CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Combat class is over and I am breathing hard, while an unbelievable rush of adrenaline and elation is still surging through me.

Claudia, meanwhile, hisses, “You are dead now, bitch.” She then turns her back on me and quickly races upstairs past the other Candidates going up.

Okay, that was—I have no words for what just happened.

As I start to walk to the doors, Oalla passes me and nods. “Nice job today, Candidate. Your sparring is good.”

And behind her, Erita gives me a faint crooked smile. She then passes a handheld gadget over my token and says, “Credit.”

I get out of the Training Hall, and honestly, I don’t even know if there’s a floor under my feet, or how I’m putting one foot ahead of the other—that’s how incredible I feel. For the first time after a gym class I am moving with a powerful buzz of energy as opposed to being utterly defeated in body and spirit.

I got a credit in Combat. No. Effing. Way.

The buzz carries me upstairs, but as it wears off slightly, the side of my face starts to make itself felt. I wipe the sweat off my forehead and touch the side of my cheek where Claudia managed to get in one blow and yeah, that’s going to bruise, if it hadn’t already. I bet I’ll look like Gordie now, with my matching shiner.

Last class for the day is Culture. I meet up with Dawn and Laronda and we grab the seats in the second row.

“Wow, look at your face,” Laronda says, examining me. “How did that happen?”

“Combat. Claudia,” I answer with choppy words, but I am smiling.

“What? Did she hit you? What a b—”

“Not as much as I hit her,” I admit, grinning now.

“What? Way to go, girlfriend!” Laronda claps, and looks at Dawn.

Dawn raises one brow and calmly nods her approval.

“It appears, an ice rink opened up somewhere in hell, because I can spar,” I announce. “And I got a credit for the day’s class!”

Laronda punches me on the arm and then does a seat dance by wiggling in her desk chair.

I let out a minor squeal and punch back, then lean over and punch Dawn who cringes away mockingly to retain her dignity. Soon we get so loud that some of the other Candidates start glancing our way.

We are interrupted by the arrival of the Instructor.

Nefir Mekei brings a sudden damper to settle over the good mood. Because today’s lecture is about the importance of family ties in Atlantis. I don’t remember much of what he says, because suddenly I’m thinking of my parents back home, and so it seems does everyone else. We sit and remember the families and relatives left behind. Grim reality washes over us. In less than nineteen months, they are all going to be dead. . . .

Everything in the world that we know will be no longer.

“On Atlantis, parents and children have strong traditional ties,” Nefir tells us, pacing before the desk. “We honor and respect the older generations, gladly defer to their wisdom and experience. But in turn, the power of society lies with the young.”

“Is this why you only take teenagers for Qualification?” someone asks. “How come the strict age restrictions of twelve through nineteen?”

“Yes, a good question.” Nefir turns to the speaker, an older girl. “We can only make room for the young who will have time to adjust and contribute to the society. And there are other reasons that you will come to understand later.”

I raise my hand. “What about the older adults here on Earth who have proven themselves to be valuable, even indispensable? I’m talking about brilliant scientists, engineers, talented artists, or others who have other worthy things to offer. Why don’t you take any of them? It seems illogical to me that you would not make exceptions for them.”

“I fully understand your reasoning,” Nefir says softly, turning his serpentine gaze upon me. “But unfortunately I cannot give you a good answer now. It is a complex thing and it has to do with certain aspects of our society and the real means at our disposal. Suffice it to say, if we could do it, we would take your adults, as many as possible. But we simply cannot. Nor would they be able to fit in sufficiently well, or integrate into Atlantis.”

Okay, that’s one mysterious and vague reply, I think.

“One thing I can tell you,” Nefir continues, turning away from me and addressing the class in general. “We start on our life journeys very young in Atlantis. For example, children commit to the Fleet at the age of seven. Other professions require similar early commitments.  It is a rare teenager who is not yet apprenticed in some field.”

Wow, I think. That explains the highly skilled and advanced Atlantean Instructors and Pilots who are hardly older than our own age.

“What about social stuff?” a boy asks with a smirk. “Do you guys have a social life? Like, dating, messing around, and so on? Do you have love and romance and marriage?”

“Obviously there’s procreation . . .” another guy in the back mutters, and a wave of nervous laughter passes over the classroom.

