Qualify

  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.

  I take in another deep shuddering breath and I stop crying.

  A wall of silence slams down.

  “No,” I say. And my voice is suddenly very steady. It belongs to someone else.

  I wipe my face with the back of my hand and look at the guard with a dead expression.

  “No, I do not accept this. I demand to see Command Pilot Aeson Kass.”

  Chapter 45

  The guard’s previously sympathetic expression closes up and he looks at me as though now I’ve become an annoyance.

  “Okay, what?” he says.

  “I must see Command Pilot Aeson Kass!” I repeat. “The one they call Phoebos!”

  The guard looks at me for several long seconds. “You do know what you’re asking?” he says coldly. “That’s a very busy man, very high ranking in the Atlantean Fleet. He isn’t going to have time to talk to you, especially not now—”

  “Look, he knows me, okay! Command Pilot Kass knows me, and he will talk to me!”

  How do I know this, I have no idea. But I persist, with the full confidence fueled by insanity that comes from desperation. Will Aeson agree to see me? It occurs to me, I don’t really know. I might be overreaching. But at the same time, there’s a strange feeling in my gut that no, I am an asset, my Logos voice and I. . . . And Aeson Kass will give me the time of day.

  As the guard continues to stare at me with a growing frown, I hurry to add: “Look, just tell him my name, please! He will agree to see me, you’ll see! Just call him now! Please!”

  The guard shakes his head, and lets out his breath in frustration. He then presses one hand to the smart-set in his ear and punches something on the console. After a few seconds, he turns to me and says, “Okay . . . Command Pilot Kass is currently unavailable. Sorry, Candidate.”

  “What do you mean, unavailable?” My mouth falls open. I suppose I expected to get some kind of instant response, at least an answer of one kind or another, but—nothing?

  “I mean, he is unavailable.”

  “But how? Maybe you can ask again? Where is he? I will go to his office right now—”

  The guard shakes his head at me. “He is unavailable because he is not here—not in this compound, not on Earth.” And he points with a finger up.

  The meaning finally dawns on me. “Oh . . .” I say in despair.

  “He’s gone up to the Atlantis mothership.”

  The despair deepens. I freeze for a few seconds in silence, my mind spinning, while Laronda and Mia and Dawn stand watching me with grim sympathetic eyes.

  “When—when is he coming back?” I try again.

  “That information is unavailable.”

  “Can you please check?”

  “His personal schedule is outside my clearance level.” The guard looks at me hard.

  “Okay . . .” Desperation makes me relentless. “But—”

  “Candidate—Gwen, is it? Candidate, you need to leave now. There is nothing more I can tell you. I am very sorry.”

  “I—I don’t accept that,” I repeat again like a stubborn idiot. And then more wild ideas pop in my head.

  “What—what is his office? Where is it? Is it here in this building?” I say. “It is general knowledge, isn’t it?”

  The guard bites his lip. “Yes, it is. Office #7, CA-2, first floor. You can get to it if you go outside and then use the next walkway entrance for the general offices. But again, he is not here—”

  “But he will be, tomorrow morning! Right? Right? He’ll be there eventually?” I interrupt in a high breathy voice that is again about to crack with tears.

  The guard shakes his head again, and then softens up. “All right, yes, he will be here tomorrow. This is not his specific schedule, but in general—he is usually here by seven AM local time, sometimes as early as six-thirty. But again, no guarantees. He may not even show up—”

  “Okay . . .” I say, crying once again. “That helps very much, thank you. Thank you!”

  The guard only nods, but already I’ve turned away, and I am walking out of the front lobby.

  I stop as soon as I’m outside, and stare into the early twilight, taking shuddering breaths.

  “I am so sorry,” Laronda says, holding my shoulder. Dawn is right there too.

  Mia watches me. “What are you going to do?”

  I wipe my face with the back of my hand and look at them. “I don’t know. . . . No, I do know. I’ll go to his office. I will wait there all night if I have to. And I will talk to him—Aeson Kass. Even if I have to go and wait at the airfield. . . .”

