Seventeen
Rural Virginia
The dream lingered, long after Nadiya woke. It chased her through the next day, pulling her attention away from everything
else. She drifted in her classes. She picked at her food in the dining hall. During shooting practice, she kept missing the
target.
Matteo, understandably, thought she was losing her mind.
“I’m getting scared,” he said as they walked from the armory. “If Nadiya Karam can’t make her shots, the world must be coming
to an end.”
“If the end of the world was coming, you’d know. You’d see the mushroom cloud.”
They ate lunch out on the lawn, enjoying the late April sunshine. Nadiya tuned out Matteo’s chatter and looked around for
Giselle. Was she still with Professor Blanchard? What was he doing with her? They’d exchanged that single message this morning,
and then Nadiya’s tablet had gone silent.
Matteo was saying something about a new game that one of the hackers had designed. He had the app open on his tablet to show
her, but Nadiya’s eyes glazed over it. Interrupting him, she blurted out, “Have you ever seen anything strange while wearing
the nodes?”
Frowning, Matteo asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean . . .” Nadiya’s gaze swept the lawn again. “Have you ever slept with them on?”
“No. Why would I?” Matteo’s frown deepened. “Have you?”
They were skirting dangerous territory. One wrong move, one misspoken word, and all her secrets would flood out like water from a burst dam. Nadiya swallowed. Dr. Iver would warn her to change the subject.
But instead, slowly, she nodded.
“Shit. Why?”
Nadiya hesitated. She wasn’t even sure she could articulate it. Another moment passed, and then she said, “Dr. Iver has always
made me. They’re supposed to help me sleep, to keep the nightmares away. But recently . . .”
She trailed off, and Matteo watched her with an uncharacteristically gentle expression. Somehow that made her feel even worse.
The thought that he might pity her.
“Well, then,” he said, “why don’t you ask him?”
As an idea, it was simple. But in execution, it felt almost impossible. Nadiya hadn’t received another message on her tablet
from Giselle all day. She’d seen her in the dining hall but hadn’t had the courage to approach her. Not after what she’d dreamed.
When she joined Dr. Iver for dinner that night, she had already run over the words in her mind, practiced her lines. But as
soon as she sat down, Dr. Iver sensed that something was off. He didn’t touch his food, and instead watched her with the canny,
probing stare of a hawk.
“What’s wrong, Nadiya?”
Her fingers hovered above her fork and knife. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him as she said, “I think there’s something
off with the nodes.”
Dr. Iver regarded her.
“When I was with Professor Blanchard the other day,” she went on, “he had me put on a pair of them, and then he . . . he put
thoughts into my mind. My own nightmares. How is that possible?”
A moment passed, and Dr. Iver steepled his hands.
“Perhaps I should have been more forthright about this with you. But part of Professor Blanchard’s purpose here is to continue crucial neurotechnological research.
The work is CIA-funded and part of important government initiatives.
These are confidential, of course, and keeping you in the dark was what I believed would keep you safe. ”
“So we’re all just rats in a lab?” Nadiya asked bitterly.
“No. You are highly valued future agents. Your training here is just as imperative as Professor Blanchard’s work. I firmly
believe that your generation will be the one to finally end the war.”
Nadiya’s mouth opened, but she couldn’t find words.
“And you,” Dr. Iver went on, “are the greatest work of my life. There is no one else in the world like you, Nadiya, and nothing
of greater value to me.”
Her heart softened, and she hated that it did. She hated that all her questions, all her indignation, drained out of her when
Dr. Iver’s voice was so gentle and his eyes were so filled with love. At least, she thought it was love. It had to be.
There is no one else in the world like you. It was the same thing he had said about Giselle. Her throat tightened. Giselle, who she had walked with in the landscape
of her dreams. Maybe she should have asked about that, too, but the thought of it made Nadiya’s stomach clench. It felt like
a betrayal, a violation of that sacred space that they had shared only when sleeping.
This would be the first secret she kept from Dr. Iver.
“I don’t want to do it again,” Nadiya said. “I don’t want to see . . .”
Her real father, lying in the growing puddle of blood. His broken, desperate moaning. Help me, Nadiya. . . .
“No,” Dr. Iver said with conviction. “I will not make you endure that again.” He reached out, brushing back her bangs and
placing a hand against her forehead. He did this often—as if feeling for a fever. “But I have something else to propose to
you instead.”
Nadiya tensed. “What?”
“I think you’ll be pleased about it. A representative from the Farm is coming next week to take a look around the campus.
They want to see what progress is being made, and which students are the most promising.”
The Farm was the nickname for the CIA’s training facility in Williamsburg. Several times a year, agents from the Farm visited
Valeran, sitting in on classes, watching students throw each other against the mats during combat training, observing target
practice. As much as it was a test of the students, it was also a test of Dr. Iver. They wanted to make sure that the CIA
was right to keep investing in Valeran—and in him as headmaster.
Dr. Iver was solicitous about these visits. He ensured the campus was spotless, every uniform pressed, every student on their
best behavior. He knocked students down the rankings board if they fooled around. If they made spectacular failures of themselves,
he threatened expulsion.
“All right,” Nadiya said. “What do you want me to do?”
“As you know, we have recently received a generous donation from Auric, including their new line of military-grade weapons.”
Nadiya frowned. “Those Luster guns . . .”
“Not up to your standards, I know.” Dr. Iver smiled. “But the CIA is curious to know how they perform. If anyone can make
a mediocre weapon look like an M1 in its prime, it’s you. I thought we might have a little exhibition.”
An exhibition. It was unprecedented. Dr. Iver had never arranged a demonstration for their Farm visitors, likely thinking
it would come across as desperate. Maybe Valeran’s funding was at risk. Maybe his job was at risk. Or maybe it was Auric,
pulling the strings. If they had his endorsement of their Luster products, it might convince the army to adopt them as crew-served
ordnance.
Nadiya was the best combat student at Valeran. Even without being officially ranked, it was not up for debate. And that was all thanks to Dr. Iver. He had taken a frightened little girl and turned her into a soldier.
She did not know who or what she would have become without him. And so it was easy for Nadiya to say, “Yes. Of course I’ll
do it.”
In her bedroom that night, Nadiya went through her usual routine of checking her body for injuries that had gone unnoticed.
She found a flowering bruise on her left knee and couldn’t remember how she might have gotten it.
When she was finished, she put on her pajamas and perched on the edge of her bed. A new set of nodes had been placed on the
bedside table. She reached for them, then paused with her arm midair. Briefly she glanced at her tablet again. No new messages.
It felt both easy and terrifying to place the nodes on her temples again. As she did, she caught sight of her father’s cross,
glinting from inside the table’s half-opened drawer. Usually, she kept it there, whenever she didn’t have it on her person.
But this time, she placed it directly on her bedside table. For some reason, she wanted Dr. Iver to see it.
Then Nadiya lay down, and dove into the dark waters of her dreams.