Kitabı oku: «The Rift Coda»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Amy S. Foster

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

“Stop scratching,” my mother commands tersely. Her fingers grip the steering wheel tightly and instead of the radio that is usually playing in the car, there is only silence. Even at seven years old I can tell that she is annoyed, but mostly, she is worried. I stare down at my slender, bony wrists. Even though it is October, I am wearing only a tank top and shorts. I cannot bear the weight of actual fabric on my skin, and even this little amount is torture. I grit my teeth. I can feel my face flush and a sheen of sweat starts to form on my forehead. I want to do as my mom says, but my skin is on fire.

I need to scratch.

I stare at my legs, two skinny toothpicks. They, like the rest of my body, are covered in red, angry welts. I have had this rash for three days. Seventy-two hours. During that time, I have slept for maybe ten of them, and my parents have survived on even less. No one knows what this is. Not my pediatrician and not the doctors at Doernbecker Hospital. Nothing has helped. I’ve had three shots of different medicines—exactly three more than I like. They put some kind of lotion and then a cream on the rash. I screamed in agony and threw up because it hurt so bad. So far, everything has just made it worse. I am trying not to cry. I have cried so much these last few days that my throat hurts and my eyes sting in the corners where the tears come out. I feel like the pictures I’ve seen of the deserts in Africa, empty except for miles and miles of sand that go on forever. That’s how I feel on the inside: like a thousand pounds of sand.

On the outside, all I want to do is scratch.

One of the doctors from the hospital has told us to go to another doctor in North Portland. A special doctor. This doctor only knows about skin and now my mom and I are driving there in the quiet car where I only hear my own heartbeat and my mother’s occasional muttering of swear words under her breath because of the traffic.

When we get to the address, I see that it is a normal office building, white and gray. This place doesn’t look all that special. In fact, it looks pretty shabby compared to the hospital and my own pediatrician’s fun and fancy office that even has a fish tank. We park the car near the entry and climb out of our seats. I am slow and deliberate.

“Come on, Ryn,” my mom says, a little calmer now that we’ve arrived. She reaches out and then pulls her hand back. If no one touches me, the rash is only itchy. If someone tries to do something else with it, even brush up against it, the rash gets angry and hurts me. Like it’s mad at someone else touching me. My mom opens the door and we walk up a flight of rickety stairs and end up in a hallway. She is looking for the name of the doctor on one of the doors. When she finds it, she opens it swiftly and we move inside. There is a small waiting room and a lady sitting at a desk behind thick glass. This is the same kind of thing that I have seen at our bank. The people who give out the money sit behind a clear wall like this. Maybe this doctor really is special. My mom does not seem to notice this. She is giving the lady our name. She is talking faster than normal. I hear the lady say through the tiny holes in the wall that our visit is covered by Doernbecker Hospital. My mother doesn’t understand.

“This is free?” she asks. Her accent is thicker now, the way it usually gets when she’s excited. She is Swedish. I speak Swedish, too. Why is my mom arguing about paying? Who cares? Let me in there behind the thick wall where the special medicine is so I can stop feeling like this!

“Don’t I have to fill out some forms or something?”

I sigh and look at a particularly large welt on my right hand.

“The hospital sent everything over. Let’s just get Ryn in to see the doctor right away,” the woman explains calmly. “Poor thing, she really looks bad.”

“Yes,” Mom snips, “of course she does. It’s—it’s just so unusual to not have to deal with paperwork.” I know this tone. This is the tone that makes me go to my room on my own without being told to.

“Well, it seems like your daughter has a very unusual rash,” the lady says while smiling at me. She is trying to be friendly, but I don’t like her smile. It’s too big. I hear a buzzing sound and a door opens. The lady ushers us inside past her desk and into an exam room. I do not want to sit. Sitting hurts. I stand in the middle of the room.

“You okay?” my mom asks. I just nod my head. I’m too tired to talk. After about five minutes, the door opens. It is not the doctor, but the lady again. She has a mug in her hand.

“I thought you could use this,” she says kindly as she thrusts it toward my mom. “I know you must be very anxious about Ryn. This is a valerian and chamomile tea to calm your nerves. I don’t know if they told you that while—of course—we believe in traditional Western medicine here, we also practice Eastern, homeopathic, and naturopathic medicine as well. This is a very holistic office.” My mom takes the mug and says thank you, and I can see she means it. She loves all that kind of stuff with plants and yoga and juices. The lady stays and watches my mom drink the tea. No one is saying anything and it feels weird.

After a few minutes, the lady leaves again and immediately there is a light knocking on the door. She doesn’t wait for us to answer. She just walks right inside. I thought the doctor would be a boy. I am happy that it is a girl because girls are better.

“Ohhh,” the doctor says, looking me up and down with sympathy. “That looks sore, Ryn. Let’s see what we can do about it.” The doctor looks at my mom and says very sweetly, but firmly, “You should wait outside.” My mom blinks. She looks at me and her eyes frown. I don’t want my mom to go. I want my mom to stay. “I should wait outside,” she says stiffly and she does. She actually leaves!

“I want my mom,” I say to the doctor. She is a tiny woman with very dark skin and bright blue eyes.

“Well, you can have your mom or you can get rid of that rash. You choose.” That doesn’t seem fair at all. My mom never leaves me in the doctor’s office alone. I stare for a quick minute at the doctor who is just looking at me. Her eyes are raised and her eyebrows would be, too, but she is bald there. Her skin is almost shiny.

“I guess I want you to fix the rash,” I tell her.

“Excellent,” she says as she walks over to a cupboard above a counter with a sink. She opens the cupboard door and takes out a package. “Now, I’m going to have to give you a shot. I am not going to lie to you. It’s a big shot and it will hurt. But I promise—as soon as I give it to you, the rash will go away.” My bottom lip starts to quiver. I hate shots. I’ve already had three! This room is cold. I want my mom. I try not to let the tears fall. Not because I care about being brave, but because the tears actually hurt my face. Doctors don’t lie. If this doctor says she can fix the rash, then she can.

