[Atlantis Grail 01.0] Qualify

by Vera Nazarian

  What am I saying? When all is said and done, there have to be millions! Probably more are arriving soon, while others might have already left.

  I quickly sing a stop command to pull up my hoverboard, in order to not collide with the closest people nearby.

  Because Candidates on hoverboards fill the very air around me, jostling so close that we could be on parade, as we hover, “stacked” on top of each other, just to be able to find an inch of space.

  The din! And oh, lord, the screaming! In every frigging language on this planet!

  As the rest of Team USA, Section Fourteen-C and D pour out of our tunnel, I realize that our tunnel is just one of thousands that cluster on the walls like honeycombs in a beehive. And more and more people are arriving from other cells of the great honeycomb.

  The cavern itself—honestly, I am not really sure how big it is, because so many people are blocking my field of vision, all the way up to the remote ceiling. All I can tell is, there are floodlights shining on us, and that there’s a cavern ceiling generally above, and a floor far below.

  “Oh, man, this is crazy-huge!” several of my teammates exclaim.

  I see Laronda and Gracie and Hasmik levitate in formation next to me, as we stare around us helplessly.

  A foot away and right below me, a brown-skinned boy wearing a Middle Eastern keffiyeh on his head points up with his finger at the ceiling and makes brief eye contact with me before looking away. Next to him is a pale blond boy who looks Scandinavian. Another board over, I see a girl who is speaking either Polish or Russian to another girl next to her.

  Everyone is overwhelmed. And it really is impossible not to be.

  “What’s next?” Jai yells.

  “Who cares! At least we made it out of the tunnel from hell!” a girl from Blue says.

  We stare upward, and after a few moments it begins to make sense.

  Somewhere high up, in the general middle of this super-cavern, the cathedral ceiling disappears upward in a conical shape. That has to be it—the way leading up to the surface, the one we were instructed to go through.

  “Okay, so we go up. What’s everyone waiting for?” Derek grumbles.

  “Maybe we wait our turn?” I say.

  “What turn? There are no ‘turns’ here, Gwen-baby! We just push and shove, and blast and kill our way up, and go!” He stares at me in dark, street-tough sarcasm.

  “Okay,” I say. “Then go.”

  Derek shrugs. And then he in fact sings his hoverboard to rise and starts shoving his way past other people hovering over him. A few exclamations and a stream of what sounds like juicy cursing in French comes from overhead, and I see Derek start pushing aside boards and then clobbering another guy. . . .

  “Oh, jeez,” Blayne says in disgust, moving in near us.

  “Whatever, let him go, good riddance,” Laronda says.

  A few minutes later, as we wait, stuck in a strange holding pattern, we manage to learn what’s going on.

  According to a Candidate from New Zealand, the way up is a relatively narrow tube, about twenty feet in circumference. The bottom portion, making up about one third of the way up, is a natural stone tunnel of volcanic origins, formed by lava eons ago. But it ends well below the surface of the ocean, so a concrete extension has been built to accommodate us, and this is the part that we have to navigate to reach the surface.

  So, what’s the problem?

  The problem is contained in that first one-third, the natural tunnel. Not only is it convoluted like a tree branch, but it takes frequent curves and sharp side-turns while generally narrowing then widening again while moving up, so it is impossible to rise at a decent speed to pass through it without hitting the walls or getting hurt against the sharp rockside. Nor is it possible to go through it for more than six people at a time.

  Supposedly the original volcano channel was more straightforward. But with time and erosion and the shifting of the earth itself all around it—plus the immense weight of the ocean water, with no water on the inside to compensate, unlike the floodgate tunnel network we just traversed—it had been seriously degraded, and in places nearly collapsed on itself.

  So, basically, people really are waiting for their turn to get through. Even at the rate of high-speed hoverboard flight, it still takes a while for so many Candidates to pass the small, convoluted tunnel portion of this underground-to-surface chute.

  “Yo! How much longer do we have?” Claudia says, kicking a guy from Team C to make him check his clock app.

  “Less than two hours,” Emilio replies instead, glancing at the smart pin on his sleeve.

