Thirty-Five
Camp Peary, Virginia
They went back to the lodge—maybe for the last time. Crispin had vanished, presumably to communicate their plans to Deckard.
Giselle wondered why he had suddenly become so tractable. Why Julian, in particular, had managed to get some sort of hold
on him.
Klaudia and Julian, meanwhile, were sitting at the table in the great room, maneuvering pieces on a chessboard. Giselle caught
only snippets of their conversation, but once or twice she heard Klaudia laugh. Not what she had expected, in their final
moments before whatever sinister denouement Deckard had planned. But it was a nice sound—soft, almost shy. Giselle wished
she’d had the opportunity to hear it more often.
Nadiya was crouched on the floor, loading all the pistols. She moved sinuously, assuredly, the same way she did when any kind
of weapon was involved. Giselle allowed herself a moment to stare at the curve of her throat, the glossy sheen of her hair.
Then she approached and knelt down beside her.
In the middle of emptying a cartridge, Nadiya looked up. The smile that came over her face made Giselle feel like she was
looking at the sun. Not the pale scald of midday light, but the sunset: warm, lush, and orange-gold.
“Can I help?” Giselle asked. She hadn’t meant to whisper.
“It’s okay,” said Nadiya. “I’m almost done.”
The question that rose to her lips was stupid, inane, given the circumstances, but—
“What are we?”
Nadiya paused, her hands curling in her lap.
“I know what you are to me,” she said quietly.
Giselle swallowed. “And what is that?”
“My first kiss.” Nadiya’s lashes fluttered. “My first . . . anything.”
Giselle’s breath caught. As fierce and regal as Nadiya’s exterior was, she had felt the fragility of her beneath the armor.
The softness of her flesh, the limbs that were more lithe than muscular, the muscles that were more delicate than sinewy.
There was a vulnerability to her that made Giselle want to close her arms around her again, clutch her to her chest, keep
her safe.
“I . . . ,” Giselle started, cheeks warming, “I hope it was good.”
Nadiya met her gaze. “It was.”
Time seemed to slow around them. They were close enough that Giselle could have kissed her again. Klaudia had put on the record
player, “Dance of the Knights” from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, but the memory of the other song echoed in Giselle’s ears. All I wanna do is bring happiness to you—
“Don’t go away again, all right?” Giselle hated the desperate tinge to her voice. “I can’t . . . I can’t do any of this without
you.”
Nadiya straightened. Her hair, held in a loose braid, tumbled over her shoulders, wisps of black curling at her temples. Her
eyes were liquid and deerlike.
“I won’t,” she said.
Slowly, Giselle nodded. She trusted Nadiya’s competence, Klaudia’s mind, and even Julian’s loyalty to them all. It was Deckard
she didn’t trust. And maybe she didn’t trust herself, either. For as far as she had come since arriving at Valeran, Giselle
couldn’t shake the feeling that she was weak.
But if there was anything she cared to accomplish here, it was keeping Nadiya safe.
She had rescued her once—against all odds, and mostly thanks to Klaudia—and she hoped that she could do it again, if need be.
As if she could summon up some secret well of strength within herself, and do something worthwhile with it.
She hardly feared for her own safety anymore; it seemed somehow trivial by compare.
She had almost ceased to think of herself at all.
It was Nadiya and only Nadiya who she saw when she closed her eyes.
Who appeared in the landscape of her dreams.
Nadiya held out one of the pistols to her. She took it, feeling the heat that Nadiya’s hands had left.
Crispin returned, pink-cheeked from the cold. In a surprisingly resolute voice, he said, “It’s time.”
Klaudia rose swiftly from the table, and Julian followed her. “To case the house?” she asked.
“No,” said Crispin. “You don’t—Deckard said you don’t have to. He said you’ve done well enough, and you can finish it now.”
He cast his gaze uncomfortably around the room. “He—it’s waiting.”
The four of them exchanged uneasy glances. There was a furrow of confusion in Nadiya’s brow. “And we’re supposed to believe
that?”
“It’s true.” Crispin inclined his chin, a bit of defiance in his tone. He turned to Julian.
“Crispin has never lied to us, Nadiya,” Julian said. “Don’t you want to get this over with?”
Nadiya let out a breath. “Fine. But if this all goes horribly wrong, I’m coming after you in the real world and your father
will have to bribe me not to—”
“Come on,” Klaudia cut in. “Let’s just go.”
But Julian said, “Do you accept payment in blue chip stocks?”
