Qualify

  As we scramble to voice-key our hoverboards, Pilot Radra’s disembodied voice sounds from the amplifier, since she is still inside the shuttle. “Please be aware there is no other light inside the tunnel system, except for the beacons to mark each gate. Use your flashlights wisely. Also, do not get distracted by any seeming detours, and stick to the main tunnel. Yes, there are off-shoots, and you do not want to take them, because they are not a part of the main system. Always stick to the biggest tunnel and cavern.”

  “Finally,” Ekit says, “if you must rest or stop, do it only when you get to the next closed floodgate. That’s the only place you can be certain you are not losing precious time. Rest and eat as you wait for that floodgate to open, in the few minutes you earned by moving fast.”

  Pilot Ekit ends and then disappears into the shuttle. The rung ladder retracts and the hatch closes behind him.

  Sickening tension starts the pulse racing in my temples. I sit down on my hoverboard, straddling it, and quickly open my backpack to find the flashlight. Everyone else is also feverishly rummaging through theirs. . . .

  A disembodied voice sounds through the amplifier, echoing through the cavern. “And now, good luck, Candidates! The next shuttle carrying Team D is waiting to enter after us, so we must vacate the cavern. Beginning gate sequence count now . . . One . . . Two . . . Three.”

  And suddenly a low rush of water comes from ahead of us, as the horizontal lift-gate parts and the top portion starts rising slowly, with a dull sound of rock grinding against rock.

  Black churning water enters the cavern and in seconds the floor is covered. We are all hovering, and those of us with feet dangling low, feel the spray against our legs. . . .

  “Oh, holy Jesus!” Laronda cries, as she lies forward on her belly, gripping the hoverboard close to her with both arms, clutching her flashlight in one hand, while her backpack sticks up like a small lump from her back.

  I’m lying on my own board right next to her, still zipping up my pack, and then quickly pulling the two straps through my arms to adjust it tightly on my back. I loop the lead cord from my flashlight around my right wrist, and clutch it in my trembling fingers.

  The gate opening grows larger and it is now at least three feet up. Water continues rushing into the large cavern, creating a fall, and all around, the echoes mingle with the sound of singing voices keying hoverboards and directing them forward.

  I throw wide glances around to see who else is here with us, looking for other familiar faces. After all, we’re supposed to be a team. In the low flickering light of many flashlights, it is hard to see who’s who.

  “Okay, go! Go!” a boy near the front cries, because there’s a traffic jam up ahead. Teens lie flattened on hoverboards, ready to burst forward as soon as there’s enough clearance between the top and bottom portions of the lift-gate.

  And then they begin to move. The front-most Candidate in line sings the “go” sequence and his board springs forward and disappears into the maw of darkness over the churning black waterfall. Immediately two more hoverboards go in after him, and then it’s an endless stream of Candidates and hoverboards, taking the entrance two and three at a time. . . .

  We rush onward like desperate salmon swimming upstream into the great unknown. There are about one hundred of us in Team USA Section Fourteen-C, judging by shuttle capacity. We come from all Four Quadrants, so the majority is unfamiliar to me.

  Laronda and I are somewhere in the middle of this chaotic lineup. When our turn comes, I take a deep breath and sing the hoverboard sequence, feeling cold air and wet spray hit me as I pass the gate, hovering about ten inches over the rushing water. My token flashes momentarily as I get scanned. I glance to my right, and there’s Laronda, flying next to me, clutching her board for dear life.

  “Hang on tight, girlfriend!” I yell out to her, as the stale ancient air of the tunnel whooshes past us.

  “Oh, yeah, mama!” she yells back. “You and I are gonna be flying out of here in no time!”

  The first few minutes are the most intense. We have to get our bearings and navigate the tunnel that is generally circular, with a dripping ceiling. The whole thing’s hewn of rock that has been smoothed by centuries of water, and feels intensely claustrophobic—and I’ve only been in it for about two minutes.

  The fact that there are other people with flashlights, flying ahead of us in a vague formation of about two or three people per row, makes it a little easier. They are basically lighting our way.

