The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(21)

They used to buy food here when his parents had been alive. He’d have the cash from his paycheck folded in his back pocket, would argue the shopkeepers down to a reasonable price for eggs and buckwheat. He’d go home, where his mother would have made lunch already. He’d eat arepas in his favorite chair in the history section and read a book in front of the window light.

He missed that life.

Which was stupid, of course. His parents were gone, and he was here. Better get used to it.

“Oh, Noam,” Linda said when he showed up on the front step of the Migrant Center, just five blocks from where he’d been living. She had flour on her hands from prepping the lunch service, although she did her best to dust them off on her trousers before pulling him into a tight embrace. She gripped him so hard he worried he might bruise. “I heard what happened. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry about your father. Are you doing okay?”

She pulled back just enough to peer at him with her kind brown eyes, gaze skimming over his face and then down to his body, lingering briefly on the cadet star sewed onto the sleeve of his uniform. She rubbed her hands up and down his arms like she was trying to warm him up.

She was alive.

She was alive.

“I’m okay,” Noam said and managed a smile.

“We thought you must be in Charleston—what are you doing here? Are you on leave?”

Right—he supposed they wouldn’t have any way of knowing he’d gone to Level IV. Survivor names were printed in the paper, but it wasn’t like they publicized Level IV admissions.

“I’m training in Durham,” he said, deciding on impulse not to mention the specifics. Level IV sounded so cold. People on the street shied away from him when they saw his drabs, like they thought he was catching. He couldn’t blame them. Parts of the city still smoldered after being firebombed during the last outbreak—he could smell the smoke from his old neighborhood from here.

Or maybe it wasn’t fear of contagion. These were Atlantians, after all. The one thing they hated more than the virus in this neighborhood was government, and when they looked at Noam now, that was what they saw.

Linda’s mouth twisted with concern. “You’re so thin. Aren’t they feeding you?”

“Sure,” he said. “It’s just . . . the virus, you know . . .”

“Of course, honey. I’m sorry. You’re still recovering, aren’t you?”

If she was afraid of him, of his uniform or the magic in his veins, it didn’t show.

“I’m all right,” he said firmly and squeezed her arm. “I came to . . . I mean, is Brennan . . .”

His breath was frozen. Impossible to exhale, impossible to imagine the possibility, now, that Linda might shake her head and say—that Brennan might be—

“He’s alive,” she said.

Relief crashed into Noam all at once. If Brennan had died . . . if Brennan had died, that would have been it. The last fragile root buried in the soil of Noam’s old life, ripped up and thrown away.

Brennan was alive.

“Can I see him?”

“Oh,” she said, flustered. “Oh . . . I bet they’ve got you spread thin already. You don’t have to worry about us.”

He could read between those lines easily enough. “I want to help. Just because the government owns my magic doesn’t mean they own me. I haven’t become one of Chancellor Sacha’s acolytes overnight.” A beat. “Actually, I’ve been working more with Minister Lehrer.”

And there was that reaction, widening eyes and a sharp breath. “You have?”

“Yes. He’s tutoring me personally.”

Linda glanced over her shoulder into the building, like she expected to find Lehrer standing right behind her. “Well. Well, that’s . . . I’m so proud of you, Noam.”

Should she be?

The thought lanced into his mind, subtle as a spider bite. Even though Noam was here, bearing promises of technopathy and open doors, it wasn’t like he was a prisoner in Level IV either. He’d volunteered.

This had been his choice, for better or worse.

“Can I see Brennan?”

“Maybe. He’s so busy these days,” Linda said, still fiddling with his collar. Had it been askew?

Too busy to talk to Noam? That was a new one. Noam bit the inside of his lip to keep from frowning. “Okay. That’s fine. Just let him know that I’m here. Tell him . . . tell him it’s important.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “Um. Is there anything else I can do?”

Linda’s next smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Of course.” At last she stepped back into the foyer, tugging him after her. “Come on now, sugar. Let’s find something for you to do.”

She set him up in one of the guest offices with an ancient two-terabyte computer and another database management task. He thought about using his newfound power to try to make it go even faster than what he could manage with a bit of LOG, but if he got caught by someone who didn’t know better, he might not be allowed to come back. Better stick to scripts.

Even so, he wrapped his power through the wires and pins, caressing each packet of information as it flowed by. It was like realizing he could see a new color nobody else could, like a part of his brain hadn’t been functioning properly, but now he could see the world as it really was.