CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Logan Sangre and I walk from the food court to the edge of the gym area where the track begins. The floor of the track is made of some kind of soft and rubbery material. I’m assuming this type of surface is easier on your feet than ordinary flooring. It’s brick red in color, with eight painted lanes and other markings in white.

A few Candidates are using the track already, running laps. I see one girl from my Dorm jogging by.

We stand before the track.

“This is so embarrassing,” I say, quickly looking up into his eyes, before anything else happens, because my mind is reeling with a combination of terror and excitement. “I suck so badly at this. . . . You’re probably going to laugh when you see me run—either that or you’ll just want to cry.”

Logan exhales. Suddenly I feel his hands come around and squeeze my shoulders, as he moves in and looks at me gently. Whoa!

“No problem, Gwen. Nothing to be embarrassed about.” His face is so serious in that moment, and oh, so beautiful. “This Qualification—this whole situation is abnormal. No one can expect you to know how to run, to be particularly good at it, or to know how to do any of these other impossible things they expect of us, out of the blue. . . . Do what you can, the best you can. And I will help you. All right?”

I nod. The feel of his strong hands around my shoulders, fingers pressing lightly, has turned me into a puddle, and at the same time I am giddy as if I’m twelve, like Gracie. If only he knew!

“And no,” he adds, leaning in over me, so that our foreheads are almost touching. “I would never laugh. Not at you. Not at the way you or any other beginner might run. If I did, it would make me the worst kind of jerk. I hope you don’t think that’s what I am.”

“Oh, no! Of course not!”

Logan smiles, and his face just lights up. “Okay! In that case, let’s see how ‘awful’ you really are. Go on and start running. I’ll catch up with you in a few, but first I want to watch your form.”

“My form? Uhm, how? What should I do?” I say, like a total dummy.

“Just pick a lane—let’s say the middle one—and try to stay in it. Now, go!”

I step onto the track, take a deep breath and start running.

When I say running, I mean, I am barely moving at a jog, my arms flailing uselessly every which way, and my wobbly feet striking the surface of the track. Only about thirty paces in, and my breath is already coming in ragged. The compounded exhaustion of the second day of uncustomary physical effort has taken its toll. I am panting like a dog, my knees start to wobble, and the raw blisters on my feet are killing me—you know, all the same horrible stuff that’s been happening every time I try to run.

I’ve barely gone around one fifth of the track, when I hear Logan come up running from behind me. He’s moving without any discernable effort, legs pumping evenly, and now he runs at my side. The only sound he’s making is the light metal jangle of a key chain in his pocket, attached to a small knife. Not sure why, as I’m fighting to catch my breath, but I think of this knife of his that he’d taken out the other night when we were at Gracie’s Red Dorm Five. . . .

Three seconds later I stop and bend over clutching my knees. Feels like the inside of my head’s going around in crazy circles, and I am about to die.

“Don’t stop moving,” he says, slowing down beside me. “Now, just walk. The key to building endurance is regular intervals of running and rest. You run, then you walk to recover. Then you run some more. And repeat. With time you’ll be able to run longer, and need fewer intervals of walking. That’s all there is to it.”

“But there isn’t any time . . .” I pant, as we walk side by side. “I kind of need a crash course, now.”

He shakes his head with a light smile. “It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. The best you can do is improve gradually.”

“Oh jeez. . . . I really suck, don’t I?”

“Yeah, you do. The good news is, you don’t suck as badly as you think. Or as badly as you could possibly suck under the circumstances.”

“Thanks—I think? See, there you go, you’re laughing at me!” I glance at him, but I am smiling too.

“Key word here is, you can improve.” He watches me playfully. “Of course, it also depends on the condition of your body and your determination.”

I make a grimace and wipe the escaped tendrils of hair off my wet forehead with the back of my hand. “I’m pretty determined, I suppose. As for my body—”

His steady gaze sweeps me up and down, and suddenly I feel a full body flush coming on.

“Your body is—fine,” he says after the tiniest pause during which he is looking at me closely and more intensely than before. “You are tall, and have long legs which will always give you the advantage of a longer stride. I have no doubt you will catch up quickly.”

“So . . .” I say, because I don’t know what else to do in that crazy-intense moment. “What about my ‘form,’ as you say? What should I do to improve faster?”

