Skandal

by Lindsay Smith

  Two.

  I enjoy the joyful chaos all around me, for just this moment. I savor the sun heating my face and the sweat trickling down my back.

  … One, Judd says.

  The fire-eater had been in a safe circle with his fellow performers, but he spins wildly and leans toward the delegation members as they pass. His expression is empty as he takes a deep breath and spews a gout of flame right into the group. Someone screams. The air warps around us, a strange mix of extreme heat and a crackle like impending lightning. The crowd shifts, compacting under Papa’s thrall, elbows and eyeballs and someone’s spiky Jackie Kennedy brooch all colliding for a moment—and then the world sets itself right once more.

  “Hello, comrades,” I say, sidling up to the two delegates we’ve culled from the herd.

  Papa is standing tall over the delegates, his hatless hair gleaming deep chestnut in the sun. “Looking for us, comrades?” he asks, flicking his Zippo open. “Judd. Help me out here, son.”

  The tallest man in the delegation—Anatoliy, I’m guessing—tries to juke around Papa, but the air warps again as Papa seizes control of him, and he falls back into line.

  “No, you don’t.” Papa puffs his cigarette to life.

  “Well, well. If it isn’t a whole family of rats.” That smug, nasal voice chills me straight to my marrow. My heart leaps into my throat. Misha, or Mikhail—one of my fellow teammates back at the KGB—stares at me from where he’s pinned between two of Papa’s pawns. “Well … only half the family, I suppose.” He assesses me with sparkling blue eyes and a smirk twisting his lips. His parents had fought in the Great Patriotic War with Mama and Papa; now he and his twin sister, Masha, aspire to be KGB officers themselves. If he’s been sent on the delegation, then he must be well on his way.

  And if he’s here, what if the rest of the team—what if Mama—isn’t too far behind?

  I charge toward him, anger powering me like a locomotive. “Where are they?” My hand closes around his throat. “Masha?” I shout, calling for his sister, a remote viewer like Sergei and Marylou. “I know you’re watching. Get a good look at your brother, because he’s about to tell us everything—”

  Misha whimpers as rage pours off of my skin, scalding him as surely as a spray of steam. “You stupid brat!” he whines. “You’re too late!”

  I squeeze harder. “What are you planning for the Peace Summit?” I can feel the rage pouring off me like lava. Misha’s eyes are wide as he squirms, trying to escape my grip, but he still manages a harsh laugh.

  “There’s no use trying to stop us. You might as well spend time with your idiot boyfriend while you still can.” Misha’s blinding smile cuts through his face as he glances skyward. “Masha? If you would, please?”

  Metal screeches against metal. The people around us gasp; as Papa’s concentration flickers and his spell over the crowd breaks, they shove and throb with panic. I glance up to find the streetlamp above us teetering precariously, bowing toward me—

  Papa snatches me in his arms and tackles me to the ground as the streetlamp crashes down. Glass sprays away from the spot where I’d just stood. Misha grins down at us from the other side of the post’s arm, then vanishes into the sea of gaping tourists.

  Their remote viewers can do that? Marylou asks. Not fair!

  I shove against Papa’s arms and slip free of his grasp. “Stop him!” I scream at the chattering onlookers. I stumble over the post, bad ankle twinging, and shove against the thick wall of people, all of them gaping, pointing, questioning, only just now reacting to the strange events unfolding. Papa chases them alongside me, though Misha’s already slipped beyond Papa’s range. Papa shoves people aside in front of our path, and none too gently—rather than a soft mental suggestion that they step this way or that, they go crashing and stumbling, flung forward, arms bent, a violent scattering of birds.

  But it isn’t enough. My mind is working in overdrive; the rest of the world feels stuck in slow motion, like a bad fight scene in a Western. There’s too much emotion, noise, panic, thickened by the fog of countless humans, breathing and sweating and shouting and twisting through the streets.

  I breathe in. My mind is mine alone. I breathe out. I can do this.

  I force my way through the crowd, one layer of humanity at a time, swiping my hands against people’s sleeves, snatching up fleeting memories of Misha’s movements to guide my way.

