It was Chancellor Sacha.
CHAPTERSIX
He was smaller than he looked on TV.
That was the first inevitable realization that fluttered across the surface of Noam’s mind, chased by an immediate surge of something terrible and acidic burning through his chest like bile.
Harold Sacha was shorter even than Dara, who was five ten at most. He had bland gray hair and a bland face and wore a bland suit, but the gaze that shot out from beneath heavy brows was keenly intelligent. A fresh tremor ricocheted up Noam’s spine, and he was on his feet before he knew he was moving. His right hand twitched, a reflex; Noam had nearly reached for the gun he had trained with in basic that morning, a gun that wasn’t there.
No fewer than six bodyguards spilled out of the room on Sacha’s heels, all wearing iridescent antiwitching armor that took on a strange gleam under the hall lights. Noam’s attention slid from Sacha’s face to theirs—or where their faces would have been had they not been obscured by heavy masks.
When Noam looked back at Sacha, the chancellor was watching him.
“You must be Álvaro. Minister Lehrer’s new student, yes?”
Noam hardly dared open his mouth. He didn’t trust what might come out if he did. And of course Dara just stood there, reading his book, completely unfazed by the presence of a war criminal not two feet away.
Noam nodded.
“Excellent,” Sacha said, looking grotesquely pleased with himself. “I’d hoped to run into you at some point. Calix has such an eye for talent. He found our friend Mr. Shirazi, of course.”
Noam glanced at Dara, who turned a new page in his book.
Sacha stepped closer, and Noam took a half step back, only to meet the wall.
“Whydoyou think Calix has such interest in you?” Sacha asked him. His eyes searched Noam’s face, then briefly dipped down Noam’s body.
“I don’t know.” Noam managed to get out those three words, at least.
“I read your file,” Sacha said.
He meant Noam’s criminal record.
Noam felt as if his chest was caving in on itself, a clenching pain that shot from his heart all the way down to the tips of his fingers. He imagined closing those fingers round Sacha’s throat.
“Leave the boy alone.”
Lehrer stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame. His expression was very cool.
“The polite thing would have been to introduce me,” Sacha commented mildly.
“And now you’ve been introduced. Dara, Noam, come into the study. We’ve wasted enough time.”
Noam sidled around Sacha, who looked as if he would’ve loved to tell Lehrer off for insubordination but was too afraid to, which...good.
He trailed Dara into Lehrer’s study, glancing back just long enough to watch the door shut on Sacha and the antiwitching soldiers. He expected Lehrer to say something. To at least comment on the chancellor’s presence in his office, or apologize, but Lehrer just directed him to the corner with a physics book. Again.
So Noam was left alone to keep prodding his technopathy against the government complex servers and watch Dara move little lights across the ceiling. He could use the time he was meant to spend reading to try and break the ward, he supposed. Lehrer certainly wasn’t paying attention.
Noam tilted his book up, leaning in like he was trying to work out a difficult problem, and expanded his mind. Lehrer didn’t have so much as a holoreader in this entire damn room. There was just his phone on his desk—ward protected, of course—and Dara’s, tucked into his back pocket.
He hesitated there, mental fingers poised over Dara’s data. God, it was tempting to drag his power through those circuits and find out some kind of nasty secret. Or better yet, chase Dara’s network connection up to the cloud and erase the whole thing.
Only, unlike the phones of all the low-level government workers out in the atrium, Dara’s was protected by the same antitechnopathy ward as Lehrer’s.
Noam glanced up.
Dara was looking at him.
