Four #3
almost faint with relief at the thought. How hard could it be to outshine a school of adolescent criminals, whose net worths
together wouldn’t equal a fraction of his own?
“Do you want to see a simulation in action?” Mikhail asked.
“Yes,” Julian replied immediately, his heart leaping.
Mikhail led him farther down the corridor to a pair of double doors at the very end. Each was fitted with a much larger window,
revealing the whole of the room within.
“Well,” Mikhail said, “there’s your competition.”
Unlike the classrooms, the practice room had no desks, no chalkboards. Instead, in the very center, there was an enormous
projection, beaming up from a machine on the floor. Translucent images danced, shifting and rippling, mostly silver but with
occasional flashes of red or blue or green. Julian squinted for a moment until he could make sense of it all.
The projection was a three-dimensional map, showing various geographic features. The colored highlights stood in for countries,
factions, and armies, which made slow progress across the major territories. The Soviet army—red, of course—had expanded past
the Iron Curtain, now encompassing West Germany, Belgium, and Italy. The blue faction, clearly the United States, had spread
convincingly into Southeast Asia. And the green, which Julian could only guess was some sort of non-state actor, was inching
into North Africa and the Levant.
It was obviously a fictional scenario, as Mikhail had said—the real United States was not having nearly as much success in the Pacific Theater.
A group of twelve students gathered around the projection, murmuring to one another.
They wore paper badges pinned to their blazers: red, blue, and green, representing their factions.
They circled the simulation, brows furrowed, hands braced contemplatively under their chins.
Here was the more cutting-edge technology that Julian had been anxious to see, something that was not likely to be found in
a Harvard classroom. But his attention was quickly drawn away from the simulation itself. Standing at the eastern edge of
the map, giving Julian a perfect, direct view, was a familiar-looking girl.
She had dark curls that reached just below her shoulder blades, but her hair was pinned back neatly from her face. She was
exceptionally pale, with even paler eyes, as gray as chips of ice. Her nose was long and her lips were outlined immaculately
in red.
It wasn’t a pretty face, but it was a distinctive one. Julian was almost certain he recognized it.
“Who is she?”
Mikhail looked taken aback. “You don’t know?”
“No.”
“That’s Klaudia. Klaudia Shimonova.”
Right. He did recognize her.
Nearly three years ago, the national news cycle had been captured by her story: a fifteen-year-old girl, arrested for impersonating
her investment banker father to successfully make the better part of $10 million on the stock market. Her trial had gotten
almost as much attention as his impeachment, and photos of her had exploded across social media. Julian recalled being astonished
by the impassiveness of her expression in every one. No young teenager, especially not one in her position, should have been
able to look so cold.
Her trial had concluded when she accepted a plea deal. Since she was underage, she’d been sent to a juvenile reform school.
Allegedly.
“Oh, right,” said Julian, feigning dismissiveness. “The girl who scammed her father out of millions. She’s crazy, isn’t she?”
Even as the trial stretched on, she never offered any justification for what she’d done. Never explained her motives. She
clearly had no taste for fame itself; she had refused every single interview request or media appearance. She had sat silently
in the courtroom day after day, as headlines smearing her as a Medusa and a femme fatale and a Soviet conspirator were splashed
across every tabloid in America.
“Call it what you want,” Mikhail said with a shrug, “but she’s been ranked number one here since the first week she arrived.
No one has been able to claw the top spot from her in more than two years. Most of us don’t even bother trying.”
“She can’t be that good,” Julian said.
“She is. And there’s only a year until her sentence is up. The DOD is already eyeing her for a top position.”
There was a sudden clamor from inside the practice room—applause and groans, shouts and jeers. A stocky red-haired boy threw
up his hands and then punched the wall. Julian felt the reverberation. Klaudia’s side, with their blue badges, grinned smugly
and gave victory whoops.
Except for Klaudia. She had won her match, but she didn’t so much as smile. Her eyes were narrowed with focus, her lips pressed
into a thin line, as if the game were still playing out in her mind. Julian let his gaze wander past her mouth, down the pale
column of her throat, and then farther. He couldn’t pretend not to notice the way her blouse pulled slightly at its buttons,
the way her pleated skirt strained around her hips.
Mikhail caught him staring and smirked. “Nice tits, right?”
“They’re all right,” Julian allowed.