  I tried to warn you, Yulia. Sergei’s voice rings through my head. His sad tone, like he’s a puppy I’ve just kicked, has ossified into something sharp and dangerous. But as usual, you don’t listen to me.

  I jump over a bicycle as it falls—seemingly under its own power, though I know better—into my path. Where are you, Sergei? Why did they bring Misha to the Pathway for Peace summit? Are the others with him? I swallow hard. Is my mother?

  Ahead, through the gap between two old ladies’ oversized sun hats, I glimpse Misha’s light brown hair, his pearly white skin untouched by the sweltering spring sun here in the swamplands of the District. I squeeze past the women with a hasty, heavily accented apology, but my bad ankle is already shooting currents of pain up my leg, slowing me down to a crawl. I grip the corner of a building and suck down fresh air. My mind is mine alone. Pain is nothing to me.

  But when I round the corner, the alley is empty.

  Yulia? Is everything okay? Marylou asks, like a mosquito buzzing in my ear.

  My hand contracts into a fist—a hot white ball of anger. I will release my anger right here. I will not let it control me.

  Did you see where they went? I ask.

  Negative. As soon as you rounded the corner, everything went white, like this big flash of light—

  Like an atom bomb going off, I reply. Like a burst of static tearing through your brain.

  She hesitates for a long moment before replying, —Yeah, kind of like that.

  Scrubbers, I say. I peer through Marylou’s vision at the rest of our crew; Papa’s shoving his way through the crowd in one direction while the others push onward in another. The delegation seems to have split apart in every which way, and we’re each chasing a different lead.

  I slump against the brick wall. I’m fighting hard to shove my despair away from me. It drips from my fingertips like an electrostatic charge. But it keeps building right back up. I’m sorry, Mama. When you told me the story of the firebird, you told me to pay attention. But I must not have paid it closely enough.

  I blink, clearing the swelling tears away. Wait. What else did Mama leave for me to remember? What other memories have been surfacing lately, like corpses that won’t stay drowned, just waiting for me to clear the dust away?

  And then I see it wavering, ever so gently: the fire escape ladder, pulled down for easy access from the alleyway. My firebird feather. Just waiting for me to notice it.

  Because Mama didn’t just tell me to pay attention.

  She told me to look up.

  CHAPTER 26

  AS I CLIMB UP the fire escape, it’s quickly apparent which window I’m looking for: the one with heavy blackout curtains, still swaying from the last person to crawl through them. I fall into the bland white room, expecting to be overwhelmed with psychic noise, but it’s curiously still; the entire room is the plainest, least memorable office I’ve ever seen. If I didn’t know what I was looking for, I’d think I’d made a mistake.

  But despite the lack of psychic residue, I can’t mistake the heavy spin-dial file cabinets or recording equipment tucked demurely under a desk; the ashtray filled with ash from long hours of operators hunched over a table, transcribing conversations they’ve snatched from the airwaves. This may not be a psychic operation, but it’s an operation, nonetheless. A nest of Soviet vipers, coiled up in listening range of countless government buildings.

  I twist one finger around the cord of a pair of headphones, connected to a giant reel of magnetic tape. The image of a pucker-faced Soviet woman leaps out at me, scribbling notes in Russian shorthand. She uses no psych
ic countermeasures; her thoughts are right out in the open for me to read, though she tries to keep them focused on the task at hand. Do these agents have any idea of Rostov’s plans? How complicit are they in his mad desire to seize control?

  None of this is helping me find Misha or Sergei or the rest. Misha had to have come through here. I trace my fingers on the window frame, the doorknob. Why aren’t I seeing him in the past few minutes’ memories?

  Marylou’s voice interrupts my thoughts. There’s a doorway down the hall that I can’t see past. They might have some sort of psychic countermeasure in place there.

  Thanks. I’ll check it out. I close my eyes and let the room envelop me. There the disruptors are, that dull hum juddering into the gaps between my thoughts. Any further signs of the delegation?

  No, but we’re doing our best. Tony’s pulling records on all the delegation members he laid eyes on, and your pops is chasing down some of the other delegates, though they seem to have melted into the crowd.

  Thanks. I’ll let you know if I find anything more.

