Chapter Six
We’re cutting across the main quad toward the dining hall after fast showers at the dorm. Hot evening sun glints on Candace’s bob and Bree’s curls. A breeze puffs against my face, clean air soothing my post-duel nausea.
“We need to talk strategy,” I say.
“Why?” Bree asks.
“To win. Why else?”
“Um.” She chortles. “Should we maybe consider more realistic goals?”
Candace side-eyes her. “Such as?”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I didn’t apply to the Academy just for the navigation. It was also about academics and meeting other kids who cared about learning and research and—basically anything other than getting high in the parking lot during free periods.”
“You’re here now,” I say. “You have those things. Those things are no longer goals.”
“Yeah, but…” As we pass the Great Tree, Bree trails her fingers thoughtfully through a low branch’s leaves. “Dr. Langmore told us to practice nav every day. And our regular classes aren’t skimping on homework either. At least, mine aren’t.”
Candace adjusts her cognac-leather satchel, once sleek, now bulging. “We all have heavy workloads.”
“Then why stress over the trials? I hear four-year students always win. Maybe we should get to a place with our nav where we don’t bleed in clinic and otherwise, you know, have fun with it?”
This is why I can’t deal with group projects, teamwork, cooperation, and all that touchy-feely crap.
I can’t trust people to want things as much as I do.
I can’t trust them to make the effort. Now my family’s future depends on a sweet, well-adjusted girl who thinks fun is a legitimate competitive aim.
Extreme stress can make navigators’ powers go wonky.
Sometimes we navigate without meaning to.
I haven’t navigated by accident since the day my power manifested.
But now, as I hear my new teammate dismiss our shot at the Archive, my bottled-up dread explodes.
Between steps, I fall into flickerstate.
Futures spin up from Bree like pink yarn. One possible Bree, floating tree-high, murmurs, “Okay, I’ll try my hardest—”
I wrench myself back to the real, panting and stumbling.
Bree puts out a hand. “You okay?”
Some people believe the number of possible futures is infinite.
Maybe so. But the futures that navigators perceive most easily are the most probable ones.
As a result, we can use what we see in flickerstate to guess, though never with total accuracy, what’s going to happen: to spy on people’s choices before they’ve chosen.
Like, now I know that in some near future, Bree verbally commits to taking the competition seriously.
A creepy invasion of her privacy, I’m aware. But that’s not the worst part. When I saw Bree say what I wanted, I almost forced that future. Hijacked her free will.
Interfered.
I swallow bile. You didn’t do it. That’s the important thing. Right? “I’m good.”
“Norah and I want to do our best in all our classes,” Candace says gravely. “Including Navigation, where our grades partly depend on the competition.”
Bree fidgets with her curling ponytail. “Yeah.”
“And since we’re a team now, we succeed or fail together.”
“I mean, I know.”
“So Norah and I need you to go all in with us. Right, Norah?”
No secret coercion of Bree here. Just good, old-fashioned peer pressure. Blessings upon Candace and all her household. “Right,” I say.
We reach the dining hall. At the main doors, we veer off, finishing our conversation under an ornamental redbud.
Bree scrunches her face, confused and resistant. “Why do you guys care so much?”
She has a point. Studying hard, doing pretty well, and not stressing are reasonable priorities. But they’re not my priorities. While I’m too shaken to say much, I hope Candace can persuade Bree to change hers.
“You remember these.” Candace taps her scarred forearm.
Bree flinches. “Yeah?”
“I was bitten. Then I was healed. Both times, something happened to me that I neither understood nor controlled. And I’m still dealing with the fallout.”
“You are?” Bree looks a bit scared.
Candace meets her eyes dead-on. “Were you unaware,” she asks, “of how everyone was treating me at Orientation, until Norah showed up and made a scene?”
“We didn’t know you were healed,” Bree protests. Then, when she hears what she admitted, her face floods pink. “I’m sorry if—I mean, I’m sorry that… I’m sorry.”
Candace nods meaningfully, acknowledging the apology. “The Archive could help me understand what happened. If I understand it, I can keep it from happening again. You see?”
Bree stares at Candace with a strange expression, respectful and something else I can’t identify. Admiring? “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“And are you all in?”
Bree nods. “I’ll—I’ll try not to let you down.”
Candace has handled the situation better than I would have. And to think, a minute ago I was whining about teamwork. “Great,” I say. “We’re in it to win it.”
The three of us walk into the dining hall shoulder to shoulder.
***
Candace, Bree, and I dump our bags on a bar top to claim it. Bree skitters toward the food, but Candace pauses. “You didn’t answer Bree’s question.”
