QUALIFY: The Atlantis Grail (Book One)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (draft)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I wake up out of a deep mind fog into soothing sterile twilight.

Such an impossible sense of peace.

Amazingly there is no pain, nothing at all. It’s as if everything has been erased into a bad dream that happened somewhere far away and long ago.

I lie on a soft bed—or what feels like a bed, or maybe a cot. There’s a comfortable pillow under my head. There’s a soft hum of equipment in the background. What appears to be a hospital curtain on rollers is hanging from overhead on one side to give my bed-space privacy.

My body is relaxed . . . everything, all my limbs, I can feel them.

I feel both my arms and my hands.

Oh wow, my hands! My wounded arm! They are whole and unharmed!

Last thing I remember is the fire agony of a burning terribly charred hand on one side and the dulled ache of a bullet-wounded arm on the other. What happened? How did I regain both limbs entirely?

I stir and make sounds. And apparently it is enough to bring someone by to lean over me, up close, and examine me. I blink, attempting to keep my heavy eyelids open.

The stranger looking down at me is an unknown Atlantean. He observes me with an impassive gaze, and then moves away.

“What . . . what happened? Where . . . am I?” I whisper, barely moving my lips.

But the next moment I see two familiar faces. George and Gracie are at my bedside, both rushing toward me. George leans in, grins and presses my arm very gently—yes, my fully functional arm!—and Gracie comes around from the other side to rest her head against my chest and hug me with both arms.

“Gently, gently!” An unfamiliar voice sounds, and I see it is the Atlantean man speaking. I am guessing he is a doctor or a med tech, because he comes to check the IV line in my arm—which I notice only now, because again, I have a fully functional arm there, amazing. “Don’t get her agitated, don’t suffocate her, now.”

“Gee Two!” Gracie mutters, raising her head from my chest.

“Finally!” George says. “Welcome back to the world of the living, Gee Two.”

“George . . .” I mumble. “Oh, thank God . . . you made it. What about Gordie?”

“Don’t worry, knucklehead’s here too. He stepped outside to get food. He’s fine.”

I start to smile in relief. “Typical Gordie. . . . So, where are we exactly?”

“We made it! We’re at the National Qualification Center!” Gracie says.

George pats my arm and hand lightly. “Yeah, and the Atlanteans fixed you up real good. See, all perfect.”

“But—” I say. “What about the bullet wound? And the burned hand, I thought it was all ruined—”

“Apparently they have medical technology we can’t even begin to dream of.” George lets go my hand and adjusts the covers around me. “When the L.A. shuttles came in and they brought you in to the NQC, their medical team took you away—”

“They were taking many others too, all the hurt and wounded Candidates who passed the Semi-Finals, hundreds of people—” Gracie interrupts.

“Yeah, and they took you and worked on you for a couple of hours. Then they told us you were sleeping it off.”

“How long?” I lift my hand that was burned to a crisp and look at the healthy skin and muscle and nails, open and close it, flex my perfectly formed fingers, as though nothing had happened to it. “How long was I under?”