Forty-Eight
Rural Virginia
Curled on the floor of the lab, Giselle managed to fall asleep. Her arms were braced over her head, tattered dress fanned
out around her. Nadiya’s blood had dried and turned it a dim shade of red.
When she slept, she dreamed. She dreamed she was in the tunnel again, staring down Deckard’s men. During the simulation their
faces had been hidden behind masks, but in her dream, they were exposed. They were the faces of people she knew: a man in
line at the grocery store, a fellow student in the hall, the neighbor who sat on the porch in his rocking chair.
In her dream, their mouths opened wide with horror and they screamed. Their flesh dissolved and their bones burned to ash.
And then she woke, body aching, breath coming in gasps. Giselle pushed herself into a sitting position. The lab was still
empty. No one had come for her—yet. She was not hopeful enough to believe she might be left there to starve to death.
I deserve it. I’m a murderer.
Those six men—nameless, faceless—had probably already been buried. Their families had wept over their coffins and the priests
had spoken over their graves. Giselle could see it in her mind, as clear as a memory.
She raised a hand to wipe the tears from her cheek. That was when she saw the locks of auburn hair strewn across the lab floor.
A part of her couldn’t believe she had really done it. Her mother had always loved her hair.
With a hiss of steam, the door opened. Giselle stumbled to her feet.
Dr. Iver and Professor Blanchard entered, the latter nursing a bruise on his cheek, which pleased her perversely to see. And,
behind them, leaning heavily on a pair of crutches, was Nadiya.
Giselle ran to her. What was the point of hiding it now? Deckard had seen everything, seen their kiss, which hadn’t even been
real. At least, not in the physical world. The fairy-tale feel of Traumstadt took on an even greater significance now. The whole
time they’d thought they were kissing under the moonlight, chasing each other through the snow, really they had been asleep
in glass coffins.
And if Deckard and Dr. Iver and Professor Blanchard wanted to, they could chip their way into her brain as if with ice picks,
and see any secret she still had left.
Gathering Nadiya into her arms, Giselle choked out, “You’re all right.”
Nadiya nodded. When Giselle pulled away, she took a long look at Nadiya’s face: pale, almost sallow, her lashes daggered with
tears.
“Your hair,” Nadiya said.
Giselle reached up to touch the ends—slightly ragged, since it was far from a professional cut. It was still strange to feel
nothing lying against her throat or resting heavily on her shoulders. She had chopped it all the way to her chin, the longest
strands feathering her jawline.
“I told you I wanted a makeover,” Giselle said, a little shakily. “What do you think?”
“I think you look like safety,” Nadiya whispered, “and feel like peace.”
Immediately Giselle’s chest tightened. Nadiya would find out soon enough that she was a murderer, and then what would she
feel when she looked at her? Hatred. Revulsion. Fear.
Before she could speak, Professor Blanchard cleared his throat.
“Not to interrupt this saccharine little reunion,” he said, “but the Dreamscape is waiting.”
Giselle’s pulse spiked. “No. I’m not going in there. I’m not killing Satow.”
“You’re not ready to kill Satow—yet. You’ll require training on how to manipulate the Dreamscape while you’re inside it. And
the rest of your team will need to be prepared, too.”
“The rest of the team?” Giselle echoed. “Do you mean . . .”
“Ms. Shimonova and Mr. Joyce-Young. Yes.”
“Then where are they?” Nadiya demanded.
“Here at Valeran,” said Dr. Iver. “Safe.”
Giselle laughed bitterly. “I doubt that.”
“Believe what you wish,” Dr. Iver said. “You’ll see them soon enough. Now get in the pods.”
Giselle’s blood turned hot, but quickly enough, her anger melted away into hopelessness and horror. She couldn’t fight them.
Escape was impossible—not just from the subbasement, but from Valeran’s impenetrable, heavily guarded walls. Worse still,
she knew that they were willing to use Nadiya against her. Nadiya, already injured and cowed.
Despair weighed down her limbs. She walked with a numb stiffness toward the pod.
“Good girl,” Professor Blanchard said.
He helped her lie down inside it, arranging her arms at her sides. Dr. Iver did the same to Nadiya. The nodes pressed to her
temples, cold at first, and then flaring to life with a painful prickle of heat.
An IV needle bit into her arm. The vital monitors blinked on. The screen in the center of the room flickered, static clearing
to reveal an image.
But Giselle didn’t have a chance to make it out. The last thing she saw before she went under was Professor Blanchard’s face. His lips moving, whispering, “Sweet dreams.”
She woke on her feet, Nadiya’s fingers laced through hers. The unreal air felt winter cold.
Slowly, Giselle opened her eyes. They were standing in a street, oil-slick asphalt beneath their feet, snow mounded on the
sidewalks. All around them, glass buildings speared the wispy, low-hanging clouds. The vivid light of sunset gathered on their
facades like liquid fire.
It was the same scene that Professor Blanchard had shown her in the photos all those weeks ago, impressed into her mind and
now carried into the Dreamscape. With only an errant thought, the briefest flash of a memory, more buildings rose from the
earth in thunderous rumbles.
Nadiya whirled, her expression one of both awe and horror, as the world constructed itself moment by moment.
My world, Giselle thought. My dream.
A familiar but terrifying sensation went through her, the reckless pleasure of knowing that she could make her will into reality.
The wild joy of pure power. In the real world, Dr. Iver had them trapped. But here? Now? This was her world.
“What do you want to see?” Giselle asked. Her heart was racing. “Where do you want to go?”
Anywhere, she thought. I can take you anywhere. Every memory that had once haunted her now armored her. All that agony now a weapon in her hands.
Nadiya opened her mouth, but she didn’t say a word. Her eyes were wide. Giselle was too exhilarated to wait. She tightened
her grip on Nadiya and let her mind surge and race. She let it carry them out of this dream and into the next, plunging into
darkness and then emerging into color and light.