Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
“Was his death even an accident?” I interrupt. “Or did you see a chance to knock off a guy who disagreed with you and bring Highwall around to your way of thinking about interference?”
“The Cruciform’s original prototype was dangerous, but I’ve improved the design since then. It doesn’t kill if you know how to use it,” she says. Which isn’t an answer.
“What does it do, then?”
She spreads her hands invitingly. “The sky’s the limit. For instance—”
“What does it do to the person you’ve nailed to it?”
“Don’t exaggerate for effect, Ms. Sullivan.
” She sniffs. “Nails would be barbaric. We’re not monsters.
After volunteers help us to operate the Cruciform, we send them away from the Academy for their own safety.
A brief increased risk of death doesn’t combine well with navigation that attracts beast attention. ”
Keeping an eye on Dr. Langmore, I edge toward the Cruciform. She doesn’t try to stop me. Just watches me, smiling slightly.
“It can save your father’s life,” she says.
“What,” I snap.
“Go ahead,” Dr. Langmore says. “Use the machine. Save your family.”
Questions crowd my mouth. Can it cure my dad at this distance? What will happen to Bree? Why aren’t you worried I’ll use it—take what I need, whatever happens to Bree—and then attack you in hypocritical fury for tempting me?
“I don’t need this horror show,” I say. “I can league.”
“You’ve found absolute unity of purpose with four other navigators?” Dr. Langmore asks pointedly. “That’s what a cure requires. Highwall was the most talented navigator ever to exist, and she managed a bite cure once.”
I have two other navigators I can league with. If I save Bree—if Bree will work with me after everything—maybe I’ll have three.
And Highwall’s league broke down before they cured anyone but Highwall. The best navigators in history, the pioneers of flickerstate—in the end, even they couldn’t get it done.
Dr. Langmore smiles, predatory. “I thought not. Put your hand there.” She points at a dark glass oval beside Bree’s hip, the one smooth part of the bristling machine. “Drop into flickerstate. Find the future you want. Make it happen.”
Behind us Candace and Vik, gripping each other’s hands, confront Griffin and Mr. Davis. Red smears their faces nose to chin. Their eyes are glazed and unblinking.
I’ve put Vik and Candace in the position of buying time for me, protecting me from Griffin and Mr. Davis while I pump Dr. Langmore for information.
I glanced back at them to check whether they were still deep in flickerstate—because I wanted Dr. Langmore to see me check and assume it was a guilty tic, an attempt to account for witnesses before I used the Cruciform.
Maybe I was accounting for witnesses.
My attention strays from Dr. Langmore for a few seconds. When it snaps back to her, her eyes have gone vague and glassy too.
She’s going to interfere with me.
Feeling bone-deep feral rage, terror, and sick hope, I drop into flickerstate and occlude.
Smoke billows from the burning pillar of my possible futures.
A steel rail, branching from Dr. Langmore’s infinite railroad, slithers toward me.
It pierces a thick fork of flame where a future Norah—a tallish, hard-faced girl, hair darkening with fear sweat—places her hand on the Cruciform’s glass oval.
The smoke I’ve summoned expands, fogging out my futures. I drop into the real.
Dr. Langmore’s eyes clear. She fixates on me—like some cigar-chomping director watching a starlet, avidly curious whether she’ll nail the scene when he calls action.
I want to ask what future of mine she tried to navigate to. I don’t. Maybe I can’t—maybe she so interfered with my possibilities that the words won’t come.
I step toward the Cruciform, thinking.
Jake was never the one interfering with Academy students. Dr. Langmore was.
I remember Bree telling me and Candace about the arachnophobe who forces himself not to scream when his navigator therapist places a tarantula on his arm. The therapist could only navigate him not to scream because, in some possible future, he managed not to by himself.
In some possible future, I use up Bree’s potential—put her life at risk for who knows how long—to get what I want. I have that in me. Dr. Langmore couldn’t have tried to navigate me there otherwise.
But all possible futures collapse into one present and one past. What you’re doing. What you did. What you’ll have to live with.
I place my hand on the oval glass, slick and cold under my palm. The machine pulls at my mind like a riptide, urging me to plunge under. Bree’s nav roils beneath the surface, augmented and undefended. There for the taking.
I close my eyes and sense Dr. Langmore beside me, smiling.
I twist and—with my whole strength—elbow her in the face.
Bone splinters bone. Dr. Langmore staggers, hands latticing over her nose. I kneel and fumble at the metal band around Bree’s neck. When I find a clasp, I snap it open. Her head lolls. I unbuckle her wrist restraints.
I’ve started on her ankles when pain explodes at the back of my skull.