Aeson Kass narrows his eyes, and his expression closes off completely. “This has gone far enough. We’re done.” He gets up from his chair and stands before me, pointing to the door.
That’s when I begin to tremble. . . . Suddenly I am so light-headed, so impossibly numb with despair. My breathing becomes so shallow that I cannot hear it. At the same time, those same helpless, disgusting, pathetic tears start flowing down my face, and I am doing it—bawling in front of him in great big shuddering sobs.
At the sight of it, he blinks. I know him enough by now to know that it is his one and only “tell”—a crack in his perfect armor, an expression of vulnerability. A single blink.
“I am truly sorry,” he says quietly.
I continue choking on my tears, and raise my hands to wipe my disgusting face with my sleeves.
“There is also something else,” he continues in a strange voice. “Because of this unfortunate incident with your sister coming to light, you are now formally cleared of all charges. . . . There are no more suspicions regarding your actions in this. Therefore, I owe you an apology.”
I stop crying. And suddenly I look up. My expression is probably crazed—or blazing—or what you want to call it. “No,” I say. “You owe me a life.”
He blinks again. And then he takes a step toward me.
“That is true . . .” he says softly.
“I saved you from that burning shuttle,” I say in a wooden voice drained of all emotion, only driven by single-minded focus.
“Yes. . . .”
“So you owe me! A life for a life! Give me my sister’s life!”
He exhales suddenly.
I stare up at him, breathing fast, waiting.
There is a long pause. . . .
“Okay,” he says unexpectedly, and then returns to his desk. He pushes forward one of the mech arms that extends a console-and-monitor unit, lowering it over his desk surface. And observing the screen, he starts keying in something.
“The Atlantis Central Agency has Disqualified your sister and removed her Candidacy—the entirety of her ID data and all her current points as of yesterday. I cannot reverse the decision, not even with my level of authority, but I can try to reinstate her ID. Grace Lark will be given a new blank ID token and there will be nothing on it, only her name and basic background, vital stats, and residency.”
“What—what does that mean?” I whisper.
“It means—” He looks up at me with a serious expression. “It means Grace Lark will have to earn her place from scratch. She will be a ‘new’ Candidate, with no points and no history. She will be allowed to remain at the National Qualification Center and attend training classes. She will be allowed to participate in the Finals, but without any starting points going in.”
“Oh, but then I can give her my points!” I exclaim with a burst of relief.
Aeson Kass shakes his head. “No. You will not be permitted to transfer your points to Grace Lark. It is one thing I will not allow. In fact, I will set a safeguard on your ID, so that you will be unable to do that—so that you don’t throw your own life away in exchange for hers.”
“But what if I choose to do that, for her?” I exclaim, as the horrible despair returns.
“I do not permit it,” he says. “We need you and your voice—on behalf of Atlantis.”
“But it is my choice!”
“Not entirely—not if your choice affects far more than you or your sister.”
I stare at him, stunned.
He in turn watches me with a careful, unreadable expression.
“But—” I say, as outrage starts to build. “I don’t understand! How can you tell me what I can or cannot do with my own life? Don’t you have a heart? What about basic human compassion? Have you no clue what it’s like to stand by and not help your own family—the people you most care about—when you absolutely have the means to do it?”
As I speak, I notice his face takes on a strange new expression. I simply don’t know what it is, don’t understand it . . . maybe it is not human after all.
He is not human.
“Are you finished?” he says after a terrible pause. His voice has grown low, and very soft, like the slither of a serpent. Its chill makes the fine hairs on my skin stand up in goose bumps.
But like a stupid fool who doesn’t know when to stop, I take a step, nearing his desk, and lean forward and exclaim, completing my humiliation entirely, “Please! I’ll do anything you want me to do! Anything! Just let me help her! Look, I am begging you! Anything you want! Take it! Tell me if there’s anything I can do, anything I have that I can give you. . . ?” At this point, even I am not sure what it is I am saying, what it is I am offering him in my desperation. . . .
