Qualify (46 page)

“Then I had an idea. . . . It was from my Atlantis Tech class, about levitating orichalcum objects. I remembered the note sequence. So I started to sing.”

The Corrector watches me in tense silence. “Impossible. . . . What did you sing?”

I tell them the notes I used, a major sequence starting with F, then A, and C.

The Correctors look at each other then stare at me.

I stare back.

There is a very long pause. . . .

“All right. Assuming what you say is true, describe exactly what happened,” the seated Corrector says.

“After I sang the sequence, the shuttle stopped falling and hovered over my head. I continued singing, because I was too afraid to stop. Then I moved out of its way. And then I sang the notes to make levitating objects come down. It came down.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, it just
did
. And then, just as it stopped a few feet above the ground, all the lights suddenly went out, and it went dead. And it sort of fell the rest of the way down. . . .”

“And then?”

I take another deep breath with a shudder. “Some kind of hatch opened. There was a stair that descended. And then there was a whole bunch of black smoke.”

“Did you at any point attempt to call for help?” The Corrector watches me with an unblinking gaze that is somehow more horrible because it is so bland, so perfectly neutral.

“There was no time. I saw people running in my direction but I didn’t think they would reach the shuttle in time. . . . So I went in.”

“So you went inside the shuttle that you yourself brought down in order to finish what you had started—to kill the occupants? Or was it to steal more navigation equipment? Or simply to cover your tracks?”

“No!” I feel despair and anger rising in me. “No, I went inside to see if I could
help
someone—anyone!”

“What was—inside?”

“
He
was inside! Your Command Pilot Aeson Kass! He was out—unconscious . . . in his chair, covered in blood . . . his head, the side of his face, his hair, everything . . . and there was a fire . . . burning in the back . . . near the floor, I don’t know . . .” I speak in quick chopped sentences, as an emotion I have no words for is rising up to choke me, and I have no air in my lungs. My hands are squeezed into fists under the table, and now I am shaking full body.

“What happened next?”

“I got to him . . . got him out of the chair, dragged him outside.”

The Corrector leans forward closer to me across the table. “Are you saying that you, a slender girl with no muscle mass, was able to carry a tall muscular young man almost twice your size, and then get him down the stairs on your own, in a matter of minutes?”

“Yes!” I gasp, while tears begin running down my face, and suddenly everything is swimming in my field of vision, and the world blurs, like rain outside the window. . . . “And no, I did not
carry
him, I dragged him! Do
not
—do not put words in my mouth! I pulled and dragged him outside the best I could, yes! And he was heavy, yes, but I wasn’t going to just leave him—”

In that moment the door opens and Aeson Kass storms into the room.

“
Enough
,” he says in a hard voice, looking at the Correctors. “Outside, both of you,
now
. I will handle the rest of this
interview
.”

There is a pause. The Correctors then incline their heads in acquiescence and depart the room.

As soon as the door shuts behind them, Aeson turns to me. He places both hands on the table, slamming them down, and he stands, looking at me like a demon.

I tremble. . . . Tears are now pouring down my face in a torrent, and I take a few shuddering gasps of air.

“Tell me
exactly
what you did.”

His voice—it is soft and precise and devastating.

I look up at him, my eyes held wide and motionless by sheer willpower. I raise one hand, still clenched into a white-knuckled fist, to wipe my red running nose and cheeks with the back of it.

“What I
did?
” I say and my voice breaks. “I hauled your damn, bloody, passed-out ass out of that burning shuttle, is what I did!”

He watches me and does not blink. Several seconds pass.

“Tell me how you found me. Where was I in the shuttle?”

“You were in a chair. In some kind of harness. You were slumped over.”

“And how was I hurt?”

I stare at him, and my gaze automatically slides to the place on the side of his head where I remember seeing all that blood. “Your head. It was on that side, and there was a lot of blood.”

“Where? Show me. . . .”

I hesitate.

His hand slams the table, hard.
“Show me!”

I partially rise from my seat and extend my right hand, moving my trembling fingers to point to the spot. His metallic hair, it is falling forward as he leans over me . . . and so I touch it lightly, feeling its strange alien texture.

“Here . . .” I say. “And here. . . . There was so much blood, and it stained all of your face, and your hair too.”

He blinks. Just once, at the lightest touch of my fingers against the blond tendrils. . . . But his lips are held in an implacable line.

“Why should I believe you?” he says suddenly. “Why should anything you tell me exonerate you?”

“Because it’s the truth!”

His eyes narrow in fury. “Oh, it’s
truth
, you claim? How well you are playing me even now—have been playing me all along, with your little innocent act!”

I stop sniffling and my mouth falls open as anger rises to drown out the despair and the fear.

But he continues, and his face hovers above mine as he leans in yet closer, full of dark sarcasm. “It becomes clear now, how you’ve insinuated yourself with all the Instructors. . . . Such a clever little teacher’s pet! So creative, so many bright ideas! Sweet little girl with such pretty earnest eyes . . . such sweet rosy lips . . . except when they’re spouting pure bullshit!”

I make a stifled sound, in a helpless mix of outrage and terror. Both wild horrible feelings are warring inside me, and it’s like I am temporarily set on “pause” until I can resolve what emotion is uppermost.

Meanwhile, he steps around the table and suddenly pulls me up out of my chair. His grip on my bare wrist is painful, and my jacket slides down and ends up halfway off my shoulders as he holds me there with his other hand, scalding fingers digging into my bare skin, bruising my shoulder.

