Thirty-One #2
Deckard pressed his lips together. “You should be grateful that you were given an opportunity to make mistakes at all. You
can choose to learn your lessons now or later—but believe me when I say the real world is not so forgiving. The very least
your enemies will be is arbitrary.”
“Our enemies,” Klaudia repeated, “or yours?”
“Don’t make me doubt your loyalty to your adopted homeland, Ms. Shimonova.”
“Resorting to nativism to make your point?” Julian’s tone was like acid. “I thought you were better than that, Deckard.”
“That’s enough,” Deckard said sharply. “For Ms. Shimonova’s record-breaking performance alone, I’ll do you a kindness and
grant one night’s uninterrupted sleep before we begin the second and final phase of your simulation.”
“Second?” Nadiya echoed. Giselle’s stomach dropped.
The faintest glimmer of pleasure touched Deckard’s expression. Or maybe it was more of an indulgent contempt.
“Of course. You still have a mission to complete.” And then, in a portentous voice, he quoted, “ ‘Once more unto the breach.’ ”
“I believe that line ends with ‘dear friends,’ ” Julian said.
Deckard’s almost-smile evaporated. “Don’t press your luck.”
The darkness was complete as they were escorted back into Traumstadt, the false moon still obscured. Giselle was so weary
she could hardly keep her head aloft.
“Get some rest,” Deckard said, directing them into the lodge. “You’ll need it.”
“Any further guidance for us?” Klaudia asked.
Deckard smiled thinly. “Talk to Crispin.”
They all looked over at Crispin, who rubbed his throat and winced.
“Sorry,” Nadiya mumbled.
“One night,” Deckard reminded them. “And then I’m expecting a performance as immaculate as Ms. Shimonova’s from all of you.”
With that, he was gone, as cryptically as he had come. The door to the lodge shut behind him. The five of them stood in the
great room, hunched by an almost tangible exhaustion.
Julian coughed weakly. Without his glasses, the dark circles under his eyes were visible and deeply hued. To Crispin, he said,
“Any advice?”
Crispin’s gaze flickered—pointedly to Nadiya and then back to Julian. In truth he looked as tired as the rest of them, his skin even more sallow than usual, and with a ring of bruises blossoming around his neck. Giselle felt an unexpected tug of pity.
“Deckard left a record player in every room,” Crispin said. “It’s common practice for clandestine officers under surveillance
to—”
“Yeah, got it,” Nadiya cut in.
Crispin nodded and shrank back. Giselle felt another flicker of sympathy. He couldn’t be any older than the oldest among them—Julian,
who was nineteen—which meant he must have come into the CIA’s employ when he was even younger than Giselle. She couldn’t quite
imagine the circumstances that would have brought a teenage boy here, but she was sure they weren’t pleasant. If Crispin had
endured even half of what they had during his training . . .
“You should all get some sleep,” Klaudia said. “We don’t know when Deckard will be generous enough to allow us another respite.”
“What about you?” Giselle asked.
Klaudia’s eyes had the glassiness of exhaustion, but her voice was clear when she said, “I’ll be up in a minute. I want to
check something in the files first.”
“You’re the reason we made it out of there,” said Julian, “and the reason Deckard is giving us a break at all. You deserve
to rest.”
“I’m fine,” said Klaudia.
Her flat tone left no room for argument. Giselle watched Nadiya’s shoulders slump, her black hair falling in glossy curtains
around her face.
“All right,” Giselle said. “But you need to sleep eventually.”
“I will.”
“I’ll come downstairs and drag you into bed,” Giselle warned.
That provoked a small, unexpected smile from Klaudia. “Fair enough.”
Giselle began her ascent to the mezzanine.
Nadiya followed behind, more slowly, but Julian and Crispin remained below.
Julian stepped closer to Klaudia and began to speak to her in low tones, and Giselle wished she had stayed close enough to hear.
Admittedly she was very keen to know what Julian’s torture had been.
That the billionaire golden boy and prodigal son of one of America’s great dynasties could be brought low by Deckard’s tricks alarmed her to no small degree.
