The Rift Coda

by Amy S. Foster

  Part of me expected that this would be more of a challenge and I guess I’m a little disappointed that it isn’t. Fish in a barrel. Oh, they give it their best shot; one even rushes me and manages to get me on my ass. He draws up his nine-mil to shoot me in the face. I snatch it away so fast his eyes bulge. I raise an eyebrow and hit him with such violent, deadly force in the temple, his brain bleeds. When the hallway is clear, I see that Levi has caught up to me.

  “Whoa,” he whistles. “You are on a fucking tear. I’m really glad you are on my side.”

  “Me too.” I flash him a smile. “Iathan!” I bellow. “You lead.”

  We follow the Roone, taking care of Citadels as they approach, but now we have the drones in stealth mode down here with us, too. There isn’t anything we aren’t prepared for. We get to the situation room. The doors are barred. I do know this place well, since we launched our first operation against the Spiradael Earth from here. The space is massive, more chamber hall than war room. Half is a proper command center and the other half is a huge oblong receiving room where Iathan is all presidential-y. It always seemed a bit more like he was president of a banana republic, though, since he has a chair-like throne on a dais.

  He and Sairjidahl Varesh should spend some time getting to know each other.

  I move toward the door, but Iathan places a hand upon my own. His skin is cool and hard.

  “Please, Ryn Whittaker, if you will allow, the Roones would like to be the first to confront our countrymen,” Iathan says with genuine humility.

  “And then what are you going to do? Call each other names?” I ask. I’m really not trying to be combative, but this is no time for a debate.

  “No,” he says, standing up a little straighter. “Of course not. We are going to arrest them. They will be put on trial publicly for the entire world to see. For the entire Multiverse. They will spend the rest of their lives in prison.”

  “Hmmm,” I say as I look to the door. That would be the most civilized way of dealing with the altered Roones certainly. I have often worried about my role as Citadel, playing judge and jury, getting to decide who lives and who dies. I was never comfortable with it. Perhaps a life imprisoned, away from their experiments and their Citadels’ adulation, would be punishment enough. Maybe death is too easy.

  Then again . . . I don’t really trust any of these assholes.

  “Nope. Sorry.” I kick down the door and there is more shooting, lasers this time. The Settiku Hesh will guard the altered Roones with their dying breath. There are only about fifty of the suicide soldiers here, though. They put up a valiant effort, but the Akshaji brutally dance through them, cutting them down as if they were nothing more than streamers at a house party. I purposely hang back and wait, focusing my attention on the hundreds of altered Roones, all that’s left of their kind. Even now, even when they know that they have been beaten, they are watching this all as if it has nothing to do with them, as if at the end of this, our allegiance will naturally turn once again in their favor.

  When the Settiku Hesh have all fallen, our entire unit faces them in the large space. I don’t quite know what they are waiting for and then I realize they are waiting for me, for my orders.

  “Varesh?” I ask smoothly. “May I borrow one of your swords?” The altered Roones are physically no match for any Citadel, but they do have a natural defense, skin as hard and impenetrable as polished stone. Varesh hands over one of his bejeweled blades, hilt first with a tiny bow.

  I walk over to the altered Roone closest to me.

  “Please,” he pleads, “we gave you such a gift. We—”

  I don’t bother to let him finish. I cut his head off with one brief slice and then . . .

  It is a slaughter.

  In the chaos, I see Edo, backed all the way into the corner; she is onyx, the color of night, the color of a Rift’s final scream. I leap over to her. I will have my revenge, not for me—not really, I’ve accepted who I am—but for Violet, who never in a million years should have been chosen to be a Citadel in the first place. When I get to Edo, I just stand there, blocking her escape. Her huge blue eyes are defiant and calculating. She is trying to find a way out of this, configuring variables, weighing her options. In short order she will know, though: there is no way out.

  She will die.

  When the room grows silent, I know my people have completed their mission. There is only one altered Roone left. I drag her heavy body to the middle of the room.