  Laronda snorts, wipes her mud-covered forehead with the back of her hand, then rummages in her backpack for food. “Great. Might as well have dinner while we wait. If these smarty-pants Atlanteans had time to install fancy-pants electric lighting in this joint, plus build a concrete tunnel, why couldn’t they just make it all nice and easy? And for that matter, some vending machines wouldn’t have hurt either . . . or a mini-mall. . . .”

  Many of us follow her lead and eat whatever stuff we have left. Every five minutes or so, there’s slight movement and new space clearing overhead as Candidates rise, a little burst of a few feet at a time, inching closer to the exit chute overhead.

  “Okay, stupid question,” Jai says, taking a huge bite of some kind of dried fruit bar. “But, what if you have to take a leak? Or what if you have to, you know, do Number Two? Are people going to be pissing on our heads now, as we wait?”

  “Oh, disgusting! Jaideep, you are so disgusting!” A girl makes a face at Jai.

  But he laughs like a neighing horse, and grins at her with a crazed expression.

  A few minutes later, a miracle happens. Suddenly, there’s my brother George followed by Gordie and Logan and Dawn, plus more, all levitating in a group, only a few feet to the right of us. Apparently it’s not that much of a miracle after all, since we all came out of the same tunnel hole, and Team A and B were only about an hour ahead of us. In this crowd, it’s not like they could scatter far and wide and go sightseeing. . . .

  “Gee One!” Gracie yells, with a burst of enthusiasm. And then, “And Gee Three!”

  I feel a wild smile coming on. . . . Joy bursts from inside of me as I see so many of the people I care about all present and accounted for, and reasonably safe!

  “Hello, ladies!” George says in a tired but flirty voice, maneuvering his board in our direction. We all collide and mingle and hug. Under the bright lights, everyone looks sickly, covered in wet mud-like gunk from the water in the tunnels, and just tired messes.

  After I practically squeeze George and then Gordie to death across our hoverboards, I turn to Logan. His warm dark eyes sparkle with renewed energy as he sees me, and we reach across and hold icy-cold hands, pressing hard, and not willing to let go. . . .

  “Dawn!” Laronda squeals. There is more hugging and touching and patting, plus a little bit of bodily displacement past a bunch of dark-haired frowning Candidates from what might be Team Greece, or Albania, or possibly Turkey.

  Looks like most of Team USA Section Fourteen is gathered here—in other words what’s left of the Pennsylvania RQC-3. We blab, share horror stories, and talk about bodies in the water and close calls.

  “Yeah, that was us, Team B, in that multi-chambered cavern from hell,” George says grimly. “I lucked out, just barely made it to the floodgate before it closed. So many other people didn’t make it out on time. . . .”

  “Oh, yeah, we had a rough time there too,” Logan says, taking a swig from his water bottle.

  But then I tell them about our stuck floodgate and how we barely made it with the hoverboards contraption.

  Logan gives me a triumphant steady look of admiration until I blush.

  “Gwen’s the man!” Jai exclaims.

  Gordie snorts, and attempts to lick dirt off his horribly smudged glasses. “Heh! Shoelace Girl, yeah. Nice going, sis.” And then he puts a granola bar wrapper in his mouth and sucks it
.

  “Ugh! Stop eating paper, Gee Three.” I smile and shake my head, patting him on the arm.

  “Yeah, I’m hungry,” Gordie says, raising one eyebrow.

  “Then eat!”

  “He ate everything in his pack.” George rolls his eyes, but shows a crooked smile.

  I shake my head then reach in my own backpack and pull out the last chunk of a granola bar and hand it to Gordie.

  “Nah, it’s okay, you need it,” he says.

  “No, I don’t,” I insist and press it in his cold sticky fingers.

  And then I remember. “Oh! Points!” I exclaim. “Quickly, Gordie, time to transfer some of your extra points to Gracie!”

  “Oh, yeah. . . .” Gordie shoves the chunk of granola in his mouth, wipes his fingers, then reaches out to Gracie and puts one hand on her ID token and the other on his own.

  “Wait!” I say worriedly, while George gives me an intense, equally worried look. “You do have enough points, right, Gee?”

