Qualify (28 page)

As I take a big bite of pizza, I happen to glance up and see a group of teens with mostly Red tokens passing by. I recognize one immediately—the familiar black hair with rare brown highlights, broad shoulders, tall muscular back and toned runner’s legs—even before he turns around, and yeah, it’s Logan Sangre. . . .

Now I am starting to choke on my pizza—or rather, I’ve forgotten to chew and breathe, and not sure what’s happening in my mouth.

Next to Logan, there’s his dark-haired friend, Daniel Tover, with the slightly crooked nose and pleasant face. He’s walking with a girl who has long dirty-blond hair and who’s hanging onto his arm and giggling in a hyper, slightly unnatural voice.

It’s Gracie.

Chapter 14

“G
racie!” I exclaim, and drop my pizza. Fortunately it lands on the plate and not my chest.

Everyone at my table stares as my sister turns at her name being called and kind of freezes. Then she and her friends stop and look in our direction.

They approach. In addition to Logan and Gracie and Daniel, there are several other Reds I’ve not seen before, and there’s Mia Weston, the petite girl from Gracie’s dorm.

“Gracie!” I continue to speak. “What are you doing here? We thought you weren’t going to eat dinner and take a nap instead.”

“Oh, hi!” Gracie has a slightly nervous, sheepish expression, and I notice she has let go of Daniel’s arm. “Yeah, well, I changed my mind. Everyone was going to see this Arena place!”

“Okay. . . .”

“Hi, Yellow Candy,” Logan says, looking at me with a light smile. His gorgeous warm hazel eyes are trained on me directly. I feel a sudden pang in my chest as my lungs kind of collapse and lose their ability to expand. . . . Just for a single dumb moment.

“Hi,” I mutter. “I’m Gwen.”

“I know.” His smile grows. “We’ve met yesterday, remember? We’re from the same school. You’re Grace’s big sister.”

“Hey, wait, I know you, man,” my brother George says. “You’re Logan, right? Mapleroad Jackson High, varsity track team? Mr. Borster’s AP History class?”

“Yup, that’s me—Logan Sangre. You’re George Lark?”

Logan leans in and they shake hands over a heaping plate of Gordie’s burgers.

Introductions happen all around.

“Want to join us?” Laronda says after a meaningful glance in my direction. “We can make room on the table and ‘de-tray.’ Go grab your food and come back here.”

Gracie looks up at Daniel, and the other Reds glance at each other. “Well,” she says. “There’s sort of this unwritten rule, we’re all supposed to stick together with people of our own Quadrant and build up allegiance or something. So maybe we should just go find a different table—”

“Says who? What rule? No one told
us
. . . . Oh, come on!” Laronda snorts. “What’s this, some kind of freaky Atlantis segregation? Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Just set your butt down here, Gracie,” I say. “This is silly.”

“It’s not so much a rule as a guideline,” Daniel says diplomatically. The Reds exchange more glances and then look at our table and all our multi-color tokens. Among us we’ve got three yellows, a blue and a green.

“I’m sure we can safely mingle tonight,” Logan says, glancing at me with a wink. “I’ll be right back.” And he heads for the food court service.

“Okay, I guess. . . .” Gracie nods at me then goes after him. The other Reds follow.

“That’s right. You all come back now, we don’t have color cooties, jeez!” And Laronda rolls her eyes and picks up her burger.

F
ive minutes later, our table is overcrowded with the Red Quadrant newcomers, and everyone’s trays have been removed and stacked on the floor in order to make room for our individual plates. We’ve pulled up additional chairs, and it’s a tight human pack all around.

“So wait,” Logan says to us, as he picks up one of his burgers. “You’re the Four Gees, right? I remember that meme going around school.”

“That’s us, we’re a meme,” Gordie says with a minor cringe, still speaking with his mouth full.

“Yeah, our parents really did us a favor.” George grins.

I consider saying something clever but decide to continue chewing instead, and stare down at my plate, just to be safe. Logan’s sitting two seats over from me, next to George and Daniel. Even with the space between us, I am acutely aware of his proximity, and the sure way he handles his burger.

The sure way he handles his burger? Really?
What kind of asinine thought did I just have? I glance up and observe Logan’s elegant jaw moving as he takes a bite, and the way his throat muscles—

Oh, for crying out loud, what am I, a lovesick cow?

I poke a plastic fork at my mashed potatoes and grow angrier with myself with every passing second.

“So, any news from the outside world?” says one of the Reds, an Asian guy with spiked black hair and high-end smart jewelry around his neck and in his earlobes, whose name is Greg Chee. “We can’t get past the e-dampers, though I hear a couple of hacker guys have bypassed and have been able to pick up something on their smart pads.”

He leans in, and speaks in a lower voice so that our table grows quiet enough to hear him. “Rumor has it, since we Prelim-Qualified and got bused over to these Centers, and then locked up in here, the whole world’s been fixated on us. The media’s live streaming all the Centers from outside the fenced in compounds round the clock, and some parents have even camped outside. And then—more major riots happened, huge ones in central China, the EU, and one really serious one here, in the Metro DC area near the Houses of Congress. They had to halt their session and evacuate temporarily. Plus, there are new military curfews all over the world, not just here. As for the President, she’s been making grandstanding promises as usual. And the UN is eating it up.”

“Yeah well, considering that President Donahue is all in bed with the Goldilocks and their technology, and has been since day one, what else is she going to do?” George puts his food down and looks around, starting to frown.

Daniel looks at my brother closely, evaluating him. “You think so?” he says. “So, you’re not a big fan of our fine Atlantean overlords?”

“Not a fan, no.” George resumes eating.

“Good to have a clear head about the situation,” Greg Chee says to George.

