Page 110 of Winterveil

Feeling through the darkness, Giselle took Nadiya’s hand, too. She tried to haul her to her feet, a chill prickling up her spine, danger hanging in the air. And then—

There was a sudden, almost deafening groan that seemed to come from both everywhere and nowhere. The floor and the walls shook. Giselle’s stomach swooped as gravity took its hold. The room was an elevator, a moving platform, and they were going down.

Nadiya cried out; so did Julian. Unbalanced, Giselle stumbled so hard against the wall that it knocked the breath from her, though she managed to keep her grip on Nadiya’s hand. After several interminable, nauseating moments of descent, the elevator shuddered to a halt. The grinding noise stopped. Giselle gulped down air, her throat tight as a vise.

The doors to the elevator opened.

A long corridor stretched out before them, illuminated by guttering fluorescent lights. Another tunnel, not unlike the one beneath the statue, only this one looked in disrepair: Water trickled from the ceiling and onto the gritty, concrete floor, and cut wires littered the ground, humming like flies.

“So this is it,” Nadiya whispered.

Crispin stepped out of the elevator. “You’re close now.”

“Well.” Julian coughed. He was still holding Klaudia’s hand. “I suppose there’s nowhere left to go but . . . forward.”

Klaudia dropped Julian’s hand, and Giselle wondered if she was imagining the slight look of disappointment on his face. “Let’s be careful,” Klaudia said. “I’m sure Deckard still has plenty of tricks left.”

“I’ll go first,” said Nadiya, and this time it was Giselle who felt bereft as Nadiya’s fingers slid from hers. “Stay behind me.”

The five of them set out through the tunnel. Giselle tried to stay as close to Nadiya as she could. Her gaze kept darting around, from one wall to the other, searching for any clue Deckard might have left for them. But there was nothing—no numbers or letters stamped onto the wall. In fact, as they walked, the metal itself seemed to be eroding, vanishing beneath the cold, packed dirt.

After several minutes of walking, they came to a heavy steel door. It looked like a bank vault. Klaudia stepped forward to examine it, frowning.

“This seems like the locking mechanism,” she said. “But it’s . . .”

“Strange,” Nadiya finished.

Julian turned toward Giselle. “Why don’t you take a look?”

Her brow wrinkled. “Me?”

He nodded.

Still uncertain, Giselle stepped forward. Instead of a traditional lock, or the biometric scanner from earlier, there was an analog panel with sixteen tiles. Each tile had an intricate pattern of curling, weaving lines. It seemed as though the tiles could be moved, slid around within the panel.

“Well?” Klaudia asked. “Does this mean anything to you?”

Giselle closed her eyes briefly. Yes, the pattern of the lines was familiar. She concentrated hard, and the memory revealed itself, a perfect likeness.

“The vines,” she said, opening her eyes. “On the trellis.”

She stepped forward and began to slide the tiles into place. It took only a matter of seconds. As soon as they were arranged, there was a loud creaking sound that shook dirt from the ceiling, and the vault door ground open.

“Incredible,” Julian murmured.

Giselle flushed. The tunnel before them was narrower and darker, the fluorescent lights few and far between, the walls pressing in close. There seemed a novel sense of perilousness. Nadiya drew her pistol.

As they walked in silence, moisture gathered on Giselle’s skin, cool droplets like morning dew. A month ago, she was being draped in a Miss Teen sash, mascara from her false lashes making her eyes sting. With every moment, it all seemed more and more surreal. What was she doing here? She didn’t have what the others did, be it their competence or their family names. And yet—she had solved puzzle after puzzle. Maybe they did need her, after all. Maybe she did belong.

“Stop right there!”

The voice rang out from ahead, echoing through the corridor. The five of them froze. Footsteps thudded as black-clad men suddenly swarmed the tunnel. They dropped down seemingly out of nowhere, like spiders from their webs.

There were six, masked and Kevlar-padded; they looked like the men who had taken Nadiya and Julian from the lodge. They trained their guns on the five of them, red lasers darting and flickering in the dark. Only Nadiya had taken out her pistol, but she was still frozen in place, and Giselle could feel the race of her pulse.

“Put your hands up!” one of the men shouted. Giselle barely registered the fact that it was English—English?

“Shit.” It was Julian’s voice, a whisper. “I mean . . . they’re just holograms, right? They can’t really hurt us?”