Chapter 33
I sprint past the crowds and the noise, and the guards watching us, along the narrow open path where the others are heading. I watch the back of the Candidate right in front of me as he runs up the spiraling staircase, ignoring the elevators, and I follow him and those before him. Just as many others come behind me.
It’s five flights up to the five level walkways. Our feet slam hard against the stairs, thundering, as we run upward. Fifth level is as far as I’ve been in this building. It is where the offices are, including Office 512. I wonder for a split second if Aeson Kass is in there now, watching us and our progress on his numerous surveillance consoles—watching me—as I rush past the fifth level walkway, and then head for the door that is labeled “Roof Access.”
I follow the teen in front of me and we take the stairs—he is doing two at a time—and then emerge outside up on the roof, into a strange flat area of concrete, a perimeter strip that goes all around the huge building structure, and alongside which I see many people. . . .
And Atlantean shuttles.
The wind is blowing. The morning sky is clear blue above, and the shuttles hover silently just a couple of feet off the roof, massive grey-silver oval birds, with rung ladder staircases hanging off. There are five of them, and I see that overhead, about a hundred feet up, five more wait in formation . . . and then another five more, two hundred feet up. Indeed, the sky is filled with them, like weather balloons. Altogether, it’s a stunning sight.
These shuttles are larger than the ones I have experienced before, at least three times greater in circumference, and I am guessing they function as mass transport buses.
Weeks from now, these same shuttles might be used to ferry those of us who Qualify up to the motherships. . . .
As I pause, still reeling in my mind, gawking in uncertainty, a uniformed official passes a hand-scanner over my token. “Shuttle number five,” he says. “Over there, Los Angeles. One weapon assignment, Yellow Quadrant.” And already he turns to the next person behind me.
I hurry in the direction pointed, and I see more officials with signs, each one bearing a number and city name.
I find the shuttle for Los Angeles and start moving up the rung ladder, seeing the clattering feet of the Candidate before me.
A sudden crazed stress-thought occurs to me. What about my brothers and Gracie? What city did each of them choose? Did they spring for the familiarity of L.A. also?
Inside the shuttle is a wide roomy interior resembling a long hallway with rounded walls of soft pale off-white color that bear faint lovely symmetrical etching designs. . . . Instantly I get a flashback to that night when I pulled Aeson Kass out of the burning shuttle, because these walls are exactly like the ones in that shuttle. . . .
“Move it, Candidate!”
I start awake and see an Atlantean whom I don’t recognize, but who could as well be one of the Instructors. “Take a seat,” he says, as he stands near the doors like a bored airline flight attendant, except with arms folded in a cold typical stance of his kind. His hair is long and metal-gold, and his attitude suggests he is used to command.
The shuttle hull interior is filled with rows of high-backed seats, at least twenty across, and five times that many more going back. The seats are filling fast. I hurry along the side aisles looking for open seats, find one in the back rows.
I sit down next to a much younger teen girl with a red token who looks back at me with a nervous frozen expression. As soon as I take up my seat—which is surprisingly comfortable, made with soft resilient material—another Candidate sits down next to me on the other side, another silent girl with a hard expression on her face and a blue token.
“Move it, move it, Candidates!” the Atlantean at the door says. “The longer you take, the less time you have.”
“Where are we going? Are we really going to L.A.?” a boy asks.
“You’re going to get your instructions as soon as we are up in the air.” The speaker is another Atlantean, this one a girl who looks a lot like Oalla Keigeri, beautiful and confident, only with a deeper tan and a more muscular built. She walks the aisles, and watches us as we take our seats, pointing to others to indicate empty seating space.
In less than a minute the shuttle is full. The two Atlanteans engage controls that raise the ladder and secure the doors. A soft hum comes to the walls of the hull, and as I sit, mesmerized, I see the etched patterns on the walls come alive with golden razor-thin lines of light.
