“Yeah, it was. But she’s still an id—”
“She was. She’s gone now. Have some respect, man,” Jared says. “We’re all in this screwed up crap Semi-Finals together, you might say we’re all idiots.”
Chapter 37
About twenty minutes later, as we still have no solution to getting past this hot zone boundary fence, I risk doing something a little crazy.
I approach one of the “recessed mushroom” drones that’s cleverly resting in its launch pad—or whatever the hole-in-the-concrete thing underneath it is. And then, taking a deep breath, I put my foot down on top of the drone.
“Hey! Watch it, there, careful,” Ethan says to me. He’s been observing me silently for the last few minutes.
But, nothing happens to me. So I press down harder with my foot, then take a step and stand on top of the slightly curving surface.
“Oh, no! What are you doing?” Zoe says. “What if you activate it and it explodes or starts firing?”
The drone is circular, curved slightly like an upside-down plate, or a classic warrior shield, only about four feet in diameter, like an oversized large manhole cover.
I stand with both feet on it, testing its resilience. There is lack of give, which is good.
And then I sing an F note, followed by the rest of the keying sequence.
Yeah, I’ve assumed this thing is made of orichalcum.
Everyone stares at me like I’m crazy. Candidates turn in my direction. Jaws drop.
With a soft lurch, the drone rises and hovers about a foot over the launch pad, with me standing up on its mushroom-cap shaped surface.
I balance with my hands, starting to flail slightly, and my usual terror of heights kicks in . . . plus I am not in my best physical shape right now. And the weight of the automatic rifle on my shoulder is pulling me off-kilter.
But I steel myself and sing the rising object sequence, my voice soaring an octave higher. The drone begins to rise, carrying me with it.
I start to close my eyes in that automatic response to the terror of vertigo. Soon I am rising over the barbed wire top end of the fence and over the beacons along the boundary.
As I pass the beacons, my yellow token flashes brightly as I get auto-scanned by the zone boundary. . . .
The choice before me is to go straight ahead and over the I-10 freeway with its six lanes of onrushing traffic in both directions, while balanced on top of a flimsy rounded slippery object not designed to be ridden. Or I can direct the “drone-board” to go to the right, over the Atlantic Boulevard traffic with half the lanes but equally-rush-hour levels of vehicles in both directions. Then I would still have to cross the freeway somehow, later, but under less pressure to stay upright on the surface of a flimsy drone. . . .
A Greek mythology reference comes to me. Scylla or Charybdis, Gwen Lark. . . . Scylla or Charybdis.
What would Odysseus do?
I think Odysseus would do the smart thing. . . . I bet he’d take the easier crossing on Atlantic Boulevard.
But considering that I am this close to passing out, this close to being on my last strength here, the smart thing would be just to go forward as far as I can, while I still can.
Damn, but I should have sat down on that drone instead of trying to balance on it while standing upright.
Well, too late now. . . .
I think this as I start moving the drone forward over the twelve lanes of freeway.
The next two minutes are the longest minutes of my life. The drone, with me riding it, sails very slowly over the San Bernardino Freeway.
I never look down, not once, only hear the roar of cars and semis below, the honking of horns, and feel the churn of air from the vehicles in motion cutting the wind tunnel right underneath me.
Just don’t think, don’t think.
Don’t look down.
Breathe. . . .
Finally, after an eternity, I reach the other side. Somehow I have managed not to fall off, and now the sidewalk of the other side of the freeway beckons, is looming before me.
I sing the descent and then the hover stop sequence.
I don’t so much jump off as I fall off the drone and collapse onto the sidewalk, hitting my knee as I land, and scraping my good hand that’s attached to the arm without the bullet lodged in it—the limb I can still use in its entirety.
I crouch, then sit on the concrete, right next to the hovering drone, and for about thirty seconds I simply breathe and breathe and think nothing.
And then I look back over the short pedestrian fence railing on this side of the freeway, and I see them.
