Chapter Eighteen #3
Far out from the bank, the river shifts.
A deep ripple passes through it, sliding a great shadow over its surface.
The water rises in a wave that builds and builds.
Soon it’s speeding toward me on the fiery shore.
Vik plans to overload me, like I did to Rob in the screening: slap metric tons of nav down on my head and drown me in power.
Finish me in seconds.
Frantically I reach for my own nav. I spin flames around myself, hotter and hotter. As the giant wave topples toward my upturned face, I blast it with a huge gout of fire.
Sizzle. Crash. Where I blast the wave, it phases from liquid to gas. The air swirls with golden mist, Vik’s nav made breathable. I pull it into my lungs in gasps. Every breath fortifies me with stolen power.
The toppled wave pulls back, smelling of silt and mineral purity. Through the golden mist, a head and shoulders break the river’s surface: Vik, hair slicked down, shirt clinging to his torso, beaded gold everywhere except the bright whites of his eyes.
I gulp humid air and jitter with alien yet familiar energy. I spin my nav into a bolt of flame and shoot it at Vik. It sears a hole in his chest. Through the hole, I glimpse a circle of sky.
Vik slides under the river’s rippling surface. But the landscape doesn’t waver: The endless river’s there, fresh and mineral, glimmering gold. I’ve damaged, not destroyed, Vik’s grip on flickerstate. He’ll hide and recover, planning his next attack.
I don’t have much time. We stalemate after ten minutes, and I need to win. Either I can vaporize Vik’s hiding place with a fireball, or I can use the time he spends hiding to siphon as much nav as I can, so that when he reappears I can beat him.
I can’t vaporize that much water right now.
Despite my jitters, I’m so tired I can barely stand.
My mind’s not working well either. Normally I see Vik’s nav as metalwork, but today I’m seeing the river he once described to me.
I’m not sure why. Maybe, now we’re acting like strangers, I’m starting to view him as walled off and separate, the way he sometimes views himself.
Whatever the case, Vik and I have opposed nav concepts right now—literally, fire and water—and I can’t figure out a conceptual link between them that would help me take his power.
Breathing in the golden mist helps me, but I need a faster way.
An idea emerges from my soupy gray matter. Squirmingly intimate, but it’s what I’ve got.
I wade into the river, splash to my knees, and lower my mouth to the water.
Not real water. Not your real body. Not a real place.
While I drink, I march these reminders around my head like mantras. They allow me to drink faster and more than a real human body could. Power surges in me till I feel like an overcharged battery.
A curved object—a head—crowns the river far out from shore. Vik vaults into the sky on a fountain of water.
I throw out my arms for aim and blast him with the stolen power I’ve swallowed.
Like my mirror, Vik throws out his arms at me.
My flames wreathe him. His white teeth gleam in his wet face. He’s sizzling.
But so am I. As I try to overload him, he grabs my nav and hurls it back at me, inflicting on me exactly the pain I’m inflicting on him. A hellish feedback loop. My hair whooshes up in flame. My skin snaps, crackles, pops. My eyes boil.
Horror and despair. I cannot go on, I cannot go on, I must drop out of flickerstate or—
Or what escapes me. I can’t think. All I know is, this burning feels like my secret certainty that I’ll be too late to save Dad, Jo will suffer things she’s not prepared for, Kev and Irene will be in terrible pain without understanding what happened or why, Mom will have to raise them alone, she’ll get bitter and old fast, and it’ll be my fault, and then I’ll die on them too.
I’m desperate to flee this feeling.
But. Vik’s burning too. He must want to escape too. I need to outlast him by a second. By an instant.
I endure. I endure. I—
Dr. Langmore’s voice echoes across the sands, across the river: “Ten minutes up.”
I fall out of flickerstate. Vik’s face hovers near mine. His chest is heaving. He and I are squeezing each other’s hands so tightly that our knuckles show hard-edged through our skin. I swipe my wet face, check my palm for blood, and find tears.
There’s an odd expression on Dr. Langmore’s face, something like pity. “You can return to your seats. Ms. Delgado, Ms. Allen, you’re next.”
I pull my hand from Vik’s and stumble to my stool. On the way, I pass Bree. Her eyes swerve from me like I’m a traffic accident and she’s nervous about gawking.
I sit down hard, dropping my forehead to my knees.
I don’t want to look in Vik’s direction.
I feel like I did something terrible to him, like we did something terrible to each other.
If I could, I’d run to him and press my face into his chest till his faded T-shirt was all I could see.
But I can’t. Flames are burning in me, and because of the choices I made, there’s nowhere I can go for comfort.
Dr. Langmore prepares Bree and Mirabel for their duel. I’m bent, trying to breathe through nausea and terror, while she counts down three, two, one.
Silence fills the room.
A minute later, Dr. Langmore clears her throat. “Ms. Delgado is victorious. Team Three has won the competition.”
Bree lost.
We lost.
Dad.
Dad.