“Everyone, look down to your right and left and see the safety harness and belt,” says the Atlantean girl, lingering among us in the aisles to point things out. “Pull both sides of the harness toward you so it meets in the middle of your waist. Press the button on the side of your armrest and engage the harness lock. Do it now!”
As she speaks, the other Atlantean moves away to the door and goes to the back of the shuttle to what looks like a small command center with four seats. He takes the first pilot chair and turns his back to us.
We begin to fumble with our harnesses. I have a bit more experience with it, having seen this same harness engaged around the lifeless body of Aeson Kass. . . . I quickly find both ends, move them to the middle as instructed, then press the side button on the armrest. Immediately a strange thing happens—the two harness lines connect, then several more lines shoot forth like snakes and descend from around the back of the chair and seat from several directions, all connecting in the middle, and the round button lock captures them all and clicks in place.
I am as well secured as a birthday gift, ninja-wrapped with a dozen ribbons and a button bow. How weird!
The Candidates all around me take a bit longer, but eventually everyone is harnessed properly.
“Attention, everyone!” the Atlantean girl says, stopping before the front row closest to the door in which we all entered. “I am your Pilot Lirama Rikat, and he who sits in the other pilot chair far behind you is Pilot Mikelion Wasi. We will be taking off and on our way to Los Angeles in a few moments. As soon as we are in motion, I will give you the instructions for what you are expected to do there, in order to pass today’s Semi-Finals.”
She pauses, observing our tense faces.
“Take-off in thirty seconds,” Pilot Mikelion announces from the back. “Ready, daimon?”
“Ready, Mik—proceed!” she responds, then races to the back, moving with sleek easy motions, past our chairs, and grabs the second pilot seat next to the other occupied one in the back. We hear the click of her harness, a brief complex sequence of musical tones—someone, possibly the male pilot, is singing them in a deep voice, or maybe it’s only the sound of the alien Atlantean navigation mechanism engaging—and then the walls of the shuttle start to quiver lightly, as the general hum deepens. The golden lines of light start to move like liquid honey being poured, racing faster and faster along the etched channels in the hull walls. . . .
So, she’s astra daimon, I start to think.
But in that moment there’s a great lurch, and the floor seems to fall right from under me, while my head feels heavy suddenly, with a strange thick weight of extra gravity. I—and all the Candidates around me—we are getting squashed. We are pulled back deeply into our seats, and our harnesses counter-react with a buoyancy, so that there’s an impossible rubber-band sensation.
“Oh, no . . . oh, crap . . .” mutters some guy behind me.
We are falling—rather, we must be rising.
“Oh God, oh God . . .” the girl on my left gasps suddenly, and she looks like she is about to throw up.
“Are you okay?” I whisper, turning slightly to look at her, as my own head is getting sucked into the headrest with the force of many g’s.
“I hate planes,” she mutters. “I really hate flying! I had no idea this would be—”
“Hang on,” I reply. “Just hang in there.”
“How long is this flight going to be anyway?” another guy asks loudly from the front.
r /> “About ten minutes,” Pilot Lirama replies with amusement.
And then the pressure on our bodies seems to ease and the gravity normalizes.
“Wow,” a girl says. “This feels much better.”
“That’s because we are now outside the Earth’s atmosphere and in orbit,” Pilot Mikelion says cheerfully.
“We’re what?” a guy says. “We’re where? How? Why?”
“It is much faster and more efficient to fly through vacuum than the atmosphere, so we just go up, go around the earth, then come back down on the other end of the continent.”
“But we’re not weightless! How come we’re not—”
“The shuttle is generating artificial gravity.”
“Well f— me! We’re in outer space!”
“Oh God . . . I’m in space.” The same girl on my left looks like she is about to die.
“Well, yeah, what did you think was going to happen eventually if you Qualified?” A girl in the seat in front of her turns around with a mean glare. “We are all competing to get off this doomed rock and get to outer effin’ space and then Atlantis!”
