The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(34)

Noam looked around, half expecting to find soldiers marching up behind him or to feel cuffs clasp around his wrists. But everyone there looked as startled as Noam felt, lifting hands to their ears and glancing around as if the walls would tell them what to do.

Running would only draw attention. The alarm shrieked in his ears, sickeningly loud. Noam reached out with his power, flinging it far, trying to find the tech that controlled the alarm. But it was out of reach, impossible to program from this distance, so he did the next best thing.

The electricity cut out. The building plunged into darkness.

Screams erupted all around him. Doors flung open, footsteps pounding through the halls. Someone collided with Noam, running fast, and he stumbled.

Fuck, this was a stupid idea, he thought as his knees hit the floor.

A moment ago people wondered if the alarm was broken, but now they all thought this was some kind of terrorist attack.

Noam clutched his bag to his chest as people raced past, more worried about someone trashing his computer than getting trampled himself. He crawled left until he hit a wall and could pull himself up. He leaned there, cradling his bag as he reached out with his power to fix the electricity. It didn’t work.

Emergency lights flickered on a second later, illuminating the faces around him with a sickly green glow and turning them into eerie skulls. Most people went for the other end of the hall, so the stairs Noam took earlier might be empty. But elevators were bound to be shut down, and if the whole building stampeded the main staircase, other people would start taking the service stairs as well.

But he didn’t have another option.

West it was, past frantic secretaries and stern-looking officers in military uniforms. He reached the service stairs and pulled the heavy steel door closed behind him, magnetizing it shut. A flimsy defense.

The stairwell was empty, thank god, but he couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t go out there either. With people looking for someone who didn’t belong, Noam would stand out like a fire burning underwater.

Up led nowhere. Down, soldiers swarmed in from their posts.

Still, going down offered a better shot than getting trapped on the top floor. His footsteps were dangerously loud on the steel traction as he clattered down toward floor four. Right when he rounded the corner on the landing, someone grabbed him from behind, clapping a hand over his mouth.

Noam’s immediate reaction was to lurch forward against the arm restraining him, but all the good that did was to pull him and his attacker one step closer to toppling down the stairs together. His reflexive gasp was muffled against the restraining hand, but the man yelped when Noam bit his palm.

“Stop it,” a familiar voice hissed in his ear, and the arms let go.

Noam grabbed for his power, though what he would have done with it, he couldn’t say; there was nothing nearby to use as a weapon.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Dara wore a soldier’s uniform with stripes on the sleeve instead of a cadet star. His eyes were too bright in the emergency lights. “Don’t worry about that right now. Can’t you fix that?” He gestured toward the green bulb overhead.

“I tried,” Noam said. “I think I fried the electrical wires.”

“Idiot.” Dara dragged a hand back through his already-messy hair, a muscle twitching in his temple. Noam couldn’t even waste time being offended; he was pretty sure Dara was right.

Dara exhaled roughly. “Okay. Listen, we have to get out of here. There are soldiers coming down the second-floor corridor, headed for the stairs. We need to go out on the third floor.”

Noam’s throat was bone dry. “That’s—”

“I know what the third floor is, álvaro. Do you have a better idea?”

“Yeah, actually. They’ve obviously got us cornered. Let’s just go out there and confess and get it over with. Maybe they’ll go easy on us if we turn ourselves in.”

Dara made a strange guttural sound, something animalistic, and his fingers closed around Noam’s wrist. Dara’s palm was sweaty, but his grip was bruising hard. He tugged once, pulling Noam off-balance. “Do you have any idea what they’d do to us if they found us here? Come on.”

“Let go of me,” Noam snapped, trying to pull his wrist free, but Dara’s hand only tightened.

“álvaro, I swear to god, if you don’t come with me right now, I will leave you here for Lehrer to find. Let’s go.”

At this point, Dara was freaking Noam out more than the soldiers were. He let Dara drag him down the steps, only managing to shake off Dara’s hand once they got to the landing. Below, he felt gunmetal outside the door to the stairs on the second floor. On instinct he magnetized that door shut, too, and just in time. A heavy weight collided with the steel, the sound echoing up the stairwell. The door didn’t budge.

“Shit,” Dara whispered. And—he had a gun in his hand, what the fuck, what the fuck—

Only, no, that was an illusion. Noam felt the magic when he looked for it, glittering around the edges of the thing and refracting light in a perfect pattern.

“I don’t think that’s going to help,” Noam said, but Dara ignored him.

Dara’s fear was contagious, seeping off him and curdling in Noam’s blood. Dara pressed his whole body against the third-floor door.

“Let’s—” Noam started, but Dara just said “Ssh! ” and leaned his brow against the doorframe.