Page 20 of Flickerstate

“At another school, your request would be appropriate. But at the Academy, we learn navigation by navigating. You’re the best of the best, so we expect more of you. Since you were brave enough to ask, you’re my first volunteer. Come stand by me.”

Bree’s eyes fly wide. That’s not what “volunteer” means. But she forces a smile and winds through the tables to join Dr. Langmore at the room’s empty center.

“Who else?” Dr. Langmore asks.

After a dragging pause, Mirabel raises her hand.

“Ms. Delgado.” Dr. Langmore smiles. “Following in her brother’s footsteps. His team won the competition six years ago.”

Mirabel’s mouth wobbles and sets. “I plan to outdo him.”

“A fine goal. If you miss, you’ll land among the stars, and so on. Come on up.”

Soon Mirabel and Bree are facing off. Dr. Langmore stands perpendicular to them, like she’s officiating their wedding.

Bree gives Mirabel a beseeching look. “So… How do we start?”

“I won’t hurt you if I can help it.” Mirabel speaks quickly, like a pilot warning passengers of onrushing turbulence. “Give me your hands. It’ll go faster.”

Bree’s hands stay stiff at her sides. Her eyes flicker around the students watching her, as if imploring us to intervene.

Incompatible emotions, water and oil, churn in my mind. One second, I’m impatient, thinking,Let’s get this demo over with. The next, I’m wondering what Mirabel meant by “if I can help it,” and Iwant to tuck Bree under my arm and march her out the nearest door.

Wait. Icanmarch poor Bree out the nearest door, figuratively speaking. I can take her place. If I do, I get a freebie—a shot at learning how to siphon before any of the other transfers.

Sure, Mirabel might hurt me. But… God, Bree looksterrified.

Before I can second-guess myself, I wave my hand in the air. “Dr. Langmore? Um, I’d really like to participate. Mind if I step in for Bree?”

Dr. Langmore raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t protest when Bree flees to our table. I leap to my feet and walk toward the room’s center. As we cross paths, Bree whispers, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I whisper back.

Soon I’m standing across from Mirabel. She gives me a look. Not exactly cold, more like,Are yousureyou don’t want to run too?

I can’t beg off. I need to snag a third teammate for myself and Candace once we’ve (fingers crossed) passed the screening. That means I need to impress people. I can’t let Mirabel define me, in our class’s eyes, as a helpless nav neonate she could murder with one good shake. I give her my toothiest grin, the one I perfected during pickup basketball at the Y:Maybe you’re taller or faster or a better shot, but I swear to God I’m tougher.

“You have ten minutes to siphon your opponent,” Dr. Langmore says. “If there is no victor after ten minutes, you’ve stalemated. I’m going to count down from three, after which you should all enter flickerstate to watch the duel. Three, two, one—”

Mirabel’s eyes blank out. A bizarre pain overtakes me, like a fishhook lodged in my heart is reeling it out through my navel. Idrop—I’m pulled—into flickerstate.

Futures unfold above me. All around me, my classmates are overlaid with their flickerstate manifestations: emerald vines, white-and-pink rosebushes, a gushing fountain, an astonishing balustrade of gold filigree.

In their center, overlaying Mirabel, stands an impossible cubist skyscraper—a screaming leap toward heaven. Sun flashes from infinite windows as it climbs, every room a future, every floor a choice-point, the building branching and branching.

And Mirabel, that skyscraper—it’sdenaturingme.

Fire flees from me in a crimson rope that streaks Mirabel’s windows bloody as it vanishes into her grasping hands. Futures branch above us, lurid with red-on-steel shine. In almost every one, I crumple while Mirabel grabs the cards from the table.

While my throat gulps against bile, my mind casts around for a strategy, any strategy.

My nav department didn’t teach siphoning any more than Bree’s did. But my instructor did mention once that to siphon another person’s navigation, you need to come up with a tactic specific to how they manifest.

So, okay.

I’m fire. Mirabel has manipulated my nav, turning it into aropeof fire.

How does a rope topple a skyscraper?