by Victoria Lee
None of them seemed remotely aware—triumphantly trading chips, Taye accusing Dara and Ames of cheating with his typical melodramatic flair—that outside these walls there was a whole world where the money Ames scraped off the table into her lap could have fed an Atlantian family for three weeks.
Finally, Noam just left. No one seemed to notice.
Even the guards at the front door didn’t stop him, although Noam had wondered if they might—and then Noam was free, stepping into chilly winter air and the seething warren of the city.
The first thing that hit him was the tech.
The whole world was a sea of data, so many electrical impulses sparking from pockets and tablets and streetlights and cameras and drones. It was like someone had plugged in a cord and turned on the galaxy.
The streetlight: yellow in three seconds. hey don’t think i’ll be home for dinnr but i’ll see you later ok? $59.21. The weather today is forty-nine degrees and sunny. Breaking news. In twenty feet, turn left on West Pettigrew Street. The CIP is down 1.2 percent.
Noam struggled just to see properly, eyes refusing to focus when there was so much . . . so much everything spinning out all around him, from here to the horizon. It was too much, dizzying, a wild free fall that left Noam breathless and grasping at the rough brick wall to keep from losing balance. Inside hadn’t been as bad. Why?
He blinked, hard, sucking in several deep breaths. Eventually the noise retreated to a quieter murmur in the back of his head, still there but not overwhelming.
People started giving him weird looks as he stood there staring at the street with his mouth open. Noam grabbed his new Level IV–issued phone and looked at it like he had somewhere important to be. He set off north.
The Sunday afternoon market that had built up around the sidewalks was nearly impassably crowded. Vendors shouted their wares, fresh chickens and cantaloupe and apples shipped in from the mountains. Noam bought a foam cup of hot cider for five aeres—insane, absolutely insane, that Level IV gave him an allowance that meant he could afford this—and drank while he walked, the sweet spices heating him from the inside. He paused for a while, too, in front of a cart that was piled high with fabrics of every hue: deep, bruised purples to silky scarlets. Cheaply made, but the shock of color was exotic after being in the government complex, where no one wore anything but drabs and dress grays.
They used to buy food here when his parents had been alive. He’d have the cash from his paycheck folded in his back pocket, would argue the shopkeepers down to a reasonable price for eggs and buckwheat. He’d go home, where his mother would have made lunch already. He’d eat arepas in his favorite chair in the history section and read a book in front of the window light.
He missed that life.
Which was stupid, of course. His parents were gone, and he was here. Better get used to it.
“Oh, Noam,” Linda said when he showed up on the front step of the Migrant Center, just five blocks from where he’d been living. She had flour on her hands from prepping the lunch service, although she did her best to dust them off on her trousers before pulling him into a tight embrace. She gripped him so hard he worried he might bruise. “I heard what happened. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry about your father. Are you doing okay?”
She pulled back just enough to peer at him with her kind brown eyes, gaze skimming over his face and then down to his body, lingering briefly on the cadet star sewed onto the sleeve of his uniform. She rubbed her hands up and down his arms like she was trying to warm him up.
She was alive.
She was alive.
“I’m okay,” Noam said and managed a smile.
“We thought you must be in Charleston—what are you doing here? Are you on leave?”
Right—he supposed they wouldn’t have any way of knowing he’d gone to Level IV. Survivor names were printed in the paper, but it wasn’t like they publicized Level IV admissions.
“I’m training in Durham,” he said, deciding on impulse not to mention the specifics. Level IV sounded so cold. People on the street shied away from him when they saw his drabs, like they thought he was catching. He couldn’t blame them. Parts of the city still smoldered after being firebombed during the last outbreak—he could smell the smoke from his old neighborhood from here.
Or maybe it wasn’t fear of contagion. These were Atlantians, after all. The one thing they hated more than the virus in this neighborhood was government, and when they looked at Noam now, that was what they saw.
Linda’s mouth twisted with concern. “You’re so thin. Aren’t they feeding you?”
“Sure,” he said. “It’s just . . . the virus, you know . . .”
“Of course, honey. I’m sorry. You’re still recovering, aren’t you?”
If she was afraid of him, of his uniform or the magic in his veins, it didn’t show.
“I’m all right,” he said firmly and squeezed her arm. “I came to . . . I mean, is Brennan . . .”
His breath was frozen. Impossible to exhale, impossible to imagine the possibility, now, that Linda might shake her head and say—that Brennan might be—
“He’s alive,” she said.
Relief crashed into Noam all at once. If Brennan had died . . . if Brennan had died, that would have been it. The last fragile root buried in the soil of Noam’s old life, ripped up and thrown away.
Brennan was alive.
“Can I see him?”
“Oh,” she said, flustered. “Oh . . . I bet they’ve got you spread thin already. You don’t have to worry about us.”
He could read between those lines easily enough. “I want to help. Just because the government owns my magic doesn’t mean they own me. I haven’t become one of Chancellor Sacha’s acolytes overnight.” A beat. “Actually, I’ve been working more with Minister Lehrer.”
And there was that reaction, widening eyes and a sharp breath. “You have?”
