Forty-Three
Rural Virginia
The helicopter ride back to Valeran passed in a blur. High above the mountains, the trees lost their details. They were smudges
of color, deep green and faded orange beneath the ever-present azure haze.
As soon as they landed, Giselle was maneuvered roughly out of the helicopter by Deckard. Her wrists were still red and raw
from the handcuffs that had pressed hard into her skin. When she looked down at her hands, she didn’t recognize them. Nadiya’s
blood was dried into every crease of her palms.
It was just after dawn, the grass still damp with morning dew, too early for any of the students to be out. Giselle was sure
that Deckard appreciated the privacy. His gait was brisk and businesslike, his gaze obscured beneath his dark glasses.
He led her into the main building. The halls were empty and seemed cavernous. Giselle remembered the fear that had shivered
through her belly when she had entered them for the first time. The blood had rushed to her cheeks and her mind had supplied
the words I don’t belong here.
Now she felt only vacant and cold.
Deckard directed her down the stairs and to the subbasement. Steel walls and winding corridors. The metal seemed to radiate
a chill, as if it were pure ice. Giselle was retracing the initial journey she had taken through the tunnels, barely more
than a week ago, when Deckard made a sharp, sudden turn and led her down a different path.
At the end of the hall was a door with a biometric scanner. Deckard pressed his thumb to the pad.
The door opened with a hiss of steam. Giselle hesitated, but Deckard nudged her shoulder none too gently and said, “Go on.”
Giselle stepped into the room. When the haze cleared, the first thing she saw was an array of glass pods. Four of them, long
and coffin-like, clearly intended to hold a person—or at least a body—within them. Each was linked via a coil of multicolored
wires to a blinking, flickering machine in the center of the room. The enormous screen above it was black, but it hummed with
latent power.
A lab. Giselle blinked furiously, as if this were a scene from a dream and she could wake from it. But she knew it was real
when Professor Blanchard emerged from behind the machine, glasses slightly fogged, smiling that thin, familiar smile.
“Giselle,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
She took an instinctive step backward. “What are you doing here? What . . . what is this place?”
“It’s a satellite location of the CIA’s Extended Reality Lab,” he replied. “Group A.”
Extended Reality? She looked up in bewilderment at Deckard, but his expression was unchanged, unreadable.
“I don’t understand,” Giselle said.
“For many years,” said Professor Blanchard, drawing closer, “the CIA has been hard at work replicating technology that the
Soviets discovered more than a decade ago. Led by Dr. Moritz Satow, the Russians and their allies were able to create a fully
immersive virtual reality.”
Giselle froze.
“The virtual reality,” Professor Blanchard went on, “is very likely where the next phase of the war will take place. The Germans
call it Projekt Traum. Here, we call it Project Dreamscape.”
“That’s why you want Satow. So that he can help you re-create his work.”
“No,” replied Professor Blanchard, with an airy laugh. “I have no interest in Satow’s work. We have fully replicated it ourselves now—with your help.”
Her heart stuttered. “My help?”
“But of course,” he said. “Why do you think we had you brought here in the first place? You see, the Dreamscape is constructed
and maintained by the human mind. Think about it. A neuron firing is an electrochemical reaction. It generates power. The
more minds that are feeding the Dreamscape, the more complete its reality. And when a mind of your caliber is feeding it . . . well, it allows you to exercise control over the virtual reality itself.”
Understanding began to trickle in, a slow drip of horror. “The nodes,” she said. “You’ve been using the minds of all the students
here to feed the Dreamscape.”
“Naturally,” Professor Blanchard said. “As I said, the caliber of the mind matters a great deal. Better to have the Dreamscape constructed by Klaudia Shimonova than by some mook on the
welfare list, no? Valeran is the perfect testing ground. All these generational minds, both brilliant and young enough to
be ripe for molding.”
Giselle looked back at the glass pods, gleaming under the fluorescents.
“The simulation in Traumstadt,” she said. “That was part of the Dreamscape, wasn’t it?”
Deckard nodded. “When you arrived in Traumstadt, you were fitted with cuffs that connected you to the virtual reality. While
your minds wandered our maze, your bodies were safely held at the local hospital. The function of the L-pills was to remove
you from the Dreamscape. To wake you up.”
Memories assailed her. The silver cuffs, the pills, the strange surfacing in the hospital. The visions that were as bright
and colored as they ever were, and as detailed as a photograph—
“Thanks to your contributions,” Dr. Iver said, “the simulation’s edges have been smoothed considerably. It’s close to flawless.”
Giselle’s mind whirled. It had seemed flawless, everything solid around them, real enough to touch and feel. Including the vision of the men in the tunnel.
Yet they had been there one moment and gone the next, removed from existence in a blink.
“But . . . ,” she started, “when we were in the tunnel, when your men were running toward us, they just . . . disappeared.
Did you remove them from the Dreamscape?”
“No,” Deckard said. “You did.”
“Me? How?”