  Be careful, Marylou says.

  I find the hallway she mentioned, musty and water-stained, with a single crackling lightbulb overhead. I rest my hand tentatively on the doorknob. Silence. Cool, empty silence. No past, no future, no nothing. I can barely even hear the current of the suppressing devices.

  I open the door with my breath held. But it’s only a staircase, leading deep into darkness.

  The staircase switches back and forth as it descends. I climb down three flights, if I were to guess, before it levels out into an underground tunnel. The deeper I sink into the tunnel, the more I feel its subterranean rumble in my bones. I have been this way before. Not here, not these tunnels, but one thousands of miles away, under Moscow. I’d tried to escape our KGB facility once, through the secret Metro tunnels, with only a desperate plan to sustain me. Now I’m not running away from my fate, but toward it, begging it to round the corner with that eager gust of wind that presages an approaching Metro train—

  Come now, Yulia. Sergei’s voice is all around me. I can feel him in the porous concrete walls of the tunnels, tugging me toward an opening. Did you really miss me that much?

  “Where are you, Sergei?” I step into the open chamber carefully, keeping my back angled toward the wall. The room is much bigger, and the dark concrete walls eagerly swallow up the light from the industrial sconces.

  I’m right here.

  A halo of sodium light spills around his golden hair as he steps into the room from the far end. His face is shrouded in shadow, but I’d know that hulking outline anywhere.

  “Sergei.” I take a step toward him. Fear and relief and anger are roiling through me, but I breathe in, I breathe out.

  No, that’s not right … Sergei says. “Maybe I’m right here.”

  A metal door clangs shut from inside some hidden recess; another Sergei looms out of the frame. I can barely make out the hint of a half smile carving across his face.

  “This isn’t funny, Sergei.” I back against the doorway. Sweat lacquers my polyester dress against my skin; my bad ankle is throbbing, begging me to sit down and give up this foolish chase.

  Or maybe I’m here?

  Sergei swings through the doorway right next to me. For a brief moment, his face is right before mine, cool air swooshing across my cheeks as I catch a glimpse of his maniacal grin. I jump back with a yelp.

  “What do you want?” I cry. “What have you done to yourself?”

  The Sergei in front of me reaches toward me. I hear the static crackling across his skin before I feel it, hungrily jumping back and forth between the diminishing distance between his hand and my cheek. His caress on my face is like the scrape of a dull razor blade.

  I want to make you understand, Yulia. This is the only way.

  White smears the edges of my vision. It corrodes the harsh corners of my emotions and my thoughts; it begs me to surrender to that empty calm at the eye of the storm.

  Yes. Surrender. Don’t you see? The other two Sergeis slink toward us, both smiling, striding at the same confident clip. Life is better when we don’t fight against what we’ve been given. Look at how my powers have grown and changed, the more I work with them instead of fighting them. You never would listen to me, but I always knew what was best. Rostov has given us a good life. He’ll make the world safe for us.

  “How can you give up so easily? What happens to you the day your dreams don’t align with Rostov’s?”

  But how could that ever happen? Why would I ever want anything other than this?

  The scrubbing white has ensnared me, as sure as any vine. I’m rooted in place. I can feel my voice weakening, the words drying up and falling away like dead leaves. I will be reborn again with the coming spring. But first, I must shed these silly thoughts. I must clear out the weeds so the truth can grow.

  As the other Sergeis surround me, touching my shoulder reassuringly, cupping my head like a comforting brother, I can see the logic in his argument. I see him smiling and laughing with Larissa, running through Gorky Park as the snow thaws and fresh green shoots emerge from the filthy ice. The Moskva River flows again through the heart of the city, rumbling with the lifeblood of the Soviet Union as it carries ships, as they in turn carry food, medicine, clothing, machinery to all the workers of the world.

  It is the Moscow I left behind; without me and my poisonous, traitorous thoughts, it has thrived. Larissa has thrived, no longer subjected to Valentin and me with our devious, ungrateful schemes. Sergei has thrived—he scored the winning hockey goal for Spartak in their most recent game. I can hear the ice swishing beneath his skates.

