Five #2
or garnered moderate media attention. The latest, written by a rather irate French economist, argued that the longer the Cold
War dragged on, the more the global economy would suffer.
“Socialist tripe,” Dr. Iver had said, and clearly plenty of others agreed—after public outcry, the author was temporarily detained by the gendarmerie for harboring Soviet sympathies.
Nadiya’s gaze skimmed briefly over the books and then rose to the framed degrees above Dr. Iver’s desk. The MPhil in neuroscience
from Cambridge, the doctorate from Columbia. She remembered once asking Dr. Iver what neuroscience meant.
“It means I study everything that goes on between here,” he had replied, touching her left earlobe, “and here.” With his other
hand he tapped her right. It had tickled and made Nadiya giggle, and then she’d forgotten the rest of her questions.
Now, when Dr. Iver saw her, he rose from his desk. He walked around it and dropped into one of the armchairs, beckoning Nadiya
to do the same.
Nadiya settled into the chair beside him. “You interrupted my breakfast.”
“Apologies, my dear. It was urgent. I can have something brought here, if you’d like.”
“No,” said Nadiya, tucking her hands into the folds of her jacket before he could notice the burns. She couldn’t stomach another
lecture. “It’s all right.”
Dr. Iver raised a tufty white brow but didn’t argue. “You were at the range this morning. I saw you checked out the Luster
rifle.”
“It’s new. I wanted to try it.”
That was one of the benefits of the reciprocal relationship between Valeran and the Pentagon. Weapons in development—carbines,
grenades, combat knives—were sent to Valeran for the students to test. Among the combat tacticians, the arrival of a Pentagon
truck was greeted with all the gleeful anticipation of Christmas morning.
Recently, Auric had been expanding into weapons manufacturing.
Luster was their inaugural brand of pistols, assault rifles, and submachine guns.
Given how friendly Auric’s CEO was with the DOD, Nadiya suspected he was trying to get the military to swap out the current crew-served weapons for his products.
Unlikely. After testing the rifle, Nadiya wasn’t especially impressed.
“Your friend was with you,” Dr. Iver said.
Security cameras monitored every room of Valeran, with a feed directly to Dr. Iver’s tablet. But he didn’t need to look at
the camera feed. He would have seen that both Nadiya and Matteo had scanned their cuffs to enter the shooting range—information
that was fed directly to his tablet, too.
“He’s a good friend,” Nadiya replied, somewhat uneasily. Even after so many years, she still sometimes found Dr. Iver difficult
to read. She’d never quite been able to tell how he felt about Matteo. The careful, removed tone that he used now made Nadiya
wonder if he worried about what Matteo would uncover, if he and Nadiya grew too close.
“It seems that way,” said Dr. Iver. “But I was wondering if I might prevail upon you to make a new friend.”
Nadiya frowned. “What do you mean? Matteo . . .”
“No, I’m not suggesting you discard him. Of course not. I only meant that there’s someone else at Valeran who would be well-served
by having your company.”
Nadiya pressed her lips together. She didn’t like when Dr. Iver was so vague; she didn’t like feeling the way the rest of
the students did—puzzled and frustrated by his enigmatic manner.
“Who?” she asked at last.
“Giselle Buckley.”
Immediately Nadiya tensed, though more out of surprise than resistance. “The new girl? Why?”
“I saw her in the dining hall this morning. She looked lonely.” Dr. Iver smiled thinly. “Isn’t that reason enough?”
“You couldn’t have really expected her to fit in here,” said Nadiya. “She doesn’t seem like Valeran material.”
Nadiya wasn’t even sure if she meant it. Mostly she was hoping that she could bait Dr. Iver into revealing something. He had
been particularly cryptic about the whole affair, even more so than usual. When he had called her into his office that day,
he had merely asked her if she was in the mood for a trip out. It wasn’t until they were in the car, halfway down the mountain,
that he explained they were picking up a new student.
“She’s in our neck of the woods,” Dr. Iver said. “Relatively speaking.”
“How relatively?” Nadiya asked.
