IT TAKES ME SOME TIME to fall asleep. I listen to the silky sighs of Masha and Larissa, but fear Rostov’s steel wool scrubbing my shield raw. When exhaustion finally claims me, I find myself in a strange dream: I am sitting around the table in our summer dacha with Mama and Papa. Mama with her hair still long like when I was little, and Papa—almost unrecognizable in his old glasses and ill-fated attempt at a beard. Zhenya sits with them, so tiny and frail—he doesn’t look more than five or six. He is whistling three notes to himself over and over like a sniper calling his comrades out of hiding. His lips are glossy with spittle but he doesn’t quit. Mama keeps pinching the bridge of her nose—she is getting a headache from the whistling—and Papa pours himself a glass of vodka—he refuses to look Zhenya in the eye.
“No,” Papa says after too many minutes staring into his drink. “I don’t care what Anton offers. We can’t go back to that, Antonina. We can’t.”
“They’ll find out one way or another. At least then, we’d be close—we could keep an eye on her…”
Wee-oo-toot. Zhenya giggles to himself. My heart aches just watching my little brother. His high cheekbones, dusted with a fine powder of freckles just like Mama and me; same straight black hair and wispy frame we inherited from Papa. His face is one of pure bliss. He finds perfection in those three notes.
Papa looks at him, skin too tight around his eyes. “He needs us more, Nina. All the children like him at the clinic do.”
“It’s glorified brainwashing.” Mama’s lip curls. “They’ll never be cured of their illnesses.”
“Then let me try it my way,” Papa says, and reaches straight for me.
I scream, but my voice is a shadow, and the darkness is filling in like a fresh grave.
Wee-oo-toot.
I wake up tangled in thin bed sheets, the harsh floodlights in the courtyard spraying blue across the dark room. I reach for Mama and Zhenya, expecting to find them by my side, but there’s emptiness, just too many unclaimed cots. Floorboards creak in the distance as a guard makes his rounds.
The dream has the fuzzy shape of a memory, although I can’t remember it actually occurring. What were my parents afraid of and what were they doing to me? And where did this strange vision come from? Cold sweat presses like a hand on my forehead.
I burrow back into the sheets, shivering, and squeeze my eyes closed again.
CHAPTER 10
WITHIN A WEEK, our days at the mansion become routine as we prepare for our first real mission: in the mornings we hone our psychic abilities, learning to apply them to different scenarios, and in the afternoon we study spycraft—conducting surveillance, or luring out information from someone on their guard. I reintroduce food to my system carefully, like I’m building up a tolerance to poison; my socks still slink down my ankles, but at least my cheekbones no longer look like lethal weapons. Larissa keeps me sane in the evenings. Without her distracting me, chatting about her favorite radio show, my frustration would have swallowed me up already. Major Kruzenko plays our mother, our headmistress, and our warden, a softer presence to counter Colonel Rostov who makes thankfully rare appearances to check on our progress.
Only when Kruzenko departs one day with Ivan and Sergei do I have my chance. Everyone is gathered in the ballroom, reading or chatting or listening to Valentin practice his scales; even the pet spiders let their shoulders droop and bow their heads toward one another to gossip. I’m among them one moment, on the periphery of their conversation, and gone the next, wedging the knife between the door to Kruzenko’s office and the rotted-wood frame. It pops open easily. I’m inside with the door latched again behind me before I hear the ostinato of heavy boots resuming their well-trod patrol route.
The office is tinier than I expected, and disappointingly bare. The room is little more than an oversized closet, stuffed with a heavy oak desk, which must’ve been a nightmare to fit through the doorway, and a tiny window, grimy and fogged, that overlooks the shedding autumn trees. I was hoping for at least a file cabinet, but I settle into the creaky chair behind the desk and test the first drawer: empty. The second holds pencils rubber banded together and a hand-cranked sharpener. My nerves crackle, bracing for disappointment as I tug open the final drawer—