The Rift Frequency

by Amy S. Foster

  It crashes into the wall on the other side of the arena.

  Every one of the spectators is yelling our names now—or, rather, the names Faustus gave us—along with their ovation. Yet it still isn’t enough. I can tell by their fevered screams the crowd wants more. That we haven’t put enough theater into this spectacle. I know Levi just did what he always does—take down an opponent with efficiency and speed. But gladiators don’t do that—beloved ones don’t, anyhow. And right now, I need this audience to fall in love with Hector and Honoria.

  I raise my hands to the audience, showing them the raw and bloody appendages. I spin, slowly, and then take my palms and wipe them across and down my face until my now-wild eyes are surrounded by a gruesome mask of blood. I let out a Valkyrie-like scream, which the spectators answer with a roar of their own. I look over to Levi and give a little nod until he does the same. I pump my arms above my head, whipping the crowd into even more of an ecstatic pitch. The music starts again. This is more like it. I give myself a running jump so that I can flip and spring across the arena as if I’m doing a gymnastic floor routine. I make sure to land right in front of Faustus, where I drop to give him the most subservient of curtsies.

  When I look back up, he is grinning like a madman. Levi must have done some fancy parkour of his own, because he is now beside me, bowing.

  We nod and wave to the cheering crowd before walking to the exit of the arena. Like I had hoped, Faustus has leaped over his little fence and has met us in the tunnel.

  Unfortunately, there are also a dozen guards.

  “Marvelous!” he says, his eyes filled with savage delight. “I have never seen anything like it, nor has this audience, I can tell you. You both are destined to become the most famous gladiators of all time.”

  I smile meekly as if his praise actually means something to me.

  “I’m glad you’re pleased,” I tell him. He is beside me now, his head so full of thoughts of celebrity and money that he has clearly forgotten what we are. Or maybe he is just so full of himself and his own sense of self-importance that he truly believes we belong to him, that we’ll play by the rules that he assigned us.

  We all walk farther down into the bowels of the coliseum. Faustus is rambling, making plans as we descend the stairs. Once we are at the bottom I lean in close to him. Not so close that our armed escorts will be alarmed, but close enough so that only he will be able to hear me. Levi is behind me, effectively blockading Faustus and me from the others.

  “Keep walking. You will take us to our packs now, alone, or my brother and I will kill every single person here, including you,” I tell him, all the while keeping the same sickly sweet smile on my face. “Don’t even think about raising an alarm. I can snap your neck in under two seconds.”

  Though we don’t stop moving, I hear an audible gulp, and Faustus’s face drains of color as he finally sees the error he’s made. He looks into my eyes—and the blood smeared over my face—and the look I give him in return promises that he will most certainly die if he does not do as I’ve instructed.

  “All of you can remain here,” he says to the guards. “I am taking these two to my private quarters so that we may toast to their victory.” He does not sound scared, though his hands tremble. I am not surprised that he is such an amazing liar.

  “But, sir—” one of them tries to say, but Faustus cuts him off before he can continue.

  “Do you think me stupid, Albertus?” Faustus snaps back with venom. “Do you think that I would put my own life at risk if I thought these two were a threat to me? They understand how important I am here.” Faustus addresses me directly now, his oily words serving as their own kind of promise. “They are aware that I am responsible for employing hundreds of people. They know that I am a husband and a father. They also know that I satiate the public. I keep the violence in the arena as opposed to the streets of our fair city. These two have honor. They will not harm me.” Faustus begins to walk briskly to his office and Levi and I match his stride. The guards do not attempt to follow. I exhale a silent sigh of relief. Of course I would have killed them all, but I didn’t want to. I never want to.

  When we arrive at Faustus’s office he swiftly unlocks the large and thankfully very thick door (although I shudder to think what he does inside that would require the thing to be practically soundproof) and ushers us both inside with a sweep of his arm. As soon as he shuts the door, he starts in.

