by Victoria Lee
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 It had been replaced by a deep sense of injustice that throbbed through his body like blood.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.
Noam looked around, half expecting to find soldiers marching up behind him or to feel cuffs clasp around his wrists. But everyone there looked as startled as Noam felt, lifting hands to their ears and glancing around as if the walls would tell them what to do.
Running would only draw attention. The alarm shrieked in his ears, sickeningly loud. Noam reached out with his power, flinging it far, trying to find the tech that controlled the alarm. But it was out of reach, impossible to program from this distance, so he did the next best thing.
The electricity cut out. The building plunged into darkness.
Screams erupted all around him. Doors flung open, footsteps pounding through the halls. Someone collided with Noam, running fast, and he stumbled.
Fuck, this was a stupid idea, he thought as his knees hit the floor.
A moment ago people wondered if the alarm was broken, but now they all thought this was some kind of terrorist attack.
Noam clutched his bag to his chest as people raced past, more worried about someone trashing his computer than getting trampled himself. He crawled left until he hit a wall and could pull himself up. He leaned there, cradling his bag as he reached out with his power to fix the electricity. It didn’t work.
Emergency lights flickered on a second later, illuminating the faces around him with a sickly green glow and turning them into eerie skulls. Most people went for the other end of the hall, so the stairs Noam took earlier might be empty. But elevators were bound to be shut down, and if the whole building stampeded the main staircase, other people would start taking the service stairs as well.
But he didn’t have another option.
West it was, past frantic secretaries and stern-looking officers in military uniforms. He reached the service stairs and pulled the heavy steel door closed behind him, magnetizing it shut. A flimsy defense.
The stairwell was empty, thank god, but he couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t go out there either. With people looking for someone who didn’t belong, Noam would stand out like a fire burning underwater.
Up led nowhere. Down, soldiers swarmed in from their posts.
Still, going down offered a better shot than getting trapped on the top floor. His footsteps were dangerously loud on the steel traction as he clattered down toward floor four. Right when he rounded the corner on the landing, someone grabbed him from behind, clapping a hand over his mouth.
Noam’s immediate reaction was to lurch forward against the arm restraining him, but all the good that did was to pull him and his attacker one step closer to toppling down the stairs together. His reflexive gasp was muffled against the restraining hand, but the man yelped when Noam bit his palm.
“Stop it,” a familiar voice hissed in his ear, and the arms let go.
Noam grabbed for his power, though what he would have done with it, he couldn’t say; there was nothing nearby to use as a weapon.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Dara wore a soldier’s uniform with stripes on the sleeve instead of a cadet star. His eyes were too bright in the emergency lights. “Don’t worry about that right now. Can’t you fix that?” He gestured toward the green bulb overhead.
“I tried,” Noam said. “I think I fried the electrical wires.”
“Idiot.” Dara dragged a hand back through his already-messy hair, a muscle twitching in his temple. Noam couldn’t even waste time being offended; he was pretty sure Dara was right.
Dara exhaled roughly. “Okay. Listen, we have to get out of here. There are soldiers coming down the second-floor corridor, headed for the stairs. We need to go out on the third floor.”
Noam’s throat was bone dry. “That’s—”
“I know what the third floor is, Álvaro. Do you have a better idea?”
“Yeah, actually. They’ve obviously got us cornered. Let’s just go out there and confess and get it over with. Maybe they’ll go easy on us if we turn ourselves in.”
Dara made a strange guttural sound, something animalistic, and his fingers closed around Noam’s wrist. Dara’s palm was sweaty, but his grip was bruising hard. He tugged once, pulling Noam off-balance. “Do you have any idea what they’d do to us if they found us here? Come on.”
“Let go of me,” Noam snapped, trying to pull his wrist free, but Dara’s hand only tightened.
“Álvaro, I swear to god, if you don’t come with me right now, I will leave you here for Lehrer to find. Let’s go.”
At this point, Dara was freaking Noam out more than the soldiers were. He let Dara drag him down the steps, only managing to shake off Dara’s hand once they got to the landing. Below, he felt gunmetal outside the door to the stairs on the second floor. On instinct he magnetized that door shut, too, and just in time. A heavy weight collided with the steel, the sound echoing up the stairwell. The door didn’t budge.
“Shit,” Dara whispered. And—he had a gun in his hand, what the fuck, what the fuck—
Only, no, that was an illusion. Noam felt the magic when he looked for it, glittering around the edges of the thing and refracting light in a perfect pattern.
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” Noam said, but Dara ignored him.
Dara’s fear was contagious, seeping off him and curdling in Noam’s blood. Dara pressed his whole body against the third-floor door.
“Let’s—” Noam started, but Dara just said “Ssh! ” and leaned his brow against the doorframe.
Noam hovered there, useless. They were both breathing heavily, the air gone humid between them. Noam magnetized the rest of the stairwell doors just in case.
