The Fever King

by Lee, Victoria

  He headed toward the stream, which had frozen over during the night. Now it was a white scar cutting through the brick underfoot. The courtyard was so utterly silent, the cicadas still in hibernation.

  Noam should never have given those emails to Brennan. He should’ve released them to the public and exposed Sacha’s moral rot for the world to see.

  He’d spent so much time waiting, hoping Brennan might come around, understand that now they were all each other had. That Brennan would let Noam take his father’s place at Brennan’s side, and together they would repair the world.

  Only he kept waiting, and hoping, and Brennan did nothing.

  All Noam did these days was wait. He was waiting right now, even: on Lehrer. Lehrer, who had a plan. Lehrer, passing cryptic notes in empty courtyards.

  Maybe it was childish to keep wishing someone—Brennan, or Lehrer, or his father—would come along and tell him what to do next.

  He ought to fight, whether he had help or not.

  When the European Federation found out what the US was doing to witchings, it had intervened. The whole country was nuked half to hell by the time Adalwolf and Calix Lehrer’s militia started gaining ground. Maybe Europe would intervene now, too, on behalf of the refugees.

  Or maybe not.

  Still, Noam could have done something. And then there would be no refugee camps where Sacha could condemn people to grisly death by infection and magic.

  Whatever Brennan was planning, it wasn’t enough. It hadn’t stopped Bea from dying, and it wouldn’t stop the next outbreak either.

  But if Noam acted on his own and failed, could he live with himself?

  Noam turned to head toward the smokestack, and when he looked up, he saw him: a shadowed figure on a balcony dimly illuminated by the lamplight. Lehrer leaned against a wrought iron railing, the red coal of his cigarette glowing as he brought it to his mouth and inhaled. His attention was fixed out toward the distant horizon.

  It wasn’t the Lehrer Noam knew from lessons or press conferences. This Lehrer had shed his military uniform, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and his collar left undone. The look on his face was softer than Noam expected. Pensive. Lehrer draped his wrist over the rail, cigarette smoke drifting through the frozen air like fog.

  Lehrer hadn’t noticed Noam’s presence. There was something strange and intimate about Noam watching Lehrer and Lehrer watching the sky—like sharing a secret.

  Eventually Lehrer put his cigarette out on the iron, the burning coal a sudden bright blaze in Noam’s sense of the metal, and turned to disappear back inside.

  Noam stayed, staring up at the gold light still visible through that open door. With Lehrer’s antitechnopathy wards temporarily unraveled, Noam could sense the movement of his wristwatch within the apartment, Lehrer’s body heat against the gold as real as if Noam were to feel it against his own skin. Then the door fell shut, and Noam’s sense of him cut off with the close of the latch.

  Faraday.

  Lehrer said they were alike, and what he’d meant was Noam couldn’t wait to grow up or gain power to make a difference in Carolinia. If Noam wanted things to change, he had to change them. At sixteen, Calix Lehrer incited a war.

  Noam had his own war to win.

  And Faraday was the key.

  Brennan was waiting when Noam arrived at the Migrant Center that next Saturday, standing in the office where Noam usually did his database tasks and wearing his government suit. He looked uncomfortable, like the expensive cotton was abrasive on his skin. Noam couldn’t imagine what Lehrer said to make Brennan take on the liaison position. He knew better than anyone what Brennan thought of people who aligned themselves with the feds, even for the greater good.

  “I heard about the outbreak,” Brennan started, and when Noam’s gaze met Brennan’s, it was suddenly difficult to breathe.

  He took a step forward, then another, and then Brennan was reaching for him, Brennan’s arms closing around Noam’s shoulders. Noam pressed his face against the fine collar of Brennan’s shirt and sucked in shallow gulps of detergent-scented air.

  Brennan’s hand was a steady pressure on Noam’s spine. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured. His breath on Noam’s neck was warm. “I can’t . . . I can’t even imagine.”

  Noam was shaking, he realized belatedly, a tremor that got worse when he noticed it. Brennan’s fingers twisted into the fabric of Noam’s sweater, like he thought that might keep him still.

  “Everyone died,” Noam whispered. “Everyone.”

  Only that wasn’t true, was it? There were four survivors out of four hundred, or so Noam heard. They were witchings now. They were going to Charleston.

  Their magic was paid for with other people’s lives.

  “We have to do something,” Noam said. This time he pushed Brennan back, hating the way his cheeks felt damp but needing to see Brennan for this. To look him in the eye and make him understand they couldn’t keep quiet anymore, couldn’t keep pushing papers around a desk and hoping for change. “How many more people will die if Sacha starts mass deportations?” He pushed against Brennan’s shoulders with both hands, knocking him back a half step. Anger twisted up his spine like a rope soaked in poison. “Do something!”

  Do anything.

  Do what Lehrer would have done a hundred years ago.

  “I know,” Brennan said. His voice was soft but stricken.

  “I mean it,” Noam said.

  “I—”

  “Tom, please!”