“Besides practicing?” Logan continues to watch me with his amazing hazel brown eyes. “I noticed that you either flail your arms too much or keep your hands clenched up, and too close to your chest when you pump your arms. Don’t do that. Instead, keep your hands open rather than in fists, your arms loose, and your elbows at a 90-degree angle.”

He takes my right arm and flexes it at the elbow gently, making a right angle, then opens my hand, loosening my tense fingers, as his own fingers brush my palm. “Keep it loose and relaxed, like this. Let your arms fall naturally.”

I feel electricity and shivers coursing up my arm where he touches me. . . .

“As far as breathing, it should be even and regular. If it helps, count paces as you inhale and exhale.” He looks down at my legs again. “Oh, and try to keep an even, regular stride. With your long legs you don’t need to compensate. In fact, short and quick strides work better in the long run—pun intended.”

He can tell my breathing has slowed down closer to normal. Of course he has no clue how his proximity really affects me. . . . I appear to be holding my breath without meaning to, and it’s miles-to-the-moon far from normal. Breathe, Gwen, breathe!

“Ready to run some more?” he says.

I nod. I inhale then exhale.

And I begin to run again.

* * *

An hour later, we exit the Arena Commons and head back to our dorms, taking the scenic route around the compound perimeter. Logan is walking me to mine, because it’s dark and it’s after Homework Hour, and yeah, we are risking being out and about during the limited curfew period.

I shiver from the cold in my sweaty thin T-shirt. But Logan’s presence at my side adds a strange feverish frisson of energy to my otherwise zombie body. Lord, but I’m tired, after having run then walked, and run then walked, over and over, around that track for who knows how many turns, with him keeping pace, running and walking beside me in absolute patience.

“I am sorry I totally wasted your evening,” I say, feeling the guilt bubble up now, feeling the insecurity and the general sense of “what the heck is he doing here with me?”

“Are you kidding?” Logan’s dark eyes sparkle in the bright lights of the compound. “I’ve had a great workout, and great company.”

My cheeks grow hot. Once again I hope he does not notice the rising color in my face. “Not much of a workout, for you,” I mutter.

“It’s funny,” he says. “We both go to the same school. But it took an asteroid, Qualification, basically the end of the world, and us getting out of Vermont and ending up in Pennsylvania, before we could meet.”

I laugh. “Yeah. Pretty funny.”

“Strange how I never ran into you at Mapleroad Jackson High.”

Oh yeah, real strange. I think about how I pretty much stalked him from afar, all these past three years. Okay, not really stalked for real—since mostly it was all dreamy romantic drama happening in my pathetic mind—but I certainly spent a great deal of my free time at school fantasizing and hoping to catch a glimpse of him on campus.

I say nothing.

We pass some more dorm buildings then a stretch of open space with concrete walls. Then an area opens up that looks like a field—or better to say, a small airfield, because there’s something that looks like a short landing strip and several small hangars. A helicopter is parked far away, and beyond it there’s open space and darkness interspersed with a few lights in the distance and what is probably a chain link barbed wire fence.

“So how is everything else going for you so far?” Logan puts one hand in his pocket and I hear the key chain jangle again. It must be a habit of his, holding on to that pocket knife.

“Okay, I guess. . . . Barely surviving Combat and Agility, doing reasonably average in Culture and Tech. Wondering how my poor parents are doing. Wondering if there are crazy desperate people camped outside, beyond that fence and trees right now, looking in on us and planning who knows what. . . . And you?” I glance at the airfield then try to look straight ahead and not at him.

He laughs, once. It’s a tired, slightly bitter sound. “Mostly same as you. My parents are left behind, back in St. Albans. And my older brother Jeff is in the military. He’s just been deployed on his first tour of duty, they don’t tell us where. Not much guessing involved however, considering all the places worldwide that peacekeeping forces are needed these days.”

I turn to glance at him in surprise. “Oh, I didn’t know you had an older brother!” And then I realize how weird that must sound. As far as he’s concerned, we’ve just met a day ago and I’m not supposed to know anything about him or his family.

But Logan does not appear to take my outburst as an oddity, thank goodness. “Yeah. My brother Jeff is twenty-two, and that makes him too old, and ineligible for Qualification. Before shipping out, he told me he does not plan to wait for the asteroid, but to give it his all—take all the risks for the sake of performing his job in an exemplary manner. . . . And if necessary, he said, he wants to go all out with flying colors, in the line of duty.”

