[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify

by Vera Nazarian

  And then I swing one leg over the front of the hoverboard and take a seat, risking the fact that the girl stands directly behind me and over my head, and she might take the opportunity to clobber me senseless.

  Fortunately for me, the girl is a decent person. Because she pauses, then sighs in resignation. She then jumps down to the ground, with feet planted on either side of the board, and takes a seat right behind me. “Okay, this better work!”

  Sarah does not lose a moment and gets behind her.

  “Jared, sit your butt down!” Sarah says in her pointed British accent, turning to stare up at him.

  Jared shrugs, and gets behind us at the very end of the board, and sticks the long knife back into a holder at his belt. With four of us, it is definitely a tight fit along the six-foot length of the board. “Are you sure this is gonna work?”

  In reply I start to sing. That way I don’t have to think about the fact that I am about to fly a hundred feet up in the air, like a witch on a broom, over a major L.A. freeway.

  The broom—pardon me, the hoverboard—shoots straight up, and starts gaining altitude. Sitting behind me, the other passengers let out squeals and other noises of alarm, as they hang on. . . .

  If the media cameras really are everywhere, they must be getting a seriously weird feed of us, all straddling the hoverboard, like a boat rowing crew, high up in the air.

  I close my eyes momentarily, as I always do during hoverboard up-and-down riding practice to stifle my vertigo, and desperately clutch the sides with both hands, white-knuckled in controlled terror, as we soar forward into the abyss over the 210 Freeway.

  My yellow token ID makes a sudden flashing blink, and I recall that the zone boundary has scanned me, and all of us, crossing it. . . .

  I continue singing, mouth open into the wind, never faltering, repeating the hover sequence to move forward.

  Below us at the foot of the hill, the Blues have arrived and are yelling in frustration and shooting up into the air, aiming at us.

  But we are already many feet up and away, and their aim is not that great, especially with this high wind turbulence.

  The hoverboard carries us deep into the hot zone, over the freeway and into a residential neighborhood. As we’re flying—going about thirty miles an hour, since I don’t want to risk any higher speed with a load of four people—the immense panorama of the City of Angels, covered in a delicate smog haze, is overwhelming.

  I feel secure enough in our movement that I go silent at last. The hoverboard is perma-keyed to me and has been programmed to fly forward.

  Which means, I can shut up and get my own fear of heights under control.

  “So, yeah, this is effing awesome,” Jared yells from the back, and then makes a horsey laughing sound into the wind.

  “Hey, did you just pinch me?” Sarah exclaims at Jared, squirming. “Jerk!” But she seems half-annoyed, half-amused.

  “So, yeah,” I say, echoing Jared’s phrasing, and turn my face lightly to look at the poor silent girl behind me whose board I so shamelessly appropriated. She is staring at me sullenly and her face is pinched and tense. “My name is Gwen Lark, what’s yours? I’m sorry to have taken over your board like this, but it was kind of desperate there. . . .”

  “That was horrible and scary,” the girl tells me. “I almost fell off. You had no right.”

  “I agree. Again, really sorry. But this is a horrible situation we’re all in. Can we just all work together, please?”

  “Do I have any choice?” The girl frowns.

  “Well,” I say. “Sure, I suppose we can land a little farther over there and let you go on your own way on the hoverboard while we all just walk. But that would really suck for all of us—including you. Because, here’s the thing—together we can protect this hoverboard and make sure you and we all have a chance to make it. Without us, someone else much less nicer might come along and pop you in the head with a gun or gut you with a knife and take away the board and leave you to die.”

  “I’m Zoe,” the girl says after a pause, with the wind whipping her thick brown bangs around her eyes. “And okay, I guess. . . .”

  “Great,” I say through gritted teeth, as another sudden wave of vertigo passes through me, and I am suddenly reeling, clutching the seat of the hoverboard.

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath of wind.