“Okay,” I say quietly. I don’t watch her as she gets the needle ready. I don’t want to know how big it is. I close my eyes. I just have to get through this next part and then I will be better. The truth is, I’d probably take a hundred shots to get rid of this rash. The doctor moves quickly and without warning I feel the sting in my arm. It really hurts. It isn’t the quick kind of shot the nurses usually give out. This is taking a long time. Real long. But after about five seconds, my skin stops itching. After ten seconds, I feel the doctor pulling the needle out.

I look down at my legs and the backs of my hands and I watch the bright red spots begin to fade. They disappear almost immediately. It doesn’t take long at all for the entire rash to be gone. I let out a long steady breath.

“You fixed me,” I tell her.

“Yes. I’ve made you better, but now we have to make sure the rash never comes back.” The doctor is standing behind me and she places her hands, which aren’t that much bigger than mine, actually, on my shoulders. “You’ve been very brave so far, Ryn, and now you must continue to be brave.”

“I must continue to be brave,” I say. At least, I think I say that. I don’t remember thinking it. I don’t remember agreeing with her in my mind.

“Lie down on the table. Not on your back, but your front. There is a little cradle for your face.” Lying down on that table is the last thing I want to do. I want to go and see my mom, but my legs move toward the exam table anyway. I’m shocked to find that I am doing exactly what she has ordered. I feel the doctor move my hair up and away so that it is falling over the headrest. My blond locks are scraggy and unbrushed because of the rash.

“I am going to do a biopsy. That’s the word I want you to remember when we talk to your mother. I have to do this in a special place, right at your hairline on the back of your neck. So first, I’m going to shave the area.”

“Biopsy,” I repeat. I can’t really see anything from this vantage, just the middle section of her body, but it’s enough to notice the razor in her hand. I feel a cool liquid on my neck and the funny tickling sensation of my hair being shaved.

“Now I’m going to give you a bunch of tiny needles to freeze the area. These won’t hurt like the last one I gave you. Just lie still.” I want to jump up. More shots! I don’t want more shots! I want my mom and I want to get out of here but I can’t move.

But I am lying still just like the doctor told me to. Why is my body listening to her when my brain doesn’t want to?

I feel the teeny pinpricks go into my head. They actually don’t hurt all that much, but I am getting another feeling, like, suddenly, this is all very wrong. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be letting this doctor do this to me. When I see her remove the large scalpel from a paper container, I lift my head up. I stare at the doctor, who seems genuinely baffled that I am looking at her.

“I told you to lie still,” she says calmly. I put my face back in the cradle, but every instinct I have is screaming to get up. The doctor gets closer and just as she is about to move into position above me I jolt up and grab her arm.

I am no longer seven.

I am no longer wearing a tank top and shorts. I am in full uniform and I am ten years older. I watch as the doctor’s face morphs. Her eyes, as blue as a neon sign at night, get bigger and wider. Her body shrinks. Her hair disappears and her skin, which was already dark, becomes jet-black and reflects the fluorescent lights from above.

“You will let me do this to you,” she tells me. Any warmth she may have had has been drained from her tone.

“No …” I say firmly, “I won’t.” She tries to move her hand, the one with the scalpel in it. She can’t. She raises her other hand and I grab that, too, so that we are locked in a bizarre kind of dance. Her wrists are as hard as rock but I know, deep inside, that I am stronger than her. I can beat her. I can kill her. Yet when I kick her in the stomach, expecting her to go flying, she barely moves.

What’s happening? This isn’t right. My strength is waning. She is getting the upper hand. She pushes me back against the table, whips me around, and shoves my head into the tissue paper cover.

“Stop! Edo! Stop it!” I beg.

“You cannot beat me, Ryn. And why would you want to when I am about to give you such an extraordinary gift?” She sounds almost seductive in that raspy inhuman voice of hers.

“I don’t want it. Please, please.”

But her hand remains on my neck and I am stuck. I feel the slow painful drag of the scalpel—which is also wrong. She gave me anesthetic to numb this area, but it still hurts. I scream out loud. I am squirming and kicking, but I can’t get away. I begin to truly panic when I see the little black box in her tiny childlike hand. I know what it is. I know what it will do to me. It will change me. It will turn me into a Citadel, a soldier, a monster. She shoves it into my open wound with brutal intensity.

“No! No!” I keep yelling, begging, screaming, but it’s done. I can’t undo this. I can take the box out, but I can’t change what it did to me all those years ago. The fight goes out of me and a single tear leaks out of my eyelid. It’s hopeless.

“Ryn!” I hear another voice calling me from far away. It sounds like it’s coming from another room. The waiting room? My mother? But, no, this is a male voice. “Ryn, wake up! It’s just a dream! If you keep jerking your head around, you’re going to open up the cut again. Ryn!

“Ryn!”

I’m asleep.

I cannot be asleep.

CHAPTER 2

What a shitty dream. I open my eyes and blink. It’s really bright. I put a hand up to my forehead so that I can see. I can’t make out anything, just two shapes, blobs really.

“She’s coming out of it,” I hear one voice say.

“Yeah, man, I can see that. Just back off, okay? You have zero medical training and I don’t want to have to get into it with you again about all the things you aren’t trained for that you insist on being a part of no matter how much danger you put people in,” another voice slaps back.

I suddenly know exactly where I am.

With Levi and Ezra.

Are they seriously fighting right now? As far as I can remember, which all things considered, might not be the most accurate, we have Rifted onto a Pandora Earth. This is an Earth that has been randomly selected by our computer program so as not to lead hostiles—or in our case, potential hostiles—straight to our Command Center. And we were fighting. We were all fighting … pigs?

What the fuck?

There was me and Ezra and Levi and … who else? Right, the Karekins. Like Vlock. He died, though—on the other Earth. I struggle to remember where we are and so I start the running tally again: it’s me, Ezra, Levi, and not the Karekins, but rather the Faida. We Rifted from the Spiradael Earth with the Faida Citadels who look like angels and claim to be on our side, but I have ridiculous trust issues—for very good reasons, I might add. So I can’t be sure of them.

Or anything really.

I am pretty sure I’ve hit my head. My tongue feels too big and my skull, while not actively painful, seems like it belongs to someone else.

“Did we win?” I croak.

