The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(37)

Lehrer’s gaze slid over the objects assembled on the table. “Give me your holoreader and the flopcell. Don’t change anything. Don’t minimize any windows, don’t wipe the cell drive, nothing.”

Nausea curdled—once again—in the pit of Noam’s stomach. Before Noam could hand the holoreader over, it was tugged out of his grasp by Lehrer’s power, floating through the air to land neatly in Lehrer’s hands. Lehrer selected a flopcell and plugged it in, then examined the screen, frowning.

Just last week, Noam considered putting extra security on his computer. He’d thought about writing a program where, if he entered a certain password on start-up, anything in his encrypted drives would immediately be deleted. It would have been simple, elegant. It would have meant Noam could erase the text file without Lehrer being any the wiser. But he hadn’t done it, because he’d thought he was being paranoid, and that was stupid, stupid stupid, because any hacktivist worth shit knew there was no such thing as too paranoid.

“I assume you were responsible for the electricity cutting out,” Lehrer said.

He glanced at Noam, who swallowed and nodded once.

“That was a bad idea,” Lehrer said. “You caused building-wide panic. It would have been better to let the alarm keep going.”

No shit. But why was Lehrer going on about that, of all things, when he’d just read what he had? He held evidence of treason in his hands, and he was telling Noam how the crime could’ve been performed better?

Lehrer shut off the holoreader and passed it back to Noam, who gripped it so hard his hands cramped. He was never letting this computer out of his sight again, not without destroying the cell drive beyond recognition, and Lehrer and his order not to use technopathy could both go fuck themselves.

“I can’t cover for you like this again,” Lehrer said. “You’re going to have to do a better job hiding yourself in the future.”

“I—what?”

Lehrer picked up a cup of tea from an end table. The drink had been cold a moment before, but by the time he lifted it to his lips, it was steaming hot. Lehrer took a sip, then smiled, as if amused.

“I really don’t care that you broke into the government complex,” Lehrer went on, swirling the tea round in his cup. “But really, Noam, a cadet’s uniform? You couldn’t be bothered to change into your civvies?”

Noam flushed. The truth was, the only “civvies” he had were the ones he wore back from the hospital—and after three months, they’d fallen apart.

His mind was muddled with new information, blown expectations whirling like watercolors.

“I didn’t have anything better, sir.”

Lehrer gave him a faintly incredulous look. “Improvise.”

The way he said it made Noam want to shrivel up with embarrassment. “Yes, sir.”

“Then,” Lehrer said, completely unmoved by Noam’s anxiety, “there’s the matter of your digital trespassing.”

Anger resurfaced like a monster from the deep, surging up into the shallows of Noam’s mind and subsuming the anxiety of a moment before.

“You read that email,” Noam burst out. “You heard what he said. Sacha’s evil, sir. He’s crazy, or he’s stupid, or—people die in those refugee camps. They’re overcrowded, and people get sick, and they never come back. And we all know Atlantia’s a death trap.”

“I did read the email,” Lehrer confirmed. He sat down in his usual chair, perching an elbow on the armrest and cupping his tea between both hands. “And I agree with you, Noam. Sacha’s behavior is reprehensible.”

“But you aren’t going to do anything about it.” Noam’s voice hurt, like broken glass in his throat. “That makes you just as bad as he is.”

Lehrer’s oddly transparent eyes did not blink. “I wouldn’t say I’m doing nothing.”

The words hung in the air between them. They grew there, transformed, spread long limbs into the empty corners and twined around Noam’s heart.

“What, then?” he said, when he couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “What are you doing? Because as far as I can see, you’re full of sympathy and promises but not much else.” The last word cracked on its way out, Noam’s chest seizing painfully.

Lehrer put down his tea and leaned forward, bracing his forearms against his knees and clasping his hands between them. The smile was gone.

“Listen to me, Noam,” Lehrer said. “This has happened before. My grandparents were so-called foreigners in their own land. Their German countrymen locked them away in prison camps for the crime of being Jews. And then, in the 2000s, the United States rounded up all witchings and their families and had them killed, allegedly for the safety of the uninfected. I survived not because I was spared, but because I was powerful enough to be studied before I was killed. What Sacha is trying to do now is no different. He’s afraid of the virus, but fear is just as infectious. This country is paralyzed by it. Sacha believes he is protecting the people from disease by taking a hard line on immigration, but he is wrong.”

Lehrer said the last part so forcefully that Noam felt it like a blow to the gut. Something shattered on the other side of the room; Noam leaped to his feet before he could stop himself.

The decanter had fallen off the table, heavy crystal in pieces all over the floor and scotch dripping onto the rug.