Their room was in the same disarray that they had left it. The blankets were thrown off the beds, sheets tangled and strewn
across the floor. Out of some numb, inane instinct, Giselle began to tidy up, shaking out the duvets and folding them neatly
on the mattresses.
Nadiya merely watched, as still as a statue.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said, after a moment.
“I know,” said Giselle. “I just want to.” There was something calming about it. She had always done the chores back home.
When she finished, she let her arms drop to her sides. Her nerve endings hummed. In the lamplight, Nadiya’s eyes shone like
polished obsidian.
“I’m not sure if Deckard is already listening,” Nadiya said. “But maybe better safe than sorry. . . .”
She glanced toward the record player, cached in the corner and covered by a thick layer of dust. If Deckard wanted them to
use it, he could have placed it front and center, Giselle thought bitterly. As it was, she had assumed it was just a piece
of set dressing.
But now she approached it, opened the case, and flipped through the records. She was curious to see what music had held up
to Deckard’s discerning tastes.
Mostly American classics, it seemed—very patriotic. The covers were faded and bent at the corners. Giselle wondered if records had some particular acoustic quality that better concealed the sounds of illicit conversation, or if Deckard was just too cheap to buy a radio or a set of speakers.
It took her a moment to figure out how to place one of the records on the machine and drop the needle. The dreamlike strains
of the Beach Boys’ “All I Wanna Do” filled the room.
When Giselle turned back around, Nadiya was standing closer. Her heart skipped.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Nadiya said quietly. Brokenly.
Giselle was almost too nervous to ask, “Do what?”
Nadiya just let out a soft, tremulous breath. She didn’t speak.
Heart still pattering, Giselle glanced around the room. She caught sight of the silver cross gleaming on Nadiya’s bedside
table. A desolating possibility occurred to her.
“Is he your boyfriend?” she blurted out.
Nadiya frowned. “Who?”
“That guy at Valeran. The—the male model. The one you’re always hanging around with.”
“Matteo?” Her brow wrinkled. “No. Definitely not.”
A flush rose to Giselle’s face, half embarrassment and half relief. “Oh,” she said, trying to keep her tone casual. “I just
thought—well, you have that cross. . . .”
Comprehension came into Nadiya’s gaze, softening it. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that,” she said. “It’s not the kind
of cross you’d see in roadside churches, if you know what I mean.” She paused contemplatively, and then added, “It was my
father’s.”
“Oh,” Giselle said again. Her thoughts were racing. “I’m sorry. I—”
There was no silence between their words. The music swirled to fill the space.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Nadiya repeated, in a whisper. “I’m not supposed to do this.”
“I know,” said Giselle. “I’m not supposed to either.” If her silly schoolgirl crush on Bonnie had cost Giselle her family, her freedom, her life as she knew it, what price would she have to pay for this? Danger seemed to hang in the very air.
But she found that she didn’t care. She took a step closer.
So did Nadiya. They were within an arm’s reach of each other now.
“I wasn’t ready before,” Nadiya said. Her throat pulsed. “But . . .”
Giselle stepped closer and closed the rest of the space between them. She had expected to feel a rush of adrenaline, injected
by the perilousness of the situation. How doomed and impossible it all seemed. Instead, a languid warmth filled her, steady,
slow.
The song unfurled. All I wanna do—
She slid her arms around Nadiya’s waist. Beneath the swelling of the music, Nadiya’s breath caught, a low sound that made
Giselle’s pulse skip in return.
Nadiya’s hands rose to cup her face. Her fingers trembled as they skimmed along her cheekbones, the curve of her jaw. She
leaned forward until their foreheads touched.
“I’m ready now,” she said.
And then there was nothing but the song and the feeling of Nadiya’s lips on her own. Giselle pulled her closer, arching against
every curve of her body, the solidity of muscle and the tenderness of flesh. The world behind her eyelids was all that lambent
orange-gold. She hadn’t imagined it was possible: to see only what was in front of her.