“Uh. Sure,” Levi answers noncommittally.

“Did I get knocked out?”

Levi frowns, though the gesture is only apparent in his eyes. The rest of his face remains a mystery. He could be worried. He could be pissed off. Or both. Or neither. It’s never easy with Levi. “You got a kind of a tusk thing stabbed into your neck.” I narrow my eyes at him. I was stabbed? And I don’t remember? “We Rifted out. Again. Because those pigs, or whatever they were, would not stop coming. We must have killed six hundred or seven hundred of them, but they were everywhere. It came down to numbers that we didn’t have. Retreat was the best option.”

I blink my eyes hard trying to get them to focus. “The pigs I remember. Unfortunately, but the rest is … I don’t know …”

Levi sighs. “I had to put you out. Sedate you. It was bad, Ryn. You lost a lot of blood.”

“But you have the SenMach patches. You didn’t need to drug me,” I tell him angrily.

“Look.” Levi’s tone has just gone from sort of concerned to downright defensive. “We heal fast, but we aren’t magical. The only way to accelerate the healing process is sleep. Rest. So that’s what we’ve been letting you do for the past two hours while the boy wonder and I”—Levi gestures flippantly to Ezra—“had to hang out here with Lucifer and the Morningstars. Hasn’t been awkward at all.”

“Fine. Sorry, but I’m okay now.” I try to get up, but the moment I do, I start seeing little black dots bouncing around my sight line and my body suddenly feels like it weighs a ton. I sit back down abruptly.

“You’re not okay, actually. You need more rest,” Levi tells me. Or possibly orders me. But it doesn’t matter. Rest isn’t an option right now.

“I don’t. I need water and some of those cubes from the SenMachs. You’re the one who said I lost a lot of blood.” Instead of answering, Levi just folds his arms and stares at me.

“Give her the water, Levi. And the other thing, whatever it is. Ryn knows her limits,” Ezra says with authority. I’m not sure where exactly this authority is coming from, because Levi could beat him seven ways to Sunday with one finger.

“Okay,” he relents as he gets the stuff out of his pack. It’s only then that I realize I’m actually lying on my own bag. “But I need to examine you.”

Levi holds out a canteen and the gel cubes and I snatch both away. “Like I wouldn’t let you examine me,” I chide. “I was stabbed. By a giant pig. You can look at my wound.” I keep drinking and then I pop a few of the cubes into my mouth.

I bend my head down and Levi approaches. I suppose I should be worried about the Blood Lust activating. He’s not cured and he’s about to touch me, but I know that I am safe. There’s too much going on. We’re God-knows-where surrounded by twenty questionable Citadels. Levi’s guard is up. He’s nowhere close to being turned on.

And God knows I couldn’t feel less sexy at the moment.

I feel his hand gently pull my hair away from the nape of my neck. His touch is tender but efficient. He seals the SenMach biopatch down on my skin and into my hairline. “I could take it off to check the wound again, but I might have to hack through some of your hair. I think we should just let it be for now,” he tells me as he sits back down on his haunches.

“That’s your crack analysis? The Band-Aid is still on?” I ask while slowly bringing my head back up again. The water and food has helped, but I feel weak and groggy from the drugs. “The SenMach tech can do more than stitch up a cut. You know that.”

Levi’s lips purse. I get it. He’s being protective over one of the biggest advantages we have—technology from a race of androids, the SenMachs. Still, now is not the time to be coy. I need to make sure I’m okay. I look past Levi’s shoulders to the group of Faida who are, thankfully, not in any kind of defensive formation but are instead talking in low tones to one another. Although that could be equally as dangerous …

Worry about that later. First, get better.

“Do it, Levi.”

“Fine. Computer! SenMach Computer—” Levi awkwardly spits out.

“Oh my God. Just let me.” I interrupt because I already feel weird enough, and I don’t need Levi’s anxious fumbling to make me feel even more out of it. “Doe,” I say into my cuff softly, “take bio readings from the cuff. Report on my medical status.”

“I will need a drone scan to get a more accurate diagnosis,” Doe’s ghostlike voice says as it floats up from my wrist. Instead of saying anything, I raise an eyebrow at Levi who looks really irritated now.

“You want to risk letting the Faida see one of those?” he asks me.

“Uh, yeah, cuz I don’t feel right and I don’t know if it’s the drugs or brain damage. So all things considered, we should take the risk.”

Levi growls, but he does open up his pack again to release a small oval-shaped silver drone. He then pulls Ezra hastily over to him so that they both are blocking any view of what is happening from the Faida. I appreciate Levi’s vigilance, but in this case it’s unnecessary. Showing the Faida what we have might lead to an uncomfortable conversation, but they’d never be able to use our tech. It was designed for us and us alone, and it’s unhackable.

The drone hovers just a few inches above my chest and then, from its middle, where the alloy has the thinnest of lines, a blue flash scans my body. When it’s done, Levi grabs the thing and shoves it quickly back into his pack as if it was a kilo of heroin. He’s just being plain paranoid now. I look past him to the Faida who are watching. I strain to listen, but they are speaking Faida, which I don’t speak. Yet. One thing at a time, though.

“You had a deep laceration running 5.3 inches from the middle of your neck to your skull between the occipital lobes. You lost 1.3 liters of blood. I would recommend a further eight hours of rest and minimal activity. There is tissue damage that is still being healed,” Doe’s voice tells me with the kind of distanced candor I’d expect from an AI modeled after a robot modeled after Tim Riggins.

“Can I fight?” I ask quietly. I’m fairly sure the Faida don’t speak English as we had been communicating in Roonish, but I’m not about to risk it.

“If necessary, but I would recommend against it.” There’s an oddly judge-y tone to Doe’s voice.

“Fine. I will do my best to keep this civil,” I say out loud to Doe. But it’s also for the benefit of both Ezra and Levi, so they know that, at the very least, I’m going to try and talk with my mouth and not my fists. I slowly get up. Levi does not assist me because he’s well aware that I’ve already shown enough weakness.

I stand up and straighten my spine. I plant my feet into the earth to steady myself. I’m not even sure which has me so off my game, the blood loss or the drugs. I guess it doesn’t really matter. Every time I move I feel like I have to push through tar.