  “Oh, yeah, tons. Two hundred-sixteen as of this morning.” Gordie talks with his mouth full then swallows the rest of the granola.

  “So, if you give your sister about sixty points, that should be enough—”

  “I can give her more, like a hundred.”

  “No!” both George and I say at once. “Don’t screw up your own score. That’s too risky.”

  “Okay, sixty then.”

  And Gordie says, “Transfer, sixty points to Grace Lark.”

  His token and Gracie’s both flash.

  “Done,” Gordie says.

  “Thanks!” Gracie mutters with a smile, and reaches across to board-hug Gordie. He skillfully evades her.

  “Phew. . . .” I exhale a long-held breath. “I guess that’s settled then—”

  “Terra Patria!”

  The insane shouts come from about a hundred feet ahead, from the general direction in the middle, right underneath the surface escape chute. They are followed in a split second by a horrible sound.

  The mega-cavern is rocked by a great explosion.

  Thousands of teens scream all around us—above, below, everywhere.

  I cringe and close my eyes, while Logan suddenly hurls himself on top of me, covering me bodily from the impact of flying rocks, debris, supply packs, people falling, more screams, general chaos. . . .

  The whole world seems to be swaying, rotating, as we barely hold on—as everyone around us latches on to their wobbling, spinning out, scattering hoverboards, or hangs by their hands, dangling in the air.

  “Oh my God! Go, go! Go! Just go!”

  George is yelling at the tangled mess that’s me and Logan, and we get our bearings, and then there’s what looks like an opening directly overhead.

  “Everyone, go! Get the hell out!”

  Dawn is pulling Laronda back up onto her hoverboard. Gracie is lying flat on hers, while Gordie is already above us, and he is yelling something in an incomprehensible voice, while the side of his face is bleeding.

  “Up! Up! Go! Go!”

  “What happened?” I gasp out, while Logan rights us, then transfers himself back on his own board that is floating next to mine.

  In answer he cusses, then says, “Goddamn lowlife terrorists! No time! Go, Gwen, we have to get out of here! Rise, now! I’m right behind you!”

  “Okay!” I scream. And then, “Gracie! George!”

  I have no idea what is happening.

  The earth is shaking around us, and it feels like the deep rumbling of an earthquake as cavern walls start collapsing far out along the edges.

  I grab Gracie by her shirt, as she is reeling, and scream at her. ‘Gracie! Sing! You have to go! Up!”

  And then I sing my own command to rise, while screaming people and objects fly all around me, and picking up speed I hurtle upward.

  Toward the ceiling, and the opening to the surface chute.

  Toward the distant sky.

  Chapter 54

  The volcanic walls of the narrow vertical chute tunnel are pressing in around me, and there is no light, except the distant flickering shadows from other people’s flashlights far up overhead, and the receding white glow of the huge cavern below.

  It occurs to me to pull out my own flashlight that still has a faint amount of charge left in the battery. The flashlight casts an erratic, sickly yellow glow on the walls of the chute around me, as I rise and rise . . . up, up, up . . . angling my board at a slightly elevated position on a 30-degree slope, nose up, as I straddle it.

  “Logan!” I cry out a few moments later. “Gracie? You there?”

  “I’m here!” I hear Logan’s strong voice coming from directly below me. “Keep going!”

  And then a few seconds later, I hear Gracie reply.

  “Watch for a hard curve up ahead!” The voice belongs to George.

  Oh, thank the lord! George is here, is okay!

  For the next few minutes we yell out things in the near-dark, just to hear each other’s voices, just to know we’re all still there.

  The curves are wicked. The chute branches here and there, so that it is so easy to run head on into a wall or rock incline. I sing new hover commands every few seconds to correct for the changes in direction and movement.

  This crazy vertical roller coaster ride goes on and on for interminable moments. . . .

  At last, about fifteen minutes later, the chute tunnel straightens out and we are inside a long and wide concrete tube that rises like an arrow straight up, piercing the Atlantic Ocean.

  With the end to the old volcanic portion of the chute, the rise becomes easy, and we all pick up speed.

