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.
When I am finished, I close the laptop and lean back on the wall. I look up at the cathedral ceilings. I am sure that I could leap to one of the beams, which might give me some kind of advantage in a fight, but I need to be honest with myself about the situation we are in. If it does come down to a fight, I have already lost. On some level, I trusted the Faida enough to bring them here, to their turf. It’s a disturbing wake-up call to realize that I felt like this Earth was somehow safer than my own.
The large wooden door swings open and Navaa enters without asking. She doesn’t say anything, but she does place her delicate hands on the thick back of a chair and lift it so that she can sit down squarely in front of me.
“So you are a human Citadel. I must admit. You aren’t what I imagined.”
I glare at her, my eyes narrowing as I take her in. “I don’t know why. You’ve been to our Earth before. You’ve seen us already,” I answer her in Faida.
Navaa gives just the briefest shake of her head. “You can do that? You can learn our language in a matter of hours?”
“I can. Is that surprising? You know what we can do. What did you think us human Citadels were going to be like? Dumber? Moodier?”
Navaa folds her hands on her lap. Her fingers are so long and her nails so neatly trimmed and perfect, I’m not sure how she could possibly do much fighting with them. I look down at my own hands, which aren’t exactly ugly but are dry and nicked and calloused from punching and blocking and holding weapons.
“No,” Navaa answers. “I thought you would be outraged. You’re adolescents whose childhood was stolen. There is little doubt that you will die young. I assumed you would be angry. Instead you seem”—she tilts her head up and looks at the wall as if it was a window—“resigned.”
I lean forward on the bed, swinging my legs around. “That is true. In a way. Although I’m not necessarily resigned to dying young. I guess it’s more that I’ve accepted what’s been done to me because bitterness won’t serve me. It won’t help me figure out the truth, or what to do with the answers once I find them.”
“And you believe that we have the answers?” Navaa asks, even though I’m not sure it was a question exactly.
“I want to know what happened here. I want to learn from your mistakes because, clearly, despite your age and experience, you made several,” I tell her boldly.
Navaa raises a single, perfectly arched eyebrow. Her spine straightens. It’s clear she doesn’t want to relive any of it. Maybe it’s pride. Maybe it’s pain, but her mouth sets in a firm, straight line.
I’m being combative and I don’t necessarily mean to be. I’m just feeling anxious. The Faida are so extra . . . everything. It worries me that they of all races find themselves in this position. I clear my throat and try a softer tone. “You don’t want to have to justify anything to me. I get it. I understand how distracting my face must be to you. You think I’m young. You don’t think I could possibly understand.” I lean closer toward her and grab the bottom of the bed so tightly the wood creaks. Navaa looks at me for a moment, then speaks.
“I won’t make the mistake of underestimating our enemies or the creatures of our enemies ever again. I don’t doubt your skill or your intelligence, but you are correct. I fear your youth makes it impossible for you to grasp the scope of what is happening here.”
“Well,” I say, chortling back to her nervously, “that’s just not true. I mean, yes, it’s true that I’m finding it difficult to wrap my head around the entirety of this, but it’s not because I’m young. It’s because the situation is absurd and I’ve only come into possession of the facts—if that’s even what they are—a very short time ago. That’s why I’m here, to try and figure out fact from hyperbole. I took Arif at his word when he said you rebelled against the altered Roones, but I gotta say, you’re not doing a lot to get the whole trust ball rolling by throwing me in a cell.”
Navaa shakes her long strawberry trusses as if we’re in some kind of a shampoo commercial instead of what this actually is. An interrogation. “Oh, come now,” she practically purrs. “We’re both soldiers. You must have known a debrief was necessary. Besides, I’ve never seen a human Kir-Abisat. You are untrained and therefore dangerous. I can’t allow you into the general population until I have a better understanding of your relationship with Rift matter.”
“Yeah,” I tell her uncomfortably. “Let’s table that just for a minute. The whole Kir thing—I’m just trying to get some answers to a few of the basics first. Why don’t you tell me what happened here. How did you win?”
Navaa’s jaw sets, making her heart-shaped face almost square. “I would hardly say we won. We survived. Some of us, and just barely.”
I shake my head warily. “I don’t get it. You knew. You all knew what the altered Roones were capable of. How could there have been dissension among the ranks?”