“You,” I say to the Faida who flew me through the Rift, away from the Spiradael who were trying to kill us all. “My name is not ‘human girl child.’ It’s Ryn Whittaker. What are you called?”

“I am Arif,” the Faida says as he steps forward toward me. “And you, you are everything the Roones claimed. Still, you are a child.”

I sigh outwardly. Arif is devastatingly gorgeous. His blond hair is curly, but not overly so, more tousled. His cheekbones are sharp enough to look like they were carved out of rock, and his eyes give the word piercing a whole new meaning, but I am a Citadel. I have seen wonders, and his beauty will not sway me. His words might piss me off, though.

“I am young, but I am no child. I haven’t been a child for many years. The Roones saw to that. What I want to know is what you were doing on the Spiradael Earth and why you were trapped there.” I fold my arms across my chest and stare.

“We were doing recon, as I imagine you were doing. A few months ago, those of us in senior command began to understand the scope of the Roones’ power. Unrest was brewing within our own ranks. It was imperative that we saw firsthand what the other Citadels were capable of and if they could be persuaded to fight with us, if it came down to it.”

I close my eyes for just the briefest of seconds. I don’t want to appear weak. I also don’t want to come across as paranoid, just in case this isn’t some elaborate trap set up by the altered Roones. If the Faida join our cause, it could very well be the beginning of the end of the Roonish stronghold.

“Okay, look,” I say to Arif, putting as much weight as possible into the soles of my boots, so I can feel the solid ground beneath me. “You seem to trust us, though I can’t imagine why.”

“Because we just fought a common enemy in the pig monsters, as you called them,” Arif jumps in quickly. “And also, we sent a scouting party to your Earth at a Rift site in a place called Poland. We sat in on our colleagues’ debrief twenty-four hours before we came here. You’re just normal children. We overheard your chatter. It was hardly different from that of the adolescents on our own Earth.”

I have to snigger a little at that observation. “I’d hardly say we’re normal,” I tell him plainly. “And I tried to tell some of my fellow human Citadels the truth, and it ended very badly. We may just be adolescents, but the altered Roones have done their job indoctrinating us.”

Arif walks closer to me. I think he may want to lay a hand on my shoulder, but he draws it away slowly, reaching instead to his wings where he strokes a few speckled feathers. “Let us talk plainly,” he says with far less condescension. “I have read much about your kind. I know what they did to you. I also know that we too tried to tell our fellow Citadels what was happening and then we found ourselves trapped on the Spiradael Earth. I do not think this is a coincidence.”

I sigh deeply. “Just lay it out,” I prod. “My head is throbbing. I am tired and I would like to believe you, but it’s all a little too convenient, don’t you think? That you would be there right when we needed help against all those Spiradaels?”

I hear a loud, sarcastic laugh from the unit behind him. Arif whips his head around to silence him or her. “No, wait,” I ask genuinely. “I want to know what they find so humorous.” A Faida woman, with hair so blond it’s practically silver, steps forward regally. She’s like a legit elf, but with wings.

“We’ve spent the past sixteen weeks on that wretched Earth with those disgusting black-eyed drones. The very idea that we would be lying in wait … for you. It’s funny.”

“Okay,” I say, convinced she’s telling the truth. I don’t know why exactly. She just seems so over the whole thing, it’s hard to believe that she’s dissembling. Besides, her heart rate is steady. Her voice isn’t fluctuating. If she’s lying, then we really are fucked because the Faida would be just about the best manipulators I’ve ever come into contact with, and that includes the altered Roones.

“We can get into the specifics another time, when you’ve rested and seen to your wounds,” Arif says dismissively.

“Oh, I don’t think so, buddy.” I keep my eyes level and my head, even though it’s aching fiercely, perfectly level as well. “Time is a precious commodity around these parts, and trust is even harder to come by. I’d like to know what exactly you were doing on the Spiradael Earth and if that’s a problem for you, well, we can always leave you here and come back when you feel like talking and I’ve gotten some rest.”

“No, no,” Arif says quickly, but the woman who’d spoken up earlier is now barking at him in Faida. He responds quickly in return and they have a heated but short exchange that ends with her throwing up her hands and repeating a word that sounds like singshe three or four times. I don’t speak Faida but I’m fairly sure by the tone that this must mean fine or possibly whatever. Arif turns back around to face me.

“I understand.” Arif nods tersely. “And I agree. Time is precious and our history is long and complicated. That is all I was trying to relay to you. I assumed that it was enough, for now, that we fought side by side. Clearly I was wrong.” Arif sighs. He wants to go. I want to go, too, but ignorance is a trap that I won’t step into willingly.

“You know, every Citadel race begins with a lie,” he says thoughtfully. “Some are more elaborate than others. For us, they opened our Rifts by feeding scientific data to one of our most well-respected scientists. The Settiku Hesh came much later, but they did come.”

“That’s what happened on our Earth,” I say quickly, wanting him to get to the Spiradael part.

“At first, it was all quite marvelous. We did not hide the Rifts from the public at large. Instead, they were celebrated,” he says, “as scientific marvels. The Faida currently live in an era of peace and prosperity. We were born to take to the skies and we have done that, too. We have visited other planets, met other life-forms. You must understand, then, that when the Settiku Hesh finally did come, the Roones’ offer of help was not so alien—they did not seem so alien … to us.”

I try not to let that comment throw me. It’s not so much that they’ve been to space, or live in space or whatever, but how does a Star Trek society find itself at the mercy of the altered Roones? What chance do we mere humans (who are basically, globally, assholes to one another) have? “So let me get this straight. You volunteered to become Citadels?” I ask, deliberately keeping my face neutral.

“They came through the Rift, like every other species. The aid they offered was simply too good to pass up. We were being slaughtered by the Settiku Hesh,” Arif says bitterly. “It wasn’t just soldiers who volunteered, but doctors, scientists, journalists. Our Citadels came from every background imaginable. It was encouraged. Perhaps if the altered Roones had made the changes conditional for only military personnel, then we might have been more suspicious. But still, even though we all had many different professions, as Citadels we became a paramilitary organization. They said it was to defend ourselves, which seemed reasonable.

