“Think of a spider weaving a web,” he says. “The strands stick together and bind the prey with a combination of adhesiveness and tight bonds. The spider also injects a paralytic to render the prey unconscious. In your case, all you have is one out of three—the ability to create tight restraining bonds. Your opponent is neither paralyzed, nor is there sticky glue involved. All you have on your side is speed and the ability to tie knots and otherwise shape the cord to restrain your opponent’s mobility.”
For all of week two we practice a variety of intricate knotting techniques, so that Tremaine walks around whistling sailor tunes. “We’re in the navy, man!” he drawls. “I’m gonna start tying my locks together in new combo knots!”
After the fancy knots, we are taught combinations of loops and string figures that feel like a complex version of the “cat’s cradle” game, using finger agility. On the first day of week three, Oalla Keigeri shows us how to “hand-crochet” a net using nothing but string and our fingers. It is amazing, because it really does resemble crocheting with yarn, except there is no crochet hook, and in its place you use your index finger to pull the string into loops.
“At last, I am a certified ninja granny,” Laronda says on the first night of week three, sitting on her dormitory cot, as she finger-manipulates coarse rope into a net that has grown to a radius of five feet around her—and I’m right next to her, doing the same thing on my cot. We race each other as our nets grow, and when we run out of string from the balls given us, we let it all out and start again.
“I love knitting and crochet,” Hasmik says from her cot on the other side of me, as her fingers fly in the making of her own net. “In Yerevan, Armenia, we all knit and crochet all the time. My grandmother teach me and my mother too. When we first came to Boston and started to learn English, I tell people I like to work with crochet hook, that I was a good hooker. Okay, they tell me, ‘No, no, hooker is a bad word, don’t say that!’ Oops! See, this is fun!” Admittedly, Hasmik has a point, because her nets are consistently the best in our class, and she has the fastest hands and fingers you can imagine.
During week four, Combat becomes truly intense. Because for the first time we are allowed to interact with Candidates from the other Quadrants, and their own native weapons are pitted against ours.
Mixed classes are taught in the Arena Commons Building. There we go up against the Reds and their sword and knife blade techniques, the Greens and their shields and bucklers and body armor, and the Blues with their projectile weapons and firearms which for now employ safety rounds, rubber bullets, and paintball pellets.
“Each Quadrant weapon presents a natural advantage and disadvantage,” Oalla Keigeri tells us, while Keruvat Ruo demonstrates.
“Blue holds the immediate advantage from a distance over everyone except Green and their shields. Yellows—do not let yourself get shot in the first few seconds. Move in quickly, and narrow the distance between you and Blue. Then you can overpower the Blue with your net and cord, up-close and personal.”
“Red is the exact opposite,” Xelio Vekahat tells us. “Yellow needs to stay as far away as possible, because you will be cut up with the blades, and your cord weapons rendered useless. However, you can still trap Red and render your opponent harmless if you cast your nets and cords in such a way as to disarm them.”
“Green is tricky,” Erita Qwas says. “Neither distance nor proximity is best when it comes to Yellow fighting Green. Instead, you need to maintain a middle distance and use speed and entanglement, while faced with the blunt force of their shields used as impact weapons to attack you.”
And then they bring out the hoverboards.
Oh, yeah. We get to learn to fight while airborne.
It amazes me what a difference a few weeks makes when it comes to learning to keep balance on top of a hovering flat surface. By week two, we no longer use English commands to control the hoverboards in Agility training, and have switched to musical note sequences—since by then we’ve also become proficient in the Atlantis Tech classes with the basic levitation commands.
Week two is all about going up and down on the hoverboard and varying heights. Week three is all about speed. First we race along the perimeter of the basement Training Hall in our dorm. Then the later classes are taken to the Arena Commons where we are told to race around the entire arena track, moving as fast as we can without falling off. Many board riders capsize on that third week, and that’s when most of the more serious injuries begin to happen. . . . And yes, unfortunately people are Disqualified on that basis, as they get taken out of the RQC in medical ambulances.
By week four, my fear of heights is still there, but it has become a numb secondary thing that I overpower somehow every day, keeping it under tight control. I am never too fast on the hoverboard, but neither am I the slowest one. Instead, I clench my hands and maintain control, and breathe, breathe, as I make my flying laps sharp and effective, making each second count.
That way, by the time hoverboards are introduced in Combat, it’s no longer a shock.
Meanwhile, in all these days of training, there’s Logan Sangre. He’s what keeps me sane in all this pressure-cooker atmosphere of the RQC, as we meet every day, as many times a day as possible. Seems like wherever I turn, there’s Logan. We train together every night during Homework Hour. We eat lunch and when possible, dinner together. He walks me back from the evening training at the Arena Commons every night. And sometimes, when we get to a certain spot between two buildings where there’s no sign of surveillance cameras—at least not any we can humanly imagine in such a tight place—sometimes Logan and I make out.
Yeah, it’s mostly very intense and brief kissing, with me propped up against a wall and Logan’s hands supporting me as we struggle against each other in sweet crazy heat. His lips crush my mouth, and his tongue enters, hungrily, and I get my first taste of tongue kissing. His mouth tastes sweet, and there is nothing really I can compare it to. . . .