“Power is intoxicating. The Faida are a proud and privileged people, and the Roones played on that pride and that sense of superiority. I couldn’t have imagined that we, who had seen so much, who had persevered through eras of infighting and bloodshed, could
ever be seduced into believing that some of us were better than others. That those of us who had been altered were more deserving of authority and command because of genetics, but that’s what happened.”
I scratch my head. “So it was ego? God complexes?” I ask in disbelief, because despite how they look, they really do seem like they’d moved beyond all that, like they were more evolved as an entire race—and not just the genetically altered ones.
Navaa huffs out a sarcastic, two-syllable laugh. “Yes, in the most basic of terms, I suppose it was. And those of us who opposed that kind of thinking were ultimately naive enough to think we could win because we had morality on our side. But we weren’t that naive.” As she says this, Navaa straightens the fabric of her uniform, as if it could wrinkle, with her palms. “Even before we told every single Citadel what we had uncovered, we began to build a weapon. A sound barrier that could block a QOINS’s ability to function. It was our intention to rally the Citadels, throw out the Roones and any Karekin—excuse me, Settiku Hesh—forces they might deploy, and use the weapon, but we didn’t know that so many of us would side with the altered Roones. It’s not like the fighting started immediately.”
I let Navaa’s words bloom in my brain. I imagine all the different outcomes and strategies and plans. The Faida are not human, and they are certainly not teenagers. They are thoughtful, cautious even. They probably would have talked, a lot, before they started killing one another. “So you told the truth and you began to get pushback. That’s when you realized you might need other Citadel races and then you sent out recon parties to see if there might be any help on that front. That’s why Arif was on the Spiradael Earth.”
“Exactly.” Navaa answers with such force that her voice bounces and echoes off the tall plaster walls of the cell. “But after Arif left, things escalated very quickly. It was only days, really. The Settiku Hesh troops started coming in alarming numbers and we had to deploy the sound blockade. After that, there was no more room for diplomacy. The war began in earnest. Between the Settiku Hesh and the loyalists we lost almost sixty percent of our Citadels, though we have re-created the formula in our own labs and we have increased our numbers back up to fifty-two percent.”
“And what about the altered Roones that were here?”
“Very few were stationed on this Earth. We executed them,” she says, almost casually.
“All except for one. There is one, right? And you’re still making more Citadels. Don’t you think, after everything you went through, that might not be the smartest move?” I ask her with genuine curiosity.
An ever-so-slight flicker of disgust flashes over Navaa’s face. “How did you know about him?”
“Technology, from our travels in the Multiverse,” I tell her honestly. The SenMachs are going to play a part in this and the Faida are going to be all over it. For now, though, I’m sticking to the topic at hand.
Perhaps surprisingly, Navaa doesn’t press. Instead, she gives me a sly half smile. “We have a single Roone prisoner whose mind is so broken that he’s mostly catatonic with intermittent episodes of lunacy. We keep him only to open a Rift to the original Roone Earth when the time comes for it. As for the Citadels . . . the sound blockade was a stopgap. Your naïveté, is it genuine? Or some sort of ploy?”
I throw my hands up in the air and thrust my neck forward. “A ploy for what? I want this to end. That means fewer Citadels in the Multiverse, not more.”
Navaa grunts and folds her arms. “Do you truly not understand what a threat we are? The fact that you, a human, are sitting here on this Earth, is changing the balance of power. The altered Roones will find a way through and they will slaughter us all. It’s going to take more than an army of Citadels to defeat them—it’s going to take legions of armies. It is a risk, creating more Citadels, but believe me when I tell you that it is far more of a risk to be without them in a battle.”
I close my eyes. I gently stroke the delicate paper-like skin of my lids with my fingers. I am built for war. I am built to lie. I was made to protect my Earth, but this room is getting too loud. Each one of Navaa’s words feels like a lit match thrown at my face. It’s just too much. There are so many worlds, hundreds of thousands of troops. I know I have to find my way through this, but I ache, and not just physically. My personal life is a disaster and I suddenly feel so crushingly alone that I’m tempted to open a Rift right in that tall, slim cell and go home to my team. I need my friends. I need people around me that I know, really know.
I put both hands on my head and squeeze. I can’t leave, but everything is starting to buzz, or maybe it’s just me. I think about it more and realize that, actually, I am the one who’s buzzing.
“How did you get through the sound barricade?” Navaa’s voice cuts through the noise.
I look up at her and squint. “I told you. We made friends in the Multiverse,” I tell her, maybe a little too loudly, just so I can hear myself. “They gave us some toys. Don’t worry, though—we’re the only ones with this tech. For one thing, the Roones don’t know where their Earth is and even if they did, this particular race will only share with humans. I’m not saying they’re invulnerable, but they’re pretty damn close.”