I stumble backwards, and he pushes me hard against the wall, breathing into my face. “Tell me,
Gwen Lark
, what group are you affiliated with? Terra Patria or the Sunset Alliance? Or wait, let me guess, neither—for you are far too clever to be a pawn of such narrow-minded small-scale idiots. So I am guessing you are working with some bigger fish. So tell me, which is it?”

“I am not!” I gasp, half-turning my face away as his warm breath washes over my cheek, my neck. “I am not working with anyone!”

In answer, his grip on my shoulder hardens, at the same time as he squeezes my wrist until I cry out in pain. . . . Like a serpent his voice hisses in my ear. “Who trained you?”

“No one! No one trained me! Stop it! Let
go
of me!”

Just as suddenly, he releases his hold and steps back away from me. He is breathing hard, and his eyes are strangely dilated, dark pupils overtaking the blue.

But in seconds he composes himself. His body straightens and he is again remote, and cold as ice, as he stands watching me.

I, too, strand up straight, move away from the wall, and pull up my jacket back over my T-shirt and my bare arms. I glare at him.

“What can I say to make you believe I did nothing wrong?” I say in despair. “What kind of proof do you need?”

“There is nothing you can do or tell me now that I will believe ever again,” he says. “Not until I can discover hard undeniable facts that point otherwise. Can you give me such facts?”

“I—I don’t know. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Ah. . . . Then, keep playing,” he says softly.

“Holy lord!”

But he shakes his head in disgust.

My hands form into fists. “What are you going to do to me? Am I Disqualified?”

But he says nothing and starts to turn from me.

“Wait!” I exclaim. “What is going to happen?”

“You are going to be questioned continually until we have the information you are withholding.”

“You mean, interrogated until I ‘confess’ to something?”

“Yes. You will remain here in custody until you do.”

I begin shuddering again as another wave of emotion strikes me, overwhelming with cold.

He starts to go, then pauses for some reason, and turns again to look back at me. “Tell me one thing at least,” he says. “When you got me out of the shuttle chair, how did you release me from the flight harness?”

“What?” I frown. “The what? Oh—there was a weird button. I squeezed it together, and it collapsed the harness.”

He cranes his neck slightly and his gaze stills on me. “Thank you—for telling me at least one honest thing.”

And then he leaves me alone in the sterile chamber.

M
oments later two guards return and I am taken outside into the empty hallway, and made to walk about fifty feet to another door. A guard opens it, and I am pushed inside.

This room is a replica of the first, an exact square, except it has a narrow cot against one wall, topped only with a thin mattress, a pillow and blanket. A toilet stands in the corner.

The door shuts behind me.

Oh, great, this is my first actual, honest-to-goodness real prison cell.
Congratulations, Gwen Lark, terrorist conspirator and Criminal Mastermind—at last, you’ve arrived
. So, looks like I am going to be here for a while.

I sit down on the cot and stare at the four walls around me. I rub the back of my hand across my nose and wipe the sticky residue of drying tears and yeah, snot. So not attractive.

Then, it occurs to me, pretty soon, at some point, I am going to have to pee. In the presence of surveillance cameras. . . . Ugh.

I have no idea how much time passes, but it feels like at least an hour.

All along, my thoughts race deliriously, and I think of my brothers and Gracie, and Mom and Dad. . . . I guess I’ll be going home now. Or, maybe not—Disqualification is only one of my current problems; I might be greeting the asteroid apocalypse in a prison cell.

Or worse—depending on the severity of the Atlantean criminal system and corresponding punishment for my alleged crimes, I might not even live long enough to see it.

Shivering, I get up, trying to shake off the despair. I stand, stomp my feet, move around, sit back down again. There are absolutely no sounds outside the long hallway corridor, not even rare footsteps.

What feels like another hour passes. Or maybe it’s only been fifteen minutes. I have no idea—it’s all hell.

At last there are footsteps and someone comes to the door.

The door opens, and a guard walks in, followed by my brother George. “You have ten minutes,” he says, then steps outside again, locking us both in.

George looks nervous and very grim, as he immediately moves toward me.

“George!” I exclaim. And then my tears start pouring again, like a gusher.

My older brother puts his arms around me and I smell the sweat and faint aftershave from his familiar clothes as I bury my face against his jacket front.

“Okay, Gee Two, what the
hell
is going on?” he mutters. “What have you done? Or better to say, what did you get yourself into?”

“Nothing!
Nothing!
” I say, moving back to wipe my face again with both hands. And then I grab George by the jacket front and hold on for several breaths until I regain my ability to speak instead of blubbering like an absolute wreck.

“What’s that on your cheek?” He frowns, examining the side of my face with its dark bruise. “Did they do this to you?”

I shake my head. “No, it’s just from sparring in Combat. It’s nothing. Just stupid—”

“Okay, let’s breathe. . . . And tell me.”

We take deep breaths. Or I take deep breaths and George just stands there and lets me recover. Then we both sit down on my cot.

“Okay, listen. . . . I did absolutely nothing wrong. But—but—they think I am a terrorist of some kind, because they matched my voice to—to—”

“To what?” George stares at me in confused worry. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, and when your dorm friends came running to get me, they weren’t making much sense either, except that you got arrested somehow. And now Gracie’s freaking out—she’s back at her dorm and swears she cannot deal—you know how she can be, total drama queen. But anyway, right now, we’re all here, your friends, Gordie, everyone’s outside the building. . . . We wanna see if there’s anything we can do to help. But—but you need to explain what happened, okay? Why on earth would they arrest you? Surely not for mouthing off to their big shot VIP, or whatever you did in that Combat class to get you disciplinary action? Is that it?”