At last, after Noam had started to worry they’d simply run out of oxygen in the staircase and suffocate, Dara tucked the fake gun into the back waistband of his drabs. He glanced over his shoulder at Noam, whites of his eyes gleaming in the strange light.
“Now.”
Noam demagnetized the door.
The hall outside was pitch black except for the flicker of emergency lights casting weak green pools on the floor every twenty feet. If anyone was in the hall a moment ago they were gone now, scurrying away in the rooms branching off both sides.
This was insane. Noam was trespassing on government property with a flopcell full of treason and a crazy boy wielding a gun. A crazy boy who had also been trespassing on government property. Noam hadn’t forgotten that Dara neglected to mention what he’d been doing here.
Noam crept in Dara’s wake. The doors they passed loomed like great blank eyes, marking the two trespassers even if the blinded cameras couldn’t.
“Careful,” Dara said, looking back at him, and Noam realized his fingers sparked with electricity.
He balled his hands into fists and nodded, and after a moment, Dara reached over for his wrist again. This time his touch was light, just the barest pressure against Noam’s pulse point, guiding him forward. Dara’s magic was as palpable as a thousand quivering strings.
Noam never in his life felt so alive.
“You there! Hey—you!”
He and Dara whipped round. A man strode down the hall toward them. He wore a general’s uniform, and if the blue ribbon on his button hadn’t betrayed him as a
witching, the way he held one hand aloft—as if prepared to stun them both with a jolt of magic where they stood—certainly would have.
Noam’s mind seared white. He started toward the end of the hall, ready to run, but Dara grabbed his arm at the last second.
The general lowered his hand, crossing those last steps to Dara and Noam with a slow frown settling onto his lips. “What are you doing here?”
He was looking at Dara, not Noam.
“Oh, you know,” Dara said. He waved a hand in the air, casual as anything. “Boyish exploration.”
Noam expected the general to snap or call for backup. But instead he sighed, as if Dara were a disobedient son and not a trespasser on government property.
“Even you aren’t allowed to wander around secure areas without a chaperone, Dara,” the general said, folding arms over his broad chest. He looked down his nose at the pair of them. “And who is your friend?”
“That’s Noam,” Dara said before Noam could introduce himself. “He’s new. Needed the grand tour.”
“I see.”
Noam couldn’t stop staring at Dara. He’d never seen him act like this. Gone was the moody boy Noam knew, all traces of his usual sullenness evaporated. There was even something mischievous about the subtle curve of Dara’s mouth, the way he tilted his head to the side.
He was magnetic.
“So-oo,” Dara said, when several seconds had passed without anyone speaking, “are you going to escort us off the premises or not, General Ames?”
Ames? Like the Ames in Level IV?
Only, no—this was Ames Ames. General Gordon Ames, home secretary of Carolinia. Of course Dara knew him. If he grew up here, under Lehrer’s care, he must know everybody. So how come he hadn’t been recognized, wandering around here when he clearly wasn’t allowed?
Illusion magic.
Dara must have made himself look like somebody else and dropped the guise when he ran into Noam.
But why? If he had illusion, he could have walked right out of this place amid the throng of government employees flooding the exits.
That meant . . .
Dara only dropped the illusion because of Noam.
He’d done it to save Noam. Because he didn’t want to leave Noam behind.
But you hate me, Noam thought as he stared at the side of Dara’s face, the elegant lines of his features in profile so beautiful but always so, so cold. Why would you help me?
“’Fraid I can’t do that, Dara,” Ames said, shaking his head. “We’re on total lockdown. Someone tried to hack the Ministry of Defense servers, so no one leaves campus until the building’s been swept down.”
Fuuuuuck. Noam’s fingernails dug so hard into his palms he thought he might have split the skin.
Only . . . technopathy wasn’t traceable. And he’d been on Holloway’s absurdly unsecured personal computer, not cracking Lehrer’s department. He shot another tiny sidelong glance at Dara.
“Oh, come on,” Dara said. He took a half step closer to the general, that fey smile curving farther along his lips. “You know we’re not supposed to be here. We’re going to get in trouble. You’ve known me since I was five. I’m not a spy. Can’t this be our little secret?”
It was a long cry from the way Dara acted with Lehrer. If Noam didn’t know better, he’d think Dara was flirting, which was ridiculous, but really?
But Ames just gave Dara another fond smile. “I’m afraid this is the worst possible time for you to be out of bounds, Dara. I have to call Minister Lehrer. But I’m sure he can sweep this under the rug.”
Ames seemed to believe he was doing Dara a favor, but Noam had been around Dara long enough now to realize this was probably the worst outcome Dara could imagine. Dara’s face could have been carved from stone.
