Thirty
Camp Peary, Virginia
Klaudia felt numb as she descended the stairs. Her limbs were stiff and it all felt like the haze of some horrible dream.
Giselle followed her, whimpering. When they reached the great room, she let out a choked sob.
The door to the lodge was still open, the wood juddering in the wind. But the men had vanished into the snow and they’d otherwise
left no trace, no indication they’d ever been there at all. Half-finished glasses of water remained undisturbed. The files
had not been scattered or tipped onto the floor. Even the chessboard of Julian and Klaudia’s aborted game was untouched. Her
gaze scanned the pieces. Julian had hung his queen. If they’d kept playing, her win was all but guaranteed.
The only proof that the strange men had come was that Nadiya and Julian were gone.
Giselle crossed the room and circled the table, hand reaching out to skim over the files, as if she might be able to feel
some of Nadiya’s and Julian’s lingering presence. A swallow pulsed in her throat. Then she looked over at Klaudia, eyes glossy
with unshed tears, and said, “Why didn’t they take me instead?”
It was not the question Klaudia had expected and for a moment she was unmoored. “We can’t know Deckard’s intentions.”
She didn’t like admitting that she was just as confused and felt just as helpless. Then Klaudia watched with no small amount
of horror as Giselle sank to the floor. She pulled her knees to her chest, buried her face in her hands, and began to weep.
Klaudia froze. She was no more equipped for this situation than she was for a shoot-out or a parachute jump.
The sound of Giselle’s tears overwhelmed her intellectual capabilities. If she were kinder—if she were another person entirely—to
kneel beside Giselle and comfort her would be second nature. But now Klaudia only stood mutely, hands clenching and unclenching
at her sides.
Giselle’s tears wore on and Klaudia made herself move. Slowly, as if approaching a cornered animal. She knelt down and began
having an internal argument with her own arm. Just touch her shoulder. That’s all you have to do. Just let her know you’re here. That you care.
It seemed such a pathetically difficult task. After another moment, she reached out and let her hand rest on Giselle’s shoulder.
Giselle looked up, tear-streaked face both despondent and shocked.
“It’s going to be okay,” Klaudia said. “We’ll get them back.”
She spoke with more confidence than she felt.
In a hoarse, pained voice, Giselle asked, “How?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
Klaudia let her hand slip from Giselle’s shoulder and she rose to her feet again. She hesitated, and then offered Giselle
the same hand. Giselle took it, and Klaudia pulled her up to a standing position.
Now Klaudia cast her gaze around the room. Deckard’s men had left nothing; they had slipped in by the cover of night and then
vanished again, as mysteriously as they’d arrived. It did not surprise her at all that Crispin was nowhere to be found. She
was almost certain that he’d been a part of it, somehow.
All of a sudden, the television flickered on.
She and Giselle both startled. The screen was gray, humming and flickering with static. After a beat, something sharpened
out of the fuzz.
IV.iii.62–69
IV.1–10
II.1
Klaudia stared without blinking. It was a more abstruse clue than she’d imagined or hoped for. She glanced at Giselle, whose
face looked equally blank.
Her thoughts swirled and raced. Roman numerals and Arabic numbers in conjunction. It was uncommon. Not even the field of mathematics
ever used both systems of notation simultaneously. So maybe it wasn’t math.
Realization flared in her like a spark through a wire.
“It’s Shakespearean citation.”
Giselle’s brows drew together. “What?”
“There’s a particular way you’re supposed to cite Shakespeare’s work.” Klaudia had been keeping Shakespeare in the back of
her mind ever since she’d seen the name on her cuff, TITANIA. “The act is in capitalized numerals. The scene is in lowercase. And the lines are in Arabic numbers.”
Abruptly everything inside her was alight. She broke away from Giselle and hurried to the library, where she’d seen all the
books and board games. The air inside was heavy with dust. Klaudia began to tear the books off the shelves.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Vonnegut’s Complete Stories. The Last Man. Giselle joined her and began searching, too. Their fingers brushed once and Klaudia found the sensation was not entirely
unpleasant.
Finally, her gaze landed on the spine of a worn, leather-bound book. Henry V.
Klaudia took it down with shaking hands. She and Giselle returned to the great room and settled back in front of the television, which still hummed and glitched. Klaudia flipped through the pages, pulse racing, until she reached act four, scene three, line sixty-two.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Klaudia met Giselle’s eyes. Though there were still tears on her lashes, her gaze was sharply defiant. Almost angry.
She really was beautiful, even now, with her perky nose and wide blue eyes, half NFL cheerleader and half Hollywood ingenue.
It made Klaudia’s chest thump with an embarrassed envy. But it wasn’t quite so simple as that. All the popular, effortlessly
beautiful girls at Trinity, while disdainful toward Klaudia, had not provoked a similar unease. They were shallow and catty,
sneering and vain. Klaudia wrote them off with a disdain of her own.
But for all her beauty, Giselle had no such vanity. Klaudia could not imagine a cruel word ever falling from her lips. And
that was worse. Klaudia had always justified her own coldness as necessary for survival. Giselle, both beautiful and kind,
was a nightmarish amalgam of everything Klaudia wished she could be. It was almost painful to be in her presence. She could
not stop envisioning how different her own life might have been, had she the fortune of being born beautiful.