Candidates riding drones, just like me—dozens of them—crossing the freeway.
Looks like I’ve set a trend.
“Okay, you’re officially crazy,” Jared tells me, as he lands his own drone two feet away from me. “But in a good way. Wow! That was brilliant!”
“You’re right, I am crazy.” I sigh, glancing up at him. “I had no idea it would work.”
“Well, yeah, who knew the drones would be dumb enough to let us ride them?” Ethan says, landing on the other side, followed by Zoe who is riding her drone while seated on it.
“Actually,” I say, “the Atlanteans probably had no idea we would be dumb enough to try something like that. So they never bothered programming the drones against this kind of thing.”
“How do you know,” Zoe says, “that they didn’t want us to do it? Maybe that’s part of our test, to think in weird new ways to solve tough problems?”
“Yeah, I suppose,” I say. “Could be.”
“So, now what?” Ethan stretches his long arms, swinging them side-to-side.
“Call our boards here, I guess. And send the drones back to their manholes.”
Ethan stares at me. “Huh? Can you do that? How can you call so far across the road? Will the voice keying work long distance?”
Obviously he doesn’t know.
“Yeah, she can do that,” Zoe says, rolling her eyes.
And so I send away the drones and call our three hoverboards. My voice rises cleanly over the noise of traffic, and in moments, the boards come sailing across the freeway expanse toward us.
Again, other Candidates stare in surprise and almost in dismay. Because the rest of the boards—their boards—are still stuck on the other side of the freeway, inside the hot zone. At this point, if these Candidates want to ride anything the rest of the way downtown, these drones that they used to cross the boundary are all they’ve got.
“How in the world are you doing this?” a girl says to me.
I shrug.
The good thing is, we’re in a safe zone now, and this is Monterey Park, according to a road sign. The bad thing is, I am not doing too well.
“Hey, so what was that thing you did?” Ethan asks me again as we get back on our three boards. “How did you sing loud enough for the boards to come to you from so far away?”
“I dunno, I have this talent, I guess,” I mutter. And then I watch as several teens try to emulate me. A girl sings a keying sequence at the top of her voice, leaning over the freeway guardrail. But her voice is not as precisely in tune as she could make it, and so her board remains inert on the other side of the freeway. Another boy tries the same thing, belting it out loudly, and again, imprecisely. . . .
Meanwhile, most people simply give up on their boards and sit down on their drones instead, rising in the air while riding these huge, black, upside-down dinner plates made of orichalcum.
“Better than nothing!” a wiry Asian kid with a Yellow Quadrant armband exclaims, laughing down at me as he zips away on top of a drone in the direction of downtown.
Zoe and I sit down on our board and rise up in the air, followed by Jared and Ethan on theirs. And this time, we can safely go much higher, above the treetops, without dealing with a projectile firing system trying to bring us down.
My vertigo seems less acute now, as we rise thirty feet above street level. Maybe bec
ause by now I am too faint to care about anything but staying awake and upright.
I put all my effort into singing the hover commands properly, focusing on the right notes and precision of tone.
We move southwest, crossing varied neighborhoods, and in about twenty minutes approaching the 710, the Long Beach Freeway, which runs north-south and apparently designates another zone boundary.
Because, yeah, I see the dratted four-color beacons every thirty feet, festooning the top of another chain link fence that runs parallel to the 710.
“Oh, damn . . .” Jared mutters, riding his own board right next to ours, feet dangling. “How much do you wanna bet this is another hot zone coming up?”
“Where are we anyway, East L.A.?” Zoe asks me. The dry wind whips her hair at this altitude.
We all stare down.
“I don’t know, not sure.” I barely find the energy to answer her, that’s how fuzzy my brain is at this point.
“Not quite,” Ethan says. “We’re just a few blocks north of it. . . . I think. It’s out of our way.”
