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“That’s very kind of you, but I believe our time would be better spent debriefing in our quarters, thank you.” Arif shrugs amiably, and Levi and I head to my room.
We walk there in silence and I close the massive wooden door to my quarters and lean my body against it. Levi sits on the lushly piled rug and leans against the bed.
The bed frame is so high that his entire back is bolstered by it. We don’t say anything to each other, not at first. Soon enough there will be plenty of words and so we enjoy a few blissful moments of quiet.
Today we’re going to do our homework. We’re going to be soldiers. We’re going to pore over every intel file we have on the other Citadel races. We’re going to learn their languages. We’re going to see how they fight. And we’re going to make sure that Iathan and the Roones back on their Earth aren’t hiding anything from us. I’m not about to get blindsided again.
“Okay,” he says finally, snapping me out of my own head. “Where do you want to start?”
“With the Spiradaels. Those pig things ate the one hostage we had, and I want to know more about them.”
“I don’t think they can be turned, Ryn.”
“Neither do I. I just want to figure out the best way to kill them.”
“Other than getting eaten by pigs?” He holds up his hand to make it clear that’s a joke and pulls out his laptop so we can begin.
We spend hours learning the Spiradaels’ guttural language, which lacks any sort of flair and only a handful of words that are more than three syllables. We study the footage we have of the giant spindly Citadel race. We watch how they use their hair as a razor-like whip. We see how they block and punch. From fighting them personally, I know they don’t use their legs. It’s all upper body with them. I think I understand it now. It seems the joints on their arms, necks, and shoulders allow them to contort these appendages almost 360 degrees. I don’t think their knees do the same, so they focus on the chest and hair to win.
Over and over again we watch their fighting style and then we practice on each other, blocking and overcoming Spiradael attacks. I never could understand why the Blood Lust never kicked in during sparring, but it never has. This is just yet another mystery of how ARC works—how specific they were when they programmed us with the Blood Lust. It never interferes with our ability to fight an enemy. It only inserts itself if we try to have a life off the battlefield. After we finish with the Spiradaels, we begin with the Orsalines.
It takes all of an hour and forty-five minutes to learn their language. They simply don’t have that many words. I still can’t believe the altered Roones would choose them. If their genetic fuckery is this big gift, why waste it on dumb bear people? The secret must lie in not just their strength, which I am learning is far greater than I gave them credit for, but their devotion to the altered Roones. It’s religious with the Orsalines. They’re zealots and that might make them the most dangerous Citadels of all.
Levi and I study their fighting style. It’s actually not so much a style as out-and-out berserker mode. They don’t kick, because, well, bear legs. They don’t exactly punch, either, as much as they do maul. Mostly what they do is either claw opponents to death or squeeze them until their organs burst. Sometimes, they will just hurl a boulder at them. Or a tree.
Once again, Levi and I do maneuvers and I am grateful for this huge, almost empty room with its cathedral-like ceilings so that we can use the walls and beams to hang and jump from. Technically, we are stronger than the Orsalines. We have more physical strength than any other Citadel, but I would hate to be on the receiving end of one of those hugs. We each find effective ways to get out of these holds and how to keep moving to make sure their nails can’t get at us. They couldn’t penetrate the uniform, of course, but a lucky swipe at the neck while going for the face would lead to death pretty quickly.
After that, we hurry ourselves to the canteen, grab something that looks like a sandwich with some kind of meat and bottles of water with additional electrolytes. We’ve got a lot of work to do and not much time until the council we’ve agreed to have tomorrow.
The Daithi are the next Citadels we study. Their language is nuanced and many words are difficult to pronounce as they don’t use a lot of vowels, almost like Welsh. While the pronunciation and grammar is harder to grasp, the Daithi lexicon is more straightforward than most. There are very few words that mean the same thing, and it is abnormally absent of adverbs and adjectives. It is a language of nouns and verbs, of naming and doing. This in and of itself gives us further insight into their culture. The Daithi are as small as children, but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. They are remarkably fast and their fighting style is more like a dance than combat. They move in quickly with deadly accuracy and move to another place in the blink of an eye. The Daithi rarely block. They seem to have little use for defensive fighting because in the footage we’ve seen where they engage, no one—not even the Settiku Hesh—gets close enough to land a punch.