  Brennan still had hold of Noam, one hand on each arm. That grip tightened now. “Listen to me, Noam. The recent outbreak has only made Sacha more determined to initiate deportations—I met with him this morning. He thinks what happened in the camp is a harbinger of what would happen in the cities if he let the refugees stay.”

  “But that’s not true,” Noam burst out. “The outbreaks are worse for refugees because we don’t have the papers to get proper jobs, so we can’t buy proper houses, so we live in tenements or get kicked into refugee camps—and how the hell does Sacha think this works, anyway? That’s how disease spreads.”

  Brennan nodded slowly. “It is . . . but that’s precisely why Sacha and the Republican Democrats want mass deportation. They claim if the refugees were gone, the outbreaks would stop.”

  “People would still die. But maybe they don’t give a shit about that, so long as it’s Atlantian corpses in the ground and not Carolinian.”

  “They believe they have an obligation to protect Carolinians first.” Brennan’s face twisted in a grimace. “Or at least that’s what they’re chanting down at the catastrophe memorial right now. ‘Carolinia First.’”

  “I’m going to fucking kill them.”

  “Noam—”

  At the catastrophe memorial. In front of the statue of Adalwolf Lehrer. In front of the monument labeled with the names of all those innocent people killed for their magic in the 2010s.

  That was where Sacha’s bullies went to crow about nationalism and call for the passive extermination of an entire nation.

  This new young Carolinian upper class hated the refugees because they didn’t want to be infected—didn’t want to become witchings themselves—but they were perfectly fine tolerating the witchings who maintained border control and kept Atlantians out. Fucked up. It was so fucking—

  He pushed past Brennan and out the door, ignoring Brennan calling his name. He barely heard anything but the pound of his own blood in his ears and traffic roaring past as he stepped out of the building and onto the sidewalk.

  The catastrophe memorial was halfway between here and the government complex, although the bus line Noam took to get to the Migrant Center hadn’t gone anywhere near it—probably the only reason Noam hadn’t known what was going on.

  He didn’t take the bus this time. He just ran.

  When he first joined Level IV, he’d struggled with a nine-minute mile. Now, on the other side of recovery and three months of grueling training, Noam barely felt tired as
he sprinted past Brightleaf toward central downtown.

  He heard the protest before he saw it. He knew the sound of hate, knew it down to his bones. It was the comments Carolinian kids used to make at school before he stopped going. It was the high-pressure spray of tear gas grenades. It was voices like these shouting “We come first” and “Carolinia for Carolinians.”

  Noam’s father used to organize counterprotests. He’d be one of those people yelling at the assholes with the banners, the one getting up in some fascist’s face and daring him to do more than talk.

  And thank god, they were still here. He knew who they were, even with their faces obscured by masks and bandannas. Knew how Grace walked and the shape of DeShawn’s body under those black clothes. But they weren’t enough, too few of them against all those protesters carrying Carolinian flags with violence in their eyes. The protesters had surrounded the monument—Adalwolf Lehrer cast in bronze, towering over these people screaming in his name. Like Adalwolf would have wanted this, like he hadn’t died fighting this same virophobia. The police were already there, of course—fucking Sacha fascists must’ve gotten permits—standing by with riot shields and hands on their guns, eyeing the counterprotesters as though they might, if they were lucky, get the chance to shoot a few Atlantian kids dead.

  “Noam!” one of the counterprotesters—Sam, he was pretty sure—shouted.

  Noam darted over to join them, taking the black bandanna someone passed him and tying it tight over his nose and mouth, tugging up his hoodie to conceal his hair.

  “And here I thought you were a witching now,” one of them said, his voice unidentifiable behind his bandanna. But Noam didn’t have time to snap back, because whoever it was just clapped Noam on the shoulder like they were old friends and said, “C’mon. Let’s fuck up the fash.”

  Someone thrust a sign into Noam’s hand—IMPEACH SACHA—and he spun around to face the protesters and the memorial and a hundred years of forgotten history and held the sign high overhead.

  Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, he thought at the protesters and willed them to hear it—and when that didn’t happen, he just shouted it at them instead, meaningless words that fed the rage that seethed inside him.

  All of them were so very proud an accident of birth made them Carolinian and bought them a lifetime of safety and privilege instead of fear and poverty and death. They ought to walk into that camp with the ground soaked in blood and magic and look Bea King in the face as she died alone and frightened at eight years old, at eight years old, and tell her she didn’t deserve to stay in their country because her parents brought her here illegally. Because she was a refugee.

  “Impeach Sacha!” Noam shouted, one of a dozen voices all shouting the exact same thing, and the angry white man in front of him twisted up his face and spat at him.

  “Go home,” the man said. His eyes were black beads in his reddened face, his spit soaking through the bandanna to stick damp against Noam’s cheek. “Go home and fucking die there.”

  And he punched Noam in the face.