  “Nice to meet you, Zoe,” Sarah says mildly, maybe recognizing my discomfort. “I am so glad we have you and your board. You saved us, you know, thank you.”

  “Yeah, you did,” I add, recovering sufficiently to speak again.

  “So, are we gonna just ride this board all the way downtown?” Jared says. “Because that would be awesome. At this rate, we’ll totally ace this Semi-Finals thing, and be there in just a couple of hours, max.”

  Just as he says this, there’s a loud whoosh in the air. A fiery projectile passes about three feet from us. And then another one, this time just barely a foot overhead. Each is about five inches in diameter, and leaves a comet-searing trail of fire in its wake. What the heck is it? A rocket grenade? A firework?

  “Damn, someone’s shooting at us!” Jared ducks in reflex.

  “Well, yeah, this is a hot zone!” Sarah and Zoe are both “landlocked” between Jared and me, and both cringe in place.

  Having crossed the freeway, we are flying vaguely alongside the path of it, next to the 210 Freeway artery, heading in the general southwest direction. I squint from the sun and wind and try to figure out where these fireballs are coming from, because it seems like they are just rising out of nowhere from the treetops and the residential areas along the way. Possibly they are coming from the several multi-story apartment or condo complexes right below us.

  Since we are not much higher than the treetops anyway, it seems smart to rise a bit higher. On the other hand that might make us even more visible targets.

  “How do they know where we are anyway?” Zoe mutters in my ear, still cringing away.

  “I am guessing our tokens send out some kind of GPS coordinates.”

  “Should we fly higher? Or lower?”

  “Or how about just faster?” Jared grumbles.

  Meanwhile, the fire projectiles are coming thick and fast. I see them rising like fireworks rockets and roman candles from various random spots on the ground below—buildings, street corners, trees.

  In moments, the sky is thick with them.

  “We have to go lower!” I exclaim through gritted teeth, and start singing a sequence to bring us closer to the treetops, and even street level. We begin the stomach-lurching descent.

  “Are you crazy?” Jared is at it again. “This is going to make it worse! They’re gonna be able to hit us—”

  “No, look up,” Sarah says. “Compare here and up there. There’s hundreds of them up there now, and if we rise back up, we will be hit for sure! She’s doing the right thing!”

  “There’s Arrow Highway up ahead,” I say, as we whistle past the trees, about twenty feet above street level. “And there’s the 605 Freeway coming up, we can head southwest along the highway past Irwindale and I think there’s Baldwin Park somewhere here. . . .”

  As we move close to the street, it becomes visible now, residents stand outside their houses and stare at us. . . . And now that we can see houses up-close, the windows and balconies of multi-levels are also filled with faces watching.

  Furthermore, we are not alone.

  Apparently there are so many Candidates here today who chose Los Angeles that they are pretty much scattered all over the place. What are the chances there’d be Candidates on the same street as we are, in this huge sprawling monster of a city? Because even on this street below us I can see two teens in grey Atlantean uniforms same as ours, wearing color armbands, a Green and a Red, running with determination, slow marathon style.

  They must’ve had a significant head start on us, because here they are, on foot, and have managed to make it this far.

  Or they are just tha
t good.

  I try not to think about what kind of position I’d be in now if it hadn’t been for my ability to commandeer this hoverboard. I might still be running several miles back, near the hillside, along the wrong side of the 210 Freeway, unable to cross it. Or I might have been shot dead by the Blues.

  Stop it. . . .

  I shut off that part of me and try to focus on the here and now.

  We are in a hot zone. We are being randomly fired upon.

  “Ok, here’s the problem,” Sarah says in that moment. “If we just fly low, along this street level, we will have a tough time getting our bearings and general direction.”

  “And if we rise up higher to look around, we’ll get shot down,” Zoe puts in.

  I turn my head slightly, my messy ponytail rifled by the wind. “So what’s the best solution?”

  “There isn’t one. It’s all crap.” Jared sighs. “Man, I could use some water now. It’s getting damn hot. And we’re going to be dehydrated real soon.”

