by Victoria Lee
Noam watched Brennan read the email, both hands gripping the bottom of his seat. He was surprised Brennan managed to keep himself under control, considering what he was reading. Only a slight tic in his jaw betrayed Brennan’s true feelings.
“How did you get this?” Brennan asked at last.
“How do you think?”
Brennan looked up. Noam was perversely satisfied to know he had Brennan on the end of a string, that he finally found something Brennan wanted badly enough to forget Noam was a witching.
As if Noam would let him forget.
“My presenting power—you know, my magic”—he leaned on the word just to watch Brennan flinch—“gives me power over technology.”
“Diplomacy only works so far with Sacha,” Brennan muttered at last. “Until now it has been the sole tool in our arsenal. But . . .” He glanced back at the email. “This gives us an advantage. We know what he’s planning, and so we can prepare for it. We’ll have protests organized and be ready to march the second the news is made public. We’ll organize a citywide labor strike, sit-ins . . .”
Noam waited in impatient silence while Brennan reread the email, fingers tapping against the edge of his desk. At last, when he couldn’t stand it any longer, Noam burst out:
“I can get more.”
Brennan’s attention leaped up. Noam wished he didn’t need that attention so badly, that it didn’t make something warm bloom in his chest, the same feeling he got when Brennan and his father picked him up when he was released from juvie two weeks after his thirteenth birthday, Noam pinned between them with his father’s arms around his body and Brennan’s hand a solid weight at his nape. That feeling of finally.
“I can get around the antitechnopathy wards on the government servers if I have enough time. I can figure out what they’re up to.” He was at the edge of his seat, all but willing Brennan to listen.
Brennan sighed. “I can’t pretend that doesn’t sound . . . obviously I’m tempted, Noam. But we can’t sink to their level. Your father and I have always disagreed on this, but I do believe peaceful protest is the only way. Besides, I don’t want you going back to prison.” A beat passed, Brennan’s mouth twisting. “Perhaps I was unfair to you before. You must know I have your best interests at heart. How can I live with myself if I let you damn yourself on my behalf?”
“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.
It wasn’t that he was happy to go back, but . . .
By the time he got back to the complex, it was late; the guard at the door took down his name with a grim sort of pleasure, meaning Noam would probably
be on toilet duty for the next week. When he got upstairs the other students were already eating dinner, all that delicious food designed by nutritionists to help them grow strong, water that didn’t have shit floating in it, real silverware.
Noam ate. The meal tasted like wax.
A new strain of resentment grew inside him, a virus spreading from cell to cell. Bethany was from Richmond; her mother was a doctor. Taye’s parents were still alive, university professors he visited some weekends. Ames’s father was home secretary. None of them could possibly understand where Noam came from.
And then there was Dara, of course, Lehrer’s ward. Dara, whom General Ames recognized in the halls. Dara, who got his indiscretions erased from the record without comment, even felony trespassing. Dara, whose name and face had been kept from the media so he could grow up in cloistered, privileged peace.
Dara, who grew up with more of a father than Noam had these past three years but who seemed determined to blow up his life in a fit of teenage disobedience.
Noam watched Dara push his collards around his plate with the tines of his fork, silently dragging them past a little hill of creamed corn but never eating them. He hadn’t eaten anything on his plate, actually; he’d just cut it all up and left it there. Because he could afford to be not hungry. Because wasting food was nothing to him.
When Noam was a kid and felt picky about choking down gefilte fish on Pesach, his dad sat him down and told him the story of la pobre viejecita. Once upon a time, there was an old lady with nothing to eat but meat, fruit, and sweets . . . and he’d flop another lump of poached fish on Noam’s plate and say, “God bless us with the poverty of that poor woman.”
Noam had a hard time imagining Lehrer guilt-tripping Dara into eating gefilte fish.
“Wait,” Noam said, when dinner was finished and Dara went to scrape his plate into the trash. He forced a smile for Dara’s benefit and tugged the plate from his hands. “I’ll take that. For later.”
Dara gave him a strange look, but he let Noam pour his leftovers into a plastic container without conflict. Noam could bring it to the Migrant Center tomorrow; maybe someone would eat it.
Dara was still standing there. Noam kept glancing at him out of the corner of his eye as he rinsed off the dishes, Dara’s arms crossed over his chest. Waiting.
Well, fuck him. Dara still might have issues with Noam, but Noam had questions for him too.
“Listen,” he said, when he finally set the last plate on the drying rack. “I need to talk to you. Is there anywhere we can go where we won’t be overheard?”
“I was starting to think you’d lost your nerve. Let’s go down to the courtyard.”
“Is that private?”
“Private enough. Get your coat.”
They ended up on a bench near the stream that cut through the courtyard, right where it poured over a manufactured outcropping of rocks. The water was loud enough that they wouldn’t be overheard, not even by the soldiers patrolling the perimeter or government employees with open windows overhead. Even so, Dara did something complicated with his magic before they sat. A ward muffling their conversation? Noam couldn’t tell what it was, but he sensed it, Dara’s magic as bright and green as summer.
Noam drew his feet up onto the seat and faced Dara, who kept one leg on the ground as he pulled his satchel onto the bench between them and dug out a bottle of bourbon. He unscrewed the cap and pushed it across the wood to bump against Noam’s shin.
It wasn’t exactly what Noam had in mind when he asked Dara out here, but he took a swig anyway. The drink burned going down, like swallowing a smoldering silk ribbon.
“Where’d you get this?” he said, looking at the label. He wasn’t that familiar with whiskeys, but a double-oaked bourbon sounded like a pretty big deal. At the very least, bourbon tasted better than the shine he and Carly used to share during late nights on the roof of their favorite café —nasty swill, like drinking laundry water, but it did the job.