  “Watch out! Big rock thing ahead!” someone yells several rows before us. We see hoverboards swerving, right and left and then the rock is right there, a half-formed stalagmite rising up from the tunnel floor, that must have developed over the eons since the tunnel was first built. Water is churning on both sides of it as it flows around it.

  We go around it, singing the correct bypass sequence, and continue forward.

  “Anyone know how fast we’re going?” a girl’s voice sounds behind us. “Because we have to go at least 30 miles an hour—”

  “Yeah, yeah, we know, bitch,” a familiar hard voice retorts several hoverboard lengths ahead.

  It’s Claudia Grito.

  Oh, great. I am stuck in a narrow tunnel deep underneath the ocean in the same damn team as the bruja from hell who hates my guts. . . .

  Next to me Laronda grimaces and throws me a look. She’s not a big fan of Claudia either.

  “Seriously, how fast are we all moving? Anyone?” a guy says from further back behind us.

  “Thirty-four miles an hour, according to the speedometer on my GPS, a worthless piece of crap that died two minutes ago,” another boy replies up in front. “Happy now?” And I recognize the sarcastic voice belonging to Derek Sunder.

  Oh, no, Derek. . . . Why, lord, why?

  “Well, now we know how badly this road trip’s gonna suck,” Laronda mutters.

  We keep moving forward in general silence, except for the sound of cold air whistling past us, and the water flowing a few inches below, then a few feet below. The deeper we go, the less water there is, until the tunnel is nearly drained completely.

  And then we come to the second closed floodgate. The six beacons glow with what feels like holiday cheer in this damp awful place. We arrive, gather in close formation, hovering in place, crowding forward, some of us closer to the ceiling, others near the floor.

  And now we wait.

  We know that as soon as the water has left the current tunnel chamber entirely, only then will this new gate open, releasing its water and starting the process again.

  About five minutes later, a now-familiar, slow, deep sound of grating stone comes, and a thin horizontal slit appears in the floodgate as the top begins to rise.

  Immediately water gushes forward, and we move back a bit, letting it drain away until there’s room to enter.

  “Well,” a Candidate boy says with a snort. “One gate down—or should I say, up—and only about a billion more to go, till Bermuda, baby!” And he plunges forward into the newly revealed tunnel.

  We follow after.

  About five hours and ten floodgates later, we have fallen into a boring routine. We fly in formation, maintaining an even speed of about 30 to 35 miles an hour, having now learned our pace and familiarized ourselves with our “neighbors”—or at least their feet and the backs of their hoverboards. We have also come to expect a floodgate about every fifteen miles.

  An eternal drip-drip of water comes from the ceiling upon our backs and our heads, and soon we are as thoroughly drenched as if we had been swimming. There’s also a slow leaching weariness in my limbs, and I know Laronda and others around me are feeling it too. . . . It seems like no big deal, but just try lying on your stomach on a hard surface for five hours, without moving hardly at all, while clenching a stiff board underneath you, all your muscles tense and constantly in a state of alertness.

  Eventually you go numb. . . . Every limb feels atrophied. Muscle groups ache,
itch, tingle, you name it. Everything becomes unbearable. Crap, everything just hurts.

  Whenever we come to a gate, most of us get off our boards, waiting for it to open. We jump around, stretch our limbs, move or jog in place. Some of us open our backpacks and pull out something to eat, drink from the water bottles.

  “It’s not like I’m even hungry,” Laronda mutters with her mouth full of granola bar. “I just need to get energy, you know. It’s so damn cold here!”

  She’s right. The cold, it is the most overwhelming sensation of all, down to our bones. So far deep underground, beneath the ocean, the thousands of tons overhead pressing down upon us, we’re basically inside a huge natural icebox. And we’re wet. Ugh. . . .

  Pretty soon, our teeth are chattering. Every gate stop becomes a few moments of vigorous exercise as everyone gets to work, to get our blood pumping. And then we cram food calories into our mouths, and wash it down with a few gulps of drinking water. It’s ironic that in this wet place, we have to conserve our water.

