After that meeting with Claude, the first half of the semester passed in a gray blur. In those weeks, Lennon replayed her conversation with Claude countless times, his warning about Dante haunting her perpetually. She could tell that it was the same with Sawyer, though he never mentioned it once over their weekly coffee dates. They became good at pretending to forget him. So good, in fact, that eventually they did.

Once a week, Lennon had a private course with Dante to develop her gatekeeping abilities. Now that she’d learned to call elevators on command, her studies focused on refining this practice and building her endurance. Each time they met, Dante had her open a gate to a new place—Madagascar, Boston, the tundra in the north of Siberia. He never permitted her to enter these doors, though, only to open them, which she did with increasing efficiency until it was almost second nature to her. Under Dante’s careful supervision, she excelled.

By far the most difficult course of her semester was Persuasion II, with Professor Alec Becker. He was a grave man as tall as Dante, and even more heavily tattooed. The entirety of his face, his shaved head, his neck and hands, were covered, allowing only pale glimpses of skin to show through. He had blue eyes that looked almost frozen over, as though he were staring through a thick sheet of ice. His eyebrows were so white they were barely visible. Next to Dante, Alec was the youngest tenured professor on campus. He was known to be both exacting and kind, though Lennon had never particularly warmed to him, or he to her. Alec—amiable toward his other pupils—regarded Lennon with a kind of coldness she found strange, given how well she performed in his class. She wondered if Ian had poisoned Alec against her, and, if so, she couldn’t fault him for it, not after she’d put a knife through his hand.

Alec was difficult to impress. It seemed like every class he taught was a challenge to be met, an exercise to complete, a test to pass or to fail. Every class period, they were made to spar with one another, brutal battles of will that often ended with teary eyes and bleeding noses, burst blood vessels that turned the whites of their eyes an eerie red. Adan even cracked a molar in the middle of their sparring exercise and had to depart for the infirmary halfway through class because of the pain.

When the weather allowed for it, Alec liked to hold these grueling matches outside instead of in their classroom in Irvine Hall. That was the case on this night. At Alec’s bidding, they formed a tight circle on the ground. The task at hand was a simple one. Each of them was given a small article, chosen at random—a rock, a seashell, a dead leaf, a splintered tree branch—which they placed on the ground in front of them.

“I’ll call the names of two individuals in this circle. Upon doing so, each will strive to persuade the other to pick up the object in front of them. The first to do so wins the exercise. I would caution you to spend as much time fortifying the walls of your minds as you do persuading your peers. Both skills are integral parts of your success in this exercise. Now, all of you will have had some experience in the realm of fortification. If you’ve been diligent about your meditational practice—as I’m sure all of you have—then you will have fortified a room within the confines of your mind, a safehold. The walls of this mental space should, if bolstered correctly, defend you against the persuasive will of your opponent. But whilst maintaining that shield, you will still need to find a way to reach and persuade your partner. This is the central paradox of this task.”

The hours that followed were brutal. Lennon watched as her classmates contended, one round after the other. The first pitted Nadine and Adan against each other. Nadine gritted her teeth with the effort of forcing Adan to lift her acorn off the ground. Adan staggered to his feet, took two large steps, and emptied his stomach at the base of a magnolia tree just a half yard outside their circle. He returned moments later, wiping his mouth.

In the rounds that followed, other students suffered similar, crushing defeats at the hands of their fellow classmates. One boy’s nose began bleeding so profusely in the aftermath of his swift defeat, Professor Alec dismissed him to the infirmary. Another student, a girl, suffered a panic attack a mere thirty seconds into her round and snatched the magnolia pod in front of her of her own volition.

By the time it was Lennon’s turn to contend, she had seen almost half of her classmates cow to their opponents. Most of the Pyrrhic victors—who seemed about as spent and sick as those they’d beaten—were visibly uneasy with their hard-won wins. Those who were unfazed, Lennon noticed, had been so efficient, so brutal and competent in their persuasion, that they seemed entirely impervious to, or unbothered by, the pain that they had inflicted upon their opponents.

Alec clapped his hands. “Lennon and Ian. You’re up next.”

Lennon’s stomach dropped. This wasn’t a coincidence. Ian had been waiting for a chance to humble her since that gruesome night at Logos when she’d put the blade through his hand. And tonight, Alec was giving him just that.

Ian cast his gaze on Lennon and smiled widely—like he’d already won—and Lennon saw clearly that any affection he’d once had for her had rotted into hatred.

Ian’s assault was quick and brutal, with a force that reminded Lennon of being pinned to her plane seat, amid a particularly punishing takeoff. Only it was much heavier than that. Lennon might’ve picked up the pebble in front of her immediately—if his intention had been only a bit more clear, more specific.

But Lennon resisted, refusing to pick up the pebble.

This frustrated Ian, who perhaps recognized the limits of his ability. He was strong, yes, but he lacked a kind of artistry, the gentle touch of technique. It was all brute force and no precision. So he forced harder, pushing her to the brink. Lennon realized then that his intent was not to make her to lift the pebble. He simply wanted her to collapse under the force of his will. His aim was not to control her, but to break her. And Ian wanted her to know it. He leered at her, his lips tearing into a hideous grin.

The pressure behind her eyes built. Lennon felt something pop high up in her sinuses. She caught the metallic stench of blood and felt it trickling hot and thick down the back of her throat moments later. She tried to search Ian’s face for something she could use against him, some weakness to manipulate, but her vision blurred so badly she could barely see him.

She realized she was crying.

Alec might’ve said something, but she couldn’t hear it over the ringing in her ears. The pressure built within her head until it became pain. Ian’s assault was relentless. He’d only grown stronger over the winter break. His was a frightening power, a kind of contained and channeled chaos. It made her feel as though she was going insane, as though Ian could bleach every memory from her mind, suck out the color and the meaning of every significant event that had ever happened to her and make it all null. A fate worse than death.

She panicked, lashed out with everything she had. Which, as it turned out, was quite a lot.

Ian froze, stunned by the viciousness of her attack. His fingertips skimmed the rock on the ground, Lennon pushed harder, and he grabbed it.

Ian’s eyes went wide, first with shock, then rage. “Fucking whore—”

Lennon didn’t make the decision to break his nose. Or even to strike him. It just…happened. Her body, for the briefest moment, severing from his will, animated and sprang to action. Her hand locked into a painful fist, her arm drew back, and she punched Ian so hard the force of the blow shunted the knuckle of her middle finger out of its socket.

Ian reeled backward and clutched his nose, blood streaming through the cage of his fingers. He looked up at her and lunged before anyone could drag him back. Lennon caught a blow to the face that might’ve been a backhanded slap, but in the chaos of the oncoming assault she couldn’t be certain. Ian, who had no preoccupations with valor or chivalry, fought with a viciousness that Lennon, in her anger, matched. And the two abandoned any psychic exchanges in lieu of blows and biting and pulling hair. They scrapped like children, like starved dogs.

And Alec allowed this to continue for some time before he stood up, fixed his cuff links, and—with a toothy smile and the flourish of his fingers—paralyzed both of them so thoroughly they froze where they stood, as though their muscles had, in the span of an instant, calcified and turned to bone, Ian with a fistful of Lennon’s hair and Lennon with her fingernails a half centimeter shy of his open eye.

Alec clapped his hands. He was grinning. “That will be quite enough.”