A few seconds in, he presses his body tight against me, and his arms and hands go around my back as he just holds me, very very tight, breathing hard in my throat, and I can hear the wild beating of his strong heart through all the layers of our clothing.
But we cannot linger, so with a shudder we come apart, and sort of straighten our clothes in place, calming our breathing for a few seconds. He gently strokes my long strands of hair and I run my fingers through his tousled own, and we are like two thoroughbreds on a hair-trigger, calming each other down, or we explode. . . .
“Okay?” he whispers and his hazel eyes are at the same time clear and deep and murky with suppressed desire.
“Yeah . . .” I nod, while my pulse beat slowly calms.
And then we continue walking to our dorms, not even holding hands.
By the third week of Qualification, pretty much everyone has an idea that we’re a “thing,” including my brothers and Gracie.
“He is really nice and cute,” Gracie says about Logan, halfway into week three.
I smile at her, and thankfully don’t mention that I am glad she hasn’t been spending all her time with Daniel Tover—only half of her time. And honestly, there’s not all that much that can be done about it, since I can neither supervise nor control my sister’s every move. Daniel seems to be mature and reasonable, and as far as I know he really is like an older friend treating Gracie and her childish crush decently.
Basically Gracie’s made a bunch of friends in her Red Quadrant, and Daniel’s at the center of a widespread group. At least that’s what I can glean from asking Logan about it, diplomatically—since Logan is friends with Daniel. For now at least, I’m keeping an open mind and trusting Gracie to behave and the older boy to not take advantage.
As for my brothers, George likes Logan and approves outright, especially since we’re all from the same school, so it makes it somehow even better, closer to home—if that makes any sense. Gordie seems to have no strong opinion, which, when it comes to Gordie, is normally a perfectly o
kay thing.
For the most part, my siblings are handling Qualification training reasonably well. Gracie loves swordfighting and knife throwing and brags about it every time we see each other. According to Gracie, Red Quadrant Atlanteans fight with multiple swords at once, two being the default, and they manage to incorporate additional smaller daggers and micro-blades in every maneuver. Then she shows me a neat trick with her fingers, opening and closing her empty palm and suddenly razor-fine micro-blades are bristling from between each finger digit like claws. “We are supposed to practice hiding and transferring blades between fingers until we get it right, so it’s like second nature.”
But Gordie wows me even more, because the boy’s become a very solid marksman. During week three, my nearsighted baby brother with his permanently smudged glasses and a chronic inability to notice things past his nose, takes me and George to the Arena Commons firing range where he calmly shoots every target in the precise center, and then switches to his left hand and does it again.
“Wow, that’s crazy good, Gee Three!” I say. “You’re awesome! How’d you do it?”
“Thanks.” Gordie beams. “It’s actually not that hard once they explained how to properly aim at stuff.”
“What do you mean? How are you supposed to aim?”
Gordie turns his head slightly and gives me his typical slow crooked smile. “That’s the thing,” he says. “You don’t really aim at all. You sort of know where the target is with your mind, beforehand. And then when the time comes to fire, you just let your body’s reflexes naturally point to it, on the fly. . . . You never aim. You find it.”
I am not sure I get it completely, but whatever it is, it seems to be working out great for Gordie. And even George admits that our little Gee Three seems very grown up these days. He also thinks Gracie’s doing pretty well too, all things considered. At least there’s less whining.
George himself is somewhat harder to read. Whatever it is they teach him at the Green Quadrant is not as clearly definable, not as clear-cut. In some ways, Green and Yellow are very similar—both are equally subtle, murky and complicated, in direct contrast to Red and Blue’s straightforwardness.
“Our basis is resistance, stability achieved through balance, and defense,” George says thoughtfully, trying to put complex notions into words. “With shields, strength is used differently. You mostly learn to block, anticipate your opponent, aspire to be where they will be in the next instant. First, you anchor yourself . . . and then you become very flexible and ‘all over the place.’ You surrender your own position and self—in order to retain it. Like a rubber band snapping. Does that even make sense?”
“Yeah, strangely enough, it kind of does.” I nod.
George laughs uncomfortably. “Glad you don’t think I’m crazy, Gee Two. Because sometimes I think Green is a little crazy. . . . Shields are crazy. Everything, this whole thing is—letting go and holding back. . . . Sacrifice.”
And when he says this, it makes me think of what’s going on outside, beyond the secure fence of the RQC in the greater world . . . which, it turns out, is falling apart more and more every day.
Because although they don’t tell us, some news gets in, in one way or another. Over the entire four weeks we learn of new escalations—mass riots on a daily basis, new wars on five continents, and even a brief nuclear threat from one crazy small nation that decided they wanted to go out with a bang on their own terms and take the whole world with them before the asteroid makes impact. . . .
I feel utter numbness come over me every time I think of our parents all alone, in our small house back in Highgate Waters, rural northern dairyland Vermont, a few miles from the Canadian border. The closest large city is St. Albans, and I can only imagine the kind of unrest that has reached even these peaceful communities by now. I have no idea if Dad even bothers to commute to his job at the University further south. Or if Mom can get the regular medical supplies she needs. . . .