  There are conflicts, still. Secretary Khruschev is too weak to do what is necessary to safeguard such a life, but there are courageous men—General Rostov, Chairman Brezhnev, and Rostov’s good friend in the KGB, a man named Andropov—who will do what is necessary to correct the Soviet Union’s course. They pity the capitalist workers beyond their borders, who labor with no guarantees, who must scrounge for change to buy homes, cars, food. But the Soviet leaders will uphold the promise of Marx and Engels. They will bring revolution to these downtrodden souls.

  They will force it upon them, if they must.

  “No.”

  I shove my palm into one of the Sergeis’ faces. That memory of him and Larissa, his fingers gingerly tucking back her hair—what darkness waits in the shadows of that gentle sunlight? There it is—he watches Larissa in a tiled interrogation room, strapped into a chair as a record player drills the guiding tenets of Rostov’s philosophy into her brain. Bright bursts of static disrupt her thoughts and keep her focused on absorbing the lesson. Sergei hunches over a radio transmitter as it broadcasts the twinkling, brainwave-syncing music from Papa’s radio station. Rostov and the Hound stand in the doorway, reshaping Larissa’s thought waves as they fall into frequency. She must pay for her disobedience in Berlin. She must be shown the error of her ways. And if we cannot teach her, Rostov says, we must remake her mind.

  You’re lying, Sergei cries. We didn’t really hurt her. It was for her own good—

  What other memories can I find? Here we are, a much older one—younger Sergei, maybe eleven or twelve, weeping hysterically as his father—Rostov—brandishes a folded-up belt. “You must not be my real son,” Rostov snarls, as Sergei tries to curl up in his mother’s arms—Lyubov Kruzenko, another KGB officer—but she shoves him away. “A real son of mine would have a better grasp on his powers by now,” Rostov says.

  Everyone loses their temper, Yulia, and he was right. We must perform our very best to make his vision real.

  His thoughts push back, the static shattering like ice, splintering and shredding at my concentration. But I am the Star. The pain needn’t stay with me. I fight through the static haze and search for more.

  The locker room at Luzhniki Stadium, after Sergei’s goal-winning hockey game. Sergei slams his locker shut and looks up into the leering face of his team captain. “Maybe if
you didn’t waste all your time with those Party sycophants,” the captain growls, “you could play like that every game, instead of muddling around half asleep.”

  The memories build and build. Sergei and his brother as little children, the Hound already showing signs of his genetic disease, and Rostov exploiting it to the fullest. Larissa sobbing hysterically in Sergei’s arms with a fear, an echoing memory, that she can’t put into words. The faces of hundreds of Soviet citizens whom Sergei has exposed for their treasonous thoughts; they were packed up and shipped into the far reaches of Siberia for reeducation, hard labor, and death.

  This anger, confusion, pain—they are not my emotions to cling to. But they are Sergei’s, still raw and open.

  And so I take hold of them. And make them burn.

  The Sergeis fall back from me with a howl. Dammit, Yulia! The voice comes from all around me. What have you done?

  Tears stream down their faces. Unlike me, they have no other release for the pain. Unfortunately, they have something stronger—a scrubber’s pulse, throbbing through me. I back into a wall, searching for an exit, but I can barely see through the white haze that’s enveloped me like a shroud. It’s drawing tight around me; it’s laced through my blood and filling my lungs. It would feel so good right now to be empty, to let it consume me. The memories hold no power over me, but the scrubbing, churning white is too much for me to fight.

  I’m sorry, Yulia, Sergei whispers through the fog. I’m sorry it has to end this way.

  Just before I collapse into oblivion, the shadow of a fourth figure stretches across the chamber. Then everything is blissful, empty white, encasing me in its permafrost, its silence, its calm.

  CHAPTER 27

  “YULIA.” A GIRL’S VOICE cracks through the frosty layer that’s encasing my thoughts. “Yulia. You have to wake up.”

  My arms and legs are filled with shards of ice that scrape and snap as I try to move. Slowly, a blond girl emerges from the blizzard—hair draped around her pale face, blue eyes rounded with fright. “Larissa?” I ask, almost certain she’s another memory shaken loose, come to taunt me for my failure.