QUALIFY: The Atlantis Grail (Book One)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (draft)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Logan walks with me in the deepening twilight through the RQC compound, and in minutes I start to shiver, having once again forgotten to wear anything warm.

“Here,” he says, taking off his windbreaker jacket and handing it to me. “Put this on.”

“What about you?” I mumble.

“I’m not the one who’s covered in goosebumps.” He smiles at me. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to dress warm at night?”

I glance up at him, feeling a surge of warmth in my cheeks. I wrap his great big jacket around me and it covers me with sudden comfort. I inhale its pleasant scent of musky aftershave and something else that is uniquely him. “Thanks. I’ll give it back when we’re indoors.”

He only nods.

And in minutes we’re at the Arena Commons Building.

We enter though the glass doors into the outer mall-like area. There I note the time on one wall clock—it reads five minutes before eight.

The stadium is sparsely populated with Candidates. Occasional bursts of voices and laughter sounds from small clusters of teens walking by, or going to the track to run laps.

Some people are milling around the “food court” cafeteria.

Red, blue, green, yellow tokens everywhere. If I am not mistaken, some of those people are also staring at me.

Okay, what is it? Does everyone in the world know?

I pause walking and turn around. I blink.

There it is, the platform deck, in the back. It is about a hundred feet away, lit up brightly from the overhead electric lights, and it appears to be empty.

Logan watches me stand there, still shivering. I clutch the edges of his jacket around me with a white knuckled grip. “Gwen?” His voice is gentle. “You will be okay.”

I take a very deep breath and then purse my lips and exhale. “Yeah,” I say, “I know.”

I start walking to the platform with determination.

As I approach, I remove Logan’s jacket, and hand it back to him. “Thank you,” I say, with a single glance behind me.

“No sweat,” he says, receiving it from me, just as we reach the bottom scaffolding and the stairs to the deck that stands at least twelve feet above the floor. “Good luck!”

“Now, please go,” I say, looking down at him, as I begin to climb the stairs.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I really want to be alone for this humiliation, whatever it is.”

He nods, and I watch him from above, midway up the stairs, as he slowly backs away, still looking at me, then begins to walk back the way we came from.

I turn and climb the rest of the way to the deck.

Then I stand there, looking around at the panorama of the stadium arena.

It is eight o’clock and I am completely alone.

 * * *

“Candidate Gwen Lark, you are on time,” a disembodied voice says out of nowhere, and I start somewhat, looking around, and there is still no one there.

And then I realize the voice sounds slightly mechanical, because it’s coming from a set of speakers at the base of the platform deck. There’s a small crackle, but I recognize it as definitely his.