The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(31)

Encrypted video from a private repository on the Ministry of Defense servers

The film opens on a bare room. Two figures enter the frame, a white-coated man pushing a boy in a wheelchair. He positions the chair in the center of the room, facing the camera. The boy in the chair is as thin and fragile as a baby bird; a metal contraption covers the bottom half of his face, something sharp and lethal affixed by spikes drilled into bone. He is approximately twelve years old.

The doctor adjusts the plastic tubing snaking out from beneath the boy’s hospital gown and rolls the IV stand out of the boy’s reach. Or what would be out of reach if the boy’s arms weren’t strapped down.

The boy shifts in his chair, lifting his gaze briefly to the camera. His eyes are unusually pale. He is conscious, if barely.

Off-screen, a VOICE: “Are you ready to begin?”

DOCTOR, after watching the boy’s heartbeat on-screen for a second: “Yes.”

VOICE: “Patient 103, session 49. December 14, 2012. Drs. Towson and Green presiding. Dr. Green, start with twenty micrograms.”

The first doctor injects something into the boy’s central line.

It’s a few seconds before the boy starts screaming, sound muffled by the contraption on his face.

VOICE: “Another ten.”

Dr. Green obeys. The boy’s body quivers violently, limbs tugging against the restraints.

VOICE: “Impress us, Calix, and the pain stops.”

But nothing happens. The off-screen voice orders the other doctor to increase the dosage again, and again.

VOICE: “I’m losing my patience.”

The boy’s eyes are wet, but when he glares at the camera, his gaze is hot enough to sear. Dr. Green prepares another injection, but he doesn’t get a chance to push it into the boy’s central line.

The room explodes in a sudden crash of sound, the camera skidding back several feet, then toppling over. Dust and brick crash down from the ceiling. Several voices are screaming.

VOICE: “Suppressant!”

The whole world—or so it seems—trembles on its axis. The boy’s body is barely visible through the debris, his chair still upright and his chin fallen forward onto his chest.

VOICE: “Dr. Green, the suppressant, now!”

A flurry of white coat, someone reaching for a length of plastic tubing with syringe in hand.

The video goes blank.





CHAPTER SEVEN

Two more weeks passed before Noam figured out the trick to getting into the government complex.

He checked the security system every day, some part of him still hoping he’d identify a failure in the ward and be able to break through. Knowing he never would.

Actually, in the end, it came down to good old-fashioned cracking.

Everything Noam ever wanted to know about Xerxes Security Systems—the company responsible for creating the biometric reader—was available online. Noam was a good liar, and technopathy could fake caller ID to make it look like he was sitting behind a desk at the National Cybersecurity Bureau. There was some problem with the biometrics, he told them. Signatures kept getting confused. Sometimes Joe Schmoe was getting logged as Jane Doe, and the NCB was fixin’ to switch to Safelarm if they didn’t quit piddlin’ around.

He had tech support on the line five minutes later.

Of course, Noam said, this was the NCB. National security meant Noam needed to have one of his own employees take care of the problem, no contractors. So he needed detailed schematics sent to his account.

Noam might not be able to use technopathy on a government network, but he sure as hell could use it on the NCB director’s phone. He had what he wanted within seconds, then deleted the email from the inbox and trash and kept the director’s phone from sounding a notification the entire time.

He used the schematics to clone the biometric-reader software and started practicing. He tried a dozen iterations of the same LOG injection before he finally figured out how to make the biometric reader match his print to someone else’s approved identity; then he deleted all record of his print being read in the first place.

And that was how he ended up standing outside a service door to the government complex at ten on a Friday, flopcell in hand, staring at the biometric security reader and wondering if he was being incredibly reckless.

It wasn’t really that hard; that was the sad part. Noam fed his program into the device, the latch clicked, and Noam pushed the door open with ease. His pulse raced in his chest, and he half expected to find Swensson standing there on the other side: I thought you might try something like this.

There was no one. The hall stretched out before him was identical to the ones in the training wing, all hardwood floor and brick walls. This part of the building was original warehouse, lovingly reconstructed; there were visible spots on the walls where someone had daubed over the crumbling mortar, rescuing it.

This was a terrible idea. Noam had a record. If he got caught breaking the law again, who would believe he was reformed?

Actually, no. Worse than that. Noam was pretty sure what he had planned for Sacha’s computer counted as espionage.

Planned. He hadn’t done it yet. As of right now, he was just a student out of bounds with plenty of plausible deniability. That would stay true right up until Noam plugged the keylogger into Sacha’s computer.

There was a distinct possibility he wouldn’t even find anything—but if he sat in the barracks one more night, eating expensive meat and doing nothing while kids got deported south, he’d never forgive himself. If he could get proof of political motive for the deportations, prove it wasn’t just contamination threat like the government claimed, that would help. Or, hell, some way to blackmail Sacha into shutting down the whole immigration division would do just fine too.