“Yes,” Nefir says, and his expression lightens somewhat. “Yes, we do. Bonds of love between individuals result in sanctioned unions, similar to your own marriage. Children are born and families grow to prominence. In fact, some families—including the Imperial Family Kassiopei, the oldest one in our recorded history, and a few others from Poseidon—are so ancient that they are said to have roots in the original colony of Atlantis.”

“Okay,” the boy persists. “But how young do you have to be to begin to date, or get in a union, or whatever?”

“It depends. Some begin what you call ‘dating’ at sixteen, others later. A few, earlier. However, we do not encourage intimate relations before true physical and emotional maturity.”

I raise my hand.

“Yes, Gwen Lark?”

“What determines maturity?”

Nefir suddenly smiles at me. “An excellent question as usual, Candidate. We prefer to consider each individual and their situation on a case-by-case basis.”

* * *

After class is over, we head down to eat dinner. I am still flying high after my successful day, and according to Laronda my bruised cheek is already turning bluish.

“Heh, badge of honor,” Dawn says.

I nod and cannot help grinning.

Before we make it to the cafeteria, which smells like garlic and French fries, I see a familiar face in the lounge.

There’s my sister Gracie, sitting in a well-padded chair with her feet up, and looking like a mixture of “determined” and “a little lost.” She’s wearing her black sequined sweater and dramatic dark mascara. Her token blazes red in high contrast.

“Gwen!” she cries, and waves to me nervously.

“Oh, lord, Gracie! Where have you been?” I exclaim, approaching her in a hurry. “I’ve been looking for you for days, what happened?  How are you? Everything okay?”

But Gracie stares at my bruised cheek. “Yeah, I guess. . . . But oh no, what’s that on your face?”

I tell her about Combat. “Just like Gordie, I’ve got a shiner that matches his own—have you seen his?” I say with a smile, running my fingers though her dirty-blond hair to fix a few loose tendrils around her ear.

She cringes away from me initially. “Hey! Stop fussing like Mom.” And then her face takes on a familiar frown as she remembers. . . .

“Sorry,” I say, letting my hand fall. But I am still smiling.

We stare at each other, and it’s amazing, but my little sister appears almost grown up, with her tired pale face and serious focused look.

“So tell me, how are your classes?” I ask, when I really want to be asking, Have you been hanging out with that guy Daniel all this time?

And then, seeing Dawn, Hasmik, and Laronda waving from the Cafeteria doors, I add, “by the way, let’s head in to grab some food, okay? I skipped lunch, so I’m starving.”

Gracie nods, and starts telling me all about their sword fighting Combat class and the weird amazing multiple swords and knives of different shapes and lengths they have over there, as we go in to the Cafeteria together.

We occupy a table in the corner, away from the loud alpha crowd tables in the middle of the room.

Today they’re serving hot sandwiches. Dawn goes up to the food server and asks for a special plate piled high with just cheesy fries, for all of us to share.

“Ooh, yum-m-m!” Gracie reaches for a very long fry and suddenly points it at me in what looks like a blade weapon position, before reversing and bringing it up to her mouth.

“Look at you!” I say, and my lips curve upward.

“Red Quadrant—we’re the warriors!” Gracie announces proudly.

“I can totally see that.” Dawn chews her own fry and dips it in ketchup. “And ooh, look, blood.”

Gracie starts to giggle and then grows serious. “I really should be eating over at my own Red Dorm, but I suppose it’s okay this once,” she clarifies. “Did I mention, we’re supposed to have strong allegiance to our own Quadrant, and not really associate with others—”

“Yeah, I think you Reds mentioned it before.” I nod, lifting my glass of milk to wash down the French fry taste in my mouth. “Seriously, what’s all that about? How come no one here in Yellow really makes a big fuss about Candies socializing with other Quadrants?”

Gracie shrugs. And then she remembers something else. “Oh, Gwen! What happened to you yesterday? I heard—Logan said you got punished by that awful scary Atlantean dude who’s in charge of everything—he didn’t hurt you, did he? I mean, that was you, right?”

“Yeah, that was me.” I shrug, and tell her the same abbreviated version of the disciplinary action.

“Your sister got in trouble—she try—she help me, and I’m so sorry,” Hasmik says to Gracie with an anxious look, reaching with her hand to pat me on the arm.