Noam felt sick too as he fell in step beside him, Ames leading them both down the hall and into his office. Whether or not they’d trace the hack back to him, whether or not it was even his hack that had set off the alarms, Lehrer would immediately suspect Noam. It would be a pretty huge coincidence otherwise. A technopath in the building while someone else fucked around on the MoD servers?
He and Dara sat side by side on one of General Ames’s plush burgundy sofas while the general dialed a number on his desk phone.
“Minister? It’s Gordon Ames. I found Dara wandering around the third floor. I’ve got him up here in my office now. He was with another student.” A beat. “No, sir, I haven’t told anyone else. I thought you should be the one to handle this. Considering how it might look . . . right. Yes, sir. I’ll be here.”
He hung up. Neither Noam nor Dara moved, both frozen in place. Dara was pale, his fingers digging into his thighs. Of course he was nervous—he’d hacked the MoD. He was the one they were searching for. And Noam or no Noam, Dara must think there was a good chance Lehrer would figure that out, too, or else he wouldn’t look like he was about to throw up.
What was he doing? Dara had no reason to hack the MoD. The minister of defense was basically his father. Why would he . . .
An idea splintered through Noam’s mind, cold and terrifying—an idea that united Dara’s presence here, the hack, Dara’s obvious fear.
What if Dara is working against Lehrer?
“It’ll be a spell before Minister Lehrer gets here,” Ames told them, taking a seat in his desk chair and gazing at them like a benevolent god, oblivious to both of their discomfort. “I’m not sure what else he’s got to do given the situation, so y’all go on and get comfortable.”
But it was no time at all before Lehrer showed up. He shook Ames’s hand at the door, thanked him for looking after Dara and Noam, and barely spared the slightest glance at either boy until he gestured for them to follow him out into the hall.
The electricity hadn’t been fixed yet, the emergency lights nauseatingly green on Dara’s skin as they followed Lehrer in silence. Lehrer didn’t say a word either. His disapproval wound out behind him like a thread that wrapped around Noam, around Dara, tight and digging into flesh.
Lehrer took them to the study. There were no emergency lights here. Lehrer waved his hand, and flame lit the wicks of several lamps and candles scattered throughout the room, cutting the darkness with an incongruous warmth.
He turned to look at Noam and Dara, silhouetted black against the window. “Sit.”
They sat.
Lehrer observed them wordlessly for a moment, and although Noam couldn’t see his face, he could imagine the look on it. The flopcell in his bag burned in his awareness like a magnesium flare.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Noam said at last. Better to seize control of the conversation early before Lehrer could start in on his interrogation. With the way Dara looked right now, Noam didn’t trust him to avoid implicating himself. “This is all my fault.”
“Your fault?” Lehrer said. His voice was dangerously soft. “Explain.”
Noam managed a weak smile, trying to look self-deprecating. “I wanted to see what the government complex looked like inside. Atlantians usually aren’t allowed in without a cleaner’s uniform, you know.”
Okay, that last part wasn’t so self-deprecating.
Next to him, Dara stared at Noam like he’d never seen him before, his gaze boring a hole in the side of Noam’s neck.
Noam kept going. “I kind of talked Dara into coming with me. I was sick of Dara being . . . being Dara, so I told him if he didn’t sneak into the government building with me, it meant he was a coward.” The lie came easier now, pouring out of him like water from a faucet. Noam shrugged, dedicated to the cocky act now. “Didn’t use that exact word, though.”
Lehrer moved closer, away from the window. Noam could see his face now, Lehrer examining him as if he could peel apart the layers of Noam’s skin and peer into his core. “Is that true, Dara?” he said. He still watched Noam.
“Yes, sir.”
“Hmm.”
Noam had no idea if Lehrer believed them. He didn’t seem angry anymore. More . . . bemused.
Pinned by his gaze, Noam felt not unlike a butterfly affixed on velvet.
“Very well. Dara, wait for me in the other room. We’ll discuss this later. Noam, stay here.”
Noam hadn’t even realized there was another room, but Dara rose to unsteady feet all the same, crossing over to one of the bookcases. He did something complicated with his hand, and magic rippled through the air. The bookcase swung inward like a door, exposing a short hall carpeted in blue and leading to another shut door. Dara looked back over his shoulder at Noam like he wanted to say something, eyes wide, but then he stepped inside and the bookcase shut behind him seamlessly.
It was just Noam and Lehrer now.
“Empty your satchel,” Lehrer said. Noam’s bag lifted itself off the floor and deposited itself in his lap.
Noam undid the buckles with shaking hands, his fingers fumbling the clasps twice before he got them open. He drew out the book he was reading, his black notebook, pens. His empty wallet. A pocket-size Ursascript reference book. And, at last, when the bag was completely empty and Noam didn’t have any excuses left to delay, he took out his holoreader and flopcells and set them on the coffee table with the rest.
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.
