I can’t hear Mama’s thoughts. No static, no shield, just a great emptiness. “Mama, I need you to listen to me. You’ve been brainwashed—Colonel Rostov, he’s—” I take a deep breath. How to begin? “I don’t know how to explain this to you, but I’ve been … I’m a psychic. You know, a mind reader. I can pull memories off of people and places.”
She laughs. I’d already forgotten how beautiful her laugh is, swimming and sinking like an arpeggio. “Yulia, darling, I know. I’m proud of you. Really.”
I stagger backward as if shot. “You’re proud?”
“It’s a good, solid future for you. What we should have done from the start. Much better than hiding, begging, and trading for food … I’ve been a terrible mother, Yulia. I’m so sorry.”
“No, Mama, you don’t understand. Put your hand to the glass—”
“No touching!” barks the guard from behind me. I grimace and take a step back.
“I spoke with my old lab director,” Mama says. “They’re going to let me resume our research. I never should have quit. Your father left his notes with them before he ran. We were so close to breaking through.”
“You quit for a reason, Mama. You and Papa ran away from something—from what?”
She shakes her head, a stray lock of hair sticking to her embarrassed grin. “Your father had such foolish ideas. Running for help, as if anyone in the West might care about our plight. Leaving me with this mess. He didn’t know how dangerous it would be for us over there. And you—you have no idea how much more dangerous it is for you, with this power. There are people who would kill you for what you can do, when all the State wants is for you to be happily employed—”
“Happy? Happy?” I screech. “Mama, what have they done to you? Why are they making you say these things?” Memories bubble up to the surface through my exhausted haze. “How do you know Colonel Rostov? What does he want with you?”
“He and our old research academy and Khruschev want what everyone wants: a better Russia. I was on the right path, once, before your father got his dangerous ideas.” For one flame-flicker second, she looks remorseful. But she blinks it away. “And now I’ve found it again.”
“Time’s up.” The guard snatches at my arm again.
“Please, wait!” Tears run down my cheeks as I pull against him. “Mama, you have to listen to me—”
“No, Yulia. I beg you—listen.” Her tone freezes me where I stand. There’s pleading in her words that belies her placid smile. “It’s not safe for you beyond the Colonel’s grasp. I know this is all very confusing.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “But promise me you won’t run away again.”
The guard stands, waiting, his grip still on my arm. Mama stares right through me.
I hang my head. I can’t even look at her as I mutter, “I won’t.”
*
I sit across from Rostov in the back of the van. He hasn’t stopped grinning. I want to punch him, shatter that smug look. He’s waiting for me to say something, give him some hint of acquiescence. But just because he’s the safest choice for me right now doesn’t make me his ally. I heard Natalya Gruzova’s screams—I won’t forget what he’s capable of.
“It is for the best that you went through this,” he finally says, picking at his fingernails. “Sometimes we need to learn our limitations. Open our eyes to the reality of why things must be the way they are.”
“You didn’t have to kill Gruzova,” I say to my feet.
The back of my head strikes the hard metal wall. My legs kick out from under me, and my wrists lock up, sealed to my sides. I try to turn my head, try to look away from his boiling face, bright red like a scar, but my head won’t obey. My thoughts scatter like a flock of birds, flapping in terror.
“What do you think the CIA team would have done to her, if I let her live? Would they continue to work with her, knowing they’d been betrayed? Would they keep poking holes into her thoughts until her brain crumbled?” The words hiss through the gap in his teeth. “She was not living. She was a walking shadow.”
I hate him—every nerve ending on my skin burns with hatred for him—but I stay locked in place. I can’t push this hatred out of me. I am too weak. I soak up his fury, letting him fill me with his emotions, his control, his contempt. Why can’t I push these feelings out? I’m like a waterskin stretched to bursting.
And the worst of it is I know he’s right.
“Traitors, dissidents, cowards like your father have the luxury of looking down on our Soviet way. They have never known true suffering, and therefore don’t see its purpose. They cannot fathom why we must resort to such measures because they’ve never witnessed the consequences of too much liberty.”