Page 66 of Flickerstate

When I turn back to my group, Bree wiggles her eyebrows at me. Luckily, no one else was paying attention.

The trial is what we predicted: a main navigator casting an occlusion over their team, while the other two teammates channel back to the main navigator. Whichever team can hold their occlusion longest wins. Zipporah’s team goes first. I expect her to be their navigator, but it’s her quiet blockmate, Amber Rashid, who steps forward, so nervous that the bracelets piled on her skinny wrists rattle as she reaches for Zipporah’s and Layla’s hands.

Dr. Ortega pulls up the stopwatch app on his phone. “Three, two, one.”

I don’t dip into flickerstate and check out Amber’s occlusion. In flickerstate, every occlusion is the same swirling shadow column from the outside. In the real, Amber, Zipporah, and Layla stand like sleepwalkers while dark patches of sweat spread under their arms. Around minute eight, blood slides from Amber’s nostrils, mixing with her lip gloss. A minute after that, she pitches forward and pukes Pepto-Bismol across the floor.

“Nine minutes, two seconds,” Dr. Ortega says. “Ready, Team Eight?”

“One moment.” Candace pulls a folded piece of plastic from her satchel. When she shakes it out and shrugs it on, I realize it’s a translucent rain jacket. She must have brought it to protect her game day getup from bodily fluids.

I smile at the unhinged logic: Sure, wear plastic sheeting over a velvet suit to a magic duel if that’s your power pose. Bree giggles. When Candace holds out an imperious hand to each of us, we grin like loons as we link up.

Dr. Ortega blinks at us behind his glasses. “You’re ready now?”

“Correct,” Candace says in a passable imitation of Dr. Langmore.

He laughs. “Okay. Three, two, one—”

As I slip into flickerstate, an idea hits me.

When my team decided I should manifest as a red sun, I instinctively imagined one of the Academy’s inferno sunsets: rage againstthe dying of the light, pelting Candace with photons like subatomic flames. It worked in the short-term, but after awhile it was always too much. The occlusion dissolved when I burned her out.

But this morning—after Vik and I finally stopped kissing, wide-eyed and laughing when we realized we were late for breakfast—we hiked up the footpath in the hibiscus-red light of an October sunrise, warm and gentle on our faces.

I could be that sun instead.

As Candace’s occlusion forms around us—impenetrable shadows to outsiders, a living wall of branches to our team within—I shine softly, painlessly on her ivy-wrapped sycamore.

Channeling like this isn’t a desperate, flaring effort. It’s like breathing.

I glow. Bree stays solid. Candace, drawing on us, holds the occlusion.

And holds it. And holds it.

***

All good things end. My sun vaults too high, burns too hot. Bree’s trellis droops. Candace’s wall of branches dries out and dies. When we slip from flickerstate, drenched like dunk-tank volunteers, Dr. Ortega announces, “Ten minutes, thirty-three seconds.”

Bree squeals and throws her arms around Candace.

Candace laughs. “My ribs, Bree; my ribs are important to me—”

Smiling hard, I push sweaty hair off my forehead and look forVik. I hope he saw us win—saw me act like a team player, grow as a person, all that razzle-dazzle. I hope he’s thinking that he liked me already, and he likes me more now, and he wants to have dinner with me tonight, sitting at a cramped bar top, our knees brushing under the table.

Near door 12, Vik and Antoine are shaking hands.

With a sharp drop in my stomach, like I’ve put my foot through a rotten stair, I remember the other reason kissing Vik was a bad idea.

My eyes ricochet around the scene: Jacqueline shrugging, Jae smiling resignedly, Griffin whooping and sweeping Mirabel off her feet.

They won. Vik’s team won.

They’re my final competition.

Chapter Sixteen

“How exciting,” Griffin says.