QUALIFY: The Atlantis Grail (Book One)

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE (draft)

"Oh, good grief!" a Candidate exclaims. "That's insane!"

But Radra continues, ignoring the outburst. "Every half hour, the locks and floodgates activate, starting a new 'lockout wave'—removing water from the next chamber in the sequence and flooding the chamber you are presently in. At that time the gates between the two adjacent chambers are open, allowing passage from one to the other, while the water drains. You must time your movement so that you are always ahead of the floodgates, because if they close with you inside, the chamber will flood and you will drown—"

"Oh no, oh no!" There are more outbursts of protest from everywhere in the shuttle.

"The floodgates are marked with four-color beacons, and your ID tokens will be scanned as you pass each one. It is recommended you stay close to your team members and work together. For each team with the most surviving members, you will get a cumulative score that will figure in the formula that determines your final Qualification standing.

"Next instruction—once you have reached the last of the cavern chambers, which happens to be the central hub underneath ancient Atlantis, you will need to rise to the surface through a wide tunnel carved out of an underwater mountain. The original tunnel opening is unfortunately many feet underwater. But we have retrofitted it so that it extends to the surface of the Atlantic ocean, and it is the last leg of your journey. You will go through the opening and rise to the transport shuttles that will await you.

"The final difficulty you will encounter will be in that major central hub cavern. That's because every single team of Candidates from all the countries around the world will be converging into the same cavern. And the final sprint race for Qualification spots will happen there. Remember—only one half of you will Qualify. That means that you must move as fast as you can in those final minutes and fight for your place on the shuttles.

"Even if you arrive at the shuttle early enough, you will still be scanned at the entrance and allowed entry only if you have sufficient points—a minimum of 100 individual points plus an average number for your entire team—the higher, the better. This team average number will include missing or dead members whose points will be subtracted as negatives and will bring down the team average. As soon as the last shuttle is filled to capacity, the doors will close and anyone not onboard will not Qualify. Which means that, a day from now, at eight PM exactly, the shuttles depart Earth."

Pilot Radra pauses and then Pilot Ekit takes over. "Candidates!" he says. "Here is where I need to explain your team roles. All the Sections have been divided into four teams, A, B, C, and D, in order of achievement, as measured by points. And this determines your time of entry into the cavern system. Everyone on this shuttle is in team C. This means that you get to go in third in your Section. The first team A has an hour advantage over every one of the rest of you. Then comes team B with a half-hour advantage, then you, then team D that will go in half an hour behind you. Once we set you down in the entrance chamber, you will wait your turn."

"But that's unfair!" a girl in front of me says. "Even if we move as fast as we can, those other teams will still get to the central hub ahead of us, so what chance do we even have?"

"It's true, you will be in a later floodgate 'lockout wave' than teams A and B." Ekit acknowledges the girl's statement. "However once you're in the central hub, you will be surprised how much time you can make up in the struggle to advance to the surface."

"This sounds absolutely horrendous," another girl says. "What if we fall off the hoverboard, or get hurt, or get stuck in some awful dark tunnel?"

"Then you die," Ekit says. "Sorry."

"Oh, wow. . . ." The girl is rendered speechless.

A few seconds pass and Radra speaks again. "We are now about to return to Earth at your designated entry point. Everyone, brace for transitional gravity."