“We believed so many of their lies.”

“So what changed? Why was there dissension among your ranks?” I ask, all the while noting his body language, checking for any possible sign, however slight, that he is lying.

“It took years for us to catch on, such is the mastery of our enemy. The first hint that something was wrong was when we started a task force to investigate the relentlessness of the Karekins. Of course, we know now they weren’t Karekins at all, but Settiku Hesh,” Arif explains calmly, slowly as if I wouldn’t get it. I find this tedious and I don’t bother to hide it. “But it was their obsession with the Kir-Abisat that spurred us to action.”

“The Kir-Abisat?” I ask, though I think I already know the answer to that one. I think whatever this Kir-Abisat thing is, I have it, too.

“The Kir-Abisat is a mutation of the genome. It allows a Citadel to open a Rift using only the sound of their own voice when matched with the frequency of a conduit, someone from the Earth they are trying to access.”

I narrow my eyes. My mind begins to scramble. Can this be true? No. No way. “So it’s not just, like, a sound coming from a person that’s not on their own Earth?” I throw out as casually as I can.

Arif looks me up and down, as if he is seeing me in an entirely different light. “It begins that way, but it is much, much more.”

I knew that Levi was listening from a distance. He didn’t need to be beside me, not with our enhanced hearing to catch these words. Now, he moves up next to me. He folds his arms.

“But they did this, right?” he asks, fishing for more information. “They gave you this extra gene or whatever? If things were so transparent between you all, didn’t you notice this particular enhancement?”

Arif huffs and shakes his head. “They said they did not. They claimed that it was a by-product of Rifting itself. We’ve been going through the Rifts for almost a decade. That explanation was plausible, at first.”

“Okay, well,” I say impatiently. “That still doesn’t tell me why you all were there, on the Spiradael Earth. How did it get from a suspicion to covert ops?”

“A few of us did not like how they attempted to isolate every Kir-Abisat. So we stole information, the private encrypted files of a few of the altered Roones. And then, we learned the truth about all the other Citadel races, that they were indeed responsible for the Kir-Abisat gene and the Midnight Protocol—the switch the Roones have that can kill us all. We tried talking. We tried negotiations, but all the while, we were preparing, as any good soldier would do, for the worst-case scenario. And that’s why we were on the Spiradael Earth.”

“I still don’t get it,” I say, throwing my hands up in frustration. “Why were you fighting among yourselves? You’re this progressive, open society with spaceships. You find out that the altered Roones have been lying to you—that they’re a threat to your safety—so who is going to be on their side?”

Arif looks down at his worn leather boots. He puts both hands on his hips as if this is a puzzle that he, too, doesn’t know how to put together. “They were using drugs to make us more compliant for one, and for another, many—too many Faida Citadels, unfortunately—believed that it did not matter. Whatever they did, whatever lies they told were insignificant in the face of being able to navigate the Rifts.”

“How did they trap you? Why didn’t your QOINS system work anymore?” Levi asks quietly. There is an edge to his voice. He is being guarded, with damn good reason.

“I believe I can answer that,” the same elfin platinum-haired Faida volunteers. “They must have caught on. The altered Roones must have figured out that we were sending scouting parties out. Every QOINS system is built differently. Or rather, they improve it, upgrade it with each species. They did not know where or when we were going out, so they simply went to every Earth with a Citadel faction and sent out a signal that would blow our specific QOINS device. It’s a relatively easy fix and, even better, a deterrent, I imagine, from sending out further assets.”

At this, Levi begins to lead me away. He tells Arif to give us a moment and he begins to speak in Latin, hoping that the ancient dead language wouldn’t be one they understand. “What do you think? Are they telling the truth?”

“I think they are. I don’t think their physiology is exactly like ours, but I think it’s close enough that we would have picked up on any biological cues that they were lying.”

He nods his auburn head. “Okay. I agree. So what now?”

“Now we take them home—their home, not ours.”

At this, Levi balks, but before he can say anything else, I walk confidently to Arif, and Levi is forced to jog a bit to stay with me. I know he doesn’t love this plan of mine—and he hasn’t even heard the whole thing. It’s bold, possibly even suicidal. However, it’s the fastest way to determine if the Faida can be counted as allies, and time is the one thing we can’t afford to waste.

“We will escort you back to your Earth. We have technology that can mask our Rift in. We also have tech that will help us do recon. We can see if your uprising was successful. If it wasn’t, then we will Rift back to the original Roones. And from there, we can start to figure out a plan.”

Arif’s polar blue eyes collect a gathering storm of emotions. I’m sure he wants to return, desperately, but there is also the chance that his loved ones are dead, that his colleagues have been reprogrammed and tortured and brainwashed. He’s been clinging to hope for months. Hope is not such an easy thing to let go of. His body becomes oddly still, like a stone angel in a centuries-old graveyard. It is the push and pull, the want and the need. The fact that this decision is not automatic further proves that he’s been telling the truth. If he had been working with the altered Roones to orchestrate this, then he would just happily take me back to his Earth where I could be easily captured and contained.

“Very well,” he finally says, resigned. “Take us home, Ryn Whittaker.”

CHAPTER 3

The Faida Earth had been newly programmed into our QOINS system by the original Roones and the signal boosted by SenMach Tech. We were able to Rift to their Earth in one jump seamlessly. We emerge from the emerald mouth in a row, a fierce firewall of armor and feathers … and the sight almost makes me gasp.

It must have been beautiful here once, but it’s clear that war has ravaged our surroundings. Tree trunks are splintered, hanging at unnatural angles, a forest of broken arms and legs. The dirt is pitted and scorched. There are clear impressions of bodies that had once lain there—flattened grass in gruesome shapes and then wide trails where the casualties had been dragged. The mud is marked by striations where fingers must have scrambled and scratched to get away. There is a heaviness in the air, a sorrow that is cloying. The despair might have been carried away by ravens or other woodland creatures, but those animals were frightened off and haven’t returned. It is eerily quiet. I hear nothing but the increasing pulses of the Faida and their rapid breathing. I wouldn’t want to come back to a home that looked like this, either.

