Qualify (60 page)

My breath starts coming hard, and my temples pound.

Ten seconds pass . . . so I hear the pop of the starting signal gun, and another batch of six runners has entered the track and is now coming up behind me.

I pump my legs and arms, moving hard.

Focus, focus! Breathe!

Another ten seconds, another starting shot. I am halfway around the track, and I can no longer tell where I am in relation to my own batch of six Candidates, since all the runners are mingling, some falling back, others overtaking the earlier group. . . .

Another ten seconds . . . another starting signal shot.

My breath is ragged, and I see the finish line coming up about thirty more feet.

Ten more seconds, another gun-pop.

I reach the finish line.

My ID token gets auto-scanned. I know this because it flickers and flares a brighter yellow as I run past the sensors.

The person just before me—I have no idea who—pauses before the smart wall panel, takes a breath, reads whatever’s on it, then slams one of the five large protruding button-levers. Then the Candidate takes off running again, forward, away from the track.

My turn.

The panel is before me, and the row of five levers.

It flashes yellow, then a readout appears in black letters. . . . Just two lines.

The first line says:

Candidate Gwenevere Lark, choose your City.

And below it, the second line reads:

New York, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles.

My mind goes into overdrive. Holy crap, what is this? What am I choosing?

What does any of this mean?

If I am going to be
assigned
to a city for whatever next task of today’s ordeal, I have only a second to decide.

Right. This. Second. . . .

And so I try to think like the Atlanteans, try to imagine what it could be. But all I can think of is, okay, I was born in California and I know L.A. I know nothing or close to nothing about the other cities. Okay, when I was six, my family had been to Dallas once on a quasi-vacation for Dad’s boring university conference, for two days. That’s about it.

I take a deep breath and slam the lever for
Los Angeles
.

The smart panel display changes and I see a new readout of three lines:

Candidate, you have been assigned:

Weapon: 1. Hoverboard: 0.

Proceed upstairs to the roof of the building for further instructions.

I start moving. Now I get it—I see where the Candidates who have gone before me are heading. They are going for the stairs and elevators to reach the upper levels of the structure.

They are all going for the roof.

Whatever’s there, that’s my destination too.

Chapter 33

I
sprint past the crowds and the noise, and the guards watching us, along the narrow open path where the others are heading. I watch the back of the Candidate right in front of me as he runs up the spiraling staircase, ignoring the elevators, and I follow him and those before him. Just as many others come behind me.

It’s five flights up to the five level walkways. Our feet slam hard against the stairs, thundering, as we run upward. Fifth level is as far as I’ve been in this building. It is where the offices are, including Office 512. I wonder for a split second if Aeson Kass is in there now, watching us and our progress on his numerous surveillance consoles—watching
me
—as I rush past the fifth level walkway, and then head for the door that is labeled “Roof Access.”

I follow the teen in front of me and we take the stairs—he is doing two at a time—and then emerge outside up on the roof, into a strange flat area of concrete, a perimeter strip that goes all around the huge building structure, and alongside which I see many people. . . .

And Atlantean shuttles.

The wind is blowing. The morning sky is clear blue above, and the shuttles hover silently just a couple of feet off the roof, massive grey-silver oval birds, with rung ladder staircases hanging off. There are five of them, and I see that overhead, about a hundred feet up, five more wait in formation . . . and then another five more, two hundred feet up. Indeed, the sky is filled with them, like weather balloons. Altogether, it’s a stunning sight.

These shuttles are larger than the ones I have experienced before, at least three times greater in circumference, and I am guessing they function as mass transport buses.

Weeks from now, these same shuttles might be used to ferry those of us who Qualify up to the motherships
. . . .

As I pause, still reeling in my mind, gawking in uncertainty, a uniformed official passes a hand-scanner over my token. “Shuttle number five,” he says. “Over there, Los Angeles. One weapon assignment, Yellow Quadrant.” And already he turns to the next person behind me.

I hurry in the direction pointed, and I see more officials with signs, each one bearing a number and city name.

I find the shuttle for Los Angeles and start moving up the rung ladder, seeing the clattering feet of the Candidate before me.

A sudden crazed stress-thought occurs to me.
What about my brothers and Gracie? What city did each of them choose? Did they spring for the familiarity of L.A. also?

Inside the shuttle is a wide roomy interior resembling a long hallway with rounded walls of soft pale off-white color that bear faint lovely symmetrical etching designs. . . . Instantly I get a flashback to that night when I pulled Aeson Kass out of the burning shuttle, because these walls are exactly like the ones in that shuttle. . . .

“Move it, Candidate!”

I start awake and see an Atlantean whom I don’t recognize, but who could as well be one of the Instructors. “Take a seat,” he says, as he stands near the doors like a bored airline flight attendant, except with arms folded in a cold typical stance of his kind. His hair is long and metal-gold, and his attitude suggests he is used to command.

The shuttle hull interior is filled with rows of high-backed seats, at least twenty across, and five times that many more going back. The seats are filling fast. I hurry along the side aisles looking for open seats, find one in the back rows.

I sit down next to a much younger teen girl with a red token who looks back at me with a nervous frozen expression. As soon as I take up my seat—which is surprisingly comfortable, made with soft resilient material—another Candidate sits down next to me on the other side, another silent girl with a hard expression on her face and a blue token.

