Page 58 of Winterveil

She was hiding quite a lot from him lately. It was an odd feeling, having secrets of her own. Ordinarily she had always felt that he was hiding things from her, answers to the questions she was afraid to speak aloud. What happened to my parents? Who killed them? Why?

Even more disturbingly, Nadiya had the creeping sensation that she had known these things, once, but the knowledge had faded somehow, like a photograph with age. In the classroom with Professor Blanchard, he had deposited her own memories back into her mind, playing her nightmares on a loop. If he could put something in, could he take something out?

Dwelling on these questions made her more ill. So she did what she always did, what she had been trained to do: strapped a gun to her hip and went to prove she was no longer a scared little girl.

There was a weary, almost hungover feeling to the students who filled the seats in the amphitheater. Maybe it was the sudden heat, or the fact that many of them had participated in the inaugural strategy game tournament the previous day. According to the whispers in the halls, there had been some sort of major upset, and that seemed to have put everyone on edge.

Even Matteo. When she joined him in the amphitheater’s holding room, he told her that he had dropped out of the exhibition.

“What? Why?”

“Too tired,” he said. “I was up until three a.m. reading the game reports. Did you hear that Klaud—”

“So what are you doing here?” Nadiya cut in.

“Showing you moral support, asshole.”

“I didn’t ask you to. Jackass.”

Clearly she was a bit on edge, too.

“Your girl is here, though,” Matteo said. He pointed through the holding room’s floor-to-ceiling window, which looked into the amphitheater.

Giselle was there, in the very first row, her hair gleaming in the sunlight. Nadiya’s heart skipped a beat. “Don’t call her that.”

Matteo just gave her a thin-lipped grin.

Giselle’s face was not the only one Nadiya recognized in the first row. Several seats away, Dr. Iver was conferring with a man in dark sunglasses. Absolutely nothing about his face was distinctive, which meant that this was surely the representative from the Farm. An unmemorable physical appearance was one of the CIA’s most sought-after traits; their ideal agent was someone who could blend unnoticeably into a crowd.

“No one from Auric?” Nadiya asked in surprise.

“I guess not,” said Matteo. “Which begs the question of why we’re supposed to be using these cheap things in the first place.”

He gestured toward the rack of weapons on the far wall. Luster pistols, carbines, snipers, and even a heavy machine gun. Nadiya grimaced. She didn’t particularly like the idea of anyone other than her firing that near such a massive crowd. The barrels of the guns were ringed in gold, Auric’s signature color, because the CEO was nothing if not conscious about his brand.

The other participating students were gathered by the weapons rack, murmuring to each other and stealing occasional glances at Nadiya and Matteo. They were his usual coterie of admirers, resentful of Nadiya’s presence, which prevented them from fawning more openly.

When she shot them a glare, the group instantly went silent. She didn’t need that as a distraction, too.

As the clock ticked near to noon, the door to the holding room opened. A first-year boy who Nadiya recognized from one of her combat classes entered and approached her.

“Here,” he said, holding out a plastic case. A pair of nodes glinted inside.

“What are these for?” Nadiya asked.

“Dr. Iver said we’re all supposed to wear them.”

“We?” Matteo echoed.

The boy nodded. “Everyone participating, and everyone in the audience. It’s too bright for the projector machines to work. See?” He waved a hand toward the dusty field of the amphitheater. Heat was rising from the ground in a visible shimmer.

But . . . The protest formed on Nadiya’s tongue, though she couldn’t make herself utter it. Dr. Iver had told her nothing about this.

“So, what?” Matteo pressed. “He wants us all to experience some mass hallucination?”

The boy launched into a stammering explanation, but Nadiya tuned him out. She stared at Dr. Iver, trying and failing to catch his eye. He was still in deep conversation with the representative from the Farm. He didn’t so much as glance her way.

Almost unconsciously, her gaze drifted toward Giselle. And somehow, Giselle seemed to notice, because she stared right back. Something warm curled in Nadiya’s belly.