The Rift closes and Levi crouches down and releases his drone. I do the same. We don’t bother with our laptops. If we have to make a run for it, or even worse, make a stand and fight, our gear needs to be stowed.

“Doe, scan for the Faida base. How far away is it?”

“The Faida base of operations is 10.2 kilometers away,” Doe says with confidence. It’s strange how even though this intelligence is artificial, I am getting a sense of Doe’s moods.

“Fly there in stealth mode and report back verbally as soon as you get visuals,” I command.

“Okay,” he responds quickly. Levi and Ezra both shoot me a look.

“Look, he kept saying ‘affirmative.’ It was creepy. I asked him to be more casual with his responses,” I tell them both a little defensively. Levi rolls his eyes, but Ezra just keeps staring at me. I never told him the extent of what we acquired on the SenMach Earth—there was no time, with the whole deflowering me and then the going macho caveman act. I wasn’t exactly in the sharing mood. And now, I don’t even know what’s between us. He gave me an ultimatum to stop helping Levi with his Blood Lust. The fact that he thought he could give me an ultimatum at all made me angry. He had wanted me to choose, so I chose myself. I’ve had enough of people trying to control me. If he wanted to talk about it, fine. But at this moment, there are more important things to focus on … so I just ignore him.

We stand in silence and wait. I try to focus past the Faida’s anatomical machinery. I try to throw my hearing out beyond anything I can even begin to see. I filter out breath and heartbeats, growling stomachs and a low careening tone that is likely a Kir-Abisat thing, but I hear nothing else. I wonder if everyone on this Earth is dead.

“I have the base in visual range,” Doe’s voice says quietly. Arif looks at me and in that moment, I am anxious for him. “There are Faida on the ground and in the air.”

“What?” Arif exclaims as he half flies, half jumps beside me. “What are they doing? How many are there?”

“I told you. This program won’t answer your questions. It only follows my orders. Or Levi’s,” I say, trying to get him to back off a bit. “First things first. Doe, is there an active Rift here?”

“There is no Rift activity on my sensors.”

“Well, that could be good. If the Roones had won, you would assume they would just go back to business as usual.”

“Or maybe they are just exercising control. An open Rift isn’t necessary anymore. The Faida know the truth. At this point, Immigrants would just be a hassle,” Ezra points out astutely.

“We must go!” Arif says. He grabs my arm. I look at his hand and tense until he, very smartly, removes it. Softening his tone, he says, “Your drones are all very well and good, but unless they have the ability to see through walls, they won’t be able to provide us with any real information.”

“They can’t see through walls, but they can pick up life signs and read heat signatures. We should at least know how many Faida we’re dealing with and if there are any visible Roones,” I argue.

“You want us to wait? That is unacceptable! We must know if our comrades are alive. Ryn, you can’t tell me that if you were in my position you would be able to sit idly here.”

I sigh and run a hand over my scalp. My hair is up, in a messy topknot. The back of my head is sticky with dried blood, and the biopatch is beginning to chafe.

No, he’s right. I wouldn’t wait, but I would hope that there would be someone like me there to be objective. Someone who wasn’t involved emotionally and who could give me the most strategically viable option.

“It’s too risky to just go barging in, though. So why don’t you let Levi and me go down there. In our sensuits. We could get actual eyes on the situation.”

“Go down there? There is no down. Our base is a thousand feet in the air, inside a mountain. You can’t get there. And even if you could, you don’t speak our language. What could you possibly learn? I know of a place where we could land undetected.” Arif is almost frantic now. His wings are practically humming with energy.

“Just because you could land there before doesn’t mean you can now. If your side lost, the defenses would be shored up,” Levi says without hostility.

“You don’t know—”

“Ryn,” Doe voice says, and I raise a finger to silence Arif. “There is a squadron of fifty potential hostiles coming in from the east at 126 kilometers per hour. They will be at your location in less than a minute.”

“We have incoming,” I say to the group quickly as I inventory my options. If I open a Rift, we won’t have any answers. If this is not Arif’s faction but is instead a faction loyal to the altered Roones, we’re screwed. Obviously, they have some sort of device that trumps SenMach Rift cloaking.

I reach down into my pack and grab an extra sensuit, which I throw to Ezra. “Put this on,” I tell him. “Doe, have the sensuits go into stealth mode.”

“What is happening,” Arif says looking around wildly. “Where did you go?”

“I hope for your sake and ours that your side won, Arif. But if they didn’t, don’t let them take you alive.” I don’t feel great about throwing our newest potential allies to the wolves, but they did say they wanted to go home. If Arif and the rest lost, we are losing a squadron of Faida, which would be helpful for the sake of intel but wouldn’t make much of a dent in the numbers, not really. But that’s not why this is a massive risk, because if even one of them is captured and gives us up, we’ve lost before we’ve even begun. We might have forty-eight hours, tops, to warn our own people. But there is no “safe” when it comes to war. There is only risk and retreat. There is no point in retreat now. They already know we’re here.

Now, there is only hope.

I listen for Ezra’s heartbeat and find him. I touch him lightly on the hand and whisper, “Hush.”

The incoming Faida dive and land with such intensity that the ground quivers beneath our feet. I watch Arif and his troops. They have no ammo thanks to the pigs, so they have made themselves ready by taking a stance that is mostly crouched, presumably to take off in the air with considerable force. Everything is resting on a knife’s edge.

And then a Faida woman comes forward, and I watch Arif’s entire body relax. His arms lower, his legs straighten, and the look on his face goes beyond relief. It is almost ecstatic.

The woman he is looking at is all cheekbones and red curls. She does not smile. Her lips tremble, though, and she stops herself by covering her mouth with a single hand. Her other hand is outstretched, as if it has just received an impossible prayer in her palm. Or maybe she waiting for Arif to take it?

Arif says something in Faida and then—as with a jolt, as if he’s just now accepting what he’s seeing with his eyes—he races to her and they embrace tightly. I let go of the breath I was holding and lift my head to the sky. This all could have gone very badly. It still could. Whatever is transpiring between these two is fiercely intense. I almost feel like looking away, but there is too much at stake to allow them a private moment. Despite their intimacy, this woman could be compromised. Even worse, this could have been Arif’s plan all along—to get us right here, lulling us with stories of rebellion and spycraft. I put my hands on my holster, my fingers a breath away from the trigger of my sidearm.

