Chapter One #3
I break her stare and focus on the blank wall behind her. Force myself not to swallow around the tightness in my throat. “Flickerbeasts.”
“And what,” Dr. Langmore asks, “is a flickerbeast?”
“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, I can 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 you know of?”
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 learn channeling.
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 seniors siphoning—which, if I understand correctly, is one navigator taking the 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 the translucent 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.
Like Dad did.
Guilt and terror race through me. I can’t let this happen again. I can’t.
I won’t.
Mom’s scrappy. She’s also a petite prediabetic smoker. I’m a varsity basketball player who runs four days a week and lifts three. I break Mom’s grip, throw her behind me, and plunge on desperate instinct into flickerstate.
Beasts don’t always manifest fully. Sometimes they flicker halfway into reality, only to flicker out again. If I can navigate to a future where the beast vanishes—
Dr. Langmore’s way ahead of me. In flickerstate, her manifestation towers, an infinite railroad branching as it ascends, looming over the beast, which pulses between families, classes, phyla of animal while it burrows into reality.
Before I can try to demanifest the beast, Dr. Langmore’s rails light up with current.
The beast exits existence.
When I blink out of flickerstate, Dr. Langmore is glaring at us. “I said don’t move.”
Mom raises her chin. “My daughter was in danger.”
Dr. Langmore ignores her, looking hard at me. “What did they teach you about beast-manifestation protocol at your Navigation Department?”
“Um.” I drop my eyes. “To freeze. Occlude.”
“And?”
“Wait for an experienced navigator to deal with it.”
“All right answers. Tell me, since you know the right answers, why did you move?”
Because Jo and the twins need one parent still alive if I can’t figure out how to cure my dad’s bites. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Any more demonstrations you’d like to give?”
Her tone is emotionless, but I can only interpret her words as sarcastic. “No,” I grit out.
“Then this interview is over. You may hear from us as early as next week. I can tell you now, in terms of raw aptitude, you’re an impressive young navigator—”
I smile on reflex.
“—but the Academy has very…particular criteria. If I were you, I’d look at other options. May I walk you back to the shuttle?”