The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(55)

“But that’s not true,” Noam burst out. “The outbreaks are worse for refugees because we don’t have the papers to get proper jobs, so we can’t buy proper houses, so we live in tenements or get kicked into refugee camps—and how the hell does Sacha think this works, anyway? That’s how disease spreads.”

Brennan nodded slowly. “It is . . . but that’s precisely why Sacha and the Republican Democrats want mass deportation. They claim if the refugees were gone, the outbreaks would stop.”

“People would still die. But maybe they don’t give a shit about that, so long as it’s Atlantian corpses in the ground and not Carolinian.”

“They believe they have an obligation to protect Carolinians first.” Brennan’s face twisted in a grimace. “Or at least that’s what they’re chanting down at the catastrophe memorial right now. ‘Carolinia First.’”

“I’m going to fucking kill them.”

“Noam—”

At the catastrophe memorial. In front of the statue of Adalwolf Lehrer. In front of the monument labeled with the names of all those innocent people killed for their magic in the 2010s.

That was where Sacha’s bullies went to crow about nationalism and call for the passive extermination of an entire nation.

This new young Carolinian upper class hated the refugees because they didn’t want to be infected—didn’t want to become witchings themselves—but they were perfectly fine tolerating the witchings who maintained border control and kept Atlantians out. Fucked up. It was so fucking—

He pushed past Brennan and out the door, ignoring Brennan calling his name. He barely heard anything but the pound of his own blood in his ears and traffic roaring past as he stepped out of the building and onto the sidewalk.

The catastrophe memorial was halfway between here and the government complex, although the bus line Noam took to get to the Migrant Center hadn’t gone anywhere near it—probably the only reason Noam hadn’t known what was going on.

He didn’t take the bus this time. He just ran.

When he first joined Level IV, he’d struggled with a nine-minute mile. Now, on the other side of recovery and three months of grueling training, Noam barely felt tired as he sprinted past Brightleaf toward central downtown.

He heard the protest before he saw it. He knew the sound of hate, knew it down to his bones. It was the comments Carolinian kids used to make at school before he stopped going. It was the high-pressure spray of tear gas grenades. It was voices like these shouting “We come first” and “Carolinia for Carolinians.”

Noam’s father used to organize counterprotests. He’d be one of those people yelling at the assholes with the banners, the one getting up in some fascist’s face and daring him to do more than talk.

And thank god, they were still here. He knew who they were, even with their faces obscured by masks and bandannas. Knew how Grace walked and the shape of DeShawn’s body under those black clothes. But they weren’t enough, too few of them against all those protesters carrying Carolinian flags with violence in their eyes. The protesters had surrounded the monument—Adalwolf Lehrer cast in bronze, towering over these people screaming in his name. Like Adalwolf would have wanted this, like he hadn’t died fighting this same virophobia. The police were already there, of course—fucking Sacha fascists must’ve gotten permits—standing by with riot shields and hands on their guns, eyeing the counterprotesters as though they might, if they were lucky, get the chance to shoot a few Atlantian kids dead.

“Noam!” one of the counterprotesters—Sam, he was pretty sure—shouted.

Noam darted over to join them, taking the black bandanna someone passed him and tying it tight over his nose and mouth, tugging up his hoodie to conceal his hair.

“And here I thought you were a witching now,” one of them said, his voice unidentifiable behind his bandanna. But Noam didn’t have time to snap back, because whoever it was just clapped Noam on the shoulder like they were old friends and said, “C’mon. Let’s fuck up the fash.”

Someone thrust a sign into Noam’s hand—IMPEACH SACHA—and he spun around to face the protesters and the memorial and a hundred years of forgotten history and held the sign high overhead.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, he thought at the protesters and willed them to hear it—and when that didn’t happen, he just shouted it at them instead, meaningless words that fed the rage that seethed inside him.

All of them were so very proud an accident of birth made them Carolinian and bought them a lifetime of safety and privilege instead of fear and poverty and death. They ought to walk into that camp with the ground soaked in blood and magic and look Bea King in the face as she died alone and frightened at eight years old, at eight years old, and tell her she didn’t deserve to stay in their country because her parents brought her here illegally. Because she was a refugee.

“Impeach Sacha!” Noam shouted, one of a dozen voices all shouting the exact same thing, and the angry white man in front of him twisted up his face and spat at him.

“Go home,” the man said. His eyes were black beads in his reddened face, his spit soaking through the bandanna to stick damp against Noam’s cheek. “Go home and fucking die there.”

And he punched Noam in the face.

Pain burst like fireworks behind Noam’s cheekbone, scintillating and bright. And he reacted without thinking, action provoking reaction, and he hit the man back so hard he felt cartilage snap under the force of his fist. He sensed iron searing the air—blood.