The two of them begin speaking in Faida. It is a language as light and airy as their wings. Words fall into and over one another. It’s almost like Mandarin, but less nasal. I try to follow what they are saying, or at least the tone. For all my linguistic prowess, though, I have no idea. Finally, after a few minutes, Arif points over to where we’re standing, still in stealth mode. Our cover blown, I deactivate my suit, and Levi does the same. The woman walks over to me.

“My name is Navaa,” she tells me in Roonish without even the tiniest speck of emotion.

“Hello,” I say matching her deadpan tone.

“Arif tells me that you rescued our squadron from the Spiradael Earth. And while I am pleased at his return, I also find the circumstances unusually convenient.”

“Interesting,” I tell her as I plant my feet firmly in the ground, legs locked, shoulders back. I may not look like an angel, with the hair and the perfect skin and all, but I won’t be intimidated. “Because I felt exactly the same when I discovered your people were trapped on an Earth that wasn’t theirs.”

Navaa tilts her head to one side, eyeing me warily, as I do her. “I see,” she says slowly. She doesn’t trust me and I don’t trust her. I’m surprised that Arif himself isn’t being more cautious. How does he know that these Citadels haven’t been drugged by the altered Roones, forced to forget their rebellion and made to recommit to the other side by torture, psychological simulations, or both?

“You will come with us to our base. There are many questions, on both sides. But there are no answers here, not in this wasteland. It is a place so full of death and regrets I can’t concentrate.”

“No, wait.” Levi jumps forward. I look to him and then to Ezra, who speaks only English and Arabic. As annoyed as I am at him, I can’t help but feel badly at how lost he must feel. “How did you even know that we were here?” Levi continues. “There isn’t an active Rift on this Earth.”

Navaa locks her eyes onto my own. “I am a Kir-Abisat. I felt the Rift open the moment you arrived.” She continues to stare at me. There’s no misinterpreting that look. She knows. She knows that I am Kir-Abisat, too.

CHAPTER 4

Arif carries me in his arms. I expect it to feel dangerous. I expect my own control freak issues to take over and hate that I’m at Arif’s mercy, but I’m wrong. In the drag and drift of his movements, I find a sort of peace on the airy current. It’s so quiet up here. There’s just Arif’s heartbeat and the wind, which blows like a tiny whistle.

The base is indeed set inside a mountain. It is majestic and imposing, but it is not weathered or aged. This place looks new and gleaming. From what I can see there are six stories, separated by huge panels of tinted glass and metal beams. The metal isn’t silver or steel, but a sort of copper color, almost the same color as the mountain itself.

Every other floor has a massive length of decking, which must almost certainly be used as launching pads. What a sight it would be, to watch thousands of Citadels take off from this vantage. Terrifying sure, but beautiful nonetheless.

Arif angles us vertically. He hovers for a second or two, I suppose to lose his momentum, and then he softly touches down and deposits me on the concrete landing. “Navaa will want to debrief me. And then she will debrief you. I hope you will not be insulted by this security measure. I’m sure you can understand her reluctance, just as we understood yours,” Arif says quietly in my ear.

“I can absolutely understand it, as long as you understand just because your girlfriend seems like she’s in charge doesn’t necessarily mean that she is,” I warn as I watch the rest of our party land. Levi’s jaw is set determinedly and Ezra … well, actually he looks a little joyous. And as annoyed as I am that he doesn’t seem to understand the seriousness of the situation, I’m also a bit jealous that he can be like that, that he has the ability to live inside a moment without thinking of a thousand things that might be coming next.

I turn back to Arif in time for him to say, “Navaa is not my girlfriend. She is my wife. No one is controlling her. The drugs don’t even work on her.”

“Oh. Well, you must be very happy that she is safe, then,” I tell him honestly. Arif just nods briefly. It seems more and more that the Faida are a reserved people, logical, tightly wound.

“I am feeling many things at once. Of course I am happy, but I am also concerned. I have no idea what happened in our absence and no clue as to how many casualties we suffered to achieve our goal.”

“Understandable,” I say as the massive windows slide back automatically. Navaa is at my side once again. She doesn’t touch me, but we are herded nonetheless into the building. The ceilings are high enough for me to have to crane my neck to see them. There is technology here—monitors surveilling our surroundings and computer terminals. Each of the stations stands tall and isolated, almost like a kiosk at an airport for checking in. There are no desks and no seats. I guess the Faida don’t sit around.

The walls are white and bare, but there are wooden beams to break up the space. While this base looks modern, it also has a strange sort of rustic feel to it as well. I suppose you get to a point in your technological evolution where you want to hold on to things from the past so that you don’t get too far away from who you were. Humans haven’t gotten there yet. We’re still at keyboards and plasma screens.

I notice a large, wide staircase at the end of the room, but there is also a perilous-looking ledge. I peer over the edge, careful to keep my feet well away from the lip. There is a significant drop-off in the middle of the mountain, its cavernous wall lit by strips of LED lights.

“We are going up a level. It’s faster if you just let me take you up, all right?” Arif asks. Right. The Faida wouldn’t need elevators.

“That’s fine.” And once again I am swooped up in his arms. The flight is quick, maybe ten seconds or so. I’m sure I could have done the stairs in the same amount of time, but I have to admit, it’s an interesting way to get from one place to another inside a building. This next level is also cavernously large, but it is broken up by a labyrinth of walls and doors. Navaa places her hand on a metal scanner, presumably a security measure to lock and unlock the doors.

“You will wait in here until we are ready to question you and your colleagues. Please don’t misinterpret our wariness for rudeness. We can’t afford to let our guard down,” Navaa says.

“You’re going to separate us?” I ask, because she was clearly addressing me and me alone.