  Only about twenty-eight hours to go. Who knew hell could be such a boring monotonous, cold thing?

  “Okay, you know what really blows?” a boy says, as we fly through the tunnel in the middle of our seventh hour. “The fact that we cannot get any rest. Not gonna be sleeping for more than a day.”

  “Everything blows,” another guy says. I think his name is Emilio Flores and he’s from Yellow. “Just don’t fall asleep, man. You fall asleep on your board, you fall off, you’re screwed.”

  And I admit, it’s getting harder and harder to stay “awake.” The longer you fly, the more you enter this weird zen state that’s neither sleeping nor awake, and you cannot do anything but think. And being cold and numb, it’s mostly delirium.

  “People, anyone know any word games or something?” a girl calls out. “Cause that would be good, now.”

  I jerk awake, coming out of the zen state, and good thing too—there’s a slight curve in the tunnel ahead, and unless I navigate the hoverboard properly I’m about to crash into a wall of rock.

  “Wake up!” I exclaim, and I think Laronda starts too, and all of us maneuver our boards around the curve.

  “Ouch, close call,” Laronda says, trying to shift and stretch on top of her board as best as she can.

  “Word games are good,” I say loudly to whomever brought it up. “Anything to stay conscious.”

  “Who knew the main problem would be falling asleep to our deaths?” a guy mutters right behind me.

  So for the next couple of hours, we play “Simon Says” or yell out random crazy phrases like, “I like eating Mindy’s boogers!” Laughter works too, to keep us awake.

  But even that gets stale. By the time we’re on our tenth hour of flying, no one listens much to anything at all, and when a Candidate says something, it’s like a murmur intruding upon a nightmare dream.

  By hour eleven, many of our flashlights start going out. The batteries are running out, and we don’t have spare ones.

  “Oh, crap! Mega-crap!” people start exclaiming, and that gets us awake and alert faster than anything.

  “Okay, everybody, take turns using your flashlights!” some guy yells up ahead.

  Really, we should’ve thought of this in the first place. Heck, I should’ve thought of this. . . . I am Gwen numbskull Lark. . . .

  “Most of us should turn ours off,” I call out. “Just have one person in each row keep theirs on until we get to the next gate, and then another person at the next gate. That should be enough light.”

  And in moments the tunnel goes a few degrees darker, as most of us turn off our still functional flashlights. I nod to Laronda to turn hers off and keep mine on until the next gate.

  By hour twenty, many more flashlights have gone out, despite our efforts at battery conservation. Good thing our eyes have gotten used to it, because now we fly in near-darkness, and mostly watch for the six rainbow beacons up ahead to indicate an upcoming gate.

  And when the gate opens, during hour twenty-two, together with the in-rushing water we get the first floating dead bodies.

  Chapter 52

  The first one comes as the biggest shock. A boy’s waterlogged body washes up through the opening in the floodgate. We know he’s a Candidate, because he is wearing the grey uniform, and there’s a red armband on his sleeve. He’s floating face down in the current.

  “Oh my G-g-god! There’s someone d-d-dead in there!” a girl cries through chattering teeth, seeing him first as he tumbles out of the gate opening.

  And those of us who are up in the front, crowd in closer to see.

  “Anyone want to check if he’s dead, for sure?” says a boy from Blue, straddling his hoverboard.

  “How can he not be dead?” Derek says meanly. “Come on, he’s been in a water-filled tunnel for the last half hour at least, probably longer. You wanna touch him? On the other hand, move over, hey, maybe he’s got something useful on him.” And Derek actually gets off his board, wades through the incoming water and kicks the body with his foot, then bends over and goes through the dead boy’s backpack.

  While Derek’s looting, the rest of us get on our hoverboards and plunge into the tunnel. The nightmarish mood of despair has just gone darker by at least another degree.

  “Did you see that?” Laronda whispers. “What happened to him?”

  “Probably fell asleep, fell off,” the guy behind us says. I believe his name is Jack, and he’s got a blue armband. “I didn’t see any blood in the water, or on the body. So probably just fell off, maybe got knocked unconscious.”