Dr. Iver had merely smiled at her, that same inscrutable smile. Then he had ordered the driver to stop for ice cream on the
way to Belle. It was one of their traditions.
“She does seem rather unimpressive at first, doesn’t she?” Dr. Iver leaned forward, and Nadiya mirrored him, drawing their
faces close. “But it wasn’t subterfuge, what I told her in the jail. We are in desperate need of someone with her unique talents.”
“And what,” Nadiya said carefully, “are those?”
“You’ll see” was all Dr. Iver replied.
Silence filled the room. Dr. Iver’s stare was so intense that Nadiya felt compelled to look away, just for a moment, gaze
scanning the bookshelves and the large bay window that displayed the courtyard. The groups of students below were tiny and
blurred from a distance.
When she looked back, Dr. Iver said, “You did a good job there, you know. Convincing her to come.”
She hadn’t planned to say anything to Giselle at all. Dr. Iver certainly hadn’t told her to. The words had just risen up,
unconscious and unbidden.
Don’t you want more than this?
I think you already are more than this.
Nadiya couldn’t explain it, even to herself.
“I’m glad it helped,” she said. “But I still don’t understand why . . . I mean, she’s . . .”
Redneck Barbie. Matteo’s voice echoed in her mind. A mean-spirited and inane nickname, but not entirely off the mark. Beauty and superficial
charm weren’t prized at Valeran, despite Matteo’s own crowd of admirers. And her accent would set her apart as much as her
pageant queen looks. Valeran was for rich kids who committed crimes out of a particular type of indulgent boredom. They ended
up at the academy instead of prison because their outlandish behavior sold papers and Dr. Iver paid attention.
How had he even heard of the girl arrested for credit card fraud, languishing in a drafty jail in the backwoods of West Virginia?
Surely that hadn’t made the national news.
She wanted to ask. She wanted to ask so many things. Nadiya felt like she had accumulated a thousand questions over the years,
bitten back and swallowed down. Whenever she thought about speaking them aloud, something always stopped her. Something inside
herself. Maybe Dr. Iver had planted it there.
“That isn’t something for you to worry about,” Dr. Iver said. “Later, when the time is right, you’ll learn. For now, it would
be of great help to me if you would endear yourself to her. Keep an eye on her.”
Nadiya’s heart leaped. It was a childish sentiment, but she couldn’t help feeling pleased that Dr. Iver was entrusting this
to her. She liked being useful, important. It felt like safety.
“Okay,” she said. “I will.”
Dr. Iver reached over and cupped her face in his hand. “Good girl.”
The words made her glow. Nadiya leaned momentarily into his touch. Then she said, “Maybe Giselle doesn’t want friends.”
“Everyone wants friends,” Dr. Iver said.
“Even you, it seems. I’ll upload her schedule to your tablet.
I’ve put her in the advanced cryptography class.
With her talents, it would be a waste to have her slog through the introductory courses.
And she’ll have private tutoring with Professor Blanchard as well. ”
Nadiya nodded slowly. “All right.”
At last Dr. Iver gave her the sort of smile she understood—gentle, uninhibited. With another brush of her cheek, he let his
hand drop and then rose from his seat, walking around his desk. He opened the top drawer and searched about for a moment while
Nadiya sat, waiting.
“I noticed that you didn’t use them last night,” Dr. Iver said. He found what he was looking for and held it out to her.
Nadiya stood and joined him at his desk. “It was fine. I didn’t need them.”
“No nightmares?”
She shook her head.
“I’m glad,” said Dr. Iver. “But just in case.”
He set the plastic pouch on his desk. Nadiya hesitated a moment before reaching out. Then, taking care not to expose the raised
red flesh of her palms, she picked it up. Through the transparent vinyl she could see the pair of nodes, partially wrapped
in their microfiber cloth. They were about the size of a quarter each; when she was younger, Nadiya had called them her bad dream buttons.
“Good dream buttons,” Dr. Iver had corrected her. “They’re what keep the nightmares away.”
Nine years. She had used them every night for almost nine years. Nadiya slipped the nodes into her hip pocket, right next
to where she kept her real father’s silver cross.