“Oh . . . I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. If I were in his place, I’d probably do the same thing, go out with a bang, make it mean something. Better to die in a blaze of glory, defending the honor and interests of your country than to rot away waiting for the asteroid to hit. . . . What a damn waste.”

I watch Logan’s gorgeous face in profile, his dark hair, the high cheekbones and angular jaw. There’s a new, withdrawn, reserved feeling about him, as he speaks of his brother.

“It really is so senseless,” I whisper. “The only difference between us and all the rest of them out there, the whole world, is—hope.”

“Hope? Not all that much of it. Mostly it’s just illusion and BS. A way to buy time for a huge chunk of the population, keep us all docile as we go through the motions of this craptastic Qualification farce while our families watch from the outside and wait, and live vicariously through us for as long as they can. But the truth is, you and I will both very likely end up out of the running, and back home, waiting for the asteroid apocalypse with the rest of them. Think about it—most of us here, most of the Candidates, are going back home in a few weeks. We might as well get used to it.”

I am stunned. Logan Sangre, so confident and comfortable, so steady and cool, is having personal doubts?

All right, I mean, he’s human—yes, I know it with the rational portion of my mind, sure. But to me he has always seemed perfect and invincible.

“If anyone is going to qualify, Logan, it’s you!” I say passionately, and just as soon as I say it, I realize how my intensity must be coming across.

Stop it, Gwen, cool it. Stop with the crazy!

Logan pauses walking, and turns to me with a blooming smile. “You don’t even know me, but—thanks, Gwen. You make a good cheerleader—in the best sense possible.”

“Thanks for what?” I pause also, and now I’m staring up at him. “I’m being practical here. I just think you seem to be the kind of guy who—who will Qualify for sure! Maybe I’ll be the one heading home, but you definitely won’t be. Want to bet on it?”

He smiles. His expression is so gentle, kind, that it’s melting my heart completely. “No way. Because I don’t want to bet against you, Gwen Lark. So how about this—let’s not think about it for now, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, thinking that the real Logan Sangre is an even better human being than my idea of him has been all these years—way better than I expected him to be.

We resume walking and we’re almost at the end of the airfield clearing, approaching another dorm structure, when one of the hangars comes awake with lights, and its wide doors slide open.

We stare, and it’s an amazing sight. An Atlantean saucer shuttle pulls out of the hangar, hovering silently about three feet in the air. Considering that it’s over a hundred feet away from us, I judge it to be about thirty feet across, flat and slightly oval instead of perfectly round. The material it’s made of is dull grey from the distance, and yet the bright hangar lights give it a strange prickling sheen of gold, which—I’m suddenly very certain—makes it orichalcum.

“Oh, wow!” I say.

Logan watches with equal wonder. “So that’s how they go up and down,” he muses.

As we stare, the shuttle glides away from the hangar, and pauses, then without a sound it seems to pick up a bluish-violet glow around it, and then it streaks upward with impossible speed, and momentarily hangs low above the trees.

At the same time, a second shuttle exits the same hangar.

It too, hovers just off the ground, and pulls away, then pauses. It’s as if it’s waiting for the first shuttle to move away a sufficient distance before following.

In the next moment, two things happen simultaneously. The second shuttle still on the ground now starts climbing. And the first one that’s higher up above suddenly ejects a blinding flash which then turns into a nova. . . .

The night sky is rocked by an explosion.

And the ball of fire that was the first shuttle falls.

* * *

As the sonic boom and blast hits, I scream and hide my face, as burning debris rain all over the airfield.

“Oh God! Stay here!” Logan cries to me. He then starts running toward the flaming wreckage in the airfield.

My pulse pounds in my temples and I watch his retreating back, at the same time as I see uniformed guards come running from all directions. A few seconds later, claxons go off and sirens begin to wail. No other Candidates seem to be about, only the guards, converging. . . .

At the same time, I look up, and see the second shuttle. It has barely risen a couple hundred feet above the trees, and its ultra-violet aura is pulsing, as it seems to stagger horizontally, sweeping wildly back and forth across the sky.

I stare, cringing, in terror, never having seen such impossible lighting-fast patterns of movement of any flying aircraft up close. Earth planes and helicopters are slow hay wagons compared to this thing.

Oh my God, it suddenly occurs to me. It’s having problems too! It’s about to crash!