  “Everyone, stay alert, people!” a girl directly in front of us says. I’ve been staring at the deeply grooved hot pink rubber soles of her running shoes for the last three hours at least, as she’s lying on her board in front of me.

  And then, as we watch the water, more bodies float by. A girl with long pale hair, which fans in the current around her, passes right underneath my hoverboard. She is young, looks a bit like Gracie, which sends a stab of pain through my gut. And then she floats away.

  Pretty soon, there’s a body every ten minutes, it seems. . . .

  And then the tunnel we’re in widens suddenly, and we find that we are in a huge natural cavern. The cavern is even taller than the one we entered in the beginning of Finals. And there are several smaller chambers stretching in multiple directions, and the current is flowing haphazardly here. Hard to tell where it’s coming from.

  “Okay, this might explain the bodies,” Jack says behind us. “This place is huge, and people got lost and could not find the next floodgate in time! Crap!”

  “You’re right,” Emilio says up ahead, as we break formation and sort of sit there, levitating, staring around us. “I have no idea which cavern or tunnel is the right one. Where do we go?”

  “Usually, the direction from where the water is flowing should tell us,” I say. “But it kind of does not seem to be flowing from anywhere at this point, it’s standing like a lake. Or at least, hard to tell.”

  “Whoa, look up, guys!” a girl says, lifting her face toward the ceiling, and directing her board to rise a few feet. “Check out the amazing stalactites! Those are the biggest I’ve ever seen!”

  “You just keep checking out junk on the ceiling, and you’ll end up floating face down in the water too,” Claudia says from a few feet away.

  I glance at her with a frown. For a moment our gazes lock, and ugh, Claudia has a fierce expression on her face. . . .

  “I think we need to break up into small groups or pairs and go check out each of these sub-caverns,” Jack says.

  Meanwhile I am staring at the very still water below us, and the three or four additional bodies floating in it. There’s no current, no movement.

  Think, Gwen, think! What is going on here?

  And then it hits me.

  “Wait!” I exclaim. “Don’t go off anywhere! I think that’s what killed these people! They wasted time looking around, wandered too far into the
sub-tunnels and by the time they got back to the actual gate it was too late!”

  “Ooh, Gwen-baby! So why the hell are you in charge, puta?” Claudia snarls at me, turning her hoverboard around aggressively.

  I flinch at the ugly word, but before I can open my mouth, Laronda exclaims, “Because she’s the smarty-pants! Don’t you know, she’s Shoelace Girl? In case anyone missed it, if it hadn’t been for girlfriend here, most of you in L.A. wouldn’t have passed the Semi-Finals! So if you know what’s good for you, you listen to her!”

  “Oh, yeah? You’re Shoelace Girl?” Emilio says with a small grin. “Okay, you got my attention.”

  “Here’s the thing,” I say tiredly, ignoring the annoying fact that I’ve just been outed as that minor NQC “celebrity” I am trying very hard to live down and forget. “The water is not moving because I think this is a permanent lake here—it’s not going to drain, ever. So if we judge by the water level here it might seem like we have plenty of time to explore, but in fact, this is as drained as this chamber is going to get. Which means, the new gate is about to open any moment.”

  “Okay, so what do we do?”

  I bite my lip. “We listen. We need to be very quiet, stay exactly where we are, and just shut the hell up completely, and listen for a sound of rushing water. That would be the new gate opening.”

  “Okay, I think that works for me,” Jack mutters.

  Laronda meanwhile glances around at the cavern with all the Candidates in our team flying around everywhere, tired voices raised in echo-raising chatter, and then she yells, “Everyone, over here! Right now! And be quiet! As in, effing shut up!”

  Some people turn briefly in our direction. And then, most of them decide it’s worth checking out whatever’s happening here in our group.

  “Listen to Shoelace Girl!” Laronda keeps repeating, as more and more Candidates converge.

  And then I have to repeat what I just said. I do, and everyone, surprisingly enough, listens to me.