The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(41)

“I’m going to do it anyway, whether you sign off or not.”

Brennan’s fingertips hovered over the screen. Noam wondered if he was about to delete all that hard-gained data, or if he might—perhaps—

“I can’t condone this,” Brennan said at last.

He didn’t say it out loud, but Noam still got the gist.

I can’t condone this, but I’ll accept whatever you can give me.

Even if you’re still a witching.

“I understand,” he said.

He wished he didn’t.

He wished they could go back to whatever it was they had before.

“I can’t believe you didn’t get caught,” Brennan said after several seconds, shaking his head.

“I kind of did. General Ames found me and . . . found me on the third floor. He got Lehrer.”

Brennan’s gaze sharpened. “He got Lehrer? What did you say? How did you—”

“Lehrer saw the email.” There was no point talking around it. “He made me empty out my bag and give him my computer.”

Brennan looked ill. His hands clenched and unclenched atop the desk, impotent. “You should be in jail right now. Executed, more like. Why . . . how are you here?”

Executed? Noam hadn’t at all gotten that impression from Lehrer, who’d been angry, of course, but even then Noam assumed he was facing arrest. Not death.

Maybe that was foolish. Treason was treason, and Dara had been terrified.

He swallowed against the uncomfortable lump that had lodged itself in his throat. “Lehrer’s sympathetic to the refugees. He said . . .”

No. Whatever happened to Lehrer or Lehrer’s grandparents was Lehrer’s business.

“He said if we were planning something, he wouldn’t stand in our way.”

Brennan turned his face toward the ceiling as if in silent prayer. “Thank god. I hate to say it, but without Lehrer on our side, we wouldn’t last a week. Lehrer controls the army. If he refuses to aid Sacha . . . well. Sacha will find himself ill equipped to round up immigrants without military enforcement.”

Noam couldn’t help thinking that Brennan’s route to change was woefully underdeveloped. It all hinged on Lehrer refusing to use the army to round up refugees, and Noam wasn’t so sure the army would obey Lehrer if the choice was between obedience to a commanding officer and treason. Especially if they feared, like most, that the refugees brought magic with them into Carolinia to infect their families.

He wasn’t sure Lehrer would even help Brennan’s movement in the first place.

Noam kept ruminating on that well into the afternoon, which he spent volunteering in the Migrant Center’s soup kitchen, spooning casserole onto trays for a seemingly never-ending line of refugees. Before Level IV he wouldn’t have noticed how gaunt they looked, how shocking the razor edge of a collarbone, the gray tinge to cheeks. It would have seemed normal to the old Noam, the one who grew up in tenement housing and was constantly hungry himself.

Now Noam had everything. Incredible how quickly he had gotten used to a soft bed and a full stomach and a world’s worth of knowledge at his fingertips. How foolish to complain about grueling boot camp sessions when all around him people starved to death.

If Sacha’s plans succeeded, most of them would be dead this time next year.

“It’s nearly six,” Linda said when she found him still there hours later, perspiring from kitchen heat and ladling stew into bowls. She started untying his apron strings without even asking, tugging him back away from the food line. “You have to go back to school, Noam. It’s Remembrance Day today. Aren’t you going to be in trouble if you stay out late?”

Probably. “I’ll be fine.”

She pulled the apron off over his head and tossed it into the growing pile of laundry. “Don’t be ridiculous, sugar. We have plenty of volunteers who can take over from here. You should go home. Get some dinner. Watch the memorial ceremony on TV.”

The food served in Level IV was meat and fresh vegetables. The stew the Migrant Center fed the refugees was carefully prepared to be high calorie and low cost: frozen potatoes, soy protein, broth from reconstituted powder.

The thought of going home and eating like a king was repulsive.

Could magic create food? If someone understood molecular biology, would that person be able to piece together the structure of an apple, or a kale plant, or even meat? Could the virus create life just as easily as it snuffed it out?

Think how many lives they could save.

Noam walked back downtown instead of taking the bus, hood tugged up to keep the snow out of his eyes and ungloved hands stuffed deep in both pockets. Without his uniform he was just another teen—in this neighborhood, a refugee—but as soon as he crossed into the government district he’d become the kid of some important minister, waiting for Daddy’s car.

He stopped at the Gregson Street intersection and stood there for a second, cheeks stinging in the bitter wind as he gazed down toward the smokestack that landmarked the government complex. People in suits edged around him without saying a word, heading to work in the refurbished tobacco warehouses that made up Brightleaf Square or north to their fancy apartments.

For the first time since he joined Level IV, Noam realized he didn’t feel that immediate plunge of nausea when he looked east. The idea of going back to the government complex didn’t make him want to lie down on the cracked sidewalk and let himself get trampled to death.