I put my head in my hands and drag my fingernails across my scalp. I want to get out of here, but mostly I just want this woman to leave me alone. There is a steady thumping to my headache. The pain is keeping time. If I could just lie down, maybe put a pillow over my head, this screeching in my ears would go away.
I wasn’t looking, so it is a surprise when I feel the weight of Navaa’s body sink into the bed beside me. “Our alliance is new and fragile,” she tells me softly. “And, honestly, in this moment, I am less concerned with sizing you up as a human or a soldier than I am with your Kir-Abisat gift. It is a very distinct kind of pain you are feeling right now, with a distinct presentation. Even though we are not the same species, I recognize it on your face and it tells me the Kir-Abisat is controlling you instead of the other way around.”
“You can literally see it on my face?” I ask in surprise.
“Yes, but also, I can hear it. We do not sound the same, because we are from different Earths, but because we are both Kir-Abisat, there is an additional shared tonal layer. It’s like the same instrument being used in two different songs. I know that does not make sense to you right now, but it will.”
“All right,” I concede, sighing in frustration. “But why?” I ask, trying very hard not to whine. “Why make a person do what a machine can do better? It’s so . . .” I search for the Faida word. I want to say Marvel-esque, but that won’t do, so I say a word that means “fairy tale” or possibly “mythic.”
“Look, I cannot tell you why the Roones are so obsessed with the Kir-Abisat. What I can do is help you navigate this gift if you’ll let me. By that same token, you have to trust that it can be dangerous, not just for you, but for everyone around you. You have to let me see how far this ability has progressed before I can let you around my people.”
I look up into her ice blue eyes. There is distance there, but compassion, too. “I can’t hurt anyone. I mean . . .” I tell her as I backpedal out of a lie, “obviously, I can hurt people, but right now the only person being hurt by the gift is me. It’s like someone shoved twenty songs inside of my brain and cranked up the volume all the way.”
“Yes. It’s like that. But I can teach you how to turn down that noise. Help you build an internal system to turn it up or down at will. Hearing people or creatures from other Earths is not the true legacy of the Kir-Abisat, it’s simply a side effect or a symptom. Always, our cells are yearning to open a Rift.”
I try to take this in. Arif said as much, but it seems impossible. Literally. Like, scientifically in a world where there is no real Hogwarts, opening a door to the Multiverse defies physics.
“I can see that you are having a problem believing me. So I suppose I must show you.” Navaa taps on her earpiece. “Rotesse, please drop the sound blockade for three minut
es.” Navaa lays a confident hand on my shoulder. I’m not loving the idea of being touched by her, especially while I don’t feel at my fighting best, but I suppose I’ll have to go with it.
Navaa’s eyes slowly close. She takes three deep breaths. Then, the very air in the small space becomes charged, and there is a smell. It reminds me of the woods at the base when the sky goes yellow, right before a big storm breaks. Navaa opens her mouth and, well, it isn’t singing as much as her own vocal cords being bowed over one another. It’s more instrumental than simple humming.
I can feel the power she is pulling from me. This is my tone, from my Earth that I’m hearing, the one that’s playing at the same frequency in my head. And then, I see it. At first it is a tiny dot of green. A neon speck that begins to spin out like a pinwheel firecracker. The noise in my head goes away. The proximity of the Rift is somehow dampening it. The green looms larger and larger, changing color and form from eggplant purple to jet-black. This is the Rift to my home. Navaa has actually done it.
My mouth gapes and then she takes her hand off my shoulder and the portal closes in on itself and disappears. Navaa simply looks at me with her eyebrows raised.
“How many Citadels can do this?” I ask in a rush. I don’t know what just happened. I’m not even sure something did happen. It must have, but I can’t get my mind to believe what my eyes have just seen.
“I don’t have exact numbers. Eighty-seven on this Earth. I don’t think the Karekin or Settiku Hesh have this ability, and I’m fairly certain they didn’t give this mutation to the Akshaji because they are too unpredictable.”
“That’s a diplomatic way of saying they seem to like all the killing, right?”
“Yes. The Akshaji are a race we haven’t had any luck with in terms of recon. Hopefully, with the humans as allies, that will change. Either way, I don’t know. It could be hundreds, or thousands. I don’t even know if the gift works the same way in all the different races.”
The Rift Coda Page 4