“It’s over, don’t worry about it,” I tell her, and change the subject. “So, what else did Logan say? Any other meaningful news?”

Gracie takes another French fry and pokes it into a puddle of ketchup. “They say—” she looks up at me—“I mean, some guys in Red say that there is good reason to think that the awful shuttle explosion thing was caused by this scary terrorist group called Terra Patria. . . .”

“Oh yeah?” I glance up at her. I recall that Terra Patria is one of the many fringe groups that had emerged during the early days of this whole asteroid and Atlantis end-of-the world fiasco. It is strongly anti-Atlantean and has claimed responsibility for quite a few incidents over the past months. Terra Patria is a dangerous mix of home-grown extremists and desperate crazies. Or so we’ve been told in the media. One thing’s for sure, neither the President nor Congress approves of their actions.

“Terra Patria?” Laronda says. “Aren’t those guys total loonies?”

“They blow up buildings and vans rigged with explosives, wherever Atlanteans may happen to show up,” Dawn adds. “So yeah. Dangerous hate group.”

Gracie glances at Dawn. “Well, maybe they kind of have a good reason for hating? I mean, we’re Earth natives, we were here first. And these strangers arrived out of nowhere from the stars, claiming to be ancient Earthlings too, and supposedly they can save us from the asteroid—”

“Why does everyone always think they’re the first people at any given place?” Dawn shrugs in minor disgust. “There’s always someone who’s more native than you. It’s just how it is.”

“How can you say that?” Gracie exclaims. “I mean, obviously people of Earth have more rights to this planet than some unknown strangers! Who can argue that we are real Vermonters or Pennsylvanians or New Yorkers, and not some space-faring creepy Goldilocks—”

“Gracie!” I say. “Since when do you use that word, Goldilocks? It’s kind of racist.”

“I can use it if I want to! I’m an Earth native and proud of it!”

“If you want to talk about being native,” Dawn says, “I’m Native. Member of the Oneida Nation, in New York. That goes for all the American Indian Nations—we’ve been here way before most any of you guys arrived, white, black, polka-dot, whatever. Sure, we’re Natives of the land, but we share it with you now.”

“Wow, I didn’t know you’re Native American,” I say. “That’s really cool!”

“Yeah, whatever.” Dawn again shrugs. “My point is, Terra Patria is dangerous, and their extremist ideas mostly suck.”

“Not to mention, it’s such bad timing, if they’re responsible for the shuttle explosion,” Laronda adds. “Not only did they kill innocent people in that shuttle and achieved nothing, they also got this whole RQC under suspicion. The other day the Correctors searched our dorm, and who knows what they did or didn’t find?”

Gracie glances at Laronda, and I can tell my sister is disturbed, by the way she blinks a few times nervously. “They searched my dorm too . . . all the Red Quadrant dorms, when we were in that horrible mass Combat class in the Arena Commons building.”

“So, did they find anything?” I say.

“I’ve no idea. . . .” Gracie looks at her plate, picks up the remaining half of her roast beef sandwich and bites in.

I wonder what’s going through that head of hers.

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.” Laronda picks at her straw and slurps the dregs of ice on the bottom of her soda glass.

* * *

It’s a quarter before 8:00 PM. We’ve sat around, up on our dormitory third floor, chatting on our beds, but now I say bye to the others and walk with Gracie downstairs. While Gracie heads back to her dorm in the chill evening, I go in the opposite direction toward the AC building to keep my secret appointment with Aeson Kass.

I tell the girls I have running homework to do as usual, and hope to see Logan at the big arena track. Both parts are true, and I really do hope to run into Logan eventually, so it makes my story more plausible.

When I reach the Arena Commons and make my way upstairs to level five, and knock on the door of Office 512, there’s no answer. The shades are drawn over the large glass widow but there is no light. No one seems to be there.

I check the closest huge wall clock in the arena below, and according to it I appear to be seven minutes early. Okay. . . .

I mill around for another minute, stare at the dizzying panorama of the stadium, at the small figures of Candidates moving around below.

It occurs to me to try the door handle. It opens at my touch, and I peek inside, into the twilight darkness.

Should I be doing this? I think for a moment. But hey, the door was open, not my fault.

Oh yeah.

