QUALIFY: The Atlantis Grail (Book One)

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE (draft)

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Minutes later, I am lying flat on my back on top of my hoverboard, relaxed in that weird painful way that can only come from absolute despair added to absolute exhaustion. My eyes are closed, and I am listening to the water rise around us. What else is there to do?

"I really didn't think I was gonna die like this," Laronda says, lying on her stomach against the hoverboard, propped up by her elbows. "I mean, I knew I was probably gonna die, but not like this. Drowning is a crappy way to go."

"Every way to go is a crappy way to go," Jack mumbles.

"It's like, I wish we could plug this seeping hole in the gate somehow?" Laronda rolls her eyes and coughs. "Wish we could just board it up somehow and, well, you know, keep this air in this chamber, until maybe we can figure a way out—"

With a start I open my eyes.

"What did you just say?" I mutter, turning my face to stare.

Board it up.

Board, as in hoverboard!

A strange crazed sequence of thought explosions happens in my mind. Bam! Bam! Bam! Idea! A chain of ideas!

I sit up, then stare wildly around us—at a bunch of other dazed, freezing people levitating on top of their boards, as we slowly inch up toward the tunnel ceiling, forced by the inevitable rising water level.

"Holy crap!" I say. "We can use our hoverboards! We can use them all kinds of ways!"

Laronda whirls to me. "What? What! Did you come up with something?"

"Yes!" I exclaim. I am suddenly shaking. "But—but it's kind of insane, it's gonna be a bunch of weird things, and I'll need everyone's board for this—" I continue speaking in a crazed rush of words, as the idea takes hold and flowers, and other "baby idea" offshoots come, rapidly, wonderfully. . . .

Oh, if only I'd thought of it ten minutes earlier, it would have been so much simpler!

"Okay, everyone, first, I need you all to look around at the tunnel and find the deepest largest bubble pocket in the wall with a kind of small opening, just enough to squeeze through, but not bigger than the length of a hoverboard! Also it should be enough to hold several people with air to spare," I chatter in a crazed voice. "But make sure it's above water!"

"Okay, so, what are you thinking here?"

But other Candidates are already looking around, and moments later we have found a large, deep, cave-like pocket that recedes into the wall of the tunnel like a small appendage or auxiliary tunnel. Water has almost reached it, but not quite.

"Okay," I scream. "Everyone get off your boards and get inside! Hurry! I have work to do!"

"What? What?"

"Just trust me on this, damn it! Go! Go! Go!"

"Listen to her!" Laronda picks up. "She is Shoelace Girl!"

Candidates start hovering closer to the bubble pocket, and teens get off their boards, and huddle against the soggy slimy surface of the bubble. I stand on the ledge and look out, and make sure that the last reluctant person gets inside, including Claudia and Derek, who are no longer protesting, because, pretty much it's this or die.

"What next?"

"I am going to board us up here," I say. "For the next half hour, we will wait out this cycle and then Team D will be here and this chamber will have air again."