  Pain burst like fireworks behind Noam’s cheekbone, scintillating and bright. And he reacted without thinking, action provoking reaction, and he hit the man back so hard he felt cartilage snap under the force of his fist. He sensed iron searing the air—blood.

  The satisfaction he felt seeing the man stagger back, blood flooding from his broken nose and dripping onto the concrete, was short lived.

  It didn’t matter who threw the first blow. As far as Sacha would be concerned, Atlantians just incited a riot.

  Fuck. Fuck—Noam’s cheek throbbed, the pain sending him staggering into the waiting hands of the counterprotesters. Someone grabbed his arm, yanking him back behind the lines before the fash could retaliate.

  The invisible, thin ribbons holding people back all snapped at once. Sacha’s protesters surged forward, and the counterprotesters were there to meet them, people shouting, one of the fascists breaking a signpost over his knee and waving it in front of him like a sword. The police moved in, trying to get bodies and riot shields between Sacha’s people and Noam’s.

  To protect Carolinians, of course. Not because they were concerned about keeping the peace.

  “Disperse!” The police megaphone was loud enough to be heard over the chanting and the screams. “Disperse now!”

  “Like fuck we will,” Noam shouted back, and a fresh wave of agony rippled from his eye socket down to his mouth. He didn’t care. He didn’t give a single shit about anything but the fire burning white hot down to his very last nerve.

  The person next to him roared a wordless noise and punched the air, the other arm looped around Noam’s neck and tugging him into a rough embrace.

  The protest was fast becoming something else, rage claiming a life of its own as it swept through the crowd. Someone shouted, and Noam sensed metal careening toward them—tear gas. On reflex, his power latched on to the grenade and sent it hurtling toward the fascists instead.

  Shit.

  The knowledge that there was a witching with the Atlantians rippled through the crowd. It grew as it spread, a fresh tide of anger and fear. Older Carolinians might respect witchings, in memory of the catastrophe, but this new generation didn’t care. To them, the catastrophe was ancient history, and witchings were just dangerous creatures afforded far too much power by the government.

  He sensed, too, when the police called for an antiwitching unit, but he couldn’t use his power to shut off comms without giving away his technopathy and, by extension, making it obvious exactly which witching hid under the antifascist masks.

  “We gotta get out of here,” he shouted at the nearest guy he could grab—Sam, he was pretty sure. “They just called in backup!”

  “Fuck their backup!” Sam yelled back and made a violent gesture toward the statue.

  Noam looked. A knot of Carolinia First protesters had managed to get one of the Atlantians away from the group—Grace, on the ground, her mask fallen, someone dragging her by the hair while another guy kicked her in the gut over and over. The police stood five feet away and did nothing. Nothing.

  “Come on!” Noam and Sam ran forward, ducking under someone’s swinging sign and sprinting toward the statue of Adalwolf Lehrer.

  The police saw them coming and rounded with plastic shields thrust out, someone tugging the pin out of another tear gas grenade. Grace was screaming. Noam and Sam dodged right and let themselves get swallowed by the roiling crowd, out of sight.

  “This way,” Sam said. He and Noam elbowed their way through all the nameless and faceless bodies until they somehow slid around the police line before the perimeter closed.

  Noam’s power was all instinct, an ungrounded electric current. He wanted to use it to burn the life out of the men beating Grace. Instead he sent it unfurling through the square, mapping metal until he sensed something familiar and yanked it toward himself. Police-issue 9 mm handgun, with a plastic casing that felt cold when Noam’s fingers closed around the grip. Not far off from the model they used in Level IV basic training.

  Grace remained on the ground, coiled in on herself to protect vital organs, but Noam could still see the blood on her face.

  “Leave her alone,” Noam yelled, and twin smirks curled round the mouths of the two guys holding her.

  The one with his hand twisted in her hair said, “Fuck off, kid. Go home to Mommy.”

  But then he saw the gun in Noam’s hand, and his skin went the color of fish meat. “You don’t know how to use that.”

  Noam raised the pistol and pointed it at him. “Don’t fucking try me.”

  The two guys exchanged looks and immediately released Grace. Hands up in the air, they backed away two steps—three—then turned tail and ran.

  Sam darted forward, kneeling on the ground at Grace’s side. Her blood was all over the pavement. Noam’s hands were shaking, the gun suddenly impossibly hot in his grasp. He dropped it and kicked it away.

  “Shit,” he whispered, nausea crawling up
his throat. “Shit.”

  “You’d better get out of here,” Sam advised.

  Yeah.

  Noam ran.

  The air was thick with tear gas to the east, so he went west, stumbling over a broken section of sidewalk and scraping his palms. He pushed himself up, had to keep going, because once antiwitching units got here, it would be fifty times harder to break perimeter.

  Fuck.

  The cavalry had already arrived. The antiwitching armor gleamed like abalone shell in the afternoon sun. Noam’s power slid off them, oil on wet asphalt.

  “Okay,” he told himself, ignoring the fear prickling like heat at the nape of his neck. “Okay—think, think—”

  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.