While they bickered, Giselle noticed that the windows of the ski lodge had turned into gleaming squares of black. The hands on the clock above the fireplace had suddenly raced to twelve. Crispin was right—Deckard was arranging all the pieces into place.
Together, the five of them stepped out into the frigid midnight air. Julian looked up, and the rest of them did, too. Overhead,
striations of green and purple light rippled across the sky, a false aurora borealis. And even though Giselle knew it was
artificially constructed, it was still beautiful. And it seemed, in that moment, so very real.
She caught a shared glance between Julian and Crispin—brief, but oddly fond. Klaudia was the one who urged them along, down
the steps and toward Traumstadt’s residential street.
The road was icy and empty. The streetlamps flickered like a static glitch. Giselle shivered in a way that had nothing to
do with the cold. The pistol was pressing hard against her hip bone.
They reached Satow’s house within moments, the quaint, fairy-tale structure with ivy on the trellises and frost on the gabled
roof. It was still hard to imagine that sinister things lurked inside. Klaudia led them up the path, careful not to crunch
any of the hardened, sugar-like snow.
Once the five of them were gathered on the doorstep, Klaudia moved aside for Nadiya.
Nadiya leaned over and examined the lock. “It’s biometric. Shit.”
Giselle pushed onto her tiptoes so that she could see it. There was a panel above the door handle, with enough space to press
a thumbprint. Etched on the door itself were five blocky letters, faded and barely legible. X-N-E-N-Z.
“It’s a cipher,” Giselle said quietly.
Four heads turned toward her.
“Another ROT13, I think.” She peered closer. “Let me just . . .”
The letters arranged themselves in her mind, and then shifted. It was like seeing something take shape from nothing, a drowned object surfacing from the water. More than ever, her brain felt like a machine. A tool.
“K-A-R-A-M.”
Nadiya tensed. “That’s impossible.”
“That’s what it says.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Nadiya insisted. “Why would Deckard—”
“It could be a red herring,” suggested Klaudia. But even she didn’t sound convinced.
“Just try it,” said Julian. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“It could trigger an alarm that sets off a mine and blows us all to bits,” Nadiya said, deadpan.
“No,” Crispin said. “Not . . . not that.”
The four of them waited, tense as the wind picked up. Nadiya stared down at the pad, gaze flickering. At last, she raised
her hand, fingers trembling slightly, and pressed her right thumb to the panel.
With a soft whir, the lock deactivated.
Nadiya’s arm dropped and she let out a faint gasp of shock. The door swung open of its own accord, releasing a waft of cold
air. The interior of the house was dark, and as they stepped inside, Giselle fumbled for her flashlight, but before she could
reach it, the lights flickered on.
Before them was a living room, far more ordinary than the charming exterior of the house would suggest. And more . . . lived
in. A leather couch and two armchairs pointed toward a television. A book was open on the coffee table, along with a half-finished
saucer of tea. There were the impressions of feet in the fuzzy carpet. On the floor was a coloring book and a scattering of
uncapped markers. It looked as though the house had been inhabited until mere moments ago, when every living person within
it had simply vanished into thin air.
As they all looked around, Nadiya dropped to her knees and made a strangled sound.
Giselle rushed to her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s—” She stared up at Giselle, dark eyes shining with unfallen tears. “It’s my home.”
“Your home?”
“My parents’ home. My . . . my real home.” Nadiya lay a hand flat on the carpet, shaking, hesitant, as if she were testing
the fabric of reality itself. “This is exactly what it looked like, before . . . before . . .”
There was so much pain in her voice that it made Giselle’s chest tighten. Turning to Crispin, she demanded, “What’s going
on? Why would Deckard do this?”
But Crispin fell silent, gaze downcast.
“He did say this test was for you,” said Klaudia slowly. She was examining the book that had been left open on the table;
Giselle caught the words on its spine. The Last Man. “Nadiya, do you—”
And then, like the drawing of a curtain, the lights went off. The room was swallowed in darkness.
“Klaudia? Klaudia?” It was Julian’s voice, taut with panic.
“I’m here,” she answered. Giselle heard the hushed slide of skin against skin. Julian taking Klaudia’s hand.
Feeling through the darkness, Giselle took Nadiya’s hand, too. She tried to haul her to her feet, a chill prickling up her
spine, danger hanging in the air. And then—
There was a sudden, almost deafening groan that seemed to come from both everywhere and nowhere. The floor and the walls shook.
Giselle’s stomach swooped as gravity took its hold. The room was an elevator, a moving platform, and they were going down.