  “Iathan!” Edo barks. “You have turned into a barbarian. How could you let these outsiders execute us like this? I demand a trial. Bring me an advocate, immediately.”

  “Are you actually asking for a lawyer?” I say, my mouth agape.

  “Ryn, enough,” she tells me, as if I am a dog, as if I can be brought to heel with a command. “There is no more victory here today. How many of your brothers and sisters have you slaughtered in the past few hours? Can you even count them? Dozens? Hundreds? I taught you better than this. We were unarmed. Defenseless. And now, you’re going to kill me? For what? Why?”

  “Good point,” I say, playing along. “Maybe we should ask the Daithi contingent their thoughts. Oh wait. We can’t do that, can we, Edo?”

  Edo’s expression changes in an instant. She knows that tack won’t work, appealing to my better angels, so she switches to another. “Do not pretend that you don’t enjoy the power I gave you.” Edo is tiny, but she lifts up on her tiptoes to whisper in my ear. “You love it.” I close my eyes for a brief second. The hatred I have for this woman is visceral. It is clawing at my insides. It’s making my fingers tremble. “Every single species we chose, all of you, were nothing but amoeba. Barely evolved, baby steps from the primordial ooze. You might not have asked for it, not implicitly, but the state we found all of you in, it would have been irresponsible to walk away without changing your sad state of existence. We made your world better and we can make it better still—and not just your world, but every world there ever was and ever will be. Despite what you’ve seen or heard, I never wanted to be a god. I wanted to be a mother, a mother to thousands of children who could open up a doorway to the Multiverse with a song.

  “I wanted you to be the gods.”

  I may be young, but I know my history. These are the words of dictators and tyrants. They step into power and blame the victims for handing it over. No one ever thinks that they will end up the martyr. Bright-eyed brides sold by their fathers and shackled to boiling pots and mewling babies, Jews herded onto cattle cars, men of color strung up on fat oak branches for daring to question their place, Muslim women stoned for adultery, indigenous people the world over forced to bend to the will of conquerors because honor and knives, voices of dissent, artists and poets and journalists who dare to tell the truth are no match for cannons and guns.

  And my sweet Violet with her long legs and agile arms turned into a soldier because they thought her grace would be deadly on the battlefield. No child wakes up and imagines themselves to be anything other than the hero of their own story.

  I reach out and grab Edo’s fat neck with my fingers and squeeze. “You have lost the privilege of speaking,” I growl. “You are a liar and a murderer and an abuser of children. You are filth. You may think all of us species were begging for it. But it is your species that is almost extinct. So—survival of the fittest. Ultimately, wherever you place yourself on the evolutionary scale, you will die knowing that you were wrong.” There is a gurgling sound as words—or maybe air—try to come out of her mouth.

  “Ryn,” Iathan says firmly as he walks slowly, deliberately to my side. “You have had your way in this. You have executed them all save for Kredolain. Let us have her, please. Let us show our people what happens to those who think they are above the law.”

  “Who is Kredolain?” I ask, maintaining my grip and not bothering to look back at Iathan.

  “Edo. Kredolain DoMiskavix. She was one of the three leaders of the rebellion,” he says with a weary sigh.

&n
bsp; “Really? Well, you aren’t making the compelling case you think you are with that new bit of information.”

  “Actually”—suddenly I feel the dull nuzzle of a firearm push into the back of my skull. Iathan, the Roone bastard, has aimed a gun at my head—“I’m not particularly interested in making any sort of a case to you. You have done your job, Ryn. Now let me, as the president of this country, do mine.”

  “If you pull that trigger, you will die,” I tell him without emotion. I’ve been carrying the weight of expectant death on my shoulder like an old handbag all day. When I try to reach for a feeling, there is only surprise. I find that I am rather shocked at my own heart’s relentless beating.

  I’m alive.

  For now. Nothing is certain in this game, and so I don’t attach any kind of real emotion to this fact because it may only be temporary. Because of this, Iathan’s threat is disappointing more than it is scary. As if my command here was something he indulged, but never truly respected.