  “Let’s get one thing straight here, you ungrateful shits. You will never threaten me again. You will never make demands of me. You will never—” Levi cuts him off with a swift but effective punch to the nose. Faustus reels back, blood spurting everywhere.

  “You hit me!” he cries in disbelief.

  “Get our things,” Levi orders.

  “But . . . but . . . you hit me!”

  Levi and I both look at each other in amused disbelief. What an arrogant little prick this guy is. Did he not see what we did out there?

  “No shit,” Levi says.

  “Get. Our. Things,” I say with a steely calm.

  Faustus throws up a single hand, and with the other grabs the drape of his toga to hold up against his nose in an effort to stop the bleeding. “Fine,” he relents as he walks toward a large metal door with some kind of keypad on it. “I suppose you deserve to have your belongings returned to you even though the repair of our mechanical fighters will cost me thousands.” It dawns on me at that moment that he still doesn’t get it.

  Wow—some people . . .

  He moves to the door, which also must be a safe, in the corner. The keypad is unlocked with a numerical code—Roman numerals, of course. Faustus twists a handle and the door swings open. It’s a small space, filled with various things including our two large packs. Levi brushes past him and gets our bags, which are much heavier than usual because we stored our rifles and utility belts in there before I got my genius plan to ask the citizens of the New Roman Empire about e-mail services. When Levi throws me my pack, I retrieve our weapons and Faustus actually tries to stop me. “Not those. You can’t walk around here with guns, the guards won’t allow it.”

  “We’re not going to walk around,” Levi tells him coldly.

  “What do you mean? Wait—you don’t actually think you’re leaving, do you? That you’d even get out of here alive?” Faustus lets out a chortle. “You belong to me. You’re slaves, and after tonight, your faces will be everywhere. There isn’t a misbegotten corner of this city you’ll be able to hide in. That’s not even the point. You wouldn’t make it out the front door. I don’t think you fully grasp your situation.”

  I swing around in a flash and grab Faustus by the throat. I push him against the wall and squeeze my fingers. “I know you don’t grasp the situation. And you’re clearly too stupid to understand an explanation. So instead, I’m going to ask you a question, and I am only going to ask you this one time: Did you take anything from these packs? Because I am going to look inside and if anything is missing, you will die.”

  Faustus’s eyes widen in true terror. There it is. Now he gets it. He is not in charge. He begins to shake his head. “That’s interesting,” I say softly, “because if I met two people like us—if I bought two people like us, I’d want to know as much about them as I could. You sure you don’t want to change your answer?” I release the pressure from his neck ever so slightly so he can speak.

  “No time,” he croaks. “I only took a brief look. Too much to organize. Was going to . . . later . . . tonight.” I suppose that makes sense, but in any case I tell Levi to check the packs. He rifles through them and then gives me a nod to let me know that everything is there. I release Faustus but shove him hard enough so that he falls to the floor. Levi hands me my things and I put my belt on and secure the backpack.

  I lean down to Faustus, who is cowering on the floor. “You’re very lucky,” I tell him. “You are about to witness something that few people ever have. Truthfully. We are children of the gods.” Levi does a double tak
e at my words, but I ignore him. I am not going to kill this douche bag, but maybe I can scare him enough to rethink his stance on human trafficking. “The gods are most displeased with this soulless place, and with you, Faustus Mallius Majus. The gods abhor slavery. All men and women are equal in the eyes of the gods. They are sickened by this violence. If you do not change, one day soon there will be a reckoning, and this city—this civilization—will fall.”

  Faustus’s eyes bulge in fear. I smile as benevolently as I am able and then I speak softly into my bracelet. “Rift,” I begin to say into my cuff.

  “Wait,” Levi says suddenly in English. “We didn’t see if Ezra was here.”

  “He would never have stayed. There’s no way he could have blended in with what he was wearing. He doesn’t speak Latin. And, without any kind of free e-mail service, or at least one that’s easy to access, I’m pretty confident he would have moved on.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I have to put a little faith in him. He is a genius, after all.”