Sitting next to me, Gracie pauses eating her fries and glances at Daniel, then Greg. “You guys remember they said they’ll be filming us during Qualification Semi-Finals and Finals. Any idea where that’s all going to be held? Is it in this building? Do you think other RQCs have their own Arena buildings like ours, and this is what they’re all going to film?” She nods over to the track and interior sports area with the scaffolding.

Greg snorts and shakes his head. “No way! Seriously, you think this, right
here
, is where the Finals will be? Hah! Hah! Hah!” He laughs, looking at Gracie with pity.

“What?” She frowns back at him.

“Look—” Greg leans in toward us. “I hear it’s huge. Huge! It’s going to be all over! The Finals, especially. They—Goldilocks—they’re preparing for something major all over the globe. Huge construction projects going on, on all the coasts, inside major cities. When the time comes, they’ll be sending us
outside
—wherever it is. This puny arena here, this is
nothing
.”

As Greg is speaking, I feel a growing sense of dread. Looks like I’m not the only one, as we all stop eating and listen to him.

“Oh, no . . .” Dawn says across from me. “That sounds really bad.”

Greg turns to her. “Yeah, it is.”

“So—what is this place for, then?” I say in confusion. “I thought this is where the Qualification happens eventually.”

“It’s probably just another big gym hall for more advanced training.” Logan tells me. “Of course nothing is certain, this dude could be wrong.”

Greg snorts. “I wish! Believe me I want to be wrong about this crap. But it doesn’t appear to be that way.”

“Hey, guys, look. . . .” Laronda cranes her neck and motions with her head upward. We all look up.

There, on the uppermost level of the walkway, a group of about a dozen Atlanteans walks by, headed toward the far end of the level. Their metallic golden hair picks up the strong overhead lights and shines super-bright in the distance, so that they all appear to have halos of light around their heads. . . . They already stand out from the rest of us by the strange grace of their movements, their general good looks—and now, that beacon-bright hair really brings it all home.

They leisurely walk directly above us, only several levels up. We can barely hear their muted conversation, and I’m quite certain it’s not in English. At one point there is soft female laughter.

I stare and recognize Oalla Keigeri, and next to her is Keruvat Ruo, the tallest and darkest of them. A few other Atlanteans I don’t know stroll by, and then Nefir Mekei, looking straight ahead, his face impassive. Right after him is the glaring contrast of Xelio Vekahat—the only Atlantean whose hair is not metallic gold but midnight black. I note that this time Xelio is wearing his uniform shirt. He is also talking closely with a short-haired Atlantean girl I don’t know, leaning in toward her, so that I cannot see his striking face. . . .

A few more Atlanteans pass, their grey uniforms all the same except for the colored armbands—red, green, yellow, blue . . .
black
.

With a strange pang, I recognize the tall slim form of Aeson Kass. I blink and watch the movement of his toned upper body, the black armband hugging his powerful arm, the angle of his head with its slightly washed out radiant metallic hair, his confident profile. Cool and dispassionate, he turns once to glance over at the panorama of the Arena as he moves by.

I am staring at him, and I swear, for a split second his gaze lands on me, and there is a moment of recognition. . . .

But no, that’s just crazy. Why would this hotshot Command Pilot and
astra daimon
bother to recognize or even remember
me
, a nerdy and awkward Earth girl who asked weird questions on her first day of Combat class?

“Looks like the Goldilocks are headed to a big party,” one of the Reds says.

“All of our Instructors in one place, eh?” Daniel says. “Oh, to be a fly on that wall.”

“Must be important.”

“More likely, must be dinner. They do eat, just like us, you know.”

“We were just wondering about that earlier.” Laronda snorts.

Greg stares hard then turns back to our group and whispers, “Oh, man . . . that’s
him
. . . .”

“Who?”

“Black armband—the one they call
Phoebos
.”

A few of the Reds in the back of the table exchange glances.

“And who’s Phoebos?” Mia Weston asks.

“Their top ranking Pilot,” Daniel says. “The same VIP we were talking about yesterday.
Phoebos
is a call sign. He’s basically in charge of the Fleet, after their Commander, I believe he’s either the third or second ranking officer—in any case, he’s a really big deal.”

“And what is he doing here?” Laronda looks worried.

“Who knows? Probably checking all of us Candies out. Taking stock of our abilities, making preliminary decisions about which of us will Qualify. I’m sure they discuss us in private, and the Instructors give him detailed reports about us.” Greg Chee sneers.

I consider mentioning again that Aeson Kass was the surprise visitor in my Combat class yesterday, but for some reason decide to keep my mouth shut.

“I think their offices are all up there,” I say instead. “So probably they’ll hang around for a few hours in case we want to go see them with homework stuff.”

“Sounds about right.” George picks up a glass and drinks his apple juice. “Talking about homework—how are you surviving, Gee Two? I can’t imagine what Agility must be like for you. The monkey bars and all that running of laps. I’m pretty beat myself and Gordie here is getting his face slapped around. But Gracie and you especially—my poor sis, you can’t even run three feet without keeling over—”

Okay, I love my brother George, but right this moment I want to kill him.

I turn bright red. “Okay, shut it, Gee One. Why don’t you humiliate me even more, and make a hashtag of it? It’s bad enough I suck at it, with daily demerits to prove it, and now the whole world needs to know it too. Thanks, bro.”

By “the whole world” I’m of course thinking of Logan Sangre. The boy’s possibly the best runner in our school. And now,
he
of all people will know how badly I suck at his chosen sport. Way to impress.

I laugh self-depreciatingly, glance around the table and there’s Logan, looking at me seriously. “You have trouble with running? You know, I can help you.”

I meet his eyes, and there’s this head-rush thing going on. “What do you mean?”

Yeah, smart, very smart retort, Gwenevere Numbskull Lark
.