“So, ready to cross the boundary?” Jared takes a deep breath and sings the notes to move forward. He’s the first of us to sail over the beacons and his red token flashes as he gets scanned.
Next, Zoe and I cross over, at least ten feet above the beacons and fence top.
Then, Ethan comes after.
As soon as we pass the boundary, we check for a red stripe painted on this side of the fence, and sure enough, there is one.
Which means, we’re in another hot zone.
Meanwhile, we see that many other Candidates are riding drones in the air around us. However, in addition to us, only a few are on hoverboards.
Lucky for us, the drones themselves don’t seem to care. Apparently, the “rules” of this particular hot zone don’t work the same way—don’t activate the drones to kill the hoverboard riders.
So . . . what do they activate instead?
Great, I think. What will it be?
What horrible new surprises lie in store for us here, as we get closer to downtown?
It occurs to me incidentally: At least some people figured out how to call their hoverboards remotely across that other freeway.
It doesn’t require a Logos voice, merely the ability to be both loud and precise, as Mr. Warrenson taught us in Atlantis Tech class, and as I’m sure the other Instructors in other RQCs across the country did also. It’s surprising how many people must have forgotten—or at least, did not extend the notion of auto-keying objects that were simply out of reach across the table from you, to the idea of doing the same thing from very far away.
Because, yeah, this was definitely something we were taught in Tech class, but we never practiced it across long distance. And getting it to work does require practice—which I’ve had.
But now, not even all these long hours of practice spent under the supervision of Aeson Kass, can help me maintain my strength.
Because I realize, as I direct the hoverboard forward, that very soon I will not have the strength to form the correct notes for the hover commands—even the most basic ones.
At the rate I am deteriorating now, I will soon be unable to sing at all.
And so, in a faint but still precise voice, I sing the complex sequence that removes the Aural Block from the hoverboard underneath me, and I tell Zoe that she can take over.
“The board is yours,” I tell her, with the dry wind bathing my face in energy-leaching heat. “I reset it, so that you can voice-key it to yourself again—before I pass out and we both crash.”
“Oh. . . .” Zoe looks at me with worry. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah . . . not really.”
Zoe nods, then sings the keying sequence in a sweet soprano. But she still looks at me seriously.
She lands our board for a moment so that we can switch seats, and she can move to the front. Then we rise and continue moving, this time with Zoe at the helm, singing the hover commands in her higher voice. I sit behind her, clutching the sides of the board with both hands, mostly my right hand, while my left feels like a heavy log of wood, a foreign limb mistakenly attached to me, an arm that belongs to someone else. . . .
Gracie, I think, engulfed in a wave of dizziness, hope you are okay, wherever you are, little sis. And George and Gordie, hang in there, just keep going, please . . . you have to make it, for me. . . .
For the first time it sinks in, the simple reality. And it fills me with darkness.
I am not going to Qualify.
Chapter 38
The first mystery of the new hot zone danger becomes clear about fifteen blocks into the zone as we pass thirty feet over East Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, and over what looks to be a green lawn-covered stretch of cemetery.
Snipers.
Bullets ring out all around us, and ricochet off distant concrete and buildings in the surrounding area.
“Oh, no!” Zoe shouts, and cringes automatically, pressing back against me as if I could protect her from a stray bullet. She then sings a sequence to increase speed.
From all directions I hear the shouts of other airborne Candidates as we pick up the pace and increase flying speed.
“Go faster!” Jared exclaims, as he bends forward, leaning in against the wind, and almost lies flat against his board.
About ten feet away in the air behind me, overhead, I hear a boy’s shout of pain, as a Candidate gets hit. His body goes limp, sliding down from the drone he’s riding . . . and he is falling. . . .
I cringe, and turn away and do not look back.
“Where’s it coming from? Who the hell is firing at us?” Ethan says from his board, easily matching our pace as he bends his knees in a wider stance for better balance while he remains upright.
