Page 77 of Flickerstate

A pained noise vibrates behind his lips. Her face pales, glossy and sickly.

“Screw it,” I whisper and plunge into flickerstate.

Odors of iron, salt, and wet greenery fill the room. Roaring fills my ears. Candace’s sycamore rears up beside a—awhirlpool of blood. Candace tries to steal the blood, which must represent Griffin’s nav, by sinking roots into its blasting current. Half the time, her ploy works: Her bark-and-leaf tower absorbs his nav and grows more massive and bristling. But the other half, his current, snaps her roots. The whirlpool, swelling with broken tree parts, rushes faster.

They’re evenly matched. At first.

Slowly, the balance tips. The whirlpool strips limbs from the sycamore that do not resprout. The tree’s trunk wavers, hazy and translucent. Through dappled bark, I catch a blurry glimpse of Candace: lips white, hands shaking like leaves.

She’s been navigating for a year. He’s been navigating since grade school. Their vastly different levels of experience are starting to tell.

I bite my knuckles.Hold on, Candace. Take the stalemate.

The crimson flood rips up her last roots. Her sycamore topples and sinks into the whirlpool.

I drift miserably out of flickerstate. My teeth have left deep indents on my knuckles.

“Mr. Minter wins, with”—Dr. Langmore checks her watch—“forty seconds left. Mr. Minter, navigate.”

Griffin’s tan skin has ashen undertones around the mouth. Sweat darkens his shirt in spongelike clouds. His eyes stay glazed for a second. When they sharpen, he stumbles to the table, where a deck of cards waits. He navigates through the clubs but misses on the first diamond, pulling the queen instead of the two.

“Thirteen choice-points managed,” Dr. Langmore says approvingly. “You may return to your seat.”

Griffin trudges unsteadily back to Vik and Mirabel.

After Candace lost, she stayed where she was to watch the draw. Now she shuffles toward me and Bree like a postapocalyptic survivor: feet dragging, face empty. Bree stares at her with anxious blue eyes.

Terror closes my throat. Bree and I have to win now. Bree, who refused to siphon her opponents during the screening, has to beat Vik or Mirabel.

“Round two,” Dr. Langmore says.

A realization seizes me, so horrible my cheeks tingle and go numb. If Dr. Langmore pulls Bree next and Bree loses, I won’t compete. My team will have already lost. By choosing one-on-one duels, I’ll have condemned myself to death without a chance to fight.

Dr. Langmore pulls a slip from the first envelope. “Mr. Souza.” From the second. “Ms. Sullivan.”

***

I face Vik. He gives me an assessing once-over like we’ve never met before.

Purple circles ring my eyes. My hands are quivering with caffeine and fear. Under the circumstances, his cool appraisal feels like a taunt. Anger shoots through the fog in my brain like a signal flare.

“Are you ready?” Dr. Langmore asks.

Vik nods.

Past the brain fog, I spot the outline of a plan. Candace lost to Griffin because, in their dragged-out duel, his greater experience gave him an edge. Vik has the same edge over me. I can’t let him use it. I have to finish the duel as quickly as possible.

I offer Vik my hand. It’s a dare: Touch makes channeling easier, but it makes siphoning more unpredictable, more painful.

And faster.

If we touch, maybe we’ll get our duel over with sooner. One way or the other.

Vik gives me an unreadable look. Then he laces his fingers through mine. His skin is warm. I bite my cheek hard, trying not to think about other times we’ve touched like this.

Dr. Langmore’s eyebrows slide up her forehead. For a second, I think she’ll warn us against hurting each other too badly. “Three,” she says instead, “two, one, go—”

With a desperate effort I hurl myself into flickerstate, farther than I’ve ever gone.