Page 100 of Winterveil

“He claims he took you and Julian because of your interactions with the man in the bowler hat—because you looked suspicious to him. But that’s not what happened with Julian and me. I spoke Russian to him. I looked suspicious. Julian threw the snowball to”—she paused a moment, glancing away—“to protect me.”

Nadiya didn’t find it hard to believe, given the puppy-dog way Julian followed her, stared at her. “So what was the point?”

“To keep you and Julian in line, surely,” said Klaudia. “He identified that you two were the most defiant. But it was also a test for me. Specifically.”

Slowly, Nadiya nodded. She glanced around the table, but felt her thoughts returning again and again to the same place.

“Look,” she said carefully, “I know that what I told you before seems hard to believe—impossible, even—but I swear, that’s what happened. When I bumped into the man in the bowler hat, the hologram, he was solid.”

A shadow passed over Klaudia’s face. She was silent for so long that Nadiya began to regret bringing it up, and then—

“I believe you,” said Klaudia.

The music swelled in the air.

“You do?”

“There’s something else going on that Deckard is keeping from us. Plenty of things, I’m sure. I’m trying to get a sense of what’s coming next. I think he’s going to try and test one of us again . . . maybe you.”

Nadiya’s stomach clenched. “Okay. Well, can I help?”

Klaudia reached for one of the books on the table and passed it to her. “Start with this.”

“All right,” said Nadiya. “But I don’t have your mind—or Giselle’s.”

“But you have more insight into Dr. Iver’s mind than either of us. He’s a part of this, too.”

Hearing his name was like a blow. She had not thought about him—she had been trying not to think about him—since they had arrived in Traumstadt. She could not reconcile what Deckard had done with Dr. Iver’s insistence that he cared for her. And he did care for her; he had to. Why else would he have taken her in after her parents’ murders? Why else would he have comforted her, trained her, turned her into someone who would never have to be afraid again?

Memories of the previous night flashed across her vision. That helpless terror. Nadiya had to squeeze her eyes shut and shake her head to banish them.

She took the book from Klaudia and flipped back to the first page. Klaudia had already underlined a quote there.

England, seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves. In my boyish days she was the universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain and mountain stretch to the utmost limits of my vision, speckled by the dwellings of my countrymen, and subdued to fertility by their labors, the earth’s very center was fixed for me in that spot, and the rest of her orb was a fable—

Love for one’s country, one’s homeland, so powerful it ruled both a man’s waking mind and his dreams. This was all a test of patriotism as much as it was a test of skill and ingenuity. Nadiya picked anxiously at one of her nails.

She flipped forward another few pages and then immediately understood why Klaudia had told her to start with this book in particular. She had underlined another quote there.

Evadne was a plaything she could in no way fear.

Nadiya looked down at the cuff on her wrist, where the name EVADNE had been engraved. Their code names had not been chosen randomly. If there was indeed a test planned for her, maybe this book—The Last Man by Mary Shelley—held some crucial clues. Shifting the cuff slightly, Nadiya noticed that there was a red mark swelling under it.

Beneath the music, which sounded orchestral and vaguely familiar, Nadiya heard the faint humming of static. She peered through the doorway that led back into the great room. From her vantage point she could just barely glimpse the television, which was gray and flickering with static.

Turning back toward Klaudia, she asked, “How long has it been like that?”

“Since we got back, I think,” Klaudia said. “Deckard put his little clue up on the screen. But by the time we returned, it was just static. I tried all the dials. It’s stuck.”

“No more press conferences from Hauke to watch?”

Klaudia set down her pen. “I suppose not,” she said. “Though Deckard must have meant something by showing us the first one. I don’t believe a single element of this simulation has been placed here arbitrarily.”

“Definitely not.” Nadiya remembered the article about Satow’s kidnapping. “Satow was a doctor at a Soviet lab. Do you think—”

She cut herself off, arrested by the same confusion that always emerged when she thought about her father. At least his face was clearer to her now: the wide dark eyes so like her own, the silver cross gleaming at his throat. She remembered . . . she remembered that he kept it tucked into the collar of his shirt whenever he went to work.

To most people, science and religion don’t mix. His voice in her mind was rich and deep, raspy with a hint of amusement. They claim it’s a clash of principles. But really, I think they don’t want to imagine that God might judge them for what they’ve done, in the name of progress and knowledge.