Page 114 of Flickerstate

I pull out my phone and hit the flashlight. A weak white beam changes the stair shaft’s angles and shadows. Step by step, one hand braced on the wall, the other holding my phone in front of me, I descend. Vik and Candace follow.

I place my feet, my mind whirring like an overheated laptop. We found the second locked door open. Griffin must be down here somewhere. Did he come on his own steam? Or was he—taken? Coerced?Interferedwith?

We never found out whether someone was interfering in the Archive competition and, if so, who.

Mr. Davis?

He itemized Highwall’s papers. He must know about the Cruciform. But he’d also know that, per Highwall’s will, a few students every year would get access to the papers that could reveal theexistence of the machine. Was he manipulating the trials to make sure the winners included kids he could recruit as accomplices?

If he wanted Vik’s team to win, was he planning to recruit Griffin or Mirabel?

During the trials, Griffin pooh-poohed Vik’s suspicion that someone had interfered with Sam Lu to make him cheat and get his team disqualified. But at the formal, Griffin admitted in so many words that he was scared someone had interfered with him around the time Jake disappeared. And Vik—Vik thought someone had interfered with him that night too.

Jake, Griffin, and Vik went to that party withMirabel.

Mirabel was looking for Griffin last night. If she found him, what did she do with him?

We saw a light in her section. That doesn’t prove she’sinher section. She could be down below. Waiting.

By the time I reach the landing, I half expect to find Mirabel just beyond the turn, grinning a too-wide smile, Griffin flanking her in a zombie trace.

That’s not what I find. I don’t find more stairs, either. The landing switches back into a smooth-floored tunnel descending to a yellow rectangle: an open door, a lit room.

“End of the line?” Candace whispers.

We keep moving. Our footsteps echo against the tunnel walls. As I’m worrying that whoever waits beyond the yellow light will hear us coming, I notice music, faint and crackling, like an old record player. The music’s classical, with violins. Lucky: It should cover the sound of our approach.

Bree’s phone alarm is classical too. She can’t be the only person on campus who listens to symphonies or whatever. But maybecandidatemeans something less sinister than I assumed? Maybe Bree’s down here working on a secret project Dr. Langmore selected her for. It’s possible, right? Bree’s smart, she follows vanguard nav research, her team came second in the trials. And Dr. Langmore invited Bree to office hours to discuss Bree’s research interests. Maybe, during that meeting, Dr. Langmore recruited Bree. Could Vik and Candace and I, keyed up by coincidences and our own shady break-ins, have jumped to paranoid conclusions?

Maybe.

I hope so.

I don’t believe it.

Close to the narrow door, I flatten against the cold tunnel wall, slide sideways toward the yellow light, and squint into the brightness. The room has a circular floor, thirty feet wide, with walls curving to a domed ceiling. The ceiling’s top is too high to see from this angle. The yellow light must beam from the ceiling’s highest point; it burns down on the bristling metalthingthat looms in the floor’s center.

The Cruciform.

A paper coffee cup stands on the floor beside the machine. It looks alien in the context, like an intern’s cappuccino forgotten in-frame on a horror movie set. A crescent of beige lipstick kisses the white plastic lid.

Two figures appear.

Mr. Davis walks into view, toward the Cruciform, carrying abody by the arms.

A moment later, carrying the legs—Dr. Langmore and Griffin.

***

My stomach twists.

I’m not surprised to find Mr. Davis here. As soon as I saw him sneaking a donor into the Archive after hours, heard his smug voice as he dangled the keys to the kingdom in front of her nose, Iknewhis stupid bulldog face was up to something fucked.

But Dr. Langmore?

After my detention, when I realized how angry she was that Secretary Tully planned to cut funding for the emergency beast-response services that protect people like my dad, I convinced myself she had principles even if she was a hard-ass. After we discovered she helped engineer the Cruciform prototype, I wanted to believe she’d genuinely agreed with Highwall that it needed to be dismantled. I wanted to believe she wouldn’t rebuild it.

My mistake.