Page 77 of Winterveil

“You go with Giselle,” Klaudia said. “I’ll invent some excuse to keep Crispin here.”

Nadiya nodded, though there was something hesitant in her gaze. The same sudden tension that had shown when Klaudia had first asked her about Giselle.

But she didn’t protest. Instead she said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

Overnight, the snow had ceased to fall—or rather, some CIA employee behind the scenes had shut off the snow machine. Now there was only a residual wreathing of white on the eaves of the buildings and a dusting on the ski lodge’s steps. Klaudia was surprised to find it had the slickness of real ice, rather than the cottony texture she had expected, and it made her descent difficult. The heeled boots Deckard had provided for her seemed more fashion than function.

Julian, who had already reached the bottom of the stairs, offered her a hand. Klaudia hesitated a moment before taking it.

“Chivalrous,” she commented, when they were both standing on the path together.

“Anything for you, sweetheart.”

Klaudia cast him a look. She refused to formally relent to playing his girlfriend. If everything went as she hoped, the elaborate details of the cover story wouldn’t be necessary.

Besides, no one would believe Julian Joyce-Young III would date a girl like her. His tastes definitely skewed blonder and WASPier.

The path from the ski lodge led them to the center of the town, which was bustling with holograms. Klaudia was again unnerved by how real they looked. Their breath misted the air; their footsteps made an audible patter against the cobblestones. Their shadows, too, were cast across the ground. Far more convincing than anything she had ever seen at Valeran, even realer than the pieces simulated for the Thymos tournament. She thought about what Nadiya had told her, about how Professor Blanchard had used Giselle for his research. Was she somehow responsible for this seemingly sudden leap forward in technology?

Klaudia would have to ask, even if Giselle made her slightly uncomfortable. She was too bright, too sincere, and too beautiful in her conventional, all-American way. She was not of Klaudia’s world.

Maybe she could enlist Julian’s help with broaching the topic. But for some reason the thought soured Klaudia’s stomach.

At least she had convinced Crispin to stay behind, which meant that she and Julian entered the town square alone. They passed the frost-veiled statue of Lenin. Under the guise of admiring it, Klaudia stopped in the center of the square and pricked her ears to see if she could overhear any Russian.

Julian paused beside her, close enough that she felt the heat radiating from his body. In a low voice, he said, “Don’t look too worshipful.”

“Afraid I’ll defect to Mother Russia?”

“No,” he said. “Of course not. But I can’t speak for anyone else who might be watching.”

Klaudia allowed her gaze to sweep the square. The holograms were chattering to one another, kicking up the snow as they walked. She tried to listen in, but she mostly just heard an unintelligible rumble of German. One of them, a man in a bowler hat, was staring at her cryptically.

She turned back to Julian and said, “I should never underestimate the average person’s insipidness.”

“Not if you’re pretending to belong with them.” Julian’s eyes skimmed her briefly up and down. “I know it’s not easy for you to playact at being ordinary.”

A flush prickled her skin. “You’re no better. You carry yourself like a patrician.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll try to slouch.”

Klaudia pretended to regard the Lenin statue for a few moments more, but no Russian surfaced from the crowd. With a jerk of her head, she indicated for Julian to follow her away.

They had decided that Nadiya and Giselle would take the winter market and the outskirts of the town, so she and Julian headed to what appeared to be a small café. Strangely enough, the smell of sugar wafted from it. Was Deckard so committed to the immersive quality of the simulation that he had installed a working oven? Was there some ignoble CIA employee inside right now, baking bread?

She and Julian found an unobtrusive spot on a bench outside. After dusting off the snow, they sat.

“Did you catch what was on the television this morning?” Klaudia asked.

“I thought it was just another one of Deckard’s gimmicks.”

“It was a recording of a real broadcast from several weeks ago. From when Hauke was giving the press conference about Satow.”

“The doctor from the article?” Julian frowned. “Do you think that’s supposed to be some sort of clue?”

“Maybe. Or just a red herring.” Klaudia glanced around the town center, struck once again by how real it all felt. A child slipped on the ice and a spurt of blood dribbled from his nose. It stained the ground—an interaction between the projections and the physical world she had previously thought impossible. “But we shouldn’t overlook it. At the moment, it’s the only real hint we have.”

“That and the blueprint.” Julian sighed. “The fact that Deckard won’t even tell us what the cube is doesn’t fill me with confidence.”