Honestly, I don’t want to know. I don’t think I can bear it.
Finally, with all that’s been going on, there’s the situation with my alleged criminal status and my special training. In that sense nothing has changed. I am still under suspicion for the shuttle incident, and over the three weeks, I am questioned at least five more times by the Correctors, as I am called in briefly to Building Fifteen to “verify” certain facts and renew my alibis, and basically reiterate everything I’ve already told them. Except for the two Candidates who were arrested on the same night as Laronda, in connection with trying to smuggle out one of the navigation chips on the underside of a delivery truck, they still haven’t found whoever is responsible for the main sabotage. And so the investigation continues, including random dorm searches. By now, everyone’s been “interviewed,” some people multiple times.
And then there’s my training. Apparently, the power singing voice—the Logos voice—that got me into this mess in the first place, is even more important in its potential than I thought. I still get plenty of curious stares around the RQC compound from Candidates who think of me as the weirdo with the “super voice.” Unfortunately, over the three weeks following, I find out that except for my ability to belt out the keying sequence that levitates a shuttle, I am unable to do much of anything else with it—yet.
At least I tell myself the “yet” part because it gets harder and harder to face Command Pilot Aeson Kass and his subtle mocking indifference every night and produce little to no results.
Blayne Dubois, on the other hand, is making amazing progress. By the end of the second week of their sessions, I find that I no longer have to hold the hoverboard for him, as he has figured out a means of keeping the board vertically upright with a combination of upper body balance and his own partial leg muscle strength.
Instead, I now get to help out only occasionally and mostly observe and wait while their sparring is done, and then it’s my turn after Blayne leaves. I should mention that Blayne and I have been discreetly practicing LM Forms sparring on our own time, in an empty classroom on the fourth floor of our dorm, with him in his wheelchair and me sitting down across from him to maintain eye-to-eye level. It’s not easy to do real LM Forms without a hoverboard, but we do get some extra time in.
But the most oddly unbearable moments happen in Office 512, after Blayne’s training is over for the night and Aeson Kass and I are left alone.
That’s when Aeson asks me about my progress from the night before, looking at me steadily with his unreadable eyes that appear to see right through me. I cringe inside with embarrassment and tell him that nothing new happened, and I am still unable to perform this task or that.
“Keep practicing,” is usually all he says, without any inflection, as he drops pieces of orichalcum into my palm. “Modulate your voice in as many ways as you can—tone, volume, intensity. You have the means to do it. It is up to you to discover how.”
And sometimes I retort in frustration, “But I have no idea what I’m doing! Is there anything you can suggest?”
“No,” he replies. “It is all practice and insight. I cannot teach you insight, only tell you what may or may not be done.”
And that’s when I really want to reach out and slap him on his perfectly shaped sarcastic mouth.
There are a few things I do manage to get right, eventually. By the end of week two, I am able to do the selective focus levitation of only one orichalcum object out of several.
But the most important assignment he gives me I finally perform by the end of week four, only a few days before our looming date of Semi-Finals.
It’s the ability to override and temporarily nullify other people’s keying status in relation to a given orichalcum object. In other words, not only can I re-key objects to myself remotely that have been already keyed and claimed by other people, but I can make it so that the orichalcum receives such a strong charge of my own vocal resonance that other people cannot key it back again for a long time. . . .
Basically it means I can s
tep in and take control from others. It is called an Aural Block. And Aeson warns me that I am not to tell anyone about it—about what I can now do. . . .
It’s my secret weapon for Qualification.
At last, it’s day twenty-seven at the RQC, with only one other day remaining before the Semi-Finals. We still don’t know what the Semi-Finals will actually be—that announcement comes tomorrow.
But today?
Today’s the day our official Standing Scores are posted in each of the twelve dorms.
The 7:00 AM claxon alarms go off and I open my eyes, blinking from the bright overhead lights. By now I am used to these rude awakenings, but this one in particular gives me a sinking sense of dread.
“Oh, no . . . noooooo . . . Sweet lord help us . . .” Laronda moans from her own bed, as everyone in the girls’ dormitory comes awake to this new frightening day.
“I don’t want to go downstairs,” Hasmik says from the other side. “I can’t bear it.”
“I know,” I mutter, sitting up.
“Our Scores. . . . Do you think they’re already up?” a girl wonders several beds down.
“Probably,” another one replies.
“Rise and shine, girlfriends! Get your butts downstairs, sooner not later! Move!” Dorm Leader Gina Curtis pops her head in from the double doors and begins yelling at the whole room in her brash voice.
“Yeah, yeah. . . . Ready?” Dawn mutters, holding her change of clothes and underwear as she waits for us to get our own morning stuff together.
“As ready as I’ll ever be . . . let’s go.” Taking a deep breath of resignation, Laronda grabs her clothes and things.
Running on nerves, we hit the bathrooms and already the gossip is non-stop. Everyone has a theory about these dratted Scores, and some are pretty wild.
[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify Page 37
