The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(33)

That could work.

It barely took ten seconds. The secretary’s phone buzzed. She drew it out of her coat and glanced down at the screen, which Noam knew without looking had a message from her boss—Need you in room 142, urgent.

Thank god for unblocked radio signals.

“Can you keep yourself occupied for ten or fifteen minutes?” the secretary asked, even as she stood up and dusted off her pencil skirt.

“Sure,” Noam said brightly.

Still, she gave him one last sharp look before vanishing out into the hall. Noam stayed seated where he was until the door finally fell shut behind her. Then he leaped up, darting across the room to the mahogany door leading back to Holloway’s office; the secretary wouldn’t need more than five minutes to realize there was no urgent business on the first floor.

The computer was on the desk, asleep. Noam dug a pair of latex gloves out of his bag and snapped them onto his hands before grabbing the mouse to wake the monitor. And, of fucking course, Holloway had it set up for retina-scan verification. Good thing Noam had that flopcell all programmed up, or else he’d be spending forever trying to script his way past the front door.

He stuck the flopcell in its slot and waited five seconds, ten . . . why is it taking so long? Only then the screen flickered, and he was in, he was in.

He had to move fast; he needed to give himself time to clean up the cache when he was done so Holloway couldn’t check his process history later and wonder what he was doing on his desktop at 11:43 on Friday when he was supposed to be in a meeting.

Noam’s first instinct was to get on the server—but when he tried to click into that path, he got a password prompt.

No time for that. What else could he look into?

Maybe . . . email? Would that be unlocked?

No harm trying. And—yes, yes, it was, thank god for small blessings. Where was his other flopcell? Ummm . . . left pocket . . . no, right pocket, okay. Filter “sender: Harold Sacha.”

There.

Oh god. There were over four thousand results. Filter “sender: Harold Sacha, Atlantia.”

Noam opened the first message and skimmed past the usual salutations and small-talk nonsense.

. . . currently houses nine thousand citizens per square mile. Our infrastructure cannot support the additional numbers of Atlantian refugees. The disease threat alone is formidable—the last outbreak killed nearly seven thousand people, and approval ratings are lower every day. People don’t feel safe in their own country. The refugees bring sickness, and crime, and antiwitching sentiment—all threats to Carolinian values.

I know Calix has expressed his objections, but I’m overriding them. We’re expanding the camps. All incoming immigrants and registered refugees should be relocated. Deport anyone without papers. If you encounter resistance, use necessary force.

Per Calix’s suggestion, I’ve offered Tom Brennan a position as official immigration adviser as a goodwill gesture. Calix will speak to him. In the unlikely event Calix finds himself less than persuasive, see that Brennan accepts.

H. Sacha

Chancellor of Carolinia

With every word he read, Noam’s stomach twisted a little tighter, until by the end of the letter it was a knot of nausea pulsing above his navel. This, this was the kind of thing Brennan needed to see.

It was foolish to pretend diplomacy was going to make any difference to someone like Sacha. Oh, he talked around it nicely enough, but Sacha’s meaning was clear.

Take all the foreigners to the refugee camps. Deport undocumented immigrants, even though returning to Atlantia is a death sentence. Obey, even if you find my decision morally repulsive.

Fuck him. Fuck him for trying to justify deportation using the same outbreak that killed Noam’s father. Atlantia was a viral cesspool. People had to flee to Carolinia if they wanted to survive. And when they got here, Sacha locked them up in camps and crowded slums, then blamed them when they fell sick.

When Carly found out she’d be sent back to Atlantia, they both cried for days because they knew what that meant. Then she shipped off in one of those canvas trucks, vanishing onto the freeway heading south. By the time her first letter made it to Durham, he’d already received the other letter, the one telling him Carly Jacobs was dead.

Noam’s anger was a cold shell closing around his skin.

Focus. Save the message to the flopcell. No—save all messages . . . ETA twenty minutes—never mind; save first twenty-five messages.

He pulled both flopcells out and stuffed them into his pocket, then opened the command interface and erased all history of what he’d done.

He left before the secretary returned.

The thrill of sneaking into the government complex was gone. It had been replaced by a deep sense of injustice that throbbed through his body like blood.

Noam passed invisibly between the government employees, all of them just as guilty, all of them traitors for letting Sacha stay in power. Noam might as well be a ghost. The cameras didn’t see him. The people didn’t see him. His fingers dug into the strap of his bag, short nails cutting crescents into the leather.

He almost made it to the end of the corridor before the alarm went off.

Suddenly the halls were full of red lights flashing from bulbs hidden up near the ceiling, a screeching sound blaring from all sides. Bizarrely, Noam felt a rush of . . . something. Something that wasn’t fear.

Let them arrest me. Let them try.