Page 40 of Flickerstate

I wake hyperventilating, pain shooting up my spinal nerves.

When the pain recedes, my breath should slow. But it comes faster as I search for a safe explanation for what just happened and come up empty-handed.

Ordinary dreams don’t hurt. Bite-dreams do.

So. My first bite-dream: breaking my neck on a steep Academystaircase.

Once the bitten start dreaming about their possible deaths, they’re gone within eighteen months. With only one bite, not nine like Dad, I wasn’t supposed to start dreaming for years.

I try to breathe slower. My phone lies on my nightstand. The lock screen reads 1:12 a.m.Go back to sleep, I tell myself, falsely calm.Can’t win the trials if you aren’t getting four hours a night.

I grab my sweaty sheets to tug them around my shoulders—and hesitate, remembering the maxi Band-Aid on my upper arm. I’m fiercely curious about my wound’s progress, but I’m also so terrified of it that I change my Band-Aids with my eyes closed.

Fear can’t control me, not now. I need to be decisive. I need to be brave.

I get out of bed. I turn on the light. I peel up the corner of the Band-Aid, hold my breath, and rip the bandage off.

Thirteen tooth marks tattoo a jagged circle on my left bicep. Ten exist halfway between flickerstate and the real, quivering like an old-time projector has beamed them onto my skin. Two have scabbed—real scabs, dry and shiny as ladybugs.

The last one, at the circle’s lowest point, oozes red.

My bite’s getting worse.

Eighteen months? Fine. I needed to get it done fast for Dad anyway.

I swallow the hysteria vibrating in my throat and whisper to my wound, “Game on.”

***

After a month and a half at the Academy, it’s time to fight for my life.

The Friday of the first trial, it rains. Water gushes from eaves. Silver droplets bead mullioned windows. In the quad, the Great Tree crouches like a guard dog poised to shake soaked fur. I pass the wet day in suspense, dreading and longing for clinic.

And I take the stairs between my classes very, very carefully.

When the hour arrives, I hurry into the nav building. Damp-shouldered students cluster around a whiteboard in the room’s center, where someone has inked an eight-team bracket in pungent black marker. I join the crowd, rising on tiptoe to see.

Team One reads MIRABEL DELGADO, GRIFFIN MINTER, VIKRAM SOUZA.They’re up against Team Two, three boys I don’t know that well. Relief ripples through me.

I hope Vik’s team loses before I have to face him.

I read on to find out who I’ll be facing instead. I locate Team Eight, BREE ALLEN, NORAH SULLIVAN, CANDACE YANG.Our opponents are kids who came to the Academy freshman or sophomore year: ELENA KUZMIN, RAFE WHITNEY, AND CARRIE LEBLANC.

Elena’s one of the best navigators in Clinic A.

I set my jaw. Best or not, Elena’s going down.

Candace pushes into the room, wet oxfords squeaking. She walks over and nods to the whiteboard. “What are we up against?”

“Elena, Rafe, and Carrie.”

Elena hasn’t arrived, but Rafe and Carrie are laying down rain-spattered backpacks on a table nearby. They don’t exactlyradiate menace. Rafe is rubbing his fogged-up glasses on his sleeve, and Carrie’s usual orange updo straggles down her neck like a stunned animal.

“Despite the hair,” Candace says as if reading my mind, “Carrie’s pretty good.”

“What about Rafe?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t in my group.”