“I’m not sure,” I mutter. Since Zoe’s driving and navigating the board and cannot easily take her eyes off where we’re heading, I am the one who must look around and try to get a bearing on our position.
“Do you see anything?” Zoe screams as another bullet zings nearby, cutting through the air, and almost touches us.
I look around as much as possible, but there is only a green stretch of lawn below, with tiny distant grave markers. I try not to look at what I know is the broken body of the fallen teen who was shot down seconds ago. Instead I observe a lone Candidate running on the street adjacent to the cemetery. The teen’s on foot, no hoverboard in sight, I think. Amazing that he managed to get this far simply by running. Or did he lose his hoverboard along the way? My feverish stupid thoughts trail off. . . . I am very sluggish now, and it is very hard to maintain any sort of proper focus.
“The shots—they’re coming from those multi-story buildings up ahead!” Ethan cries. “Past the cemetery!”
“Oh yeah, I see something,” Jared says. “A five-tier parking structure, and on the rooftop a bunch of black figures. They look like SWAT or riot police or something. With rifles! They’re the ones firing!”
“But why?” I say. “Why fire at us? That’s unbelievable. Why would the local police or whoever fire at what could be their own innocent kids competing to survive?”
“Maybe they’re not locals,” Zoe mutters grimly. “Maybe they were brought here exactly because they’re not, and told that by killing us and cutting down the numbers of Candidates overall—all of us competing for limited spots—they were improving chances for their own kids elsewhere?”
“That’s really sick.” I shake my head weakly. “But if that’s so, it makes sense.”
With bullets flying all around we manage to fly past the rest of the cemetery at breakneck speed, and then put some distance between us and the structure with the snipers on the roof.
Except for that one fallen boy, none of us are hit, maybe because those snipers were not trying all that hard to hit any of us—or at least that’s what I hope and tell myself. Because to think otherwise is much too dark, and I don’t think I can bear that line of thought.
&nb
sp; And then I remember, thousands of cameras all over the city are live-streaming us. Millions of people all around the world are watching. Multiply that by the number of cities involved in the process. . . .
Maybe the snipers just didn’t want to be seen doing what they were doing, by all those millions of people.
“Anyone know the time?” Jared calls out, as soon as we’re outside sniper range.
Balancing on his board, Ethan checks his gadget again. “It’s twelve-nineteen PM, local time. Lunch!”
“Heh, I wish.” Jared shakes his head. “Would be nice, though. To take a little lunch break detour from this Semi-Finals hell, go for some pizza, you know, maybe sandwiches. . . . Hey, I’d even settle for some crummy tap water.”
Zoe glances at him. “You do not want to drink L.A. tap water. Remember the yuck back at the Huntington fountain? Anyway, at least we still have plenty of time.”
“We have about four and a half hours,” I say. “That sounds great, and downtown is very close. But considering what might be ahead of us, I don’t know if that’s enough or not.”
Right now, what appears to be ahead of us is a stretch of park, and beyond it, a mess of freeways. We’re flying high once more, at least thirty feet overhead.
“Oh, man . . .” Jared says in awe, looking into the distance of curving and connecting roadway loops of concrete. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s a big honking freeway loop,” Zoe cries out. “I don’t remember what it is—the I-10, or maybe the I-5?”
Ethan puts a palm up over his eyes to stare. “The sign says it’s the Golden State Freeway. And the Santa Monica Freeway. I think it’s both the 10 and the 5 merging with the 101 which in this place happens to be the Santa Ana Freeway.”
“Holy—wow. It’s . . . it’s like they’re mating.”
Zoe snorts at Jared’s slack-jawed surfer dude expression. “Yeah, well. This is L.A., land of concrete road beasties.”
“Yeah, I know! But I’ve never seen ’em from the air like this. . . . Blows your mind . . . and not in a good way.”
“So, are we going over them now, or what?”
“See anything firing at us? If no, let’s do it.”
“We basically have to,” I say. “Downtown is on the other side.”