We face each other at close proximity, our gazes locked in intensity.
“You have nothing,” he says suddenly, and a faint line of derision comes to his lips. “There is nothing you have that I want.”
Once again I am stunned. “What about my Logos voice?”
“Your voice has value for Atlantis, which is already a given. If you Qualify, we have you.” He pauses, and again there’s that fine subcurrent of disdain. “I thought you were offering something for me.”
“I—” My words trail off.
He is right, what am I saying?
“Look,” he says in a milder tone, after that unbearable pause during which my mind is reeling. “You got what you wanted, Lark. I reinstated your sister, and she has a fair chance of earning back most if not all of her points. Under the circumstances, it is absolutely the best I can do for her—or for you. In fact, I think you should be grateful right now. What do you say?”
I exhale, as general numbness returns, and I am suddenly worn out, depleted completely, emotionally wrung out. There is nothing of me left here, nothing to offer, nothing to barter with. . . . He is right.
“Thank you,” I say.
He nods. “I am glad this is resolved. In the next hour your sister will be discharged, and her belongings returned to her dorm.”
“For real?”
“Yes. Now I strongly recommend you get back to your own dorm and schedule. Strange as it may seem, I have other things to deal with than Lark family drama.”
I nod, then mutter something that sounds like “Okay.”
He watches me as I turn around and move to the door. Just before I step outside, he says, “Before you go—we need to continue your regular voice training. Be here tomorrow night at eight.”
Startled, I glance again at him. “But—I thought you have other things to do?”
“Lark,” he says. “Just be here at eight.”
Chapter 46
On my way back I run into George halfway between the Atlantean offices in CA-2 and Yellow Quadrant Dorm Section Fourteen.
George looks like he’s been pulled out of bed, or else he hadn’t been to sleep at all, his dark hair standing up in a tousled mess. He is breathing fast from running and his expression is grim. It’s the closest to being panicked that I’ve ever seen my brother be. With him is Logan, equally stressed and serious.
“Gwen! Where’s Gracie? Where is she?” George cries. “What the hell is happening? What has she done? I can’t believe any of this!”
I remember with a minor delay that up to this point George knew nothing about Gracie’s involvement in the sabotage incident. I am guessing, he has just been told by Mia and the others in Red Quadrant Dorm, Section Fourteen.
“It’s okay! Gracie’s okay!” I exclaim in a hurry, putting up my hands in a reassuring gesture. “She will be released! She—they Disqualified her but he—Aeson Kass—I talked to him and he somehow reinstated her, so she is being let out soon—”
And then in a jumbled torrent I explain what happened.
George and Logan stand listening to me, and George regains his breathing. “What an absolutely stupid, flaming ass!—Oh man, Gracie, what an insane fool! How could she do this thing?”
“I know,” I say, and m
y own temples are pounding from renewed stress. “She’s a stupid little idiot and I’m ready to strangle her, but thank God it’s going to be okay!”
George shakes his head. “Why on earth would she even do it?”
“Get this—she was trying to impress Daniel Tover!”
“What?” Logan says. “What does Daniel have to do with this?”
“Apparently nothing.” I glance at him. “But Gracie has a little girl crush on him, and she thought she’d look cool or something.”
“Great. . . .”
I notice that meanwhile Logan has been staring at me closely, and I am not sure if it’s because of what I am saying, or if he is just worried about me.
“Logan,” I say with a light smile. “It will be all right. Really!”
“It’s amazing that you convinced the hard-ass Atlantean—Kass—to do this for Gracie. Seems to me, he didn’t do it so much for Gracie as he did it for you.”
“Huh?” I say. “I stalked him, begged and pleaded, and gave him every logical—and illogical—argument under the sky. I think I even went a little crazy there, not even sure I remember the insane stuff I said. But in a nutshell I reminded him that I saved him from that burning shuttle, and I think he realized he owes me.”
