CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

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 my 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 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 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 Kass 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 might 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 Olympic 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?”

I don’t bother to disclose the fact that I also have to see Aeson Kass at eight PM tonight, and it’s right here in the CA-2 building. I can sneak off for half an hour and then come back and get in the pool afterwards.

Zoe agrees, and so I hurry back to my Section Fourteen to round up some people while she goes in the other direction toward Section Thirty-Nine.

When I get back to my Section, Logan is down in the “airport terminal area” first floor lobby, waiting for me. He is leaning casually against the wall, and I watch his sleek powerful body as he comes toward me. Glancing into his hazel eyes, I get the familiar warm jolt of electricity.

“Gwen!” he says with a smile. “Hey, Yellow Candy, I’ve been meaning to see you. Classes have been insane, or I’d have been here for lunch.”

“Logan!” I hurry to approach him.

He immediately pulls me by the hand and we come closer, slide against each other body-on-body and almost touch—not quite but almost, because again, surveillance cameras are everywhere and there is still the “No Dating” rule being enforced.

“I really miss you . . .” he whispers in my ear, leaning in casually as though to adjust my uniform collar, as his hair brushes against my cheek.

Oh, how badly I want him to hold me! And how much I want to just reach out and run my fingers against his arms, his chest, his soft wavy hair. . . . My skin is prickling with goose bumps, and it’s not the heat of the late afternoon, but the heat that’s rising between us, as we stand in such impossible near proximity, tantalizing each other with our bodies.

“Hey . . .” I say, looking up into his eyes, while my own are in a dreamy haze. . . . And then I tell him about the dinner and then swimming plans.

“Oh—forgot to mention, I still have to see Command Pilot Kass at eight, for the voice training, again,” I add.

Logan’s expression immediately hardens. “Oh yeah? Did he—tell you this when you were seeing him about Gracie?”

“Yeah.”

Logan exhales then nods. “Okay. Then you do that.” But he glances away and looks cool suddenly. . . .

“What?” I mutter. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he says. But I can tell he is upset somehow.

And suddenly it occurs to me in that bizarre moment, Is it possible that Logan is jealous?

WTF? Seriously? My mind is reeling.

“Logan!” I say. “Hey! You know I have to go see him, for my voice! Remember? It’s not a choice!”

“Of course, I know.” He glances at me briefly, and there is something odd and vulnerable in the way his eyes meet mine for just an instant, before he again looks away. “But I still don’t have to like it.”

Logan is jealous!

I am absolutely amazed! And at the same time, I feel a weird perverse stab of pleasure. It is wrong of me, but it’s what I feel, just for a moment. . . .

And then I tell him softly about the pool, as a kind of reward.

“Afterwards,” I say, in my most ridiculous attempt at a seductive voice, “when the voice training stuff is over, and I get out of there, I will see you at the pool . . . in all that sweet cool water. . . .” I briefly run my fingertips over his hand.

At my feather-light touch, I can feel him shudder slightly. Okay, wow. I did not expect that. . . .

And then he looks directly at me, and this time his gaze locks onto mine with intensity, and the hazel eyes are very, very dark, his pupils wide. “Do you know that normal surveillance cameras are not going to see very reliably what’s happening underwater. . . ?” he whispers.

“I know,” I whisper back, feeling a slow, strange, languid pulse-beat awakening in my head. “And there’s very little chance that there are underwater cameras, though with the Atlanteans we never know.”

His lips curve up sensuously. “I think we can risk it. . . .”

“I think so too.” And I smile also.

My lord, I am flirting!

* * *