CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The rest of the day at the NQC is not particularly different from the RQC Semi-Finals training, except for the difference in location, scope, and individual Instructors. Suffice it to say that by the time dinner hour comes around, I am tired and starving.

I meet up with Laronda, Dawn, Hasmik, Zoe, and a few others to eat in one of the ten cafeterias scattered throughout the first floor terminal area of our Yellow Quadrant dorm. Zoe is in Section Thirty-Nine, so she would have to make a minor hike to meet us at our own nearest cafeteria. We decide to compromise and aim for a cafeteria that’s halfway between our Section and hers.

As we mill around downstairs below Fourteen waiting for a few more people before we head out to eat, I see Blayne’s wheelchair roll out of an elevator.

“I’ll be right back!” I say to Dawn, and then quickly walk toward him.

“Blayne!” I say, stopping before him. “Hey! Good to see you made it!”

The boy tosses his hair back out of his face and looks up. “Hey yourself, Lark. You’re alive. . . . Obviously.” But he has a lively expression. Since our training sessions with Aeson Kass, Blayne has taken on Aeson’s way of addressing me by my last name, and I find it kind of comforting.

“Yeah, it was touch and go there toward the end.” I make a snorting sound. “L.A. almost killed me. So, what city did you do yours in?”

“My personal hell was in Denver,” Blayne says calmly. “I chose it figuring I’d get mountains and heights, and hence more chance of flying at high altitude as opposed to being on foot. Which would have been the end of it for me.”

“Wow. I can imagine. . . .”

“Well, no, you probably can’t imagine it, not really, but I’ll humor you.” He gives me a crooked smile.

“So how was it?”

“Peaches and cream. No, it blew chunks the size of the Rockies. Literally. We were taken to the mountains and had to contend with sonic-boom-induced man-made avalanches. Yeah, those damn Atlanteans and their sound tech. . . . Overall, after hearing what kind of obstacles they had in the other cities, I still think I made the right choice—I’m here, aren’t I? By the way, I did beat out three guys for one hoverboard using, amazingly enough, the LM Forms. Happened right at the get-go when they unloaded us from the shuttles and suddenly it was all ‘Lord of the Flies’ meets the Battle for Helm’s Deep. Not even five minutes in, I think they ate a guy. . . . Anyway, if I hadn’t, I’d be screwed. The hoverboard saved my ass . . . and the rest of me.”

“That’s so cool you made it!”

“Yeah, amazing.” He smirks. “I’m pretty stoked about it myself.”

Is there just a hint of sarcasm there? I never know, with Blayne. The boy oozes sarcasm and dry commentary, so probably, yeah.

We pause, and there’s one awkward moment during which I want to say more things, while he just kind of looks at the wall or the people walking by.

“A bunch of us—we’re going to eat at Cafeteria Five,” I say at last. “I’d ask you to come with, but not sure you want to deal with rolling all that extra distance. Do you? Wanna come? Cause that would be great, if you like—”

Blayne cranes his neck slightly. His expression is slightly closed up, proud, calm, as he considers me. “Maybe another time, Lark. But—thanks for the invite.”

And with that he turns away and starts rotating the wheels with his hands in his quick easy manner. I notice he’s bulked up even more and his strong arms show it.

I sigh and return to where Dawn and Laronda are waiting for Hasmik and Tremaine to show.

In that moment I hear someone yelling my name. I turn and there’s a petite brown-haired girl with a red token running toward me, whom I vaguely recognize as Mia Weston from Red Dorm Five back in Pennsylvania—she hung out with Gracie.

“Gwen . . . Gwen Lark!” she barely manages to gasp out, and I see she’s struggling for breath. “Your sister! Oh my God! You need to come! Grace has been arrested! These Correctors showed up and took her away just now! She was just—she was—she told me to run and get you—”

Mia stops, then bends over to catch her breath, while I suddenly grow very, very cold and my own breath stops.

It just cuts off. . . .

And then my heart restarts with a crazy lurch. Temples start pounding and I breathe in with a shudder and exclaim, “What? Where? Where is she?”

“Come!” Mia cries. “She’s being taken to CA-2 . . . there’s a correctional facility there in the back of CA-2 . . . it’s right near the airfield.”

