Only if they did that, they’d all be sitting ducks when the antiwitching reinforcements came in. Their hostages would become weapons used against them.
So he stayed where he was, feet grown roots into the tarmac, and watched his soldiers kill thousands of unarmed Texans.
Was this how Lehrer felt? During the catastrophe, when he ordered the massacre of DC, all those dirty bombs injecting virus into the air and dirt. The wreckage he’d left in his wake, Lehrer’s power pulling skyscrapers down to their knees until nothing and no one was left.
The decision felt like a steel shell closing round his heart. And then he felt nothing at all.
“Secure the infrastructure,” Noam ordered once the dust had cleared.
They marched forward down the runway, picking their way through smoldering metal and bloody bodies. Some were still alive, trembling hands waving like poppies in a red field.
Later, once they’d swept the area for survivors and placed their own soldiers in all the buildings and towers, Noam found Bethany vomiting right outside the largest aircraft hangar. She wiped her mouth and lifted her head when he approached, her cheeks a mottled pink.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry.”
“It was the right thing to do,” Bethany said, in the kind of firm tone that made Noam think she was trying to convince herself as much as him. “For Ames and Taye and their battalions. But for the war too.”
Noam didn’t say anything. He couldn’t open his mouth. He felt certain if he did, he’d spill his stomach on the ground next to hers.
Bethany’s hand caught his, her slim fingers lacing together with Noam’s. She squeezed. “We’re Level IV,” she said. “That includes Ames and Taye. Like it or not ... like it or not, we’re too valuable to die here.” She inhaled, as if steeling herself, and said: “Lehrer would have wanted you to do whatever it took to save them. You did the right thing.”
And she was right. Of course she was. In Lehrer’s perverse utilitarian calculus, a single Level IV cadet was worth four battalions of baseline soldiers.
Maybe more.
Noam wished he could promise her—promise himself—that he was still as good a person as Dara had always thought he was. Wished he could believe he’d ever truly been good.
“I don’t know if it was right,” Noam managed to say at last. He glanced toward her, then out again toward the sky—what he could see of it, anyway, past the light pollution of those aerodromes. “When those antiwitching units get here, we might not be able to fend them off. We won’t have our magic. What if I ...”
What if I just damned us all?
“You didn’t,” Bethany insisted, and she gripped his hand still harder, until the tips of Noam’s fingers went numb. “Listen—lookat me, Noam.”
He looked.
“You didn’t,” she said again. “These are good soldiers. They’ll do their job. This is what they trained for—it doesn’t matter to them if those men have antiwitching armor. They can still get shot.”
Noam made himself exhale slowly, and after a moment, he squeezed her hand back.
“We need a plan,” he said. “Better than just waiting here. We need a plan.”
“Okay,” Bethany said. “Then let’s make a plan.”
The antiwitching units arrived two hours before dawn.
They swept down from the skies as silently as Noam had predicted, black birds that almost blended into the starless sky. Noam waited with one of his units in a dark hangar, staring out into the night with his pulse pounding in his throat.
Right now he wished he had Bethany back with him, there to whisperit’ll be all right—but she was deeper in the building, sequestered away where she could focus on healing as many of their soldiers as she could. Noam only had these strangers. Strangers who watched him with glowing eyes, marking his every motion, every breath, looking for fear.
Noamwasafraid. Noam was terrified.
But he kept his body steady, his expression set to neutrality. He kept thinking,What would Lehrer do?A horrible thing to think, a repulsive standard to aspire to, but at least Lehrer would’ve known what came next.
Noam had cut the power to the airport and to as much of the surroundings as he could reach. That was one thing he’d learned from reading the Texan antiwitching schematics, at least. They relied on electricity. If they couldn’t charge up, eventually they’d run out of juice.
It was a dumb hope. Noam’s battalion might not last long enough for it to make a difference. But at least it was something.
