“Shit. Um. Okay.” Noam scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Then: “Okay. New idea. Let’s—”
“Don’t tell me. Don’t even think it. Just do it.”
Dara shoved at his arm; Noam nodded. “Yeah. Come on.”
It was a well-worn route, a sprint Noam’s feet had learned from eight months of tracking it again and again. His mind was the white noise of adrenaline and blood pumping through his skull, Dara’s fingers digging into the back of his hand, and this. This was perfect. They could keep running, just like this, all through Durham, into the neighboring towns, all the way out over the wall and into the quarantined zone.
They could disappear.
Noam’s shirt was sweat soaked by the time they stumbled through the door of the Migrant Center, Dara’s hair plastered to his forehead and the summer humidity hanging over their shoulders like a wet blanket. Linda startled to see them, nearly dropping the potted plant she’d been carrying to a windowsill.
“Noam,” she started. “Sugar... are you—”
“No time,” Noam gasped, chest aching every time he sucked in air. Fuck. He could’ve sworn he was in better shape than this after all that basic training. “Listen. Linda. You helped Brennan get people out of Atlantia, right? Refugees. You sneaked people over the Carolinian border.”
Linda’s gaze slid from his face to Dara’s.
“You can trust him,” Noam said.
Linda put the plant down on the table. It was several seconds before she said, “Yeah. Yeah, I helped.”
“Can you take people the other way?”
“What?”
“Can you get peopleoutof Carolinia?”
Linda stepped closer, wiping both palms against her skirt. “Honey, are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Not him. Me.” Dara managed a grim sort of smile and shrugged. “I need to disappear. Fast.”
“Is he...” Linda started.
“Please,” Noam said. He was ready to beg if he had to. No telling where Lehrer was now, not without checking all the cameras from here to the government complex. He could be right outside. “Linda, please, just trust me. Will you do it?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah. Right now.”
For a moment, he was so sure she was going to say no. That she might look at him and see what he had done to Brennan. Might realize he had no right asking her—or them—for anything at all.
But then she exhaled and said, “I have a car out back.”
“Perfect,” Noam said. It felt like all the blood drained from him at once. He could have lain down on the floor right there and slept for ten years. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Linda’s car was an ancient black sedan, not even driverless, covered in a thin layer of road dust with smashed bugs on the windshield.
It looked incredibly generic. It was perfect.
Noam tossed the pack into the back seat and then turned to face Dara, who stood there with the door held open and an expectant look on his face.
Just looking at him hurt more than Noam had thought it would. Right now, Dara seemed almost healthy. The brightness in his eyes wasn’t mania but adrenaline. The color in his cheeks wasn’t fever, but exertion. He could have been the same boy Noam had held in his arms in the barracks bedroom, the same boy he’d kissed and touched and wanted so badly it ate him alive.
He was getting better. Lehrer’s treatment was working.
If Noam sent Dara into the quarantined zone, where magic ran rabid in the water and ground, how long would he last?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Dara said slowly. “Noam, get in the car. We have to go.”