“All right, your attention, everyone!” Pilot Lirama engages some kind of audio-enhancing tech and speaks into an amplifier, so that her voice carries crisply throughout the shuttle. “These are your instructions for the rest of the day. First instruction! We land in Los Angeles and you will be deposited and released thirty miles from the city center—commonly known as downtown. Each one of you will receive your weapons and in some cases hoverboards, according to your track sprint results. There are a hundred of you on this shuttle, but only a few Candidates will get hoverboards. Those of you who get them—hold on to them the best you can, because as soon as you’re on the ground, others can and will try to claim your hoverboards and any weapons or other equipment advantages you might have on you. Yes, it is allowed.”
She pauses, and we stare and listen intently, while nervous whispers move around the shuttle.
“Second instruction! Once you’re on the ground with your allocated items—weapon, hoverboard—you have one simple task. You need to get to the center of the city as quickly as possible, either on foot or via hoverboard—using just these two means. Word of advice: if you have no hoverboard, start running immediately, because 30 miles is a long way to go on foot. No other means of standard transport are allowed, including no urban transport—no cars, no buses, no bicycles, nothing. Also, you may not make contact with any of the residents, nor may you receive any help or medical assistance from them, no matter how hurt you might be. The penalty for disregarding this is Disqualification.
“The Semi-Finals is a race. You are racing against the clock—five PM, Pacific Time—and against each other. And the Rules of Conduct are, there are no rules—anything goes. You may work together in cooperation with one another, or you may fight each other for weapons and advantages. You may do whatever it takes, using all your training and skills, and you may kill. In fact, many of you will be killed today, because there are several difficult and fatal obstacles along your way.
“The City of Los Angeles has been specially prepared for your Semi-Finals Race. It has been divided into several circular zones, hot zones and safe zones, separated with fence boundaries. To pass from one zone to the other you will have to scale the fence and get scanned by the fence sensors—so do not lose your ID tokens! Bright four-color light beacons are set up along the fence in short intervals, so that you will know a boundary when you come to it. As you move closer to the center, you will pass from one type of zone to the other. If it’s a safe zone, you will face no additional dangers other than your fellow Candidates—each other. But if it’s a hot zone, you will be faced with random unpleasant surprises. Be ready for fire, snipers, explosives, booby traps, and other tough obstacles. A hot zone will only be marked with a red stripe painted on the interior side of the boundary which contains the danger. If you are lost, disoriented, or cannot decide in which general direction to move, scan yourself against any beacon and it will rotate and point to the center of the city like a compass.”
Pilot Lirama pauses for a moment, as though considering her next words. “If at any moment you decide you’ve had enough and want to give up—or are simply too hurt to proceed—you have the right to make the ultimate choice to quit the competition. To Self-Disqualify, simply remove your token ID, turn it over, and press the recessed button on the interior. It will transmit a signal and designate you as Disqualified, and also send a request for help, including a medical ambulance. I realize it’s a hard choice to make, but for many of you it will be the kinder choice today.
“Remember also, media cameras are everywhere, so every move you make, everything you do, will be recorded and transmitted nationally and globally via live video-feed. If you break the rules, you will be seen and Disqualified.
“Third instruction! Once you get to downtown, in the very center of the city there is a giant deep pool reservoir filled with water. On the bottom of the pool are hundreds of batons made of orichalcum. You must dive into the pool and come up with one of the batons. There are only enough batons for twenty percent of you—thirty people competing for one—based on the number of you from each RQC, who chose Los Angeles. Each Candidate is allowed only one baton, so you may not remove more than one from the pool or you will be Disqualified. At the same time, there will be transport shuttles like this one, waiting up in the air, about a hundred feet from the ground. Take the baton up to any waiting shuttle, either by means of a hoverboard, or by voice-keying the baton itself and making it levitate upward as you hold it. As soon as you do that, you will have passed Semi-Finals. The shuttle will take you directly to the National Qualification Center for the final Qualification stage and final training.