Levi and I quickly realize that the only way to defeat the Daithi is if we don’t rely on sight. We need to use our other senses—smell, their heartbeats, the whirring rush of air when a fist or leg swings toward a body. This is especially difficult for me because of the stupid Kir-Abisat and the sound my own body is throwing off, but in a way, it’s good practice. It forces me to learn how to dampen it even more.
Levi blindfolds me, like the Jedi I’ve always wanted to be, and begins to attack. The first hurdle is just getting out of the way. I focus on his heartbeat and the heat signature his body gives off. When he lunges, eventually I get the hang of spinning away, ducking and rolling in a different direction. As cool as this is, it won’t actually help us defeat the Daithi. Together, Levi and I come up with strategies that will help us strike immediately after deflection. For this, we use not only combinations of punches and kicks from very strange angles, but our knives as well. Guns would be the most useful, of course. I’m never above just shooting someone, but if things go down the way they did with the Spiradaels, we’re going to need to fight them off long enough to talk to them.
We don’t bother leaving the room for dinner. We stuff our faces with the tasteless gel cubes provided by the SenMachs. They will give us the nutrition we need and save us valuable time. Besides, I’m not in any mood to deal with Ezra. I’m actually enjoying today. It feels good to be doing something I’m actually good at as opposed to all this fumbling around, second-guessing every word I say and how it will be interpreted.
When we move on to the Akshaji for the first time, I begin to feel truly afraid. I had been worried up till this point and anxious, of course, because of the sheer volume of puzzle pieces the altered Roones were trying to put together. The Akshaji are barely Citadels. They’ve been enhanced, certainly, but it’s clear they see the Rifts not as a call to duty, but as a form of endless entertainment.
The language does not take us long to learn, and soon we’re able to converse in Akshaj as we study their fighting. But while learning Akshaj is easy enough, learning how to defend yourself from and beat a race of Citadels with six hands at the end of six arms is another story entirely. Levi and I use the sensuits to give us the illusion of this, a visual, just so we know what to avoid and how, but other than looking terrifying, it’s a fairly useless way to train as the four “pretend” arms just kind of hover. In the end, Levi and I devise a high/low strategy and just have to hope it will work.
We spar, taking turns being Akshaj. As humans, we aim for the feet and calves in an attempt to get them off balance, on the ground preferably. Alternately, we go right for the head and throat, aiming killing blows there or using the leverage of what’s around us to jump up and straddle our legs around the necks. Again, guns are always a bonus, but in the case of the Akshaji, we wonder if machetes or scimitars wouldn’t be preferable. It would be a lot easier to just hack off those extra appendages than try to avoid them.
It is near midnight when we finish, but our day is hardly done. We ask Doe to show us any pertinent documents about the Roones that might help us. I had Doe download their entire database when I was on their Earth—unbeknownst to them, of course. We ask Doe to look for anomalies and inconsistencies in the data when compared to the story we were given by Iathan. Doe shows us videos, official documents, health records, experiment hypotheses, the various species the Roones spliced with their own to create the “altered” Roones and the Karekin. Doe assures us that the story Iathan told us is the truth, or at least, the Roones’ version of the truth. The altered Roones would have a very different take on things.
So, for all of Iathan’s arrogance and posturing, he wasn’t lying. We can trust him as an ally. This should make me feel better, but for some reason it doesn’t. It’s so obvious from the research that a civil war was inevitable. I saw it coming years before it actually arrived. Politicians at one another’s throats, rhetoric and propaganda about superior species. There were demonstrations and marches and strikes. The Roones didn’t like what was happening to the Immigrants. The Roones practiced civil disobedience, but it was their civility that was their downfall. There is no reasoning with crazy. There is no compromising with tyranny. None of them thought in a million years it would get to where it would, and when it did, the Roones were more offended at first than they were tactical.