  The air whistles around us as the boards meet wind resistance. I have no idea how fast I am going now, but it’s fast, and the rounded tube walls of concrete blur into a streak around me.

  The air is still frigid cold, but there’s a new freshness to it, as the musty depths of the earth are left behind.

  I close my eyes momentarily, reeling with exhaustion and remember that I am supposed to be afraid of heights and that I suffer from vertigo.

  It is gone now.

  The stunning realization comes to me—the fact that I am no longer bothered by height, by any of this at all, that fear has receded because of so many other things taking its place. . . .

  And just as I realize it, I suddenly burst through, out of the great tube chute, and into a great wide expanse of sky, filled with golden light. . . .

  And orange sunset.

  I soar up heavenward, my eyes blinking in the sudden radiance, my lungs bursting with the fresh, clean, balmy air. Dots of Candidates on hoverboards fill the sky all around me, like rising distant birds. Or maybe, it occurs to me in a silly flash, we are Halloween Witches, riding crazy brooms, straddling the boards in black silhouette against the sunset.

  I let out a wild laugh, followed by a scream of exultation.

  “Gracie! Logan! George! Gordie!” I scream out names, and laugh, like I am insane.

  And then I turn my head and look higher up in the direction of the Eastern darker portion of sky, and see the hundreds of Atlantean shuttles.

  In the same instant I see right below me, Blayne is flying next to Gracie, and she is clutching him by the hands and barely hanging on to her own board with her legs.

  “Gracie, what happened? Are you okay?” I yell, as the happy drunken joy deflates from me, just like that.

  Gracie sobs and makes little terrified noises, while Blayne voice-commands both their hoverboards to hover in place and then nods to me. “She’s okay, I got her. She spun out, started to fall just now, as we were flying out of the tube, but I grabbed her mid-flight. Remember, Grip of Friendship?”

  “Oh my God! Blayne, thank you!” I exclaim, but he just nods at me tiredly, and sort of disengages himself from Gracie’s desperately clutching grasp. I see his blue eyes flash with some kind of quiet satisfaction as he then rises up and speeds away toward the distant hovering shuttles.

  “See you on the flip side!” h
e yells in our wake.

  I turn to Gracie, and hold her, silently, as together we rise up to the shuttles, right behind him. Gordie is soaring overhead, and George, just a few feet below.

  At the door of the nearest transport shuttle, an Atlantean stands with a faint smile. He passes a scanner over my ID token, then Gracie’s. They both flash a bright yellow and red light, respectively.

  “Qualified,” he tells us. “And, Qualified. Proceed inside.”

  I pause, breathing deeply, in utter serene disbelief . . . while Gracie lets out a tiny scream of joy.

  Gordie is already inside, seconds ahead of us. He is leaning from the hatch opening, grinning widely, waiting for us. “I Qualified!” he announces. And then Gordie just laughs.

  I turn back, and see George, as he hovers before the shuttle entrance, coming in for his turn. There’s a strange solemn look on George’s face.

  “Hurry up!” I tell him.

  George nods. And then he floats toward the Atlantean who scans his green ID token.

  There’s a brief flash of green.

  And then the light goes out and George’s ID token goes dark.

  I freeze.

  The Atlantean looks at George, and his faint smile changes to a blank look with just a shadow of sorrow. “I am very sorry,” he says. “Not Qualified.”

  “What?” I cry.

  Behind me Gracie and Gordie’s voices have gone out.

  There is wind and perfect silence.

  “Yeah,” George says, breaking that silence. “Yeah . . . I didn’t think I would.”

  “But—this has to be a mistake!” I stutter. “You—you are here, you made it! Your score is great! What’s going on?”

  “It’s your team score,” the Atlantean says softly. “Unfortunately it is below the minimum.”

  “What? No! No!” Now I am crying, big sloppy sobs and fat tears running down my ugly mess of mud-covered face.

  George sighs. “Most of Team B died in that cavern. I suspected this would happen. Too many of us gone, not enough for the team average. . . . The only reason I even bothered to continue this far here was to make sure you guys were all okay, that you got loaded in safely—”