Ten
Rural Virginia
lit up, jolting every student at Valeran out of bed. Klaudia, who was already awake, closed the volume from Columbia’s latest
Institute of War and Peace Studies Conference, clicked on the link, and read.
At breakfast that morning, every table in the dining hall was alive with conversation. Theories and fears flew wildly. Some
of the students were frenzied, flushed and gesticulating. One of the first years looked near to tears.
Mikhail was more composed. “It’s bullshit,” he said. “I don’t think he was kidnapped. I think Satow defected. Hauke is just
trying to save face.”
“Defected back to East Germany?” Jane frowned. “Why would he do that?”
“Because Russians have better booze?” Mikhail shrugged.
“They do not.” Jane giggled, then turned to Klaudia. “Klaudia?”
“No comment,” she replied.
Julian had not said anything—yet. He had continued to eat meals with them, breakfast and dinner and sometimes even lunch,
too, if their schedules aligned. He had begun to engage in casual, friendly conversation with Jane and Mikhail. Klaudia had
even observed them making each other laugh.
It soured her stomach. Socializing was easy for someone like him. Someone with nothing to lose.
But he rarely said a word directly to Klaudia, and vice versa. It was clear, from the last time they really spoke, what he thought of her. The air between them felt both electric and cold.
“I don’t see how kidnapping is any less humiliating for Hauke than defecting.” Julian spoke up at last. “He still lost an
asset—either through incompetence or guilelessness.”
Klaudia had been thinking the same, not that she had any intention of publicly agreeing with him.
Mikhail ducked his head and lowered his voice. “I did do a little digging on Satow,” he said. “Nothing official, of course.”
“Oh, don’t!” Jane cried. “You’re going to get in trouble for hacking the servers again.”
“It’s all right,” Mikhail assured her. “This time I won’t get caught. But I found some Russian- and German-language message
boards on the dark web talking about Satow. They said he was actually the head of the KGB lab. Why would someone so high up
on the food chain defect?”
“Maybe because America has better booze,” Julian suggested.
Mikhail let out an amused breath. “I mean, I don’t know. It could all be bullshit, too. I wouldn’t stake my reputation on
anything I learned from the dark web.”
“Probably a good general policy,” said Julian.
“The boards claimed he was involved in something called Projekt Traum. But I couldn’t find anything else related to that name. So, yeah. All signs point to bullshit.”
“You have to stop,” Jane said, in her most serious voice. “Dr. Iver said he would expel you.”
“Dr. Iver sent us all the article,” Mikhail said. “Clearly he wants us to look into it.”
Since the firewalls prevented Valeran students from accessing most websites, Dr. Iver sometimes forwarded them important news items—anything he thought might change the global landscape or that might be relevant to their studies.
There was a cost to spending four years or more isolated from general society.
All their theoretical training would fail if they were incapable of applying it to reality.
But Klaudia didn’t think Mikhail was accurately reading Dr. Iver’s intentions. He didn’t want them to search for answers—a
fruitless task anyway, given the firewalls. Strategy was not about answers; it was about ideas. Julian was most likely right
that the circumstances around Satow’s disappearance were irrelevant. Dr. Iver wanted them to predict what would happen next.
Or maybe even consider how to get Satow back.
Klaudia didn’t like that Julian had spoken her opinion aloud before she could. She liked even less that they were aligned
in their theories. As much as it pained her to admit, Julian Joyce-Young III was not stupid. Vain and indulgent, yes. But
not stupid.
The conversation continued, Julian, Mikhail, and Jane arguing back and forth while Klaudia observed in silence. The ease with
which Julian had settled in occurred to her again. It felt vaguely like a threat. If she was the superior strategist, how
had she allowed Julian to invade her friend group uncontested—almost displacing her?
She watched him for several moments. He had conventional good looks and a politician’s glib smirk, but his eyes flashed with
subtle cleverness. Klaudia glanced pointedly away when she thought he might notice her staring.
Abruptly, Mikhail rose to his feet and gathered his things. “I have to go,” he said.
“Why?” Jane frowned. “You don’t have a morning class.”
“I have to put the finishing touches on my extracurricular project.” Mikhail smiled in a cryptic way. “You know.”
“Just keep everything aboveboard, okay? Please.”
“I will,” said Mikhail. He slung his bag over his shoulder. “I promise. Hey, I’ll send it to you all tonight for playtesting.”
After her classes, Klaudia went to the reading room. It was empty, as she figured it would be, given that the weather was
far too warm for anyone to want to light the fireplace. Admittedly, she was also thinking about Julian. He would never show
his face here again. She didn’t have to worry about another chance encounter, and so she tried to put him completely out of
her mind.
But she had only just settled into one of the armchairs when the door to the reading room swung open.
Carter Egan’s shadow fell over her book as he approached. Klaudia quickly snapped it shut.
“I thought I might find you here,” he said. Lit from behind by the sun pouring in from the window, his red hair looked even
brighter than usual.
“How perceptive of you.”
Carter was accompanied, as always, by two lackeys. They stood on either side of him like his personal bodyguards, arms folded
across their chests. Irrelevant third-year admirers, drafted into Carter’s private war.
At Valeran, Carter had a reputation that rivaled her own. But, unlike Klaudia’s, it was a reputation earned mostly outside
the classroom. He and his lackeys tormented first years, staged smear campaigns against their fellow students, and viciously
sabotaged anyone who might threaten their place on the rankings board.
