, but compared to the others I am struggling already, after just one city block. My breath comes fast, temples pounding with the pulse-beat, and my head is light and “soaring” with weakness.

  A few minutes of this, and some Candidates start jogging, picking up their pace. I see all four colored armbands, but a slight predominance of red and green. It does make sense that the high-aggression Reds and the high-endurance Greens would be the early ones near the finish.

  What am I doing here? I think. I am barely hanging in.

  “Hey, Gwen,” Jared says, turning around. “You might want to have that rifle ready to fire, because pretty soon we’ll need it. Too many Candies here all in the same place, kinda reeks of trouble.”

  “Not sure if it’s trouble, but yup, it definitely reeks.” Zoe wipes her forehead and wrinkles her nose.

  “You’re lucky you got that thing.” Ethan nods at my rifle. “How’d you get it?”

  A sick memory flashback comes to me, and I don’t immediately answer.

  “We met up with some Blues back there,” Jared says quickly, and I feel immediate gratitude. “Things got ugly, we got lucky.”

  We walk a few more minutes in silence, seeing occasional Candidates running by to overtake us. Mostly, I note, they are very fit, athletic types who look like they could run a marathon. One boy, very tall and skinny African American, I suddenly recognize.

  It’s Kadeem Cantrell from Red Dorm Nine, my own RQC, who got the #3 Standing Score. He appears as though out of nowhere, out of what looks to be a dead end alley, and passes us on the street, running effortlessly. There are two intricate folding swords attached with a harness on his back. Unlike most other Candidate runners, he’s not keeping to a street layout but moving along his own personal path, which at present takes him on a clean diagonal through the current street we’re on.

  Kadeem clears the road then leaps over a short fence. In seconds we watch him run up and scale a wall using only his speed and the soles of his shoes as leverage—as though he’s made of rubber—and cut across through someone’s back yard, and then emerge on the other side of a short chain link fence, and then beyond. . . .

  “Whoa, that dude’s doing parkour,” Jared says. “He must’ve been running all this time, I bet!”

  I nod. “Yeah, he’s really good, from my RQC, actually. He got a #3 Standing Score.”

  Ethan whistles. “Oh yeah, he’s gonna pass Semi-Finals.”

  “Unless some Blue shoots him down,” Zoe whispers.

  “What time we got? How much farther?” Jared asks a few minutes later as we pause before what looks like another freeway overpass.

  “Let’s see. It’s just after one-fifteen PM. And I don’t know.” Ethan puts away his gadget and wipes sweat from his face. “See those tall buildings up ahead? Downtown, baby.”

  “I know that, but where’s that big-ass swimming pool we’re supposed to find? With batons or something?”

  “I am guessing it’s where all those shuttles are.” I point up, trying to ignore the wave of nausea that moves through my body together with the lightheadedness, whenever I make sudden movements. And in the white sun glare we finally notice the dozens of silvery disk shapes hovering in the skies over downtown.

  But first we need to pass this latest freeway.

  Only it’s not.

  We walk up East Seventh Street and it rises up into a bridge over a huge concrete basin that is none other than the L.A. River.

  Yeah, I know, start laughing now. It’s basically miles and miles of ugly concrete dotted in places with discarded trash that people toss over the many bridges, and in the center there’s a trickle of water. Admittedly during Los Angeles rainy season—those fabled three days of the year, unless it’s drought year, in which case, forget it—during those few days when water actually comes from the sky in Los Angeles and causes multiple-SigAlert twenty-car pileups, the basin gets filled up pretty well, so there’s a significant rushing torrent, and people and poor stray dogs fall in and have to be rescued by emergency services who then have to be rescued by other emergency services. But otherwise, this basin is a desolate and sad testament to, well, pretty much nothing but a few birds and tadpoles. And oh yeah, it works great as a wind corridor, so the Santa Ana winds use it effectively to blow throughout the city.

  And here we stop.

  Because the way across the bridge is blocked by a barricade. It is dull, charcoal grey, impenetrable, a twenty-foot wall of bristling metal and barbed wire and concrete erected to keep anyone on foot out—probably even a fancy parkour urban runner like Kadeem Cantrell.

  “Great.” Jared frowns, squinting in the sun, and looks in both directions. The rest of us who reach the barricaded street also pause.

  We mill around for a few minutes, as our numbers grow and more and more Candidates arrive. Looking north along the length of the L.A. River on this side, we see another street crossing several hundred feet away, and on it towers another barricade wall. Same thing in the other direction, south.

  All street crossings are blocked, so we will need to enter the concrete river basin in order to cross.