“Yes. He’s tutoring me personally.”
Linda glanced over her shoulder into the building, like she expected to find Lehrer standing right behind her. “Well. Well, that’s . . . I’m so proud of you, Noam.”
Should she be?
The thought lanced into his mind, subtle as a spider bite. Even though Noam was here, bearing promises of technopathy and open doors, it wasn’t like he was a prisoner in Level IV either. He’d volunteered.
This had been his choice, for better or worse.
“Can I see Brennan?”
“Maybe. He’s so busy these days,” Linda said, still fiddling with his collar. Had it been askew?
Too busy to talk to Noam? That was a new one. Noam bit the inside of his lip to keep from frowning. “Okay. That’s fine. Just let him know that I’m here. Tell him . . . tell him it’s important.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “Um. Is there anything else I can do?”
Linda’s next smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Of course.” At last she stepped back into the foyer, tugging him after her. “Come on now, sugar. Let’s find something for you to do.”
She set him up in one of the guest offices with an ancient two-terabyte computer and another database management task. He thought about using his newfound power to try to make it go even faster than what he could manage with a bit of LOG, but if he got caught by someone who didn’t know better, he might not be allowed to come back. Better stick to scripts.
Even so, he wrapped his power through the wires and pins, caressing each packet of information as it flowed by. It was like realizing he could see a new color nobody else could, like a part of his brain hadn’t been functioning properly, but now he could see the world as it really was.
The whole damn city was alive with light.
He’d been at it for a couple hours when someone knocked. Noam turned and immediately leaped to his feet.
Brennan looked—good. He looked good. The circles under his eyes were darker than before, perhaps, but he didn’t have the flushed cheeks or glassy eyes of someone battling a fever. He wasn’t too thin and weak,
like Noam was now. No magic flickered over his skin like lethal electricity.
He really was okay.
Noam darted across the space between them and threw his arms around Brennan like he was twelve years old again. Noam couldn’t stop shaking, a bone-deep tremor; when Brennan’s hands rose to grasp his shoulders, Noam’s fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt.
But Brennan didn’t smooth that touch down his arms, didn’t stroke his spine or whisper comforts against his cheek. That grasp tightened instead, and Brennan pushed him away.
Noam couldn’t name that look on Brennan’s face, or define the oddly flat set to his mouth.
“Please,” Brennan said. “Take a seat.”
Noam obeyed. He felt colder without the press of Brennan’s body heat against his chest.
“I’m very sorry to have heard about Jaime,” Brennan said. He didn’t step closer. He kept one hand on the knob, like he might leave at any second. “Your father was much loved by all of us. He did great things for the cause.”
Before Noam’s mother died, went the unspoken conclusion. Before he drowned himself in his depression and forgot he cared about anything, never mind politics.
Just hearing his father’s name was like dropping below the surface of a frozen lake. Especially when Brennan’s voice sounded like that, so formal, as if Brennan and Jaime Álvaro hadn’t been best friends.
“Thank you,” Noam said, a little awkwardly. His hands curled into fists against his thighs, and an unexpected nausea rippled through his stomach.
Brennan’s gaze skimmed the length of Noam’s body, lingering on his sleeve. “And I see you’re doing well.”
Why did Noam get the feeling that wasn’t a compliment?
“I’m better,” Noam said. He lifted his chin to look Brennan in the eyes, flattening his hands again. “I’m a witching now.”
“Yes. I heard.”
Brennan surveyed him in cool silence, long enough that Noam thought about trawling through the phone he could sense in Brennan’s pocket and finding out if there was something going on. This was—weird. Brennan had always been reserved, but this wasn’t his usual reticence.
So what the hell was going on?
He’d actually reached his power out into the circuit board and started parsing binary when Brennan said, “I don’t think you should be here, Noam. You should go back to the government complex.”
Noam paused, all that data still humming at his fingertips.
“What? Why?”
Brennan shook his head. “It’s like you said. You’re a witching now. You should be with your own kind.”
It took a moment for that to sink in—and then it was like being shot in slow motion. Brennan’s words tore through Noam too hot, too fast, stealing the blood from his veins and leaving him cold.
“My own kind? Are you serious? They don’t even want me there. You should have seen the way they looked at me when they heard I’m Atlantian.”
“Be that as it may,” Brennan said, unruffled, “you’re working with Minister Lehrer. I’m sure he wouldn’t like you to get mixed up in refugee politics when your actions could reflect poorly on the administration.”
Noam couldn’t believe he was hearing this. His whole life he’d lived in tenement housing. He knew all the people who came to the Migrant Center by name. This was his home every bit as much as that burned-out hole that used to be his neighborhood. Brennan had been, if not a father, then like an uncle to him. He came to Shabbat dinner every Friday night. He gave Noam handmade birthday presents. Noam had organized the cyberattack on the Central News Bureau servers; he’d gone to every fucking protest. And now—now that he actually had a chance to make a real difference—Brennan wanted nothing to do with him?
He now recognized that look on Brennan’s face. It was the same look he used to give the government witchings who accompanied Immigration on its raids, the same look they had given him in return: a twist of the lips and a narrowed gaze.