“Word of warning—all the shuttles leave all Semi-Finals sites at five PM sharp. If you are late, even if you have the baton, you will be Disqualified.”
Pilot Lirama grows silent.
We sit, stunned and overloaded with all the information.
And a few minutes later, we feel a sudden lurching sense of falling.
“All right, we are going down now,” Pilot Mikelion says. “We’re in orbit directly over Los Angeles. Hang on!”
And then the shuttle plummets. . . .
A very long few minutes later, we stop falling, and then come to a hover stop. The golden threads of light stop pulsing around the hull walls, the hum fades, and there is silence.
“We have arrived in Los Angeles,” Lirama says, popping off her harness and getting up from her seat. “You may now remove your safety harness by pressing the button in the middle. Then, get up and come line up at the exit door to receive your equipment. As soon as you are equipped, you head out! It is 6:30 AM local time, and because you’ve changed time zones, you’re lucky—you gained three extra hours of time, since the competition is based on local time. You would’ve had exactly seven and a half hours had you stayed in Eastern Time, but instead you have ten and a half hours! The clock starts now!”
“Wait, does that mean that people from the West Coast RQCs who chose an Eastern city have lost three hours?” a teen mutters. “Wow. . . .”
“Yeah, it does. And—unlucky break,” Pilot Lirama says, overhearing him.
Both Pilots proceed to the front, past our rows of seats, and open side compartments in the walls. At the same time the shuttle exterior door slides open silently, and Southern California early morning sunlight and clear blue skies greet us from the opening, together with a blast of lukewarm dry air, faintly tinged with exhaust and chemicals that constitutes local smog—a familiar childhood smell for me. The smog also carries fine particles of low-grade coastal radiation, which is relatively harmless for short-term exposure, but over time it can cause serious consequences—as it did for my Mom.
The ladder descends even as Mikelion begins the process of scanning our tokens. He gives a lucky few of us hoverboards, while Lirama hands out Quadrant weapons from the other compartment
—various firearms ranging from automatic assault rifles and semi-automatics to small handguns to the Blues, swords and knives to the Reds, protective armor in the form of vests, arm-sleeves, and other partial wearable pieces to the Greens, webbing, nets and cords to the Yellows.
When it’s my turn, I receive only a slim long cord folded like a lasso. Looks like it’s the best I get based on my sub-par running score.
“One basic Yellow Quadrant Weapon,” Lirama tells me. “Good luck.”
I also notice that as I get scanned, the Standing Score number and white background square on my uniform disappear, front and back, simply fading away, and there’s only the plain grey fabric. Same goes for every other Candidate who gets scanned—apparently our scores are wiped clean, and we are now anonymous blank slates.
Clutching my weapon I step on the ladder and descend outside into the growing early light of day.
The first thing I see as I hop down from the ladder stair is a wide urban panorama with the distant dot of high-rise buildings that indicate downtown L.A., the heart of the city, straight before me. I blink and squint in the sun glare. Some mornings start out overcast in L.A. but this is not one of them. I am on some kind of elevated hillside, covered in yellowed grass and native chaparral shrubbery.
Where are we exactly? In what direction from the center? I am not too sure, all I know is, we’re thirty miles from downtown.
There are other Candidates milling all around me, trying to get their bearings. I realize many of them have been deposited here by other shuttles, from many other RQCs from all across the nation. Wherever they’ve come from, all I know is, I don’t remember seeing these Candidates on my own flight. To prove my point, there are, at present, several shuttles hovering at various intervals along the large hillside, casting great ovoid shadows upon the sloping grade. Some are still unloading Candidates, others already rising and receding to specks into the aerial distance.
The Candidates—we are a varied, mixed bunch. Some of the Candidates stand, holding only weapons, while a few have hoverboards that they hurry to key to their own voices while giving wary stares to anyone nearby. Even as I watch, two guys are already airborne, up on their hoverboards and away from the rest of us, making hover circles from a safe distance, and then speeding away toward downtown, balancing skillfully on the boards.