  Oh, great . . . I didn’t even think of that.

  Because Jared’s right. And the Atlantean shuttle Pilots mentioned nothing about food or water supplies. They only said we could not get help locally from the city population. Would getting water be considered getting help?

  As I think this, I hear gunshots behind us.

  “Oh, no! Go faster! Go, go, go!” This time it’s mellow Sarah who exclaims.

  Apparently there are other hoverboards coming our way, and the Candidates riding them have firearms.

  Chapter 35

  “Hold on!” I exclaim, and then I sing the sequence to increase speed, followed by variations to keep the board away from various obstacles in our low-hanging path.

  The hoverboard under us lurches onward, and I feel the increased wind-drag against the skin of my face and all of my upper body. Since I am the lead anchor, the wind tears into me first.

  That’s another thing I didn’t think of—when you’re flying fast, it’s impossible to look straight ahead without squinting, and your eyes dry out. What you really need is protective eyewear such as goggles or sunglasses. Bike and motorcycle riders know this. I bet Atlantean hoverboard riders know this.

  It is also really hard to sing. Hard to open your mouth even, as the wind fills your lungs immediately.

  So I keep my face half-turned and try to sing the notes that way.

  “Can someone look around and tell me who’s behind us?” I cry out.

  “Two guys on boards—no, make it three. The third’s a girl. They’re all Blues.”

  “Damn these Blues and their craptastic firearms!”

  We move along Arrow Highway then turn off north on some side street, because two hoverboards are coming fast from both sides behind us, to cut us off from the south, while the third begins to rise to treetop level, so that it ends up tracking us while coming down from overhead. The guys balanced on the boards are holding automatic assault rifles. So is the girl overhead.

  They are now only about fifty feet away, and coming hard and fast.

  The two marathon-style runners on the street with us take note and pick up the pace, then wisely disappear into the nearest side alley.

  Volleys of shots ring out behind us.

  I make the board swerve as we are flying too fast now, way too fast for safety and my ability to navigate it properly.

  “Go up! Up!” Jared cries. “Go faster!” He’s the one in the back, so if anyone gets hit, he’s first in line.

  Coming up directly before me is the 605 Freeway overpass. I direct the board to fly right underneath the wide concrete slab and then we turn a corner behind giant support posts and freeze in place, levitating right below the ceiling that happens to be the freeway underbelly. It’s not really a hiding place, but at least it’s out of direct line of fire.

  “What now?” Sarah says softly.

  “We’re trapped,” Zoe mutters.

  I am breathing fast. At least there’s no onrushing wind and I can breathe and think straight, if only for a moment. “We’ll wait them out . . .” I say.

  “How long?” Jared whispers. “They’ll just take us out the moment we show ourselves. And we have no weapons that can take them on. My knife-throwing skills are crap and besides, I’ve only got one.”

  “Besides, what’s stopping them from coming in under here and just executing us all? They can guess we don’t have firearms,” Sarah says.

  “Would it be too much to hope that they just leave us the hell alone and go on their own way?” I grumble.

  “Hey,” Jared says. “Can you do something again to take over their boards?”

  “What, me?” I say.

  “Yeah, who else? You, Gwen. Do that weird singing command thing that you did before.”

  I frown, thinking.

  Just as I consider whether or not I am capable of doing high-speed, directed, remote keying of not just one but two orichalcum objects at once, while being fired upon, the Blue girl Candidate on the hoverboard appears, floating from behind the concrete support slab. She is balanced easily on her board that’s levitating forward in slo-mo at about two miles an hour, and she holds her automatic with practiced ease.

  We’re basically sittings ducks for her.

  I think of Blayne Dubois practicing his LM Forms. And then I sing a sequence that creates an Aural Block and then raises the board underneath the Blue girl nose up, at a near vertical angle.

