Page 114 of Winterveil

It all felt like a strange, distant dream.

Julian rose to his feet, head throbbing. If anything, Deckard had undersold the adverse effects of the pills. He hadn’t felt this awful since the morning after election night, an empty bottle of gin on the floor next to his bed and Christabel Cabot asleep beside him.

With a sudden panic, he thought again of Klaudia. She had told them to take the pills, directly flouting Deckard’s orders. Would she be punished for her disobedience? Julian stumbled toward the door and pushed it open.

An empty corridor stretched out on either side, fluorescent-lit and pure white. The air had a chemical quality. He had accompanied Aurelian to the psych ward many times before, and Julian recognized the starchy, antiseptic scent of a hospital.

But unlike the familiar corridors of Massachusetts General, there were no gurneys parked against the wall, no steadily beeping EKG machines. Julian could discern no sign of life at all. His pulse thudded as he walked, Klaudia’s name on his lips. The instinct to call out for her was strong, just like the instinct to reach for her in the dark. There, in the elevator, Klaudia hadn’t hesitated to grip his hand back.

Julian was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t hear the approaching patter of footsteps.

“Julian?”

It was Giselle, hurrying down the corridor to reach him. Like Julian, she was wearing what appeared to be hospital scrubs, and her feet were bare, but she looked unharmed. A slight feeling of warmth penetrated the icy block of fear in his chest. Hopefully Klaudia was unharmed, too.

“You’re here,” Giselle said breathlessly. The relief was clear in her voice. “Are you all right?”

“Sick as a hungover dog, but I’ll live.” Julian regarded her. “What about you?”

“I just finished throwing up. Deckard wasn’t lying about those pills.” Giselle grimaced. “But that might be the only thing he wasn’t lying about.”

The memory crashed back into his head. This isn’t an extraction mission. It’s an assassination. We’re not supposed to rescue Satow. We’re supposed to kill him. Naturally Klaudia had discerned the truth within moments. We’re taking another way out.

“Deckard is a prick,” Julian said, but he was too weary to imbue the words with appropriate venom.

Idly he wondered if he should be concerned about a hidden device overhearing him. Were they finished with the mission? Had they left Traumstadt behind for good? Or was this another one of Deckard’s tests?

“We should find the others,” Giselle said. “I hope they’re—”

“Yeah,” Julian cut in. “Me too.”

They set off down the corridor together, their pace cautious. As they walked, Julian watched Giselle. Her reddish hair was more unruly than usual, and her face was almost green. Julian imagined he looked similarly worse for wear. Giselle’s throat kept pulsing, as if she wanted to speak but was swallowing the words down.

Maybe he should have swallowed his own words. But Julian had never been a paragon of restraint.

“About what happened in the tunnel,” he began slowly, “with Deckard’s men—”

Giselle’s head snapped up. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, or how I did it. If I did it.”

It seemed impossible. It was impossible. Those men were real—or at least, their bullets were. Maybe it was a shared hallucination, Deckard piping some invisible psychedelic gas through the walls. Otherwise, Julian could conjure no explanation.

His skin prickled. Giselle had begun to unnerve him, in an odd way. But he shook off the sensation and looked pointedly away, his thoughts returning to Klaudia. He needed to find her, to see her face.

They turned down the corridor, identical to the last. Perhaps he should have been keeping track of their course, so they could retrace their steps. He opened his mouth to voice his concerns to Giselle, but then a figure appeared at the end of the hall. Black-clad, crisp-edged, and horribly familiar.

“Welcome back to the waking world,” Deckard said.

“Where’s Klaudia?” Julian demanded, at the same time that Giselle asked, “Where’s Nadiya?”

“Safe and well,” Deckard replied. “Just like you two.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily agree,” Julian said through gritted teeth.

Deckard did not even indulge him with a scowl. “Get dressed,” he said. “It’s time for your briefing.”

In hardly any time at all, Julian was slouched in a stiff-backed chair, wearing a sky-blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of khaki pants. Civilian attire—precisely what he would have worn if he were free. It even smelled like his housekeeper’s choice of detergent.

Deckard had been generous enough to return him his watch, Aurelian’s watch, but both of the hands were stopped at twelve. He fiddled with it, though was unable to get it running again.