  A few Candidates are already scaling the short railing into the River, and the most athletic ones are running down the steep incline of the concrete bank that frames both sides. Good thing this portion of the river basin does not have vertical walls as it does in some sections of the city. Otherwise we’d ne
ed rappelling equipment. At least there my Yellow Quadrant length of cord lasso would come in handy. . . .

  “Okay, so we cross the hard way,” Ethan says. And then he goes to cross the railing. Zoe and Jared follow.

  I trail behind them, pressing my teeth together while waves of nausea move through me, and it is harder to contain, and to keep myself upright.

  Just as I reach the railing, the screams come.

  “Hot! Hot! It burns!”

  The Candidates in the middle of the concrete basin and those who have almost reached the opposite sides are instead screaming in pain, and some jumping from foot to foot, others stumbling and waving their limbs. An unfortunate few have fallen down, and their bodies are contorting on the concrete floor amid the discarded city trash and the trickle of water that runs in the central gutter ditch that is nothing more than a thin groove gully that has been cut from the concrete.

  “It’s hot! Oh crap! Burning!” Teens closest to our side of the railing begin experiencing the whatever the heck it is, and start racing back to the railing and climbing back out of the river basin—that is, those of them who can.

  The others—it’s hard to describe the awful thing we get to witness.

  Because the bodies of the Candidates still in the basin begin to smoke, and then their screams are cut short as they are engulfed in flames.

  Ethan, who’s only about five feet down-slope from the railing, exclaims in sudden pain, flails his arms and immediately turns around and runs back toward me. . . .

  Zoe and Jared don’t need to be told to move. They’ve just managed to swing their feet over the railing, hop off, take a few steps, and are paused near the edge—and immediately back they come, climbing like crazy.

  “What is it?” I cry. “What’s down there? What is burning?”

  “Me! Everything feels like it’s on fire!” Ethan yells back as he climbs the railing, moving wildly.

  The moment he’s over and back on the level of the street, he stops, frowns as though “listening” to something, to his own body, and suddenly it’s over.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Now I am. All right, this is insane! The pain is gone and the burning sensation all over my body, my shoes even—it’s all gone.”

  “What the hell is it?” Jared stands rubbing his elbows. “I swear, I could begin feeling it too, a sudden warmth, and it was growing with every second the longer I was down there. But because it was gradual, it was easy to ignore, attribute it to the heat of the sun or exhaustion. If not for those other people screaming, I’d have kept moving across until it was too late to get back.”

  “I felt heat coming through my shoes,” Zoe says thoughtfully. “And through my clothing, the sleeves, pant legs, everything. . . .”

  Meanwhile, Candidates are climbing out of the basin all around us. Faces are flushed, and some look like they’ve been running for miles. They wave their hands to cool off, stomp their feet. Those who have come from deepest in the river basin, look the worst. They have what looks like sunburn or first degree burns on their neck and around their sleeves. For some, their skin is starting to blister.

  Everyone stares at the half a dozen bodies left in the basin, now charred and smoking.

  “Okay, this is bad,” a boy says. “Whatever’s down there—a force field or reactive chemicals or something—there’s no way to cross.”

  And so we stand, looking over the basin, as minutes tick. More of us arrive, and the news of the danger below gets passed on.

  As others mill about, I put my fingertips on the railing. It feels warm to the touch, hot even, but in a way indistinguishable from being the usual sun-heated metal and concrete stuck outside on a hot L.A. day.

  I think. . . . Or I try to think through the fog and sluggish nausea that fills my mind.

  “What time is it?” someone behind me asks.

  “Close to two o’clock.”

  “That really blows,” a Candidate mumbles. “Is there any way to go around this, maybe climb the barricade wall on the bridge?”

  I stand and stare out at the river basin expanse. Sterile concrete rises for endless miles in both directions, interrupted only by thick bridge supports. A few birds circle occasionally, then land briefly to drink from the trickle running in the gully.

  I glance to one side and see a pale moving spot that draws near and resolves into the shape of a stray dog running along the incline of the basin. My heart immediately feels a twinge of painful pity for the poor stray. The animal appears unharmed, and it has definitely been in the basin long enough to be affected by whatever forces that generate the killer heat.

  Except, it is not.

  Neither the dog nor the birds are in any way experiencing the warming effect.

  I touch Zoe’s arm and point at the dog. “Look, it’s been running for some time and is not getting burned.”

  Zoe stares at the dog.

  Meanwhile I take a deep breath, put my hands on the railing, and with some effort climb over.

  “Wait! What are you doing?” Ethan says.

  I stand on the other side, a couple of feet down the incline, and take off my yellow ID token.

