Qualify (67 page)

“Where’s it coming from? Who the hell is firing at us?” Ethan says from his board, easily matching our pace as he bends his knees in a wider stance for better balance while he remains upright.

“I’m not sure,” I mutter. Since Zoe’s driving and navigating the board and cannot easily take her eyes off where we’re heading, I am the one who must look around and try to get a bearing on our position.

“Do you see anything?” Zoe screams as another bullet zings nearby, cutting through the air, and almost touches us.

I look around as much as possible, but there is only a green stretch of lawn below, with tiny distant grave markers. I try not to look at what I
know
is the broken body of the fallen teen who was shot down seconds ago. Instead I observe a lone Candidate running on the street adjacent to the cemetery.
The teen’s on foot, no hoverboard in sight
, I think.
Amazing that he managed to get this far simply by running. Or did he lose his hoverboard along the way?
My feverish stupid thoughts trail off. . . . I am very sluggish now, and it is very hard to maintain any sort of proper focus.

“The shots—they’re coming from those multi-story buildings up ahead!” Ethan cries. “Past the cemetery!”

“Oh yeah, I see something,” Jared says. “A five-tier parking structure, and on the rooftop a bunch of black figures. They look like SWAT or riot police or something. With rifles! They’re the ones firing!”

“But why?” I say. “Why fire at us? That’s unbelievable. Why would the local police or whoever fire at what could be their own innocent kids competing to survive?”

“Maybe they’re not locals,” Zoe mutters grimly. “Maybe they were brought here exactly because they’re
not
, and told that by killing us and cutting down the numbers of Candidates overall—all of us competing for limited spots—they were improving chances for their own kids elsewhere?”

“That’s really sick.” I shake my head weakly. “But if that’s so, it makes sense.”

With bullets flying all around we manage to fly past the rest of the cemetery at breakneck speed, and then put some distance between us and the structure with the snipers on the roof.

Except for that one fallen boy, none of us are hit, maybe because those snipers were not trying all that hard to hit any of us—or at least that’s what I hope and tell myself. Because to think otherwise is much too dark, and I don’t think I can bear that line of thought.

And then I remember,
thousands of cameras all over the city are live-streaming us. Millions of people all around the world are watching. Multiply that by the number of cities involved in the process
. . . .

Maybe the snipers just didn’t want to be
seen
doing what they were doing, by all those millions of people.

“Anyone know the time?” Jared calls out, as soon as we’re outside sniper range.

Balancing on his board, Ethan checks his gadget again. “It’s twelve-nineteen PM, local time. Lunch!”

“Heh, I wish.” Jared shakes his head. “Would be nice, though. To take a little lunch break detour from this Semi-Finals hell, go for some pizza, you know, maybe sandwiches. . . . Hey, I’d even settle for some crummy tap water.”

Zoe glances at him. “You do
not
want to drink L.A. tap water. Remember the yuck back at the Huntington fountain? Anyway, at least we still have plenty of time.”

“We have about four and a half hours,” I say. “That sounds great, and downtown is very close. But considering what might be ahead of us, I don’t know if that’s enough or not.”

Right now, what appears to be ahead of us is a stretch of park, and beyond it, a mess of freeways. We’re flying high once more, at least thirty feet overhead.

“Oh, man . . .” Jared says in awe, looking into the distance of curving and connecting roadway loops of concrete. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s a big honking freeway loop,” Zoe cries out. “I don’t remember what it is—the I-10, or maybe the I-5?”

Ethan puts a palm up over his eyes to stare. “The sign says it’s the Golden State Freeway. And the Santa Monica Freeway. I think it’s both the 10 and the 5 merging with the 101 which in this place happens to be the Santa Ana Freeway.”

“Holy—wow. It’s . . . it’s like they’re
mating
.”

Zoe snorts at Jared’s slack-jawed surfer dude expression. “Yeah, well. This is L.A., land of concrete road beasties.”

“Yeah, I know! But I’ve never seen ’em from the air like this. . . . Blows your mind . . . and not in a good way.”

“So, are we going over them now, or what?”

“See anything firing at us? If no, let’s do it.”

“We basically have to,” I say. “Downtown is on the other side.”

W
e 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.

“W
hat 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 need 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.