Page 111 of Winterveil

He turned to Crispin, but Crispin’s face had gone pale and blank.

“Hands up!”

Giselle was too gripped with fear to move. Even Klaudia looked lost. And then, without warning, something flew past their heads. The five of them ducked, huddling to the ground, pressed together in a single, silently panicking mass. There was a thud as something embedded itself into the wall behind them.

Slowly, Giselle turned to see a small hole in the metal.

“Nadiya,” Julian said, between breaths, “was that a real fucking bullet?”

Nadiya’s eyes were shiny. “I think so.”

“Oh, fuck you!” Julian’s voice rose to a shout. He pounded his fist once against the wall. “I know you’re listening, Deckard, you rat fuck—”

“Stop!” Klaudia said sharply. “We have to go; we have to run—”

Run where? Giselle thought in despair. But Nadiya was already hauling her to her feet.

They bolted—more like crashed—through the tunnel the way they’d came. Bullets cracked the air overhead. Real bullets—real agents. Deckard had lied to them. Giselle’s vision blurred; her heart was lodged in her throat.

The door materialized before them, cold and shining steel. Closed. Locked. Deckard had shut it behind them.

Giselle all but collapsed against it. Klaudia, Julian, and Crispin all pressed their backs flat against the door, still and wild-eyed. But Nadiya—Nadiya slipped her hand from Giselle’s and stepped out in front of them, arm raised. Her pistol was held aloft, aimed. Her fingers shook as her thumb brushed the trigger. As the men lurched toward them.

No. The word burned, unspoken, on Giselle’s tongue. There were six men, too many for Nadiya to shoot. If she could even bring herself to do it. These men were real, not holograms, and if Nadiya could aim her bullet in the gaps between their Kevlar padding—which Giselle was very much certain she was capable of—then it would make her a murderer.

Nadiya had to know that, too. That had to be why she hesitated.

But Giselle didn’t hesitate. She pushed past Nadiya, standing between her and Deckard’s men. Her mind was a jumble. All she wanted was for the men to vanish, for no one to kill and no one to die. She just wanted Nadiya to be safe.

Her eyes squeezed shut. The world behind them exploded with color. A half scream, half sob ripped from her throat.

When she opened her eyes again, there was only silence. The tunnel before them was empty. The men were gone.

The first sound came from Nadiya, a choked gasp.

“Did you—did you do that?”

“No!” Giselle blurted. “I don’t . . . no, I . . .”

“It’s not possible.” Klaudia stepped away from the door. Her voice was trembling. “They were real. They can’t have just . . .”

Julian’s voice quavered, too. “Is Deckard just messing with our heads?”

But how? The men weren’t holograms; that bullet had been real. Technology couldn’t explain what had just happened. It felt like . . .

Like magic. Giselle pushed the thought down. There was a strange ache spreading from her temples, and the cuff around her wrist—which she had all but forgotten about until this moment—began to burn. She looked at Crispin, a desperate, unspoken question on her lips.

Crispin’s gaze flickered. All he said was “You’re close now.”

Maybe it was the desire to finally, finally be finished with it; maybe it was the residual fear that had eclipsed the strangeness of the event; maybe it was that they were all going a little mad, having been trapped in this unreal world—but no one said a word. Julian peeled himself off the wall. Klaudia patted the gun at her hip, as if reassuring herself that it was still there.

Giselle looked down at her own pistol, and it occurred to her with a start that maybe she didn’t need it. If she could do that—whatever it was—again . . .

But whatever she had done was unnatural. Impossible. It should have frightened her far more than the prospect of firing a gun. And yet Giselle didn’t feel frightened. She felt a nauseating, perverse surge of power. The rush of it was pure heat, flooding her veins.

She couldn’t tell anyone. She couldn’t speak a word.

The five of them pressed on. They made their way past where they had been stopped by the men, and at the end of the corridor there was another door, another puzzle. Silently Klaudia moved aside so that Giselle could examine the panel. This one required her to remember the precise arrangement of stones on the fireplace chimney in the ski lodge. Her mind felt more machine than organ. She slid the tiles into place.