  “I am willing to die to do what is just and right,” he says, though his voice falters. He’s the one who’s scared.

  “There is no way to put the genie back in this bottle. Where was your sense of justice and morality when all this began? You can’t be the better person now, it doesn’t work that way.” I tell him calmly squeezing a little harder. Edo’s eyes bulge.

  “Ryn!” Iathan screams. “Ryn, stop please. I don’t want to do this!”

  “No one wants this,” I say sadly. Edo begins to slump, her impossibly heavy head giving way to gravity. I know on an intellectual level that I am wrong and Iathan is right. He is the leader here. Edo is a Roone and his people deserve some kind of closure for all that they have endured. I just can’t seem to let her go, even as I feel her life slipping away and the barrel of Iathan’s pistol dig into my head. I have moved beyond reason. I think I may have lost my mind.

  “Ryn,” I hear Levi’s voice from somewhere close, but I can’t see him. I can’t stop looking at Edo, the woman who violated me in every conceivable way. “Let her go. Listen to Iathan . . .” There is a distinctive thread of panic weaving through his words. Levi never panics, and this jolts me enough to slacken my grip just a fraction.

  “Please!” Edo gurgles.

  I tighten my grip at her pathetic word.

  “Ryn!” Iathan warns. I want to take my hand away, but I can’t. It’s like my brain is frozen.

  And then, a shot. The singular whistle of a laser. I drop Edo to the floor and spin around. Iathan is at my feet with a scorch mark on his carotid and a pool of blood forming rapidly around us. I look up and see, to my surprise, Berj, with his arm still outstretched and his gun in the air.

  “Our people do not need any more reminders of the past,” he says sadly, “and Kredolain certainly does not need a platform to spew any more of her lies. She will manipulate every Roone she comes into contact with. She is too dangerous to let live.”

  Edo, who is also on the floor, is taking deep, gulping breaths. “You have the nerve to call me the traitor,” she wheezes. “You just assassinated your president.” Her hand is clutching at her throat and she is trying to move backward, away from me. “Karekin, you will pay for this.” Edo looks wildly around. “Why are none of you arresting him?” she asks the Roones and Karekins in the room.

  “Because,” I tell her in Roonish. “I am the commander of the United Free Army and these troops belong to me. Berj was protecting his superior officer. He is the opposite of a traitor.”

  At that, Edo laughs. It is the sound of boots walking over bits of sea glass. “The United Free Army? Really, oh my,” she manages to get out condescendingly.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny. Iathan, for all his flaws, was a good man. Misguided and arrogant, but not rotten to the core. Not like you.”

  “Oh, enough, Ryn,” Edo waves her hand dismissively. “If you are going to kill me, then do so,” she announces while getting on her knees. “I die happily, knowing that you are the legacy I leave behind. You have already reshaped the world, many worlds in fact. You have torn them apart, but you will find that putting them back together again is not so easy. And in those moments, when hundreds of thousands are looking to you for guidance, you will think of me. You will realize that you and I are far more alike than we are different. After a time, your hatred will lessen and you will regret what you have done this day, but I will already be gone, as will my ability to absolve you.” She bends over, exposing her jet-black neck. “Go ahead,” she barks, “chop my head off.”

  I get down on my knees and grab her by the shoulders. “You still think you have bestowed some great gift, don’t you? That we are all somehow better because of you? No, Edo, I am not better. I just . . . am. And I will not spend the rest of my life hating you less. I will spend whatever years I have left trying not to hate myself. And knowing that I never chose this, that you did all the choosing, is what will save me, one day.”

  I take both my hands and place them gently on her cheekbones. She doesn’t like this. She doesn’t like me to be so close, so intimate, and so she balks, her bright blue eyes shifting. I have learned this about the altered Roones—they want to observe. They are serial voyeurs, always keeping a safe and acceptable distance. They believe they are parents, that they are our parents. But this is false. They are zookeepers. They are Oppenheimer and Groves, watching the first atom bomb tear apart a fragile New Mexican desert from behind a concrete shell.