“It was a gift,” Dara said. He reached out a hand, and Noam passed the bottle. “I didn’t want to drink it alone. Well, that’s a lie, but . . .”
“So you’re sharing it with me?”
“If you’ll break into the government complex all on your own, you’ve clearly got the spine for it.”
“Speaking of.” Noam put the whiskey down on the bench between them and arched a brow.
“Right.” Dara reached for the bottle, staring down its open mouth. “You want to know what I was doing there.”
“And?”
“You know, I could have asked you the same thing, but I didn’t.” Dara’s mouth twisted into a brief and superficial smile, and he looked up. “How about you don’t ask, and I continue to return the favor.”
“I already told you and Lehrer what I was up to. I was bored and decided to have a look around. Your turn.”
“Oh,” Dara said, waving a vague hand. “You know. Same.”
“You hacked into the Ministry of Defense.”
“Hacking is more your wheelhouse, Álvaro. Guess you need to practice your technopathy more, seeing as you got caught.”
Noam made a face. “Alternatively,” he said, “you could just tell me what you were looking for. Maybe I can help.”
“Nice try. Cute, though.”
“Are you trying to undermine Lehrer?”
“Now why would I do a thing like that?” There was something to the lilt of Dara’s voice, something almost bitter.
“You tell me. Is it just to get Lehrer’s attention?”
That hit a nerve. Dara physically recoiled, knuckles going briefly white around the neck of the bourbon bottle. His mouth was a thin line.
“I’m sorry,” Noam said. “I didn’t mean that. I just . . .”
“Wanted to get under my skin?” Dara said, voice still strained, even though he smiled before he took a swig of whiskey. “Well, good job. I think you’re right. That must be it.”
Noam bit his lip to stop himself from asking more questions. “Yeah,” he said instead, just to fill the silence. “So. New topic. Um. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Dara snorted.
“I mean it. Bethany wants to be a healer. Ames wants to keep climbing military ranks. Taye’s gonna . . . well, okay, who even knows what Taye wants. But what about you?”
Dara drank again, relaxing back against the bench and turning his face toward the market lights strung overhead. “I don’t know,” he said, passing the bottle back to Noam.
This time, Noam kept it. He could tell Dara was already starting to feel the liquor—his eyes were glassy-bright, cheeks flushed. He must’ve been drinking already, before they came out here.
Maybe it wasn’t any of Noam’s business. Dara would almost certainly say so, that he was allowed to drink if he wanted to drink.
But Noam wanted to get to know him. To really know him, not just the version of Dara that emerged from the bottom of a bourbon bottle.
“Sure you do,” Noam said.
“I really don’t.”
“What about politics? You have the connections for it.” Connections to Lehrer. To Sacha, whom Dara didn’t even bother to greet in the hall.
It wasn’t an entirely innocent question, but Noam kept himself wide eyed and curious all the same.
“Not that,” Dara said, screwing up his face and shaking his head. “I always thought . . .” He hesitated for a moment, darting a quick glance at Noam from beneath his lashes. Then: “I’d like to live out on a farm somewhere. With a garden, and maybe some goats. Somewhere I can see the stars.”
Oh please.
Whatever. If Dara didn’t want to tell him the truth, then fine.
Noam was happy to just drink with him. It was good whiskey. And besides, Noam liked the way the liquor made him feel, his thoughts warm, fat fish swimming through the sea of his mind. He was still better off than Dara, who had finally tugged the bottle back out of Noam’s grasp and slung one arm over the railing, his face toward the gl
ittering sky.
“Never had bourbon before,” Noam said at last. “No, really. It’s all beer and shine in my parts.” Or aguardiente, if Noam’s dad was feeling nostalgic. “You ever had moonshine?”
“Do you really think Lehrer let me drink moonshine growing up?”
“Lehrer does seem more the vintage imported whisky type,” Noam admitted. “Like, he’d probably say we could only enjoy this drink if we had sophisticated adult palates.”
“You’re right,” Dara said, looking back to Noam and holding the bottle out over the brick sidewalk, mischievous. “Maybe we should just pour it out. Better than insulting the distillery by drinking it with our crude palates.”
“Don’t you dare.” Noam lurched forward, grabbing for the bottle, but Dara was quicker, pulling it out of reach and tipping his head back for another swallow, this one long, as if he were luxuriating in it. Dara gave him a considering look when at last he lowered the bottle, fingers toying with the neck. He had transformed, somehow, in the past several minutes—from cold and cautious to something brighter, buoyant.
Dara reminded Noam of a piece of tourmaline he found once, gleaming a different color every time he tilted it to a new angle. He was fascinating.
“We should do this again sometime,” Dara said.
Noam fought to ignore the sudden, prickling rush of adrenaline flooding beneath his skin.
“Oh yeah?”
Dara set the bottle down on the bench between them with a clink of glass on wood. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s not often that I meet someone who shares my taste in liquor.”
“Or tastelessness, as it happens.”
Dara smirked and put the bourbon away. “Yes, well. We should get inside before Howard sends someone looking for us.”
Noam got to his feet, and after a second’s hesitation, extended a hand to help Dara up. Dara laughed and ignored him, pushing himself up with far more grace and ease than Noam had expected.
“I’m not as drunk as you think,” Dara said.
“You just consumed your body weight in bourbon.”
“Well, I did grow up drinking decent whiskey instead of your bootleg moonshine, so I suppose I’ve built up a tolerance.” Dara started off toward the training wing, glancing back after three paces to gesture Noam along.