  Levi rolls his eyes, but doesn’t say anything.

  “Seriously, I think chances are he was never even here. I didn’t think it through,” I admit reluctantly.

  “Okay,” Levi says, without any of his usual rancor, which is refreshing but a little strange.

  “Rift. Ezra,” I tell the cuff, and the Rift opens with a screaming green brilliance that’s almost impossible to look at. Faustus looks at the Rift and us and then scrambles up to his knees, praying and bellowing, begging for our forgiveness. He clutches the fabric of my uniform and I step away before he can really touch me. Levi just rolls his eyes and grabs my arm. It’s time to go. Without looking back, my partner and I step through the emerald wave and are gone.

  Chapter 14

  We walk out of the Rift into a cold, starless night. There is grass at my feet; the green slivers have a tinge of white frost on them. I put my hand on my rifle as my eyes sweep the area. Even in the dark, I know where we are. I’ve spent enough time on these bleachers, and as further proof I can see the orange and black reflective banners hanging on the fence.

  “We’re in Battle Ground,” I say, more to myself than Levi.

  “The football field. Go, Tigers,” Levi announces without any real enthusiasm. This is our home, but it isn’t our Earth. The frequency of our Earth is too different from Ezra’s to bring us back, and I know the SenMachs have made the QOINS too efficient for a mistake.

  I don’t want to be here. I’d rather be anywhere but here. This is a fake diamond ring. It’s a gorgeous chocolate cake that you can’t eat sitting on the table. This is a cruel joke where everyone we love, where the life we could have had, is right in front of us but a billion Earths away. It is a grotesque reflection where we can see right through to normal. Levi would have played on this very field. I probably would have watched him and crushed hard, praying to God that, somehow, he would have noticed me in the stands. I doubt he would have. The only thing that makes me special is being a Citadel. On this Earth I’m probably just boring Ryn who watches too much TV and still plays the cello. I wasn’t exactly a weirdo in eighth grade before I was activated, but I was sensitive and insecure with two parents who were infinitely cooler than I was.

  I was, in other words, just a teenager.

  “Let’s move over to the bleachers,” I say. “We need to get out of the open just in case there’s anyone around getting drunk or stoned. Although, I suppose if there were, we could at least explain a Rift opening that way.”

  Levi doesn’t respond. He just runs toward the side of the stands, closest to the field house.

  When we get to the bleachers we crouch down, taking off our packs as we slide. “Just in case.” And then I say, “Battle Ground, Washington, 2021, high school student.” The sensuit goes to work, flowering up my arms and down my legs until I’m wearing jeans, a turtleneck, and a down jacket.

  “Good call,” Levi agrees, and he does the same. We look like we belong here now.

  Now there’s a cosmic joke if I’ve ever heard one.

  I pull out the thin SenMach laptop from my bag and open it. As difficult as it is for me to be here, it’s just now occurring to me that, actually, this might be a good thing. As long as zombies or vampires or mutant people suddenly don’t start to descend on us, this is an echo Earth.

  “You know,” I begin, “this could be it. This could be Ezra’s Earth.” I look up at Levi, who has no expression on his face at all. I don’t really have any reason to believe it is, other than good old-fashioned optimism. And if this is his Earth, then my time with Levi alone is over. I am desperate to find Ezra, but I can’t help feeling a pang. This will be hard for Levi. And, I have to admit, hard for me, too. I know now that even though he can really act like a complete asshole, deep down, he isn’t an actual asshole. His persona is just another kind of armor that he wears to keep that little boy whose mother sang to him every night safe from being hurt.

  “Even if we find Ezra here, it doesn’t mean we’ll stop with the deprogramming,” I try to assure him.

  Levi places an elbow on his knee. It’s cold. The uniform and sensuit keep me warm enough, but my hands and face are starting to redden from the chill. It doesn’t help that there’s a frigid breeze, ruffling the banners and signs at the front of the bleachers and the ones hanging from the diamond holes in the fence.

