Qualify (61 page)

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.

T
he 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.

And then it begins.

More Candidates are still descending from the shuttle that brought me here when the first screams come.

An older muscular girl has just attacked another teen, and has taken away his hoverboard. The young kid, probably an eighth grader, sits on the ground, rocking from the pain of a hurt leg, while the attacker, up on his former hoverboard, is rising up into the air without a second glance.

“What a bitch!” another girl with long stringy reddish hair and freckles says expressively, a few feet away from me. She wears a green armband, a green token, and carries a small armor vest that she didn’t even have time to put on. And her accent is either British or maybe Australian, but I cannot tell which because, yeah, I am that much of a doofus, I know, sorry.

In any case, I agree with her assessment. For a moment I consider if I should approach the boy who’s down to see if he needs help, maybe. And then I see the two Blue guys with guns about twenty feet away. They are older, hard-faced, and I suddenly get a bad feeling as one of them starts loading a magazine in his assault rifle while looking at us.

“They did say we should start running,” I mutter, just as the first of the Blues takes aim in the direction of another batch of Candidates who are wisely sprinting away in the general direction of the center of L.A., which happens to be downhill.

“Run!” cries the red-haired girl, in the same moment as shots ring out and echo across the panorama.

Our own shuttle takes that very moment to swoop directly up, having released the last of the Candidates onto the hillside.

I start running downhill, running for my life.

Chapter 34

I
feel my breath catching as my feet pound and slide against the crumbling gravel and dry grass, and I come rushing down the hillside in the direction of the nearest highway. The girl who cried warning is running about twenty feet away from me, her stringy hair tangling in the breeze.

More shots and cries sound behind us.

Down, down, down, I go, past shrubs, and rocky inclines, barely missing sharp branches scraping against my loose uniform pants-covered legs.

As I run, a sense of despair comes to me, together with the realization of the immense distance that is before me that I will now have to cross on foot.

Because I don’t have a damn hoverboard.

Could Gracie and Gordie and George be here too, also running for their lives? Are they here now, somewhere on another distant Los Angeles hillside, maybe? Or did they choose some other cities?

For that matter, where is “here?”

From the looks of it, I make a wild guess it’s somewhere east of downtown, with the Pacific directly beyond it, as I’m facing in that direction.

I need to get my bearings, and quickly. . . .

Think, Gwen, think . . . try to remember. . . . This is L.A.

A vague memory comes to me. Mom and Dad had once mentioned some kind of 30-Mile Studio Zone which is a circular area used by old-time Hollywood film studios for union work zoning purposes. If I remember it right, this is the exact 30-mile radius around the center of Los Angeles, and the boundaries of this zone run in a circle pretty much where the Atlanteans have deposited us. So, if I am in a spot along that boundary to the east of the heart of the city, then I am most likely somewhere in Anaheim, or possibly further north in Fullerton, or Pomona. Had I been even higher up north along the circle boundary, I’d be in the middle of Angeles National Forest, but I am not, since I can definitely see populated areas at the foot of the hill.

One easy way to get my bearings is to find the nearest major freeway artery. Once I see it, I will get a better idea of where I am.

Needle in a haystack, is where I am.

This is hopeless.

This is hell.

You are dead.

Breathing fast, clutching the cord lasso in one hand, I keep moving at a light run down hill, and there is definitely a freeway up ahead.

At the place where the shrubbery ends, the hillside runs into a fenced area overhanging a multi-lane freeway. A couple of Candidates are milling around, looking dejectedly at the impassable section of concrete wall overhanging the freeway. The girl with long stringy hair and freckles is one of them. She turns around at me with a nervous glance.