  I am desperate in that moment for Edo, or Kredolain, to experience the full weight of these “gifts” she has given me. I want her to know what it means to be the mother of a god, truly. If she had read any mythology at all, she would have known it never ends well for her kind. That in fact, a god cannot become a god without murdering her creators. I move my mouth an inch away from hers. I think she supposes I might kiss her. And I will. In a way.

  I begin to hum. I let the song build. I let the Multiverse collect itself from every atom and neutron and photon inside my cells. I let them dance in my blood. I can feel Edo start to pull away from me. But she made me so strong, and she can’t get free. I can feel the panic in her. A beheading is one thing, but to die in this way, that is something else. Yet I keep singing. I sing into her mouth and I hear a scream as the Rift starts to open in the center of her tongue.

  My song builds. I keep just the right tone and the precise volume for this to happen. Edo’s entire face disappears inside the swirling neon green helix of the newborn Rift. It does indeed take her head. Pieces of her onyx skull fracture into such tiny fragments they become mostly dust. And then the rest of her body lifts up and follows suit, swirling and folding and dissolving.

  Edo is nothing more than a pile of sand in front of a purple Rift no bigger than a chair. I close my mouth. The Rift bleeds back to green and then pops away like a soap bubble. The altered Roones are dead. The United Free Army has won the privilege of its name.

  I take a handful of what remains of Edo and shove it into a leather pocket on my uniform. She was right about one thing—I have torn worlds apart. I will need reminding every day how not to turn into her when I help rebuild what I have destroyed.

  Chapter 26

  I return to Camp Bonneville and sleep for twelve hours. My slumber is a light switch. One minute I am on, moving through the bunker, talking, advising, ordering, and the next I am in a makeshift bed, completely off. There is no in between. There are no circling thoughts, or plans, or wondering what to do next. My body retreats. I do not dream.

  When I finally awaken I see that Levi is on his tablet in the cot next to me. I sit up and rub my face and scratch at my short hair. I haven’t slept so long since, well, I can’t remember. Probably it was before the chip was implanted.

  “Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he says as he lowers the tablet. I notice he’s not in his uniform anymore, and I also notice that I actually slept in mine. Gross. “Feel any better?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say without enthusiasm. “I feel great.” Levi rolls his eye
s. Neither one of us will feel anywhere close to great for a long while. “I’m going to hop in the shower, and after that, let’s take a walk, okay?”

  “Sure,” he says with a salute. “I’ll be here.” I peel myself off the bed and walk to the locker rooms where I take a long hot shower and leave my uniform among a pile of a hundred others in the laundry bay. I know that I’ll have to put it on again for what’s coming next. We all will. I make a mental note to ask Henry who can be assigned this monumental task. The laundry is the least important thing on a list a mile long I have running in my head. I’ll get to it, but for now, I just need to be outside, away, even though it’s cold and sprinkling with rain. I turn my sensuit into a pair of comfortable jeans and a cozy sweater. Instead of walking back to the bunk room, I ask Levi to meet me outside.

  Together, Levi and I walk the distance to the Rift. We don’t say anything. He just keeps his arm around me, occasionally putting his lips to my hair. We must look like an ordinary couple out for a little hike. God, I wish that were true.

  We arrive at the massive emerald green tower of the Rift. The place is absolutely deserted. We don’t need guards here anymore. Of course, we never really did. It was always just a way to test us, the extent of our abilities and how far we would be willing to go to protect Battle Ground. The door has been closed, but not locked. I sigh one long breathy exhale and lean my head on Levi’s shoulders.

  “So many kids are dead,” he says quietly. “We could never keep this a secret, but now that we’re on the other side of it, I can see why they wanted to. It’s going to change everything. Where do we even start?”

  “We start with the truth. And I’ll do that,” I tell him while I squeeze his hand. “I won’t be like Edo and her people. I’m going to step forward and put myself right in the middle of it.” Although even thinking about that—press conferences and interviews and all the questions—makes my stomach lurch.