“Protocol,” she answers haughtily, while folding her slim fingers together. All things considered, I suppose I can understand that, though Levi’s stance has me worried. He’s deposited his weight to his feet, leaning forward just a fraction, the way he does when he’s about to fight. Ezra is watching us all, taking it in, going on body language alone, but he seems to be tensing, too. I don’t like the idea of us not remaining together, but as I am learning, when it comes to diplomacy, it’s all about concessions, agreeing to things that leave you feeling vulnerable. “I will take your bag for inspection,” Navaa orders.

Then again, diplomacy isn’t always the answer. I grip the handles on my pack lightly, to prove a point.

“Well, you can try. But then I’ll have to snap your wings off and open a Rift before you can call in reinforcements.” There are only six Faida. I am confident that Levi and I could neutralize them. They can lock me in a room. They can observe me, as I assume they will from the two-way mirror on the far side of the room. But they are not getting anywhere near my equipment.

Navaa has dropped her hands. Her blue-black wings look almost flexed. Her breathing has increased. Although she is ready to fight, I can’t help but get the sense that she doesn’t want to. For all her bravado, there are eggplant smudges, like tilted crescent moons, beneath her eyes. She is tired.

I know the feeling.

“Navaa, let the humans keep their things. They brought us home,” Arif tells her gently, placing a palm over her forearm.

Navaa answers in a lilting string of Faida. They argue gently back and forth until I see Navaa give a slight nod of her head and a weak groan of agreement. She walks briskly out the door, taking Levi and the remaining Faida with her. Ezra, though, obviously has no idea what’s going on.

“Ryn!”

“It’s okay, Ezra. They’re just separating us for a bit. I promise—it will be fine.”

His eyes are a little wild now, but he nods and follows the rest out of the room. Just before the door closes, I see Levi looking back at me, a smirk on his face at Ezra’s panic.

Jerk.

The ivory-colored room has the same high ceilings as the rest of the compound. A large wooden rectangular table is shoved up against a far wall with two upholstered wooden chairs. The setup seems odd. I drop my pack to the floor to investigate. I run my hand along the smooth edges of the grain. It’s thick. At least a foot, which is a strange depth for a table. I bend down and peek at the underside. A mattress is tucked into it, and a pillow and blanket are strapped there as well.

I maneuver the table by pulling it forward, then up and down. The legs bend back down the other way for stability. I have no idea how long I’m going to be stuck here. Given that I now have a bed, though, it could be a while. Clearly this isn’t just an interrogation room; it’s a brig. I step back and consider the walls. I notice an ever-so-slight fracture running down the length of one of them. I push it and hear a click and hiss. The wall retracts and a platform moves forward. It’s a toilet and a sink. Yeah. This could be an issue. I decide that I will be cool until it’s not time to be cool.

I retrieve my laptop and my wireless earbuds from the SenMachs. I know I am being watched, but they have no real idea what I can do, or more accurately what this computer can do, so I’m not all that worried.

“Doe,” I say in a hushed tone as I sit on the bed. “Quanti hoc possibile est in composito Faida?” As Levi did before we Rifted to this Earth, I decide that Latin is the best option. Have at it, you angel dicks, you can even watch me pee, but you don’t get to understand what I’m asking, namely, how many Faida there are in this base. Doe plays along, speaking in Latin as well, and tells me he can wirelessly connect to their computer files, but without direct access via the computer’s sentient component, the data may be incomplete. I instruct him to do his best with what he’s got and extrapolate if he has to.

“There are 388 Faida currently on this base. There are 622 not present but nearby.” I sigh and chew my bottom lip. This is both good and bad news. I like the numbers as allies, but if Navaa decides not to trust us, I don’t know how we’ll get past that many.

“Can you detect any Roones here?”

“Yes. There is one Roone present, although given this Roone’s location, I must conclude that he or she is being detained. The last Roone entries into the database are consistent with the rebellion Citadel Arif spoke of and I cannot detect their unique heat signatures.”

Well, I guess that’s good news, although prisoner or not, I’m not crazy about the idea that there’s an altered Roone here.

“Can you patch me through to Levi’s cuff?” I ask as I shuffle my butt around and give a little bounce. The bed is surprisingly soft. I didn’t think the Faida would care much about the comfort of their prisoners, but maybe they do.

“I can. Go ahead and speak,” Doe instructs me.

“Levi,” I say casually. All the evidence is pointing toward Arif’s account of what happened here and the current state of things being true. Navaa’s suspicions about us and the timing are not unwarranted. I don’t need to win her over exactly, but I can’t be acting like a spy. “Go get your earpiece and computer. Be casual about it.” I wait for a few seconds until I hear his voice.

“I’m here. I’m in some kind of a cell, but unharmed. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say softly in English, hoping they won’t understand it. “Listen, we need to use this time productively. Start learning the Faida language and ask Doe to download all files pertinent to the altered Roones, their experiments, and the rebellion. Once you learn the language you can begin to sift through it. I do believe Arif’s story, but better safe than sorry and the more intel we have, the better.”

“Copy that. I assume you’re going to begin to learn it as well?”

“I am, as a sign of good faith.”

There is a slight lag. “If that’s how you want to play it, okay. Besides, we either Rift out or let them call the shots, because we have zero advantage here.”

“Roger that. Let’s get to work.” Without my asking, Doe pulls up the Faida lexicon on the laptop. I don’t know how much time I have until someone begins to question us. I assume Arif is debriefing the rest of the Faida. I have to also assume he’ll want some alone time with his wife—will that come before or after they chat with us? No way to know.

I let my thoughts drift for just a moment, wondering about Arif having a wife. What would marriage even look like when you’re a Citadel? Well, it would probably look like what I’ve just seen with Arif and Navaa, spending the majority of your time thinking that your partner is either injured or dead. I’m not sure why anyone would sign up for that.

I spend the next four hours learning how to speak Faida. It is a fluid language with long pronounced O sounds and clipped S’s. I memorize the many different words the Faida have for flight. Heouine—flight during exceptional winds. Youshin—flight in the dark when the moon is full. Dawlbei—gliding flight on a wind from the Northeast. Kaisu—high-velocity flight. Theirs is a language that rarely uses metaphor or simile, presumably because there are so many different words to describe what English has only one or two for. While this makes it in some ways easier to learn than a language like ours—which can be deceptively confounding—its massive vocabulary pushes even my brain to the limit.