I blink, and step inside, and immediately see the lights of the multiple computer active display screens over at the observation center. There’s a soft hum of cooling fans and machinery, and the displays are live-streaming various scenes and images, so that the room is faintly lit because of it, with flickering light and shadows moving cross the nearest walls.

No one’s there, and I have a sinking feeling I probably shouldn’t be here by myself, but what the heck.

I approach and take a peek, leaning forward in the half-light. The closest displays, split into quadrants, show the compound, various sections of it. I see the airfield in one. . . . So, they repaired the surveillance cameras in that section, I realize with a jolt in my gut. Either that, or they were never actually damaged in the blast as Logan originally claimed.

I glance over, and other displays show media footage, various news channels from the outside, feeding current events. The sound is off, but the images of burning, looting, police in riot gear, are overwhelming. And the running marquees list locations and events in a perpetual scroll of shame.

I put my hands to my mouth as I see a huge explosion take apart a whole section of a skyscraper in some urban center.

While we’ve been safely ensconced in the artificial cocoon of the RQC for these past five days, things have gotten really bad out there.

I let out a shuddering breath and continue taking in the various news feeds, local and international. There’s some kind of huge demonstration in Moscow’s Red Square, and another in London in front of the Buckingham Palace where the King and the British Royal Family are hiding. . . . More demonstrations in the streets of Paris, Barcelona, Beijing, Stockholm, Melbourne. Everywhere, people are holding effigies of dolls in Atlantean metallic gold wigs and paper models of spaceships, and setting fire to them, while police advance in gear and tanks roll in. Other counter-demonstrations have Atlantean mannequins rigged as some kind of messianic figures, surrounded by halos ands religious symbols, while people hold up signs and scream at each other across militia lines.

“You are early, Candidate Lark.”

His cool voice sounds right behind me and I almost jump at the sound of it. How did he come up on me that I did not hear?

My temples are pounding as I turn around and Aeson Kass stands there, watching me with his intense inexplicable eyes. In the low illumination, the colors are faded but the angles of his face are prominent—lean jaw-line, high cheekbones, chiseled straight nose and barely curving brows.

He is impossibly handsome, I realize suddenly—painfully so. My lungs begin to constrict from the awareness, so that for an instant I cannot breathe at all. How did I not see it immediately? I thought him proud, distant, ruthless . . . strangely alien when he was injured and covered in blood during the crash . . . confident and attractive, yes, but most recently, terrifying.

But he is also beautiful. . . . From the shape of his sculpted body—concealed by the functional grey uniform, but oh, I can easily imagine it—to the lines of his face and all the way to that telltale metallic hair falling to his shoulders.

“Oh, sorry!” I mumble, because I must say something. “I tried the door and it was open, so I came in, hope that’s okay. . . .”

“Good evening,” he says. “Yes, that’s fine. I left it unlocked for you and Candidate Dubois.”

“Oh,” I say. And continue staring at him.

I am so glad it’s dark and he cannot see my face burning up, again, just as it did yesterday—except yesterday I did not know why it was happening and now I kind of do. But I also know that I am still furious at him, for the blunt and devastating things he said the last time. And for the fact that he is so hot and yet cold as ice—a paradox.

What’s the matter with me?

“It is better that you don’t look at those news images,” he says softly, putting one hand firmly on my upper arm, to guide me away from the computer screens. “The world—your Earth—it is a sorry place right now, and you do not need the distraction of knowing it, which can throw you off track. The process of Qualification is difficult enough without dealing with any of this.”

The touch of his strong warm fingers against my arm, it sears me. “Okay . . .” I mutter. “I did not mean to look.”

“Oh yes, you did,” he retorts, and I am not sure if he is mocking me or not. Again I feel a searing sense of being ripped open and consumed by fire, because yet again he can see right through me.

I am saved from needing to formulate a reply by the arrival of Blayne Dubois.

He knocks, fumbles with the door handle.

“Come in!” Aeson tells him. “And turn on the light on your way in.”

Blayne manages to open the door and pushes himself inside, struggling momentarily as the wheelchair snags on a small bump in the threshold. He flicks the light switch near the entrance, and I blink as the bright overheads come on.

“Sorry I’m late,” Blayne says.

“You’re not. She is early.”