Which means it’s all the way at the end of the compound, two miles away.

I start running.

* * *

As Mia and I—followed by Dawn and Laronda—cut through four huge building structures, then race past the foot traffic along the street that stretches between Green Quadrant Dorm and CA-2, Mia tells me in short gasps what happened.

Gracie was at her girls’ dormitory floor in Red Section Fourteen. She was about to come down to eat with Mia and a few others, when suddenly four Correctors and several guards came in, and there was a Section lockdown. That’s when five people got arrested—three guys, and another girl, and Gracie.

Apparently, after the Semi-Finals, some of the sore loser Candidates who did not advance, went to the Atlantis Central Agency authorities and confessed to being a party to the sabotage of the shuttles at Pennsylvania RQC-3. And they named names.

All names.

Why did they do it? Probably because it was a last-ditch effort to get rescued, a kind of twisted attempt at getting a plea-bargain—information in exchange for Qualification. Or maybe, they were just dumb enough to think that they would be incarcerated at Atlantis, and get to escape the asteroid apocalypse in exchange for life in prison. Or maybe it was just pure malice. . . .

In any case, Gracie was named as one of the secondary conspirators, one of the Candidates who handled and passed one of the navigation chips around.

The Correctors took Grace Lark and Becca Marlin, the other guilty girl, away. At the same time, other Correctors were arresting the three guilty boys, one dorm floor below.

Gracie had barely time to cry out to Mia to get me—or get our brother George—before they took her away in handcuffs.

“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap,” I keep muttering, as I run. “Did they say where exactly she is being held? Or what will they do to her?”

Mia shakes her head, barely keeping up with me. “Not sure—but I think she may be Disqualified.”

Oh crap!

* * *

About twenty minutes later, staggering and gasping for air, we arrive at the end of the long CA-2 building. The glass walkway leads us into a rear portion of the building that is dedicated Atlantean office space on all four floors, while the correctional facility space begins in the very back, its end wall facing the huge airfield.

I burst though the double doors and into the short sterile lobby with a guard behind a glassed-off security area. He stops me with a calm glance away from his computer screen.

“I must see my sister, Grace Lark!” I exclaim. “She was arrested, and I need to talk to someone in charge right now!”

“Your name?

“Gwen Lark!”

The guard gives me a scrutiny then looks away and checks his console. I hear the keystrokes he makes through the crazy pounding in my head.

A moment later he looks up. “Grace Lark has been detained until tomorrow morning when she will be taken from this compound together with the other Disqualified Candidates.”

“What?”

“I believe her belongings are being picked up right now. Fortunately for her, her charges were secondary, so she will not be prosecuted by the ACA, simply discharged to return home.”

“No!” I exclaim, while my throat starts closing up with the pressure of tears. “No! She cannot be Disqualified! She can’t be! This is just—no! I must talk to someone right now! She is twelve! She’s just a stupid little kid who made a bad mistake! She is not a terrorist, she didn’t even know what she was doing! Look, she was trying to impress a boy! That’s all! Just an idiotic prank! She has no idea about any of this—”

“I am really sorry, Candidate,” the guard interrupts my tirade, and his gaze softens slightly seeing what a mess I am. “But your sister—she has been caught committing a serious criminal act that is punishable. There’s nothing I can do, she broke the law.”

“Is there any—any kind of thing—or process—or anything that exists to—to—”

I find that I am crying. . . .

Tears are running down my face and my nose is full of snot, and suddenly I can’t see anything. . . . Someone’s gentle hand presses against my back lightly—Mia? Laronda?

I stand, taking in deep shuddering breaths while the guard watches me kindly. He might have kids of his own, it occurs to me, he probably knows what it’s like. . . .

“If you want to come and see your sister tomorrow morning around eight AM, before they put her on the shuttle, that should be okay,” he says.

I take in another deep shuddering breath and I stop crying.

A wall of silence slams down.

“No,” I say. And my voice is suddenly very steady. It belongs to someone else.

I wipe my face with the back of my hand and look at the guard with a dead expression.

“No, I do not accept this. I demand to see Command Pilot Aeson Kass.”

* * *