Page 135 of Winterveil

The guard wrenched her arms behind her back and laughed. “Don’t worry about Julian. He’s going to be fine.”

Nadiya lifted her head, blinking back the darkness that edged at her vision. “What do you mean?”

“He’s gone. Left with his father. Bad idea, hitching your wagon to his. Once a two-faced prick—”

The guard’s voice faded into the background. Blood roared in Nadiya’s ears. Julian had betrayed them. Why had she trusted him to be the one to make the phone call? He could have said anything to anyone. He could have sold them out in seconds.

She searched for the well of anger within herself and found only despair. The same boy who she had watched weep on the other side of the glass in Deckard’s cell had turned on them. How could she have ever trusted him? After all her training, after all the pains she had taken to make herself ruthless and invulnerable, she had let her guard down at the worst possible moment. He had made her look like a fool.

With that thought, Nadiya found her anger at last.

I’m coming for you, Julian Joyce-Young III. I’m going to make you suffer.

Giselle’s words were strangled. “Where’s Klaudia?”

“You’ll see.”

The radio crackled again. “Are you bringing them down?”

“Yeah,” the guard answered. “But one of them needs to get to a hospital.”

In her last moments of consciousness, Nadiya watched the guard shove Giselle toward the rooftop door. She let out a broken sob of protest, but it was swallowed up by the wind. Nadiya reached out her arm, blood dripping from her trembling fingers. And then the world shuddered away.

Forty-Two

Spring 2037

Klaudia was drifting, in and out of consciousness, moment by moment. Her vision was a haze and so were her memories. Only vaguely could she recall the guards closing in on her.

Chane had stumbled out of the dining room, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, a crazed smile on his face. As the guards held her in place, he grasped her by the chin and brushed a thumb over her lips.

“Not cool,” he said, panting slightly. “Not cool at all.”

“What do you want us to do with her?” one of the guards asked.

“Well, I—”

Deckard shouldered past the guards. “This is my call, Chane.”

Chane’s grip on Klaudia’s face tightened, nails digging into her cheek. “Too bad. I had a lot of fun ideas.”

“I’ll take her now,” Deckard said. “Dr. Iver will want a say in her fate.”

The scene rippled, like a reflection on water. What Klaudia did remember, with perfect clarity, was Julian’s hand slipping from hers. In another moment, she was under.

When she regained consciousness, Dr. Iver’s face hovered over her.

“Almost perfect,” he said. His voice was delicately cold. “Even in your disobedience, you demonstrated an incredible strategic mind. And I’m sure Mr. Joyce-Young’s betrayal already feels like punishment enough. But I do have to communicate my own potency. I have to remind you of who you are to me. You understand that, of course. You’ve read enough of the realist scholars. Power means nothing unless your enemies believe that you have it.”

He reached down and drew something out of his pocket. A clear plastic case. With precise ministrations, he removed the nodes and placed one on each of her temples. The metal flared against her skin.

“Know that this brings me no pleasure,” Dr. Iver said. “You’ve always been one of my favorite students.”

Klaudia tried to push herself up, but her limbs felt impossibly heavy. The nodes on her temples hummed faintly. The scene before her flickered, as if with a static glitch. The corners of her vision darkened. And then she was under once more.

Forty-Three

Spring 2037