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“Ryn!”
I’m asleep.
I cannot be asleep.
CHAPTER 2 (#ubca2da7c-28d1-5585-ad0f-d48d883733ff)
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 (#ubca2da7c-28d1-5585-ad0f-d48d883733ff)
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.