“Bree’s question?” I repeat like I don’t know what she means.
“Why we care so much. I explained. You didn’t.”
“I told you yesterday.”
“You want to understand.”
“Yeah.”
“Everything.”
“Yeah.”
Candace gives another meaningful nod. This one suggests that she doesn’t believe me but she’ll do me the courtesy of not demanding answers.
For now. Then she walks off in search of food.
I’m about to follow when I spot Vik, Griffin, and Mirabel walking into the dining hall.
They’ve changed clothes. The boys’ hair is damp; Mirabel’s crackles with a recent blow-dry.
I feel a sudden hunch—the kind that comes just before a working strategy. Okay, I didn’t recruit Vik to my team. But since the Academy gave me an ultra-competent peer mentor, I will make his competence work for me.
Leaguing’s my leverage.
Instead of heading for the cornucopia, I head for him.
“Hi, guys,” I say to Griffin and Mirabel. “Vik, can I talk to you for a minute?”
Mirabel walks past like I don’t exist, but Griffin stops, hooking an arm around Vik’s shoulders. “Supergirl!”
“Supergirl?” Vik echoes.
“Inside joke,” Griffin asserts baselessly. “You passed the screening.”
“Yep,” I say.
“And your first day, you lasted six minutes dueling Mirabel.”
“Yep.”
“You don’t sound enthused.”
“I lost.”
Griffin laughs. “You weren’t going to win. But you lasted five minutes longer than any of the other newbies would’ve. I’m on to you. You know Candace asked me to join your team?”
“You’re her stepbrother. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Dear Candy is not in the habit of asking me for favors.”
“Who says you’d be doing us a favor? Maybe we were trying to do you one.”
This is empty bravado on my part, but it entertains Vik. He flashes a split-second grin.
“Cute,” Griffin says. “But seriously, it’s telling that Candace asked. When I look at you, I see strategy. I see ability. I see moxie. You might be the team to beat, you and Candy and what’s-her-face.” He points two-fingered at his eyes and then at me. “I’m watching you.”
The joke makes my wounded arm itch. “Good to know.”
“And putting you on notice has whetted my appetite. Food time. You coming, man?”
“Norah wanted to talk to me,” Vik says.
“Right, mentor-transfer business. I’ll leave you to it.” Griffin claps Vik’s shoulder and strides off.
“You and Mirabel better ration his Red Bulls,” I tell Vik.
“He doesn’t even drink coffee.” Vik sounds serious, but I suspect he’s amused. “That’s just Griffin. But I’m guessing Minter’s unvarnished personality isn’t what you wanted to discuss?”
I nod. “Back in clinic, you mentioned something called ‘leaguing.’ Two-person navigation? Dr. Langmore seemed annoyed.”
His demeanor shifts from impish to intense. “She tells every class it’s impossible. The other nav instructors won’t contradict her in public.”
“Maybe they agree with her.”
“Dr. Ortega doesn’t. During his PhD, he contributed a chapter to Philosophy of Navigation that argues leaguing is possible in theory.”
“In theory.”
“Sure. But channeling and siphoning are real. If we can transfer and steal nav, and sharing’s possible in theory, why can’t we share in practice?”
Horses and narwhals are real, so unicorns are possible in theory, but I’ll never fulfill my bloodthirsty childhood dream of riding one into battle. I don’t say that to Vik, though. This is my opening. “Back in clinic, it sounded like you wanted to try leaguing with someone.”
Vik makes a frustrated noise. “I asked Griffin and Mirabel. They’re convinced it’s a waste of time. Langmore says it’s impossible, so it’s impossible.”
“How sad. Luckily for you, I’m willing to step in.”
Vik goes dead still. Meeting his eyes feels like having a staring contest with the sun, like his attention might burn out my retinas. “Step in.”
“I’ll league with you.”
He frowns. “You’re a nav newbie.”
“Green as grass. And your only volunteer.”
After a long moment, he nods. “It could work,” he says slowly. “You lasted six minutes against Mirabel our first day. You passed the screening. You must have some natural control. Some natural focus.”
I’m not immune to flattery. Quite the opposite.
If the Academy’s best navigator wants to praise my control and focus, I’ll listen all day long.
Besides, I am curious. Researchers talk about nav like it’s a new iPhone the universe rolled out: a neato gadget that we should figure out how to use, and whose weirder apps the nerds among us should feel free to play with, but not something whose inner workings we need to understand.
That attitude is wild to me. We’re seeing the futures—plural!
—and only sad philosophy adjuncts bother to ask follow-ups?