Carter held a particular grudge against Klaudia, which she supposed was understandable. For the entirety of their time at
Valeran, she had been number one to his number two. Lately, his frustration seemed to be building.
“You must not eat or sleep at all,” he said. “I always thought your kind weren’t quite human.”
By your kind Carter could have meant any number of things, among them the passport that still marked her birthplace as Leningrad. Klaudia
got to her feet.
“I understand why hard work is such a foreign concept to you,” she said. “We don’t all scorch the earth behind us in pursuit
of a better ranking.”
Uncharacteristically, Carter seemed to brush off the slight. A slow smile spread across his face.
“Haven’t you heard the rumors? There’s a new student here who might snatch your crown.”
Klaudia said nothing. It was a bluff.
“Come on,” Carter said, when she remained silent. “You’ve been eating with him for the past week. That Back Bay brat. Julian
Joyce-Young the Third.”
Something else notable about Carter was the legendary chip on his shoulder. His family was firmly middle-class, and he had
grown up in some irrelevant Boston suburb. He and Mikhail were probably the closest Valeran had to scholarship students, but
while Mikhail had no such hang-ups, Carter was unabashedly concerned with his humble background and extraordinarily sensitive
to anything that brought it to the surface.
Undoubtedly this also contributed to his resentment of Klaudia. She may have been Soviet by birth, but she had been raised
in a luxury Manhattan penthouse.
Julian’s arrival must have been even more galling. But, oddly, Carter’s voice held no bitterness. Only gloating.
“He’s climbed more than halfway up the ranking board in just under a week,” Carter went on. “That’s practically unheard of.”
As she regarded Carter, Klaudia realized that while he certainly didn’t like Julian, Julian was the lesser of two evils. Better to be shown up by the closest thing America had to an aristocracy than by a Russian girl.
And despite his pettiness and ego, Carter was a competent strategist. He knew how to pick a winner. If he couldn’t beat Klaudia
himself, he would throw all his support behind someone who could.
“Well,” Klaudia said, bending over to gather her books and pick up her satchel, “I do hope your new hero doesn’t disappoint
you.”
Carter’s face flushed as red as his hair. “You really think you’re untouchable?”
“My ranking hasn’t slipped in three years. I’ve earned everything that I have.”
“So have I,” Carter shot back.
“Yes, you’ve certainly earned your place beneath me,” said Klaudia. “Truly, Carter—you deserve it.”
She turned and hurriedly exited the reading room before she could hear Carter’s outraged rejoinder. Klaudia reassured herself
that he was mostly bark and little bite. For all his bluster, Carter had never truly threatened her place at Valeran.
But as she returned to her dorm, his words nagged at her. Carter was no real challenger, but what about Julian? He had already
proven himself intelligent and capable. It took considerable skill to improve one’s ranking so drastically in such a short
period of time. And it was impressive, winning a major election at eighteen, even if it had ended in humiliation and scandal. Money and privilege did
not account for everything. Plenty of billionaires twice his age couldn’t even buy themselves a Senate seat.
He’s weak, Klaudia tried to assure herself. She had seen him crying. It might have been an asset in the real world, but here at Valeran,
his privileged background was also his soft underbelly. Once exposed, it could be exploited.
Back in her room, she pulled out her tablet and checked the rankings board. She scrolled down until she found Julian’s ranking. Twenty-eight. Far from first—but maybe not far enough.
Klaudia scrolled back up to the top of the list. Seeing her own name there at number one eased her mind. The list would refresh
at midnight, and at the end of the week, if she remained at first, Dr. Iver would offer his usual array of rewards. The most
sought-after reward was a weekend furlough, which Dr. Iver only granted to the student at rank one.
Klaudia had never taken it. It was hard enough to keep her father from her thoughts, from her nightmares. The mere idea of
going back to New York turned her blood cold. Instead, she took the more trivial rewards: an allowance for otherwise prohibited
items and small luxuries, like makeup and hair clips. She ordered shoes and jewelry for Jane, shampoo and skincare products
that made the other girls in the bathroom eye them with envy. Arranged neatly on Klaudia’s bureau were tubes of red lipstick,
as much proof of her superiority as the rankings list itself.
Her tablet pinged with a message from Mikhail. Game’s afoot, it read. Let me know what you think.
Included was a file, which Klaudia swiftly downloaded. The app materialized on her home screen and then launched something
called THYMOS.exe.
When it opened, she was able to see the other users who had logged on chronologically. Jane Lin, of course, and below it, Julian Joyce-Young III. Mikhail had sent it to them in precisely that order. Jane first, then Julian, and then her.
Worrying her lower lip between her teeth, Klaudia opened the plain text with Mikhail’s instructions. It was thousands of words
long. On the side of the screen, a green check mark pulsed, indicating that Julian was also online.
Klaudia took out a notebook and a pen. She scrolled through the file, taking assiduous notes, working until her hand ached.
Mikhail had built a truly impressive product, with what Klaudia swiftly determined were dozens of strategic considerations that had thousands of potential outcomes.
It drew obvious inspirations from chess and other turn-based strategy games but was far more complex.
After more than an hour had passed, an hour of note-taking and mental equations, Klaudia put down her pen and shook out her
fingers, wincing.
Her father was left-handed, too. When they’d come to America, he’d switched his wedding ring from his right hand to his left.
But he always took it off before he did what he had to do. He was always careful not to leave any marks.