And then Aeson uses tones to call the hoverboard to him. Standing upright, leaning against the farthest wall, the board rises and comes to a stop accurately before Blayne’s wheelchair.

Blayne knows exactly what to do, by habit now. He lifts himself by his hands and arms out of the wheelchair and lies flat on his stomach against the board.

I push the empty wheelchair out of the way, without needing to be told. Meanwhile Aeson makes the board rise and hover nearly upright, at an angle.

“Lark,” he says, while Blayne grips the board with his hands to stay on, so that his arms are shaking with the effort. “Come and hold it from this side. Keep it steady.”

And as I hold the hoverboard in place, Aeson glances at me briefly. “You’ve got a bruise. What happened to your face?” he asks, while arranging Blayne’s lower limbs against the board.

“Got hit during sparring in Combat,” I say, almost proudly.

Aeson nods, without looking at me.

“Put some ice on it. Or a paper towel dipped in cold water should work too.”

“It doesn’t really hurt anymore.”

But he is no longer paying attention to me. His focus is on Blayne.

“Tonight you are going to learn how to use the hoverboard as a defensive shield,” Aeson tells him. “There are three LM Forms involved. First LM Shield Form—using your lower limbs as much as possible to keep it anchored and covering you while you fight with your upper body. Second LM Form—combination of lower limbs and using only one upper limb at a time to position it to your advantage, to block your opponent, here and here, while one hand fights.”

He pauses, to point out various spots on the board where to maintain a grip. “And finally, Third LM Form uses both hands to hold the board while your lower body makes no contact with it at all—which means a great deal of upper body strength, since you will need to be able to support your own weight entirely while you manipulate the board as a shield. Basically you are hanging off the board in an upright position as dead weight and moving it too.”

“Okay.” Blayne nods and follows the movements with his own hands, testing the grip positions.

“Why are there so many LM Forms?” I ask. “Seems very complicated. . . .”

Aeson throws me a hard glance. “Why? They evolved for a very good reason. Wounded soldiers had to have a means of supporting their injured, variously incapacitated bodies while continuing to fight. The LM Forms of Er-Du are taught to all in the Fleet as part of basic training, because they are necessary. Limited Mobility is an honorable aspect of military training for an Atlantis warrior. Every soldier experiences it at some point, and it saves lives.”

“So, you fight on hoverboards a lot?” I ask.

“We spend a great deal of time on hoverboards. Fighting is only one of the many things we do. Now—enough questions, pay attention to what you’re doing.”

I grow silent and continue holding the board. I watch Aeson’s precise movements and Blayne following his lead. I try to concentrate, to memorize these new LM Forms, now that I know their importance.

Only . . . my mind keeps flashing back to the moment on the airfield when Aeson lies against me senseless, covered with blood and soot, his face backlit with the flames of the burning shuttle. . . .

* * *

The half hour is over, and Aeson Kass curtly dismisses us. “Same thing tomorrow. Be here at eight.”

As I glance from the corner of my eye, a soft repeating beep alarm sounds from the direction of the observation console center. A video message has come in on one of the screens, and Aeson turns to it, quickly motioning us out of the room. There’s enough time for me to see a caller’s face framed by metallic hair, as it appears on screen. I recognize it as belonging to one of the Correctors.

“Go, now!” Aeson raises his voice at us. He shuts the door forcefully, as soon as Blayne’s wheelchair clears the threshold. And the next moment, Blayne and I find ourselves outside.

“Okay . . . wonder what that was about,” I mutter.

“Atlantis business, not ours.” Blayne does not make eye contact as he starts to roll away. However, a few feet later he pauses, then turns back to look at me.

“Thanks for working with me,” he says, moving his hair out of his eyes in the usual mannerism, and craning his head slightly to look up. “Sorry you’re taking up your own homework time with all this LM stuff that’s basically useless to you.”

I walk after him. “Hey, it’s not useless at all. Didn’t you hear him explain it? These LM Forms are super-important!”

“Yeah, well.”

“I mean it!” I say. “I’m taking mental notes too, this can come in handy for anyone. Wish I’d known about it before.”

And then I add, “We’re kind of very lucky to be learning this actually. You are lucky. I think he really believes in you.”

Blayne continues watching me. “You think so?”

I nod.

“Then he knows nothing.” And Blayne turns away, starts moving, and this time does not look back.

* * *