When we finally finish, I feel tired in a way that I haven’t for a while. It is the exhaustion of a full day of hard work, of goals accomplished and the odd clarity you can sometimes find through busywork. I stretch my legs out on the carpet, flexing the arches of my feet and rolling my neck clockwise to get the kinks out. Levi is sitting on the only chair in the room. His back is resting against it, but there is an intensity to his gaze that lets me know he’s far from relaxed.
“What?” I ask him hesitantly.
“We have to talk about this, Ryn. You need to tell me what the hell is going on with you and Ezra, because it’s messy and it makes us all look bad.” I don’t answer Levi right away. Instead, I walk over to the tall leaded-glass window. It is pitchblack outside and all I can see is my reflection. Why don’t these windows open? It’s not like the Faida would be worried about someone falling out. I inspect the seams, I run my fingers over the cool metal, and I hear the window shift and creak. I move my hand away and the sound stops. I wave my hand over the window again and this time it swings open fully. Motion sensors. That’s the kind of thing you might want to tell a guest.
I open the remaining three windows and a cool breeze rushes in to wash away the stale air. There is the faintest smell of eucalyptus and burning wood. The night creeps in slowly like a tired ghost. It’s one thing to see the hour and quite another to actually feel it.
“I had sex with him,” I tell Levi boldly. There’s no point in lying. Ezra and I were together—though, perhaps, the reality was our togetherness was more of a technicality. Still, I believed I loved Ezra and maybe I did or even still do, but it was an indulgent love. It was selfish and myopic, as almost all first loves are.
Yet I also cannot deny that there is—and always has been—something between Levi and me. I can’t say for certain what it is, though Levi seems to have a better idea of it. I also know that he hasn’t allowed himself to feel much of anything for years, which means his feelings cannot necessarily be trusted. His emotions are just unfurling. They are gilded petals, bright and shining, too fragile yet to pluck and examine.
I watch his body change with this admission. His knuckles turn white as they grip the wooden armrests. His back molars grind together, squaring off his jaw. “Okay,” he says softly. “Then what happened.”
I bite the corner of my lower lip. I don’t want to talk about this with him. It’s none of his business. But … it is his business, and he’s right to ask. There’s too much obvious tension among us three right now, and that puts us at a disadvantage. Whatever we feel for each other, at this moment us humans have to put up a united front here. What’s at stake is just too important.
“Everything changed. I don’t know,” I say as I shake my head. “He said there were rules. That once we’d been together like that, we were a proper couple and that I couldn’t deprogram you anymore because it wasn’t right to be intimate with someone else.”
I watch as Levi gives a giant exhale out, as if there had been a weight pressing down on his chest and now his lungs were finally free to let go of a breath fully. “So, basically, he gave you an ultimatum.”
I undo the topknot from my head. “I don’t blame him. He’s not wrong,” I say as I let my long hair fall. I rub my fingers into my scalp to help relieve the pain of having it pulled back all day. “He just could have handled it better. I mean, I really thought he understood me. I thought he would have known for sure that I don’t respond well to that kind of pressure.”
Levi slides off the chair and crawls toward me on the floor. “But that’s because he doesn’t know you. You guys knew each other for a couple months and there were only two weeks of that time where you were actually together, right? Isn’t it possible that the deprogramming sort of fucked with your ability to have perspective about him? Isn’t there a really good chance that the love you feel for him is mixed up with a bunch of other things?”
A laugh escapes my mouth. “And don’t you think you could say the same exact thing about you and me?” I chide.