  It all takes a few seconds. The Blue girl screams in surprise as she starts sliding off her suddenly-upright board, tries to hold on, then inadvertently starts firing. . . .

  Her rifle goes off, and the splatter-volley hits the concrete right behind our heads, so that the wall is riddled with holes.

  Behind me, Zoe cries out, and then Sarah slumps over.

  The Blue girl loses her hold and falls, about twenty feet onto the concrete and asphalt sidewalk of the street level below.

  Her board remains hovering nose-up in the air before me.

  I look down, and see her grey-uniformed body and blue armband, as she lies broken on the asphalt.

  I just killed another human being.

  I did it . . . I, I did it.

  . . . Killed another human being.

  And then, as a wave of utter numbing cold washes over me at the realization, as I sit frozen, I feel a stinging pain in my left arm. And I see a red stain.

  At the same time, behind me Zoe is screaming, while Jared holds on to Sarah’s lifeless slumped body in his arms.

  All it took was less than three seconds.

  To change everything.

  I start “awake” and suddenly tears are gushing down my face, while the two people still alive behind me are yelling, saying something that I can hardly understand.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  In that same instant the two remaining Blues on hoverboards appear. They see the other empty board hovering, and the body on the ground below.

  And instead of firing at us, they suddenly take off.

  Had they stayed, I would not have been able to sing a single note in time to fend them off, because I am very slow right now, like molasses . . . slow and numb and thick. . . .

  “Gwen!” Jared yells my name and Zoe shakes me. Zoe is bleeding from a light wound on her cheek where a bullet barely grazed her. Jared is apparently unharmed, but Sarah—she is dead.

  “We need to go, Gwen! Land us, for a moment, please, just set us down right here,” Zoe says. “We need to—we need—”

  I take a deep shuddering breath to stop the tears, and the wound in my arm is really hurting now. Good.

  It’ll give me enough focus to regain control over my voice. Because I have to sing us down.

  I start the note sequence, and my voice starts out breathy, powerless, so I repeat, forcing my lungs to cooperate. This time we begin moving, descending slowly, and hover a foot over the ground.

  “We can put her down here . . .” Jared mutters, resting his dangling feet on the ground, wiping his forehead
and smearing Sarah’s blood that’s all over him and Zoe, and me. He holds up the girl’s body with a kind of horrible quiet awe for which there are no words.

  “No,” I say. “Not here. Not on this horrible ugly concrete, under a freeway.”

  And then I look up and the other board is still hovering near the ceiling of the freeway overpass.

  I make a sound and it comes down to me, floating softly, and then I make it right itself so that it is once more horizontal. “Put Sarah on top of the board,” I say. “We’ll take her somewhere else—more decent.”

  “You’re bleeding too,” Zoe says awkwardly. “You need to press down on the wound or something. Or—or you’ll bleed to death.”

  I look at my arm, and there are rivulets of red liquid running down my uniform. Zoe’s right, it’s not a bad wound but I need to stop the bleeding or I’ll go weak eventually.

  I point to Jared’s knife. “Let me borrow it for a moment.”

  He hands me the knife and I use it to cut off a length of my cord weapon lasso. I then bind my arm above the wound and just below the armband. Funny—it looks now, it occurs to me, that I have a yellow and a red armband. . . .What a mess.

  And then I think, I have a bullet lodged inside my arm.

  After Sarah is laid flat, her thin body stretched out along the second board, I use the rest of my lasso cord to tie her in place. I look over her face with its stringy hair and freckles.

  Sarah’s eyes are still open. Someone—someone needs to close her eyes.

  And then I walk over to the fallen body of the Blue girl. I try not to look at her face. But I do anyway. I pick up her automatic assault rifle, the same thing that killed Sarah and wounded Zoe and me. I set the safety on and sling it over my other shoulder. And then I get back on the first hoverboard.

  I start singing in somebody else’s alien voice, and the two boards rise simultaneously, three of us straddling one, and Sarah’s body on the other.