Page 91 of Last of Her Name

“No.”

The air rushes out of me. “But she has to be there. If she’s not on Alexandrine—”

“Princess, you misunderstand. I’m not saying she isn’t there now. I’m saying she wasneverthere.”

I blink. “What?”

“No record of your Clio Markova seems to exist.” He shrugs as he pulls my door shut. “Perhaps your friend was not who she claimed to be.”

Volkov doesn’t waste any time. The tests begin the next morning.

A lab has been set up on the top floor of the Rezidencia. Volkov brings me there at dawn, when the edge of Alexandrine burns gold as the sun creeps around its girth. Inside, Dr. Luka and a team of scientists are still unpacking machines. A half-reclined chair waits for me, and as I settle into it, I try to quell the flutters of panic in my stomach. The scientists swarm around me, taking blood samples, saliva samples, scanning my fingerprints and retinas, poking and prodding until I want to scream.

I think of Clio.

I didn’t sleep a minute last night. Instead, I paced my opulent room, trying to reason why Volkov would lie to me about her. Perhaps she’s filed under a different name. She’s a war orphan, after all. They may have changed her name when she was sent to Amethyne. Her original “file” could have been lost.

Even if she isn’t here, she has to besomewhere. And knowing she’s important to me, surely Volkov would produce her—even if it were to threaten her to make me cooperate. It’s a worst-case scenario, but a believable one. So what does he gain by lying?

It doesn’t make sense.

Unless he’s right, and it’s Clio who’s been keeping secrets.

But that sounds evenmoreabsurd. Clio is the most honest person I know, the person I trust most in the entire universe. She could never keep anything from me. And besides, Isawher on that newscast, boarding a prison transport with the same people now sitting in the palace prison. All the others were there—so why not her?

“Well, Luka?” asks Volkov, after an hour has passed. “Where are we?”

“We’ve isolated the code,” says Dr. Luka, bent over a tabletka. “It’s right there, but in its dormant state, it might as well be an alien language to us. We’d hoped we might use the code extracted from Natalya Ayedi to crack it open, but there are too many differences between them.”

“Any progress on how to activate it?” asks Volkov.

Dr. Luka shakes his head. “Whatever the switch is, the emperor took it to his grave. Genes can remain dormant for a person’s entire lifetime. It takes certain conditions to activate them, but we have no idea what the conditions are. If they were normal, organic genes, we’d still be able to sequence them. But this cybernetic stuff operates by different rules, and the original Leonovs left none of their research intact for us to follow.”

Volkov curses. “You were the imperials’ primary physician fordecades, Luka! How could you be so ignorant of this crucial element of their physiology?”

Anger deepens the wrinkles in the doctor’s face. “You know as well as I do, Alexei, how closely they guarded the Firebird. Theydiedto protect its secrets. All I was ever allowed to know was that it existed, and that it was the source of their … abilities. I don’t know how it was created, or how it gave them control of the Prisms’ energy. Nor do I know how it can be woken.”

Volkov turns away from him, his jaw tight.

“When she’s ready to rule, the Firebird will guide her,” he murmurs. His eyes slide to me, probing. “Does it speak to you, Anya?”

I swallow, pulling away. “Find Clio. If you can’t guarantee her safety, I’m not giving youanything.”

The shadow falls over his eyes again, the one I got a glimpse of in the astronika. His voice drops to a low murmur. “We’ve been generous with you up till now. But I see that we’re going to have to be more assertive.”

The genteel host I met on the astronika is beginning to fade, and someone far more menacing is taking his place.

“Do it,” he says to Dr. Luka.

The incision is made before I even know what’s happening: a swift cut at the base of my skull. They must have anesthetized the spot without my realizing it, during all their prodding. The brainjack unit is popped inside, but I can’t see it or feel it. Even so, my chest tightens with panic.

“All right,” Dr. Luka says softly, his face pale. “Turning it on.”

I feel a sort of zap in my head, and then I go into convulsions.

Scientists swoop in to grab my hands and head and hold them still, while foam bubbles from my lips and the room tilts wildly around me. Pain rolls through me, hot as flames.

“What’s wrong?” Volkov shouts.