  “Let’s just see if he’s here. We can think about that when . . . it’s time to think about that.”

  Levi’s words are hardly convincing. They must be for my benefit, because by the look on his face I know he’s thinking about the time we’ve already spent deprogramming and how it’s changed things between him and me. But I back off, because it’s what he wants, and honestly, it’s what I want, too.

  “Okay. Piggyback a Wi-Fi signal,” I command the computer. I give it a second or two and see on the screen that the laptop has done what I’ve requested in a matter of seconds. It’s also running protocol to get us in invisibly. Whoever’s signal we’re hijacking will have no idea their IP address has been compromised. “Find Gmail,” I tell the software. Within seconds the familiar logo pops up on the screen. I log in with our sophisticated username and password.

  And there it is. A message from Ezra.

  “It’s him!” I open the e-mail, my heart hammering. He could be right here, just miles away, blocks even. And then just as quickly, hope is replaced with something else. Fear.

  NOT SAFE. NOT MY EARTH. ENEMIES EVERYWHERE. KEEP RIFTING.

  I touch my fingers to my lips and blink. What the hell? What enemies?

  “Is that right?” Levi says as he snatches the laptop from my hands so he can read it again. “You’re sure this is from him?”

  “Yes,” I tell him as I nod.

  “Do you have any idea what this means? Is this some kind of a code?” I have an idea, all right, but it’s not one Levi is going to like, let alone completely believe. I try anyway.

  “Remember in the cave? When I said I heard that sound?” By way of an answer, Levi simply nods his head and closes the computer. “And there is something else. Back there in the coliseum. I saw someone. A spectator who was sitting in the first row and . . . he was singing, no, not singing like ‘la-la,’ but humming, buzzing. Very loudly.”

  “Well,” Levi considers, “before you go all conspiracy theory on me, it seems like the most logical answer is that somewhere along the way you hit your head. You have a brain injury. Or maybe the SenMachs . . .”

  “Please don’t do that,” I say sincerely.

  “What?” he counters innocently, throwing up a single hand.

  “Don’t try to make me seem crazy. I’ve seen crazy. That’s not what’s going on here.” I yank the computer from his hands and put it back in my pack.

  “Look,” he says warmly, calmly. “I’m just trying to be logical, that’s all.”

  “We were just gladiators. I fought an animatronic Medusa!” I say with excitement, but I am not yelling—I am p
assionately defending. “There is nothing about what we’re doing that feels logical, so just forget about that for a minute. I don’t have brain damage and the SenMachs didn’t do anything to me. You know that I can sense a Rift before it opens and you know that not every Citadel can do that.”

  “Yeah.” Levi crosses his arms, but he hasn’t shut me down. “So?”

  “Well, you also know that there is something in my DNA that is different from yours. Feather said so.”

  Levi rolls his eyes. “We don’t know what that is. It could be anything or nothing.”

  I clench my fists reflexively. He’s still trying to be rational. Or maybe he’s just in denial. Who could blame him for not wanting yet another thing we can’t completely explain? Yet, just once, I’d like for him to simply believe me.

  “You’re right about that, in isolation,” I say. “But as part of a bigger picture, we shouldn’t just dismiss it. We don’t know what’s inside a Rift. It’s a bridge across the Multiverse. It’s likely dark matter and also a bunch of other shit that we don’t even have words for. So what if, like, the more we Rift, the more we’re exposed to whatever is in there and it changes us somehow?”

  There’s a moment of tense silence as Levi just looks at me. Finally, he says: “I’m really not trying to be a dick, but I mean, Ryn, come on . . . You’re going to go with some sort of psychic superpower, like a legit superpower, over a head injury? Or stress? Or just out-and-out fatigue?

  I shake my head tersely. “I’m only moderately stressed”—Levi frowns—“okay, maybe I’m completely stressed, but I don’t feel tired. Besides, none of that would explain why Ezra is warning us against enemies. I didn’t make that up. So my question is: Enemies from where?” I zip my pack up and get on my feet again.