I stare helplessly, watching the second shuttle in the sky struggle to stay aloft, and at the same time begin an erratic descent.

Whoever’s flying it must be aware of the burning wreck below, and trying to land the craft safely far away from the crash site. . . .

Whatever the Atlanteans inside are doing, is causing the shuttle to lean sideways, favoring one end, then try to right itself horizontally, meanwhile starting to fall faster, losing its normal gliding smoothness that all the Atlantean ships seem to have.

It’s out of control completely now, spinning wildly, turning over and over, and oh, God it’s coming down right at me!

I start to back away, then begin to run—even though it’s hopeless to try to outrun a falling object the size of a bus—while with each second the shuttle is plummeting down . . . it’s now a hundred feet, then fifty, then thirty—so that I can see the pulsing colors of its violet-blue aura. Another second, and it looks like an electric charge has covered the entire shuttle in a cocoon of pulsing energy—

I scream.

And then a crazy, last-second-only, desperate idea strikes me.

The ship is probably made of orichaclum. Which means—

My scream turns into a musical note.

I don’t know what it is, but I am singing and holding a single note, at the top of my lungs.

My voice falls into the specific frequency naturally, and I put all my strength and effort into it, and then mold the vowel from an “a-a-a” into an “e-e-e”, which I know is the easiest vowel to sing if you want to make a powerful sound.

The random note that I am holding is a Middle F Major, and then immediately I follow it with an A and C sequence, to make a chord progression.

As my voice blasts out in the night air, rising over the crackle of the flames and the claxons and the sirens—cutting through everything, because I am singing with every fiber of my being, as loudly and clearly as I can—the falling shuttle pauses and comes to a jerking standstill in the air.

It hovers, about twenty feet over my head. I see its electric, violet plasma-lit metallic underbelly.

It have keyed it—yes, this huge shuttle-sized piece of orichalcum—to myself.

“F-A-C,” I sing the chord sequence, not daring to stop, else it plummets on my head. . . . Even though I remember in flashes that no, once the levitation state is achieved it stays in place, on its own, until the next voice command is issued.

And then I feverishly think back on my Atlantis Tech class and recall the other sequence needed to bring objects down.

I desperately continue to sing, even as my mind cringes at the thought of this monster of metal levitating overhead, as I run backward, trying not to stumble and accidentally knock out my breath. . . . This gets me sufficiently away from underneath its hover space, a distance of at least thirty feet, so that the ovaloid saucer is no longer directly over me—where it might drop any second and squash me like a bug.

And now I mentally try to “find” F Major in an octave higher than the one I’m singing now.

Oh crap! That’s a pretty high note! What in blazes made me go with the Middle F Major for my tonic, starting note?

How in the world am I going to hit that note cleanly? I haven’t properly sung in ages, in years! My Mom could hit that note just like that, easy as apple pie, make it roll out smooth and rich like honey in butter. . . .

And me? I was just a kid accompanying her in my little kiddie voice.

What’s worse, I have no idea how high I can sing these days!

I am singing now . . . I’m actually singing . . . no, do not think . . . just keep singing . . . just sing!

I quickly take a big gasping breath, and aim for the higher octave F Major. . . .

I hit it, clean on.

Holy lord!

My voice holds and sustains the F Major easily, and I realize my voice is rich and earthy, even in the upper register, and I am a mezzo-soprano just like my mother.

And then, I bring it down, sliding an octave below, stopping on the first F Major.

As I end the slide and hold the original tonic note, the shuttle begins to descend smoothly.

It comes down, and hovers barely off the ground, maybe a couple of feet, at most.

The colors pulse around it, then suddenly everything goes dark.

And it drops the remaining distance to the ground.

I go silent, balling my fists at my sides, breathing fast in nervous exertion, while a door appears, cleaving the shuttle surface, and a ladder descends. It must be an automated emergency hatch opening, because no one appears to exit. Inside, is near-darkness, and I see the beginnings of smoke coming out.

With my peripheral vision I note guards running in the distance, heading toward me and this barely landed craft. There are also other Candidates coming from the direction of the dorms.

Meanwhile, black thick smoke is really pouring out from the shuttle door.

Where there’s smoke, there’s going to be some pretty ugly and certain fire.

Ugh! What am I doing now? I think, as I take a big gulp of clean night air and then rush forward, grab the rungs and haul myself up the ladder stair and plunge inside.

* * *