“Well, good,” George says. “Because, he does. You saved his Goldilocks ass.”
An hour later, when we’re back at the dorms, namely Red Quadrant Dorm, Section Fourteen, Gracie shows up.
She looks awful. Her hair is a slept-in mess, jacket barely pulled on, smeared eyeliner and mascara streaks on her cheek. A guard is walking with her, carrying one of her duffel bags, while she has the other, slung over her shoulder.
The moment she sees us, Gracie drops her bag, rushes forward and throws herself silently at me, and then at George. Her hug is so tight that she is choking me. Then George holds her in a bear hug, while she mutters something unintelligible, at the same time as I gently pat down her messy, dirty blond hair, and run my fingers through it in a calming way.
“You’re okay, Gee Four . . . all is well . . . you’re fine, you made it!” I repeat over and over.
“I am . . . so sorry . . . so sorry!” Gracie keeps repeating, and her face is muffled against George’s chest.
“You should start by thanking your sister,” George says. “If she hadn’t busted her ass to convince the Atlantean VIP to give you another shot, you would be back home by now.”
Gracie tears herself away from George and turns to me, and her eyes are big and brimming with liquid. “Gwen! Thank you, I love you!” she mutters, and then she’s back hugging me.
“It’s all right, Gracie, all right, sweetie! Love you so much!” I press her against me and feel the little girl skinny body shuddering. “It’s over,” I say. “No more horrible bad moves like that, ever, okay?”
She nods. “Okay. . . .”
“Promise me you will never do something like that again. Promise me you will think before you act, and you’ll remember why we’re here, and what’s really going on,” George says. “Or I swear, you’ll never live it down. I won’t let you forget it, brainless ditz! You’ll see—”
“I promise!”
We go on like that for the next five minutes, doing the “good parent, bad parent” thing to parallel the “good cop, bad cop” thing they do on TV (Mom and Dad would be proud of us now if they saw us in action), and then we help Gracie settle back in and reclaim her cot and dorm space. Other Reds from her dorm stare at us curiously, as this is all happening. . . . Fine, let them. Neither George nor I care.
“Be smart, Gee Four! Remember, you’re a Lark!” we tell her, before we head back to our own scheduled classes that are starting in about five minutes.
As we leave Gracie’s dorm, George turns to me, grim and thoughtful. “You think she’ll last?” he says softly.
I frown. “She has to. We’ll do everything we can to help her regain points.” And then I explain to George the full extent of the situation, and how I have been forbidden from giving any of my own points to her.
George exhales and bites his lip. “If it comes down to it, I’ll let her have mine,” he says.
My heart constricts painfully. I knew that was coming. “Look,” I say. “Let’s not go there yet, okay? Please . . . I can’t lose you either!”
“Hey, I hear yah. I can’t lose me either,” my brother quips bitterly, running his hand through his messy dark hair. But I see the darkness has taken hold in him, and the despair is back—all that despair that’s been there all along, simmering under the surface, temporarily eclipsed by the hope that we still had a chance to Qualify, to make it out alive somehow. Because now George knows that even if he Qualified, he still would have to do this thing—the right thing, for our younger sister.
In fact, the whole “points dilemma” has been hanging over all our heads as soon as the situation was explained to us by the Section Leaders on our first day of classes yesterday. Points are now like currency. They can be earned, bartered, given away, et cetera.
I can just imagine the kinds of dealings that will start happening on the day of the Finals when we will finally have full control of our points and the ability to hoard and keep them or to disburse them as we please. . . .
I try to put all this out of my mind as I go to my classes. After my nearly sleepless night and the ordeal with Aeson Kass, I am exhausted, so it’s a very long day, followed by a blah evening. It doesn’t help that the temperature has been unexpectedly warm, even for mid-spring in the Eastern Plains of Colorado, where most of us suspect we are. The huge dorm structures are air conditioned but not enough to keep up with the unusual balmy weather outside.
