The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(15)

“He can take the exam this afternoon while the others are in class,” she continued. “We’d be fools to pass on a low-antibody technopath just because he comes from a spotty background.”

Noam wasn’t sure he liked being discussed as a business acquisition much more than he liked being looked down upon for his parents’ nationality, but this time he kept his mouth shut. There was probably some cosmic quota for the amount of sass you could get away with in one day, and Noam wouldn’t be surprised if that cold black-haired man was keeping score.

“Why not?” the older man agreed after a moment. He looked to his left. “Ivar?”

The colonel sighed and arched a brow, which the others seemed to take as sufficient response.

“Excellent. Mr. álvaro, you’ll return to the barracks in the meantime. Colonel Swensson will be along later in the afternoon with your exam materials, and then we’ll see about where to put you.”

A dismissal, even if it wasn’t phrased that way. Noam fought the urge to bow or salute and instead simply inclined his head in their direction. Mostly for Lehrer’s benefit. Lehrer was the only one who had stood up for him, after all.

Upstairs, everyone was still out for classes, the barracks empty except for the paper shuffling Noam could hear from Dr. Howard’s office. He found a few basic textbooks gathering dust in the corner of one of the bookshelves and tried to learn at least a thing or two about physics.

Turned out, learning physics required a little bit more than knowing how to read. Growing up in a bookstore, surrounded by the classics, by everything he’d ever want to learn about the British Empire, books upon books written in dozens of languages, didn’t begin to lend him the kind of knowledge he’d need to answer a question about organic chemistry. Who cared that Noam read fluent Russian or that he could hack his way into the housing association’s servers in less than six minutes? The only thing he remembered from science class was that the cell membrane was a lipid bilayer. Helpful.

Maybe, Noam thought when two o’clock rolled around, maybe he could use the time set aside for the exam to try to access test records and change his score to reflect a passing grade. He’d never tried cracking a government firewall before, but if he really was a technopath, he could probably figure it out. Right?

But when Colonel Swensson arrived, he carried a folder filled with printed paper and a black pen. Analog. The sardonic look he gave Noam as he slid the exam packet onto the kitchen table suggested he knew what Noam had been planning—knew and thought less of him for it.

“You have three hours,” Swensson said and sat himself down just across from Noam. Presumably to make sure he didn’t find some other way to cheat.

Don’t panic, Noam ordered himself as he finally reached for the pen and wrote his name in block letters on the first page. It’s fine. It’s just critical thinking. You can do this.

But it wasn’t, and he couldn’t. The questions weren’t logic based; they were factual, designed to appeal to someone skilled in rote memorization. Whether Noam was or wasn’t that kind of person was irrelevant since he’d never memorized the right things. Despair had settled like a black rock in his gut by the time Swensson’s stopwatch went off, and he passed the exam materials back.

“Dr. Howard will let you know your results either way,” Swensson said, his cool gaze traversing Noam’s face. “Therefore I’m sure we won’t meet again.”

I’m still a witching, Noam reminded himself once Swensson was gone, lying on the plush sofa with an arm flung over his eyes to block out the window light. He could do magic. He’d done it in that room, even. If he didn’t pass this test—although he didn’t pass this test—he’d still have a place in the military, even if just as an enlisted soldier.

Not that he’d ever go to Charleston. The whole point of signing up for Level IV was that it brought him close to Lehrer—and, by extension, to Sacha. If he wasn’t here, in the government complex, then fuck it. Noam would take his power and go rogue, figure out some way to use technopathy to erase every piece of data on the government servers.

Great plan.

Noam swung his legs off the sofa and crossed back into the kitchen to grab Invitation to a Beheading off the table. He carried the book over to the chair by the window, setting it open facedown on the armrest, as if he’d abandoned the book midway through reading. He hoped this Dara, whoever he was, had a conniption.

As Swensson promised, Dr. Howard found him a few hours later, after Noam had raided the fridge for expensive-looking snack items but before he’d chosen a new book from the broad library collection. He spun around a bit guiltily when she said his name, even though he’d technically done nothing wrong.

“I failed, didn’t I?” Noam said, deciding to preempt the soft breaking-of-the-news he could tell Howard was working herself up for. “It’s all right. I figured.”

“I’m sorry,” Howard said. She genuinely did seem sorry.

Noam’s heart felt strange, like it was being crushed in a giant fist. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. “Cool. Guess I don’t need to pack.” It wasn’t like he owned anything. “Mind if I keep the toothbrush?”

“You’ll stay here,” Howard told him, perfectly matter-of-fact. “You failed the exam, but Minister Lehrer has offered to personally oversee your remedial education until such a point as you can join your peers in regular course work.”