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 offinally.
“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.
