QUALIFY: The Atlantis Grail (Book One)

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN (draft)

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

After a large and loud group dinner in a huge and noisy CA-2 cafeteria, during which Zoe Blatt gets to know my friends and we exchange Semi-Finals horror stories, we all make a beeline for the nearby pool. However, it’s seven forty-five, so Logan and I excuse ourselves, and pretend we’re going for a brief walk together.

“Hey! No fooling around, you two!” Laronda wags her finger at me and Logan. “Remember, they catch you, you be screwed, but not the way you’d like to be, if you know what I mean—”

“Oh, shut up, jeez!” I say with a grin.

And then Logan and I head outside, walk down the street briefly and find the glassed-in walkway that leads to the Atlantean offices section.

“What will you do while I go in there?” I say, pausing with him before the lobby entrance. “It’ll be at least half an hour.”

He shrugs with a brief smile, putting hands in his pockets. “No worries. I’ll find something to do.”

And then he turns and saunters down the street into the balmy night, waving at me.

“See you soon!” I yell back.

And then I go inside.

* * *

I tell the guard in the front secure area I am here for an appointment to see Command Pilot Kass, and he only asks my name, then buzzes me right through.

At the door of Office #7 I pause momentarily. Already my pulse is starting its familiar pounding race in my temples—ragged and wild and dangerous, in contrast to the languid sensuality I’ve just experienced with Logan. . . .

I knock, then hear his calm voice. “Come in.”

I open the door and a blast of slightly cooler air hits me. I see the now familiar machine room office, and Aeson is sitting at his desk.

His face is weary and dispassionate as he stares at a console screen, half-turned from me. But as I enter, he looks up immediately. I notice the slightly damp tendrils of his metallic gold hair and a sheen of sweat at his temples.

“Lark, it’s you—good,” he says, as his dark blue eyes immediately overwhelm me with their unblinking regard. And after a tiny pause, “How is your sister?”

“She’s okay, thanks,” I reply, and my voice sounds teeny and uncertain. “She is—doing her best, I suppose.”

“Come on in, come closer.” He motions with his hand.

I take two steps, and then there’s his desk.

There’s no other chair in the room.

I think he only realizes it just now. It occurs to me, he must not have many visitors in this relatively small crowded office. Else there would be another seat?

“Well. . . . There’s nowhere for you to sit, Lark, sorry about that.” He raises one brow, in an expression that comes closest to minor amusement I have ever seen him display. “For now, you may sit on the end here, if you like.” And he pats the surface of his desk lightly. “I’ll have a chair for you next time.”

I bite my lip and then use my hands to lift myself up. I perch on top of his desk, at the end farthest from him. My legs dangle down. Good thing I am wearing the baggy uniform pants. It feels surreal, and for that reason I forget to be uncomfortable.

“Let’s get to work,” he says, looking away as he reaches for a small box in a drawer under the desk, which I recognize as an orichalcum sound damper box—a soundproof container that neutralizes the effect of keying on orichalcum objects.