Later, he found out that he’d probably only lain there for a few hours at most. It felt like more. He watched the trees come alive and trundle around like giant insects. He saw the ghosts of the dead parents he didn’t remember flit between their trunks. And soon he slid into a daze, color and light bleeding into a muddy blur that darkened to black.
He was unconscious for four days. When he woke, he was still sick. Still fevermad. But the withdrawal had faded to a dull throb in his temples and a lingering queasiness. And he was no longer in the forest. He was in an unfamiliar building, a blank concrete ceiling staring down from overhead, and when he tried to get up, found he was strapped down to the bed at both wrists and ankles.
“You’re awake,” a voice had said, a voice with a thick Texan accent. The speaker, when she stepped into view, was a slim black girl with close-cropped hair and sharp eyes.
Her name was Claire.
CHAPTERSEVEN
NOAM
For three days, Lehrer flat-out refused to let Noam leave his apartment.
He had plenty of good reasons:You’re still in shock. You’re ill. We don’t know who might be looking for you. Dangerous.
It almost didn’t even matter where Noam was. He barely even got out of bed. He spent his hours curled up under the blankets with his eyes closed, trying to pretend he didn’t exist.
The morning Lehrer finally relented, he stood there in the foyer with both hands on Noam’s shoulders and looked at him like he thought he could still strip back the layers of Noam’s mind if only he tried hard enough. His pale gaze flicked back and forth between Noam’s eyes, tiny saccades that sent a strange flutter down Noam’s spine.
“I don’t want you leaving the government complex,” he said. “And you’re not sleeping in the barracks. You’ll come back here tonight when your classes are through. Understood?”
Noam nodded.
“What’s that?”
“Yes.”
Lehrer shook his head, however minutely. “This isn’t a request. I am your commanding officer.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lehrer’s hands fell away from Noam’s shoulders, and he straightened the cuffs so a perfect quarter inch of white sleeve showed beneath his suit jacket. “Better.” A brief pause, then something in Lehrer’s expression softened, and he added, “I’m sorry to be so strict about this, darling. But we have to be careful now—I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I know,” Noam said, and Lehrer tipped forward, resting his brow against Noam’s for a moment and closing his eyes. Noam had the odd urge to lift his hand and slip his fingers into Lehrer’s hair, keep him there.
“I’ll cook something nice for dinner,” Lehrer told him. “I’ll make this up to you. I promise.”
He left, and Noam waited the obligatory ten minutes there alone in the apartment, sipping his lukewarm coffee and watching people meander through the icy courtyard below the window, before he finally grabbed his satchel from the armchair and headed out in Lehrer’s wake.
He always left when the hall was empty, mornings like these, but he didn’t have Dara’s skill of illusion—he couldn’t make himself look like anything but an out-of-bounds teenage cadet wandering through the government complex on his way back to the barracks. At least people recognized him. They knew he was Lehrer’s student. They assumed he had reason to be here.
Over these past three days, Noam had barely spoken to Lehrer. Before Dara’s return they’d existed in the same small spaces, circling each other in their shared guilt over a death that never even happened.
Noam’s guilt, perhaps, more than Lehrer’s.
Now, after Lehrer had realized Dara was still alive, he hadn’t ... he’d been socold. He’d stood there in his apartment debating the merits of putting out a warrant for Dara’s arrest, hadn’t even considered the possibility of inviting his own son back home. Maybe Noam had been lying to himself thinking Lehrer’s grief was real.
Lehrer sure as hell wasn’t grieving now.
Noam got back to the barracks at nine and slid into his seat for Swensson’s class three minutes after the lecture had already started. Swensson paused midsentence to give Noam one long, meaningful look before proceeding with his discussion of inflammatory cytokines. Great. Now Noam was back on Swensson’s shit list. Not like he everwasn’t, considering he barely attended class anymore thanks to Lehrer’s extracurricular excursions into the quarantined zone—
“What the fuck, Noam?” Ames hissed, leaning halfway out her seat and across the aisle.
Swensson’s sharp gaze swung over to fix on her instead. “Silence.”
Ames’s expression was murderous, her lips twisting in a painful-looking knot, but she didn’t speak again. Just grabbed her pen and scribbled something down on a sheet of scrap paper. She at least waited until Swensson had turned toward the holoboard to toss it onto Noam’s desk.
Where the hell were you?