  “Hold this for a moment, Zoe,” I say, handing it to her.

  For just a few seconds I feel nothing different.

  And then there’s a warmth. It is definitely there, gathering around me, as though a gust of hot air has risen to sweep along my skin, underneath my clothing, inside my shoes.

  And it is growing warmer.

  “Okay . . .” I mutter. “So it’s not the token.”

  I take another deep breath, as the warmth rises around me, becoming unpleasant. And then I begin to strip.

  First, I ask Jared to lend me his knife, and I use it to cut off the length of cord that’s been tied around my arm to stop the bleeding. As soon as the pressure of the cord is gone, my arm pulses with a sudden agony of restored circulation.

  I grit my teeth to hold back the moan of pain. . . . And then I hand the knife back to Jared, and use my good hand to untie the Atlantean yellow armband.

  The heat continues to rise around me as I drop the armband on the concrete floor of the L.A. River. Then I carefully set down the automatic rifle.

  Candidates on the other side of the railing are gathering, staring at me, voices are raised in curious discussion.

  I untie my uniform belt and drop it on the ground, together with the lasso cord weapon still attached. Then off comes my shirt that I unbutton with numb fingers, too tired to be embarrassed about being seen in my underwear by millions of people. Good thing I wear a tank top, and a bra underneath. The shirt falls on the ground. Then I pull down my uniform pants and remain only in my practical cotton briefs. Down go the pants, to lie on top of my shirt.

  As soon as the uniform is off I feel an immediate relief from the stifling heat. It dissipates immediately. I don’t even have to pull my socks off, or my shoes.

  So, it’s definitely the uniform, then, I think. And that makes sense—the uniform has to be made from some kind of Atlantean specially treated fabric, possibly orichalcum-based. After all, it “magically” displayed those Standing Scores, so it is definitely reactive to things.

  Candidates stare at me as I stand in my underwear, holding my numb arm and watching the trickle of blood resume from the bullet wound.

  I glance at all of them and say through my teeth, “It’s the uniform that’s causing the burn. You guys might want to strip. Zoe, can I get my token back?”

  Zoe nods, watching me intently, and tosses me my token ID.

  I catch it. Then I pick up my cord lasso, unravel it and tie up my uniform clothes in one bunch, handling them as quickly as possible before my fingers start to burn. Making sure that none of it comes in direct contact with my body, I carry my uniform bundle swinging from the cord attached to the end of the rifle and walk across the river basin.

  I step over the gully at the halfway spot, glancing at the tiny bit of run
ning water. I try to ignore the charred bodies lying every few feet. . . . At one point I turn to see if the poor lonely dog is still there, but he’s gone far along the riverbank.

  And then I keep walking coolly to the other side and up the incline.

  At the end, I slowly climb over the railing and pause, looking back.

  Behind me, Candidates in their underwear, some carrying their uniforms at the ends of swords and rifles, others suspended on cords just like me, are beginning to cross the river basin.

  Chapter 39

  “I did mention previously that you’re absolutely nuts, didn’t I, Gwen?” Jared says, walking up to the railing on my side of the river. His uniform is swinging from the end of his knife blade, and he’s in nothing but his baggy boxers.

  “Yeah, you did.” I give him a pained smile as I start putting my clothes back on.

  “Well, let me repeat it. You’re way more cray cray than anyone I know.”

  “Thanks, I think. . . .”

  “It’s a compliment.”

  I smile again, weakly.

  A few minutes later I am dressed, with my armband once more around my sleeve, tied awkwardly with one shaking hand. And then I cannibalize another piece of my cord weapon to tie my arm off again, using my good hand and my teeth. This time I nearly pass out from the pain.

  Zoe, who’s gotten dressed while I am still fumbling, watches my slow and difficult movements. “How are you hanging in?”

  “Okay.” Because, really, what else can I say?

  But Zoe steps closer to me and looks into my eyes, so that I am staring down at her very young face with its angular jaw and fierce blue eyes framed by the brown bangs.

  “No, you’re not, I can tell.”

  I shrug.

  Zoe takes my arm—the good one that’s not hurt. And then we begin walking together, with Zoe supporting me lightly.

  I admit, it does help, a little.

  By now, we’ve pretty much nearly there.

  We walk a couple of blocks, heading slightly north toward the Arts District section of downtown. Why? Because that’s the general direction of the spot over which the Atlantean shuttles seem to be hovering in the skies. At this point, I admit, my mind is a muddy mess, and I am only thinking about putting one foot ahead of the other.

  Other Candidates soon overtake us, and I watch the more athletic ones again take off at a light run. But Jared and Ethan continue walking next to Zoe and me.