“Move it, move it, Candidates!” the Atlantean at the door says. “The longer you take, the less time you have.”

“Where are we going? Are we really going to L.A.?” a boy asks.

“You’re going to get your instructions as soon as we are up in the air.” The speaker is another Atlantean, this one a girl who looks a lot like Oalla Keigeri, beautiful and confident, only with a deeper tan and a more muscular built. She walks the aisles, and watches us as we take our seats, pointing to others to indicate empty seating space.

In less than a minute the shuttle is full. The two Atlanteans engage controls that raise the ladder and secure the doors. A soft hum comes to the walls of the hull, and as I sit, mesmerized, I see the etched patterns on the walls come alive with golden razor-thin lines of light.

“Everyone, look down to your right and left and see the safety harness and belt,” says the Atlantean girl, lingering among us in the aisles to point things out. “Pull both sides of the harness toward you so it meets in the middle of your waist. Press the button on the side of your armrest and engage the harness lock. Do it now!”

As she speaks, the other Atlantean moves away to the door and goes to the back of the shuttle to what looks like a small command center with four seats. He takes the first pilot chair and turns his back to us.

We begin to fumble with our harnesses. I have a bit more experience with it, having seen this same harness engaged around the lifeless body of Aeson Kass. . . . I quickly find both ends, move them to the middle as instructed, then press the side button on the armrest. Immediately a strange thing happens—the two harness lines connect, then several more lines shoot forth like snakes and descend from around the back of the chair and seat from several directions, all connecting in the middle, and the round button lock captures them all and clicks in place.

I am as well secured as a birthday gift, ninja-wrapped with a dozen ribbons and a button bow. How weird!

The Candidates all around me take a bit longer, but eventually everyone is harnessed properly.

“Attention, everyone!” the Atlantean girl says, stopping before the front row closest to the door in which we all entered. “I am your Pilot Lirama Rikat, and he who sits in the other pilot chair far behind you is Pilot Mikelion Wasi. We will be taking off and on our way to Los Angeles in a few moments. As soon as we are in motion, I will give you the instructions for what you are expected to do there, in order to pass today’s Semi-Finals.”

She pauses, observing our tense faces.

“Take-off in thirty seconds,” Pilot Mikelion announces from the back. “Ready,
daimon?
”

“Ready, Mik—proceed!” she responds, then races to the back, moving with sleek easy motions, past our chairs, and grabs the second pilot seat next to the other occupied one in the back. We hear the click of her harness, a brief complex sequence of musical tones—someone, possibly the male pilot, is
singing
them in a deep voice, or maybe it’s only the sound of the alien Atlantean navigation mechanism engaging—and then the walls of the shuttle start to quiver lightly, as the general hum deepens. The golden lines of light start to move like liquid honey being poured, racing faster and faster along the etched channels in the hull walls. . . .

So, she’s
astra daimon
, I start to think.

But in that moment there’s a great lurch, and the floor seems to fall right from under me, while my head feels heavy suddenly, with a strange thick weight of extra gravity. I—and all the Candidates around me—we are getting
squashed
. We are pulled back deeply into our seats, and our harnesses counter-react with a buoyancy, so that there’s an impossible rubber-band sensation.

“Oh, no . . . oh, crap . . .” mutters some guy behind me.

We are falling—rather, we must be rising.

“Oh God, oh God . . .” the girl on my left gasps suddenly, and she looks like she is about to throw up.

“Are you okay?” I whisper, turning slightly to look at her, as my own head is getting sucked into the headrest with the force of many g’s.

“I hate planes,” she mutters. “I really hate flying! I had no idea this would be—”

“Hang on,” I reply. “Just hang in there.”

“How long is this flight going to be anyway?” another guy asks loudly from the front.

“About ten minutes,” Pilot Lirama replies with amusement.

And then the pressure on our bodies seems to ease and the gravity normalizes.

“Wow,” a girl says. “This feels much better.”

“That’s because we are now outside the Earth’s atmosphere and in orbit,” Pilot Mikelion says cheerfully.

“We’re
what?
” a guy says. “We’re where? How? Why?”

“It is much faster and more efficient to fly through vacuum than the atmosphere, so we just go up, go around the earth, then come back down on the other end of the continent.”

“But we’re not weightless! How come we’re not—”

“The shuttle is generating artificial gravity.”

“Well f— me! We’re in outer space!”

“Oh God . . . I’m in
space
.” The same girl on my left looks like she is about to die.

“Well, yeah, what did you think was going to happen eventually if you Qualified?” A girl in the seat in front of her turns around with a mean glare. “We are all competing to get off this doomed rock and get to outer effin’ space and then Atlantis!”

“All right, your attention, everyone!” Pilot Lirama engages some kind of audio-enhancing tech and speaks into an amplifier, so that her voice carries crisply throughout the shuttle. “These are your instructions for the rest of the day. First instruction! We land in Los Angeles and you will be deposited and released thirty miles from the city center—commonly known as downtown. Each one of you will receive your weapons and in some cases hoverboards, according to your track sprint results. There are a hundred of you on this shuttle, but only a few Candidates will get hoverboards. Those of you who get them—hold on to them the best you can, because as soon as you’re on the ground, others can and
will
try to claim your hoverboards and any weapons or other equipment advantages you might have on you. Yes, it
is
allowed.”