The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(57)

He spun around, prepared to dart back into the crowd, and nearly collided with the broad armored chest of an antiwitching soldier. The man’s hand closed around Noam’s arm with inhuman strength, and maybe he wasn’t human, maybe there was nothing behind that black-glazed mask but technology and magic. A faceless voice spoke.

“You’re under arrest.”

The city jail was next to the government complex, right across the street from where Dara and Bethany and Taye and Ames were probably sitting down for dinner.

The officer who booked Noam was a heavyset man with bushy eyebrows. He didn’t even meet Noam’s gaze as he demanded, “Papers.”

“Don’t have any,” Noam lied.

The man huffed. “Figures. All right, gimme your hand. Fingerprints.”

The gun.

The gun, on the sidewalk, that Noam had stolen from a police officer with magic. The gun with Noam’s prints all over it.

When Noam didn’t immediately react, the man just grabbed at his wrist himself, pressing Noam’s hand against a screen. Noam felt the machine scan his prints and couldn’t do a damn thing about it, couldn’t wipe himself from the system without getting caught using technopathy and giving himself away.

Whatever. If Noam went to juvie again because he was fighting fascism on behalf of Atlantians, he was okay with that.

“Name?” the man asked.

Noam didn’t answer, just to be contrary. Instead he tried to track whether the system immediately told the police his identity, but the data packet with his fingerprints uploaded instantly to federal servers. Servers which were, of course, concealed by antitechnopathy wards. Great.

They crowded Noam and all the other refugees—the Carolinia First contingent was notably absent from the arrestees—into a holding cell guarded by antiwitching soldiers. A man in a suit stood on the other side of the cell bars and said, “Listen up. We know one of you is an unregistered witching. If you own up to it, maybe we go a little easier on you.”

Silence answered. Noam and the others all avoided looking at each other, as if making eye contact might be taken as evidence.

The man waited patiently, seconds stretching out into minutes.

“Very well,” he said at last. “Then let me put it this way. Anyone who tells me who the witching is gets to walk out of here today. No charges. No questions. No deportation.” His cool gaze surveying each of them in turn. When he looked at Noam, Noam stood.

“We’re entitled to legal defense,” he said.

“As illegal immigrants, you aren’t entitled to anything.”

Noam was pretty sure he was more familiar with Carolinian law at this point than the man in the suit. He’d read quite a bit of it in the free library at juvie. “Carolinian law states every person is entitled to a public defender against federal charges. Every person, not just every citizen.”

The man looked at him. “Let me rephrase: illegals are not entitled to government-funded lawyers for immigration-related charges.” His smile was thin, mean. “After all, who said anything about charging you with federal crimes?”

Right—because why bother wasting resources charging them with incitement when they could just deport everyone in this room to Atlantia on immigration charges and save the trouble? They’d figure out who Noam was sooner or later, and that he was a Carolinian citizen, but for everyone else . . .

Noam sat back down.

The man in the suit was still smiling as he turned toward the room again, hands on his hips. “I’ll say it one more time. Who wants to walk out of here?”

Noam stole a glance at Sam, who still had Grace’s blood on his shirt. At DeShawn, with his left eye swollen shut. At the others, people Noam didn’t even know but who might know him, who had no reason to defend a Level IV witching when they could save their own skin in trade.

No one spoke up.

Noam should have been terrified, but warmth bloomed in his chest too.

He nudged Sam’s ankle. Sam didn’t react. So Noam found the wedding ring on his finger and warmed it up until Sam flinched and finally glared over at him, hand flexing. Noam stared back, brows lifted.

Do it, you idiot.

Sam exhaled a heavy breath. And at last he said, “It’s him,” and jerked his thumb toward Noam. “But joke’s on you, assholes. He’s not unregistered; he’s Level IV.”

The man in the suit looked back at Noam with narrowed eyes.

Noam smirked, even though it made his bruised cheekbone hurt like fuck. “I can see the headline now: ‘Level IV–trained witching arrested at anti-Sacha protest.’ Ouch. Hope you have a good PR department.”

He relished the look on that man’s face: hatred, resentment. Apprehension.

The man looked to one of the uniformed officers. “Call the Ministry of Defense and figure out how they want to handle it. You.” He pointed at Noam. “Get up. You’re coming with me.”

Noam got up—what else was he going to do?—and crossed the small space between the bench and the bars. They didn’t bother trying to cuff him this time, just opened the door and tugged him out by the arm. The door slammed shut after him, an officer twisting his key in the lock.

“Wait,” Noam said, gesturing to Sam. “What about him?”

The man in the suit tapped his tongue against the backs of his teeth. “Too bad,” he said. “Shoulda got it in writing.”