Five
Rural Virginia
In the sleek corridor of the shooting range, when the lights dimmed to complete darkness, Nadiya’s body flooded with adrenaline.
Translucent specters shuddered into reality from nothingness, silver quivers through the otherwise impenetrable black. They
moved in ghostly blurs, the technology too limited to make them look entirely convincingly human.
Nadiya raised her rifle and peered through the scope, night vision casting the holograms in a sickly shade of green. They
were featureless, anonymous, occasionally blurred with blips of static. Nothing that could be mistaken for real, and yet the
memory rose anyway, a hazy ripple behind her eyes. The close, copper scent of blood in the air. The hand, outstretched.
I promise, you’ll never have to be afraid again.
One of the holograms—flickering, faceless—charged her. Nadiya whirled and fired. There was no blood. The false opponent merely
shuddered out of existence, as ephemeral as it had been when it emerged. The bullet buried into the far wall. Reality reasserted
itself. The lights came back up.
Under the bright fluorescents, the incomplete nature of the technology became even more obvious. A projector machine lowered
its belly from the ceiling, whirring and humming like an insect. Other lenses were fitted into various spots on the walls
and the floors, all in the service of creating a more compelling illusion.
Secretly, Nadiya thought the best part of the simulations was that they could never be mistaken as real. That meant she never had to be afraid. Not that she would ever admit that aloud.
And certainly not to Matteo, who was tapping insistently on the glass. Nadiya slipped the rifle back into its holster and
walked toward the viewing gallery. As she approached, he flashed his best smug-but-inscrutable editorial smile and wolf-whistled.
“Show-off,” he said, voice muffled through the glass.
She tapped back hard enough to make Matteo flinch. “Very self-important to think that I have any interest in showing off for
you.”
Matteo raised a hand in mock surrender. “Sorry. Just used to it, I guess.”
Nadiya scoffed. Matteo wasn’t really so vain and arrogant—not that he didn’t have good reason to be. It wasn’t because of
his ranking, to which he was utterly indifferent, but because, in his two years at Valeran, he had accumulated an arguably
more impressive form of social capital: an ever-rotating cast of admirers, crowding his lunch table, falling over themselves
to help him with assignments, and making soppy faces at him from behind their tablets.
Nadiya considered it her solemn duty to keep his ego in check. It certainly seemed that no one else was up for the task. So,
after she returned her rifle to the clerk at the armory, scanning her cuff (KARAM, NADIYA / 12.27.2018), she intentionally tuned Matteo out during their walk to the dining hall. He was chattering idly about a new girl in his
cryptography class.
Hallett-Carr Dining Hall, with its sumptuously arched ceilings and stained glass windows, was arguably the nicest building
on campus, save for the headmaster’s residence—which seemed a shame given how little time the students spent there. Even now,
at 9:00 a.m., when breakfast was being served, the dining hall was only a quarter full.
As much as Dr. Iver liked to believe otherwise, Valeran students were still teenagers, and still inclined to the same adolescent pettiness.
Cliques of students, usually divided by discipline, sat at the same tables day by day.
Strategists, most esteemed in status, sat together in the center, while the hackers, distrusted and maligned, kept to the corners.
The tradecraft and tactical combat students were looser in their associations, spreading around more freely among their classmates.
But, unlike a typical high school, meals were poorly attended. Why would Valeran’s students, ruthlessly chasing their number-one
ranking or a top appointment in the defense sector, waste their time chatting with friends over lunch when they could be writing
code, studying Clausewitz, or aim training?
That was why, in addition to Matteo’s obvious physical attractiveness, his carefree arrogance was so appealing. The students
were desperate for anything that allowed them to have a moment’s reprieve from worrying about their ranking, their status,
their future. Their families at home, if they had them.
Nadiya and Matteo took their usual table, which always went uncontested, but Matteo’s usual crowd of admirers hung back. If
Matteo put the other students at ease, Nadiya knew her presence often spooked them. And she couldn’t deny that it gave her
a faint flicker of pleasure. There was a satisfaction to being intimidating.
She placed her tray on the table and sat, watching a duo of strategy students scatter out of the corner of her eye.
But before Nadiya could even pick up her fork, Matteo nudged her shoulder. “That’s her.”
Nadiya turned. Matteo was pointing at one of the far tables. Usually that table remained empty, but now it was occupied—by
a single student. Her head was bowed, red-gold hair spilling over her shoulders in loose, slightly unkempt waves. She was
staring pointedly at her tablet, though with a glazed and distant look in her eyes, as if she were not really seeing anything
at all. Even from a distance, Nadiya noticed her biting down on her lower lip.
