Page 5 of Flickerstate

“If I pull a card from that deck, I can use navigation to change the probability of drawing particular cards. But if…” I grope fora nonthreatening example. “If I’m in line with my mom at Sonic, and she’s waffling between a soft-serve cone and a shake…I can navigateher. I can change the probability of her buying the shake from fifty-fifty to almost one hundred percent.”

“What do we call navigating other people?”

“Interference.”

Mom purses her lips like she’s knotting a drawstring bag. No one enjoys thinking about how navigators can tamper with other people’s actions.

“Good,” Dr. Langmore says. “What’s the relationship between occlusion and interference?”

“Interfering means pushing people toward specific future choices. If you occlude someone’s futures—hide them—then other navigators can’t interfere with them..”

“Very good.”

I’m not sure why Dr. Langmore is praising my answers. Everyone knows about interference and occlusion. Because of interference, navigators scare people. Because of occlusion, people want navigators’ protection. Navigators can only mess with the futures in our direct line of sight, and we can only see minutes into the future at most, but even that power can wreak havoc. Since Highwall proved navigation was possible, all U.S. presidents have hired at least one navigator to their Secret Service detail to occlude them from any terrorist who might sneak into the Oval Office and interfere with them until they, I don’t know, get frisky with the nuclear codes.

“What’s the second reason to occlude?” Dr. Langmore asks.

I break her stare and focus on the blank wall behind her. Force myselfnotto swallow around the tightness in my throat. “Flickerbeasts.”

“And what,” Dr. Langmore asks, “is aflickerbeast?”

“Flickerstate predators. They…feed on futures. If they bite you”—I suppress the instinct to touch my arm—“it causes a possibility wound.”

“Which does what?”

“Eats up your longest possible futures till all that’s left is early death.” My gorge rises. I ignore it. Force myself to sound nerdy and unemotional. “In technical terms, a bite increases risk of death by any cause. Fatal accidents, strokes, sudden organ failure, murder, whatever. All more likely to happen to you if you’ve been bitten.”

“How does occlusion protect us against beasts?”

“The beasts are native to flickerstate. And navigation attracts them. But to bite someone, the beasts have to phase out of flickerstate and manifest in the real. If they can’t see your futures in flickerstate, they have no reason to manifest. If you run into a beast, occluding helps you hide until it goes away.”

“Correct. Now I want you to occlude your own futures.”

After the card draw, my navigation aches like a strained muscle. I follow the ache, flex, and drop into flickerstate.

In flickerstate, I’m a fire. To occlude, I imagine smoke.

Black smoke billows from me, smelling like burned toast and incense and anger. From within the whirling shroud I’ve made, Ican look straight up and see my own futures—but if I’ve occluded successfully, from outside Dr. Langmore should see no futures, only smoky darkness.

She coughs. “Back to the real.”

When I fall out of flickerstate, sweat blossoms down my back.

“Good.” She sounds normal. The smoke wasn’t real, so the coughing didn’t last. “You’ve managed occlusion, Norah. What else can you show me?”

“What else?” I echo. “Navigation and occlusion—that’s all our Navigation Department taught me.”

Dr. Langmore frowns. “County Navigation Departments are shamefully underfunded,” she says, more to herself than to me. “What else do youknowof?”

Like a good little interviewee, I seize the chance to show off and suck up. “I was really excited to see on the Academy’s website that juniors and seniors learnchanneling.Which, um, I would define as one navigator temporarily giving their power to another, so the other navigator can see farther into the future and navigate to less probable outcomes. And it’s interesting that you guys teach seniorssiphoning—which, if I understand correctly, is one navigatortakingthe other’s power by force? I guess that’s necessary when—”

I cut myself off. Dr. Langmore’s eyes have darted over my shoulder, her face twisting with fear.

“Don’t move,” she says.

But I’ve already glanced behind me. By the nearest door, the air wrinkles like plastic wrap. A giant insectoid leg pokes from thetranslucent folds—and pulls back. A moist pink gullet lined with teeth adds depth to the abnormality, like a wormhole to another dimension. The wormhole closes; the air wrinkles again. Scaled paws thrust into the room, strobe, and vanish.

Arms grab my waist. Mom wrenches me around, my flats skidding on the floor, until she’s put her body between me and it.