  “Want me to go look for your brother George?” Dawn mutters.

  I nod, silently.

  “Want me to get you some food, girl?” Laronda squeezes my shoulder.

  “No thanks, not hungry. But—thanks.”

  “You need to eat something! It’s gonna be a long wait. And then there’s the sucky ten PM curfew, what will you do? If you don’t make it back to our dorm—”

  “I—don’t know,” I say again, hearing only partially what is being said around me, as I stare ahead and up at the darkening clear sky. There are a few stars out already, and I wonder if any of them are their ships, up in orbit.

  Aeson Kass is up there right now.

  He has Gracie’s fate in his hands.

  A few minutes later, I am in the large business office area of CA-2. Laronda and Dawn have gone, to get George, to get me food—Laronda insisted—and Mia went back to Gracie’s dorm to see what’s happening there.

  After inquiring at the front desk, I am told that Office #7 is right around the corner and down the hall, one of the first ones on this floor, which is the VIP area.

  “But, we are closing for the night, hon, and sorry, but you cannot stay here,” a woman guard tells me. I need to lock up this floor. The Atlanteans work late sometimes, but we cannot have any unauthorized personnel here—”

  In a dead voice I explain to her what has happened with my sister. And then, “I am just going to wait in front of his office, until Command Pilot Aeson Kass comes in,” I say. “I can sit on the floor. Please!”

  But the woman shakes her head. “I’m really sorry, we cannot let anyone stay here after hours, not without permission—”

  “But he knows me!”

  “Sorry, no, we can’t do that. Go on now, dear, come back first thing tomorrow morning. . . .”

  I turn around and exit the building.

  And then I start pacing at the front entrance.

  My mind is an absolute, swirling, numb mess. I—the girl who always comes up with solutions—I suddenly have none.

  I don’t know how much time goes by, and
then I see the entrance doors open and someone exit. Probably an office employee or guard, leaving for the night.

  I glance up with a clouded gaze, and it’s Nefir Mekei. I recognize his somewhat shorter-trimmed metallic hair and Atlantean features, the slightly blunt chin with a dimple, and his skin tone that’s the dark red hue of river clay.

  My Atlantis Culture Instructor from Pennsylvania!

  He pauses, looking directly at me, and then there’s recognition. “Candidate Gwen Lark!” he says with a shadow of a smile. “Glad to see you passed Semi-Finals.”

  “Oh, Instructor Mekei!” I exclaim. “Please, maybe you can help me! It is urgent, I need to see Command Pilot Aeson Kass!”

  And then I explain to him what happened.

  Nefir listens to me with an expression that is so hard to read, as always. And then he nods. “I don’t have a direct line for him, but a general one to his command deck. I will relay a message to Command Pilot Kass for you. He may not get the message until tomorrow morning, when the regular ship-to-ground relays are opened, but at least it will be there waiting for him.”

  “Thank you!” I say. “Thank you so much!”

  Nefir takes out some kind of gadget, and then punches what looks like Atlantean text into it. I recognize the strange hieroglyphic-and-phonetic-alphabet hybrid that is Atlantean script, which looks remotely like Ancient Egyptian and Sanskrit rolled into one. In moments he is done, and hits their equivalent of “send.”

  If I weren’t in such a state of mind right now, I might have gotten a kick out of seeing someone texting into orbit.

  Instead I nod, looking at him numbly.

  “It’s done, Gwen,” Nefir says. “Now I suggest you get back to your dorm and get some rest, and then come back here in the morning. Six-thirty to seven should be a good time to catch him. Kass is never late.”

  I thank him again, and start walking.

  Overhead, twilight has deepened into night, but down here it is dispelled by the bright street illumination of the compound.

  The rest of the night is a mess. I remember almost none of it, only that I get back to my dorm and go directly to bed. I don’t think Dawn ever finds George. And Laronda leaves a small plate of food next to my cot before heading over to her own that’s on the other end of the large girls’ dormitory hall of Section Fourteen.