The heat doesn’t let up overnight, but I’m so tired I manage to sleep anyway. And the next morning I wake with a much clearer head and the beginnings of a plan for Gracie—at least I hope so. Laronda and I make it to breakfast at the closest cafeteria, and there, along with Dawn and a few other people we know, we talk points and teams and what can be expected for the Finals.
“Hey, you gotta remember,” Mateo says, chewing his eggs and hash browns. “This thing is going to be unlike anything we can imagine, and it’s going to be international.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dawn says. “You’re right, easy to forget.” And she rolls her eyes.
“No, really. Actually it is.” Mateo takes another big bite and continues seriously. “I mean, think about it, we all know what’s coming, and that the competition is only getting tougher and tougher, and that now the odds are fifty-fifty, and only half of the Candidates in this NQC are going to Qualify. But that’s just still old thinking, as in, only all of us, United States. Now we have to deal with everyone else on this frigging planet!”
Now that he says it, it does kind of hit home.
“Well, let’s think for a moment, what are we training for—endurance, power, fighting skills, general Atlantis tech and social knowledge,” I say. “And now, they’ve added swimming—all the Water SAS stuff. Put it all together, and up the odds on an international scale, and what does that imply?”
“I’m thinking, a big-ass ocean,” Tremaine says. “And hey, maybe the Atlantic, cause, you know, Atlantis?”
“Hey, you’re kind of a smarty-pants too.” Laronda turns to him and tugs the long sleeve of his uniform around the arm. It has fresh sweat stains on it—as all of ours do, because, yeah, it’s hot. . . .
“So, we’re gonna be what, swimming across the Atlantic?” Jai says with a sigh and a widening of his eyes. “That would majorly suck.”
“Not to mention that would be kind of impossible,” Tremaine mutters.
“Hey, man, with our Atlantean overlords, nothing is impossible.” And Jai flashes his white teeth in a world-weary grin.
After a grueling day of Combat, Agility, Tech, and Culture, swimming is almost kind of a relief from the muggy heat. Today we meet at a different giant larger-than-major-international-competition pool, this one located in the CA-2 structure, because we are doing mixed
swimming with the Green Quadrant Dorm. Our last class for the day is a combination of team swim relays plus handling weapons in the water—Green shields and Yellow nets.
So yeah, we get to learn how to spar in the water.
Zoe is once more in my class, and as we splash around, I explain to her what happened the other day and why I didn’t show up for dinner, because of the Gracie situation.
“Less talking, and more floating,” Instructor Qurume Ateni tells us in his deadpan manner as he walks past us on our side of the pool. “Naturally, you may carry on doing whatever it is you are doing, as soon as I am on the other side and cannot see you.” And then he keeps moving.
Which we in fact do—as soon as he is out of hearing, Zoe tells me she’s sorry about Gracie’s close call with Disqualification and relieved she is okay after all.
“Wow! How did you ever convince Command Pilot Aeson Kass himself to give your sister a second chance?”
“It’s a long story,” I exclaim, splashing her as I cast my net weapon at the approaching opposite team swimmers with green tokens who use their shields as flotation devices.
“I bet!” Zoe says with a laugh, splashing me back as she tosses her lasso weapon in turn. “But then I should know you’re always kind of full of surprises!”
Soon, Water SAS class is over, and okay, I admit it, it was actually fun. What a weird thing to say about any aspect of Qualification. But we’ve all been so stressed and tired for so long that swimming seems to really work well for most of us—except for those of us who could not swim before, and are getting a crash course now. . . .
After class, I make plans with Zoe to attempt dinner once more, and maybe introduce her to my other friends.
“How about, see you at the cafeteria closest to this pool in an hour?” I say as we turn in our Quadrant weapons and get dressed at the lockers. “That way, after dinner we can use Homework Hour for messing around in the pool again, and yeah, okay, some laps?”
[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify Page 56
