Page 47 of Flickerstate

The arachnoid beast fuzzes like an old television and disappears. So do the others.

The nav building bursts into noise. Students screaming, crying, asking questions.

I whisper: “Did we—

Vik, lips parted, nods.

“What did you do?” Dr. Langmore bears down on us, heels clacking. Her thin face contorts with strange anger, part outrage and part fear.

Vik breathes in. He’s about to tell the truth.

“He banished them,” I say, pushing myself upright.

“You expect me to believe,” Dr. Langmore says, “that twostudents accomplished what four experienced navigators might have crashed out attempting?”

Four?—oh. Dr. Ortega, Mr. Davis, and Mr. Dennison have converged near door 12. Dr. Langmore must have summoned them to channel to her. It’s hard to banish a manifested beast, harder to banish multiple beasts, so…

“It could be a coincidence,” I mumble.

Dr. Langmore’s head thrusts forward. “Acoincidence?”

“Maybe the beasts vanished on their own.” My suggestion sounds feeble, but it’s possible. Vik and I couldn’t have navigated to that future otherwise.

She turns to Vik. “You navigated the usual way?”

“What else could he have done?” I ask.

Her eyes dart to me. Her expression—suspicious, wary—convinces me, sudden as a slap, that she has awhat elsein mind. “Of course. He should be proud. That said, you both disobeyed instructions during an emergency. Report to detention after clinic. Mr. Souza, my office, five. Ms. Sullivan, six. Students, gather your things and line up in an orderly fashion to exit clinic.”

All around me, people grab their bags, talking in excited voices, shooting shocked glances at me and Vik, but I can’t pay attention.

I didn’t give Vik power. We shared it.

Leaguing.

***

By the time I walk into Admissions for detention, I’ve showered,eaten, and filled out a soothingly mechanical Spanish grammar worksheet (conjugating the imperfect subjunctive, mm, like warm milk to a baby).

I’ve tried to calm my ass down, is what I’m saying.

I still might buzz out of my skin. While we packed to leave clinic, everyone stared at Vik and me like we were nuclear bombs badly disguised as sweaty teens.

But actually, I’m not sure how much power a couple of relatively inexperienced navigators have to be packing to banish three fully manifested beasts. You can’t measure navigation ability the way you can measure height or blood pressure. Nav’s a fuzzier concept, like intelligence. Asking how much nav you need to reach a certain future is like asking how smart you need to be to write a witty sonnet. Plus, everyone believes I channeled to Vik. And when you channel, you lose some power in the transfer, creating a system less than the sum of its parts.

Leaguing seems to have the opposite effect.

How powerful did it make us?

I can’t ask anyone. For some reason, Dr. Langmore hates leaguing, and she controls access to the Archive. I need to play like I’m a clueless striver who doesn’t know or want to know anything except what’s on my final exams.

Instead of waiting outside Dr. Langmore’s office, I lurk inside the main entrance. I’m hoping Vik leaves detention by himself, so I can grill him on what Dr. Langmore asked him.

At six, Vik walks out of the office, Dr. Langmore a step behind. She tailgates Vik all the way over here; I can’t whisper to him withouther overhearing. He catches my eye, and I hope for unexpected post-leaguing telepathy. But no, his face just shifts minutely, from annoyed blankness to friendly blankness.

“See you,” he says, sliding past me, gone.

“Ms. Sullivan,” Dr. Langmore says. “This way.”