“There are limits to how much we are able to control the Dreamscape externally,” said Professor Blanchard. “The minds that
are used to shape it are much more competent at manipulating its reality. Think of it like a chain: We put images into your
mind, and then your mind feeds them into the Dreamscape. Given your remarkable recall, you are able to re-create what we show
you. Perfectly.”
“So all those videos you forced me to watch, those pictures you showed me,” she said slowly, “that was all for me to feed
into the Dreamscape?”
“You are our greatest asset in the war now, Giselle.” Professor Blanchard’s eyes were fixed and bright. “No one is able to
manipulate the Dreamscape more adeptly than you. You are our most powerful weapon.”
Giselle shook her head. “No. I’m not—I can’t. I’m not a weapon.”
“You can,” said Professor Blanchard. “And you are. You’ve already killed for us.”
Within a moment, ice flooded her veins. “What?”
“Those men you saw in the tunnel were CIA employees,” said Deckard, “sent into the Dreamscape to make the simulation more
convincing for you.”
“No,” she repeated. “No, I . . .”
“You used your influence over the Dreamscape’s architecture to make them disappear,” Professor Blanchard continued. “And,
in doing so, you ended their lives in the real world, too. Left their brains burnt and smoking like a dead engine.”
The ground seemed to shift under her feet. Six. There had been six of them. Six men with names, with homes, with families,
with histories and futures. She had stolen that from them. Without ever wielding a weapon or pulling a trigger, she had killed.
“I’m a murderer,” she choked out.
“It is a bit unfortunate,” Deckard admitted. “Those were some of my most efficient employees.”
The room spun. Giselle launched herself toward the door, but Deckard stepped swiftly in front of her, blocking the exit.
She dropped to her knees and hung her head, whimpering.
“I’ll take it from here,” said Professor Blanchard. “Thanks for delivering her.”
“See you soon, Adam.”
And then Deckard was gone. The door to the lab shut behind him with another hiss of steam.
Giselle remained on her knees, staring at the floor. Her eyes burned but she couldn’t blink. All she could think of were those
men. She imagined their bodies turning cold in the pods, the monitors attached to them flatlining. The dead hum of empty air.
Professor Blanchard approached her and, very gently, tipped up her chin.
“I hate to see you suffer,” he said. “When you kill Satow, you’ll be an American hero. Your name etched into the annals of
history . . . and you’ve refilled my own well of hope, too. My perfect subject. The world’s most capable mind. It hardly seems
fair for you to be so beautiful, too.”
Giselle stared at him in confusion, tears running down her cheeks. And then Professor Blanchard grasped her face and kissed her.
The shock of it made her go still. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, as Professor Blanchard’s mouth worked against her
own. A black abyss of terror opened up within her and Giselle tumbled through. All of a sudden she was a little girl again,
helpless under her mother’s boyfriend’s hands.
No. The word seared through her like a burst of light. Not again. Never again.
She was not that little girl. She was grown now, and she was a killer. If nothing else, she wasn’t weak anymore. She might
be sinful, but she was strong.
Giselle tore away from Professor Blanchard. She struck him across the face so hard that pain echoed through her palm and up
her arm.
He stumbled backward, glasses askew. He caught himself against the wall, chest heaving, and then gave a low laugh.
“Nice to see a little fight in you,” he said. “But save the rest of it for the mission. As soon as the others return, you’re
going into the Dreamscape, and you’re not coming out until Satow is dead.”
Nadiya, recovering in a hospital bed in New York. Klaudia, somewhere Giselle had not been given the privilege to know. And
Julian. Bitterness filled her. If he hadn’t turned on them, they would be far away by now—fugitives, not soldiers. Not murderers.
“Get away from me,” she bit out.
Professor Blanchard straightened and adjusted his glasses. “Very well,” he said. “Then enjoy your solitude.”
He turned and stepped through the door, white coat billowing after him. With a blast of steam the door shut again, and Giselle
was alone.
Alone. Trembling but determined, she circled the lab, examining the machines. She tried to pull the wires from the pods, but they held fast. She opened a filing cabinet and flipped through the folders, then scattered them all onto the floor.
Her heart was pounding. Giselle opened the top drawer of Professor Blanchard’s desk. She rummaged through pens and pads of
paper, empty vials and sets of nodes in their plastic casing. Then she uncovered a pair of scissors, silver and gleaming sharp.
She took the scissors and approached the screen, which was still dark. The spasming blackness threw her own face back at her.
Even tear-streaked and pale with exhaustion, it was still the face of a pageant queen. Pretty and delicate. Flimsy, breakable.
Years seemed to pile on her at that moment, memory after memory, crushing her under their weight. Her father’s retreating
back, her mother’s quiet weeping, Meemaw standing in the door of the trailer that night. Glitter and stage lights, sequins
and cheap crowns. Bonnie turning away from her. Sutton’s face smirking at her through the bars.
All that had happened to another girl. Giselle lifted the scissors and dug them into her tangled mass of hair. One rough cut,
then another. Locks of auburn fluttered to the ground. With each cut, her tears ebbed. When she looked up at the screen again,
her eyes were dry, and her jaw was set.