“Her?” Nadiya turned back to Matteo. “Giselle?”
“You know redneck Barbie?”
Nadiya hesitated a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I went with Dr. Iver to pick her up.”
“Oh shit.” Matteo paused to take a bite of toast. After swallowing, he said, “What did she do?”
Once again Nadiya hesitated. She kept her relationship with Dr. Iver as vague and covert as possible, though almost everyone
at Valeran knew that they had some sort of connection. They knew that was why Nadiya stayed in the headmaster’s residence instead of the girls’ dormitory, why
she was permitted to check out the highest-grade weapons from the armory without clearance, and why she wasn’t ranked alongside
her fellow students.
They didn’t know that Dr. Iver was the closest thing she had left to family. They didn’t know that the cold, enigmatic headmaster
of Valeran had spent years tucking her in at night and reading her bedtime stories. They didn’t know that the academy, to
Nadiya, was home—for almost as long as she could remember. They mostly just assumed that she had an extended sentence for
some grave, mysterious offense, which only added to her intimidating air.
Matteo was a bit more informed of the truth, and she trusted him. Mostly. But her throat tightened as she tried to speak.
Maybe it was the desire, as ever, to guard Dr. Iver’s secrets. Or maybe she felt strangely, unaccountably protective over
the new girl.
Not likely. But she chose ambiguity anyway.
“Committed a crime and got caught,” Nadiya replied. “Just like the rest of you.”
“Cryptic,” Matteo said, popping an apple slice into his mouth. “The whole school is desperate to unravel the mystery of redneck Barbie.”
“Don’t call her that,” said Nadiya.
“I heard she’s a pageant queen. Who knew that vapid, backward bullshit even still existed?”
“That’s rich coming from someone who was signed to IMG.”
Matteo drew an indignant breath. “Need I remind you that I also went to Stern?”
“You dropped out of Stern.” Nadiya cupped her bowl of oatmeal. “To model.”
“Modeling was just a means to an end,” Matteo said.
The end was doing something—anything—to escape the weight of his parents’ legacies. His father, Axel Sorensen, was the CEO of Deltage,
Auric’s only real competitor in the West, and his mother, Siena Alemu, was a renowned sculptor. Matteo couldn’t go into the
arts, of course; the nepo baby allegations would hound him for the rest of his life. If he decided to go into tech, he would have to work for his father’s
company (“My dad would take me out back if I told him I was defecting to Auric,” Matteo once said). Modeling seemed like a
safe and innocuous career path.
Unfortunately, safe and innocuous also meant dull, and if there was one thing Matteo could not have abided, it was dull. Nadiya wasn’t sure exactly how he had gone from walking in Fashion Week to lifting a Rothko from the MoMA, but he had certainly
succeeded in making his own name. And it seemed like a well-aimed, double-bladed jab at both his parents: MoMA’s security
system ran with Deltage tech and, in an interview with Tate Global, Siena Alemu had just named Rothko her favorite midcentury painter.
“Right,” said Nadiya. “All part of your grand design. And getting sent to Valeran was . . .”
“A masterful plot twist by a genius artist,” Matteo finished, beaming.
Nadiya laughed then; so did he, causing the table of girls next to them to glance over with hope. Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Nadiya reached for her spoon, but before she could pick it up, her tablet vibrated in her bag.
She let go of the bowl immediately and fumbled for her tablet. A message was displayed across the home screen.
DR. IVER: Come to my office.
Nadiya grabbed her bag and stood. “I have to go.”
Matteo frowned. “You didn’t even eat. Wait—shit, Nadiya, look at your hands.”
She glanced down at them. Her palms were swollen and red. She must have been holding on to the hot bowl for too long without
realizing. It had been the conversation about Giselle—she had forgotten to be careful.
“Oh,” Nadiya said. “Don’t worry. It’s fine.”
“You should go to the infirmary and get it looked at. How are you supposed to hold a gun with second-degree burns?”
“You’re so dramatic,” she replied. But after she slung her satchel over her shoulders and hurried out of the dining hall,
she tucked her hands into her pockets, just in case.
Dr. Iver’s office had changed very little over the years that Nadiya had been at Valeran, save for the evolving assortment
of books. They were mostly medical journals, along with whatever new popular history or economy book made the bestseller list