Yet in this moment, Klaudia realized she could not afford such resentment, or to be so uneasy in her company. They were bound
together now, allies. They could only find their way out of this together.
“Saint Crispin’s day,” Giselle murmured, brushing her finger over the words. “Do you think that means . . .”
Klaudia’s throat bobbed. “I think so.”
She flipped back to the prologue of act four. The lines of the chorus.
Now entertain a conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other’s watch.
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other’s umbered face
Klaudia’s mind flared again. Adrenaline flooded her. She turned to the chorus of act two.
Now all the youth of England are on fire
When she looked up from the page, Giselle was watching her intently. “Does any of this make sense to you?”
“Yes,” Klaudia said, with a surge of certainty, “it does.”
She and Giselle both dressed hurriedly and returned to the great room. Klaudia found herself glancing again and again at the
chessboard. Mere hours ago Julian had been sitting there, moving his pieces with long, dexterous fingers, staring at her unblinkingly
from behind his glasses. The image kept returning to her, and it was both invigorating and nerve-racking. She hated to do
something as mundane as miss him.
Klaudia hated even more to wonder what would happen if she and Giselle failed. Or what was already happening to Julian and
Nadiya, wherever Deckard had taken them. She had to believe that this was all still part of the simulation, an elaborate test.
She had to believe that Julian and Nadiya were both valuable enough not to risk damaging.
But Klaudia also knew there were plenty of ways to hurt someone without leaving any evidence.
Giselle looked equally nervous. Her cheeks were pale and she was visibly shaking. The clock mounted above the fireplace ticked
loudly, approaching midnight.
Now entertain a conjecture of a time . . .
“Are you sure about this?” Giselle asked. “I know, I don’t have any right to doubt you, I just—”
Klaudia frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I know that you’re good at this. That you’re a genius. The way Julian talks about you—Nadiya, too. You were Valeran’s top
student, you . . .” Giselle’s gaze dropped to the floor. “You have a reason for being here. I don’t. I’m sorry. I can’t really
help you.”
Klaudia was so taken aback she could have laughed. It seemed absurd to her that someone like Giselle would ever be uncomfortable
in her company. More than ever she felt as though they were living in some bizarre, through-the-looking-glass world, where
everything was backward and twisted, where an all-American former pageant queen confessed such a thing to her.
“Trust me,” Klaudia said, “nothing in my life has adequately prepared me for this.”
Giselle looked up timidly.
“All I did at Valeran was stand at a podium or sit behind a desk. I wrote essays and played games. And all I did before was
read the paper and buy stocks on my father’s computer. I’m not good at this—whatever this is. I’m just trying to get us through it safely.”
Not that she had even done a particularly good job of it, so far. She had missed something, and Deckard had gotten the drop
on them. She could never let it happen again.
“If anything,” Klaudia went on more slowly, “this is all my fault. I don’t blame anyone but myself.”
“It’s not,” Giselle replied, with unexpected fierceness. “You’ve done more for us than anyone else could have.”
Klaudia wasn’t sure she believed that. But the conviction in Giselle’s voice was unmistakable. There was resolve in her gaze
now, too, the timidity shed.
Now all the youth of England are on fire—
With a deep breath, Klaudia said, “Then let’s hope that we can do this. Together.”
Outside, it was completely dark. Deckard had switched off the stars and hidden the moon away behind a layer of false clouds.
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe
Only the hazy beam of their flashlights guided them from the lodge, down the sloping road, and to the town square.
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night—
Klaudia paused in front of the statue of Lenin, still cloaked as it was in the artificial snow. It emitted a very soft, almost
static hum, like a fluorescent lamp. She had noticed something off about the statue when she’d regarded it that afternoon.
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other’s watch.
Carefully, she neared the statue. Lenin was dressed plainly, in a heavy work coat and ushanka. His face, so familiar from
old news broadcasts and the pages of textbooks, stared back at her with an almost reproachful severity.
Behind her, Giselle was unpacking the satchel they’d brought and laying out their materials on the snow-dusted cobblestones.
She worked without looking up, eyes narrowed in concentration.
Now all the youth of England are on fire . . .
The handle of vodka Deckard had mysteriously included with their canned food. A strip of fabric torn from one of their bedsheets,
stuffed down the bottle’s neck. A matchbox taken from the trunk in front of the fireplace.
Giselle put it all together, while Klaudia looked on in unexpected admiration. For as much time as she had spent wearing sequined
dresses and press-on nails, Giselle Buckley was no delicate flower.
When she was finished, she approached the statue and set the bottle at its base. Her gaze was fierce.
“Stand back,” Giselle said. “I’ll light it.”
Moved by the resolve in her voice, Klaudia walked backward, putting a safe distance between herself and Lenin’s marble likeness.
No—not marble. A cast of plaster, hollow inside.
Giselle struck the match, orange flame quivering against the heavy darkness.
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other’s umbered face
The strip of fabric caught instantly, and Giselle rushed to Klaudia’s side. They both ducked behind a nearby tree and braced
their arms over their heads. Pressed together, Klaudia felt the warmth of Giselle’s body and heard the thrum of her pulse,
but strangely had no urge to inch away.
See you soon, Deckard, she thought as the bottle blew and the statue of Lenin exploded into pieces.