Contempt.
“You aren’t getting it,” Noam said, trying to be calm. “That’s the point. I’m Level IV. Fuck DDOS attacks; I can do something real. We can stop the deportations. I’m a technopath now—I can get you anything you want off the government servers. We could prove what Sacha’s up to. We can prove there’s no real contamination threat from the refugees. If I can find a way onto Sacha’s computer—”
“That’s illegal,” Brennan said.
“You didn’t care about that when I was taking down CNB,” Noam retorted. His hands were in fists again, tight enough his nails dug into his palms. “You didn’t care when I went to fucking juvie. Back then it was all, ‘Oh, I’ll talk to your public defender, don’t worry Noam, you’re doing the right thing.’”
A threatening heat prickled at his eyes. God. If he started crying he would never forgive himself. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed the tears away, sucking in an uneven breath. He sensed Brennan still there, watching.
“And we are grateful,” Brennan said at last, voice soft and nearly paternalistic, “but we never asked you to do any of that.”
“Right. Because you couldn’t ask me. You had to keep your distance from it. But you knew what I was planning, and you didn’t try to stop me.”
When Noam opened his eyes again, Brennan looked tired, dragging one hand back through his hair and avoiding Noam’s gaze. “If you regret what you did . . .”
“That’s not what I said. I don’t regret it.” Only that wasn’t true, not entirely. Noam had done it for the cause, but he’d also done it to prove to his father—and to Brennan—that he could help, that he was good for something. And now being a witching erased all that.
Noam’s legs ached with the need to get to his feet. To pace around this tiny office. He stayed where he was.
“I’m telling you I want to do more. I’m telling you I can do more, and all you can say is that you don’t want my help anymore now that I’m not working two jobs and practically living on the street.”
“You do have certain privileges now—”
“My father is dead!”
And Noam was on his feet after all, dizzy with the rush of blood away from his head and his veins burning. It was hard to breathe, like he’d plunged underwater and given up on air.
Brennan watched him in silence, eyes dark and unreadable even in the office fluorescence.
Whatever else Noam had planned to say was gone. All his thoughts were white noise. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the office chair and slung it over his arm, stalking past Brennan and slamming the door behind him.
Out on the street he only felt worse, anger exposed under the bright sunlight and impossible to avoid. This had been his life. This had been his life, his father’s life, and now it meant nothing.
Noam had magic. He was one of them now.
Noam meant to go back to the government complex, but in his foggy rage, that wasn’t where he ended up.
He found himself ducking under red quarantine tape instead, stepping off the sidewalk and onto a softer ground of black ash. Soot plumed underfoot, a cloud of it that tasted like charcoal and made him cough. Once upon a time, this street had teemed with people, street carts selling candied plums and pulled-pork sandwiches, kids playing, families on their way to church.
All those buildings, the street carts, the children and families—all just dust in Noam’s mouth.
It didn’t matter what Brennan said.
Noam thought about his father, draped over that useless chair and refusing to speak. There was medicine that might have made him better if they’d been able to consistently afford it.
Noam could still see the sign in the pharmacy. NO PAPERS, NO PILLS!!
When they were rounding up people to take to refugee camps, his father had fit perfectly into the cabinet beneath the sink, thin and frail as a moth.
Noam looked out at his ruined neighborhood. He exhaled soot and bone.
He’d break into the government complex. He’d find out what Cha
ncellor Sacha was planning next, and he’d bring it to Brennan. He’d prove what side he was really on. And then.
And then.
Diary of Adalwolf Lehrer, from the private collection of Calix Lehrer, stolen and delivered to Harold Sacha, October 2122
February 4, 2015
I still can’t believe it’s him.
He doesn’t even look human now.
February 5, 2015
Calix is out of surgery. Raphael managed to get that damn metal gag off his face, but now he’s a mess of open wounds. If he survives, he’ll have scars.
I didn’t read Raphael’s report. I don’t want to know the details of what they did to him in that place. All that matters is he’s here.
Calix reacted badly coming out of anesthesia. To be expected. Will have to talk to the men about it next meeting, must try to explain. He couldn’t help it. He was scared. Magic doesn’t behave the way you’d like when you’re scared.
G-d. He’s just a kid.
February 8, 2015
C. was sick last several days, infected central line. Doing better now. Raphael expects him to recover.
Damn kid demanded I bring him books from the stacks. Wants to read Wittgenstein.
Who the fuck is Wittgenstein.
February 10, 2015
Seriously, I thought 16-year-olds were supposed to be into comics and girly magazines, not Husserl.
Guess it’s reassuring to see C. hasn’t changed a bit.
He’s still having the nightmares. I’ve started sleeping in his room just so he isn’t alone. The way he screams sometimes makes me want to tear my own ears out. I can’t stand it.
February 11, 2015
Prep for CDC mission. Israfil and Nakir have everything in order. Will be ready by May deadline.
April 24, 2015
Calix joined us for the prep meeting. I think being around him makes the others nervous. Maybe because he’s powerful, more likely because of his face. Even I don’t like to look at it.