Instead of laughing with me or even cracking a smile, Levi’s eyes become even more serious. “No,” he says firmly enough to wipe the grin off my face. “Because I know you. I’ve known you since you were a little kid. I’ve watched you train. I’ve fought beside you. I’ve been amazed by your ability to keep getting back up even when I know you’ve been hurt really bad. You’re a good friend. You’re an excellent commander. You hate ice cream and except for your uniform, I’ve never seen you wear the color green, ever, which is probably a question that answers itself. I know you and I never would have done what Ezra did to you.”
I draw my knees up and wrap my arms around my legs. I am making myself small. This conversation is rolling around inside my chest like a marble in a tin can. “Well, that’s easy for you to say—now. But trust me, things do feel different after you sleep with someone.”
Levi throws his hands up in surrender. “That’s what you’ve got to say to me after what I just said? You think it’s cool to be casually rude? Are you trying to pick a fight?”
I actually don’t want to pick a fight at all, but his speech was somehow both totally emotional and entirely logical. He might be right. And I don’t want him to be right. Still, I tell him no, but I can hear my voice becoming harried. “It’s just that if you and I had sex right now, you wouldn’t want me dealing with Ezra. Right? You wouldn’t want me touching him or holding him.” The whole time I don’t let go of my legs. I’m like a little khaki blob on the floor.
“Of course I wouldn’t, but the difference is, I never would have had sex with you in the first place. Don’t you get that? I wouldn’t do that with you until I knew a hundred percent that it was you and me and no one else. I’m a Citadel. I know how to be patient. I understand the benefits of waiting it out. We both know that your aim is pretty much useless when you’re trying to lock in on a moving target.”
I sigh and bring my head up. “I don’t even know if I made a mistake. Was I not supposed to get involved with Ezra? Was I not supposed to try to deprogram you in the field? Because neither one of those things felt like choices.”
Levi sighs, almost sadly. “I’m not saying that,” he assures me. “I know why you slept with him.”
This ought to be good, I think to myself. “Oh yeah? Why is that?”
“Because you could. Because you had a choice. For the first time, in years, you got a say in what you wanted to do with your own body.” Levi wipes his palm over his face. “I get it, because I want that power, too.”
Levi isn’t wrong, but he isn’t completely right, either. I had sex with Ezra, yes, because I could, but also because I wanted to. Because I care about him. Because I found him sexy and attractive and wanted to feel him as close to me as possible …
I push what feels like a literal swamp of emotions aside. They are sticky, murky things. I don’t need to wade through them right now. Right now, I am looking at a boy who can’t do what he wants, and I hate it. It’s not fair. Levi doesn’t get a say. He can’t own his body the way that I can own mine, and the weight of those bonds is suffocating him.
“You should take some red pills,” I tell him gently. “We should get your Blood Lust under control as soon as possible, especially here.” I give him a wide grin. “There’re a lot of really pretty girls here.”
Levi looks up, but he does not return my smile. He opens his mouth to say something and then he closes it again with a brief shake of his head. “Ryn, I …”
“Don’t, okay?” I push the words out of my mouth in a whisper. “The timing sucks. But the timing always sucks. Let’s just do this. I want to be free of it. Don’t you?”
Levi looks at me as though I’ve slapped him.
“I don’t mean free of you,” I say. “I don’t mean that. I mean, I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything and I want to stop feeling like I need to fix you. I want things equal between us, normal, whatever that looks like.”
Levi doesn’t say anything, but he nods his head slowly. He gets up and I hear him rustling through his pack. I listen to the slow zipping of his uniform being peeled away. I keep my eyes on the floor.
We go for a full fifteen minutes without saying anything. I close all the windows but one with a sweep of my hand. Levi puts some music on by an artist I don’t recognize. When he is certain the pills are taking effect, he finally walks over to me. He is wearing sweatpants and nothing else because for some reason, he seems to have an aversion to shirts. Or maybe he knows what he looks like shirtless. It’s probably that.
He stands close. He stands so close it feels like he’s doing my breathing for me. His eyes are green. A color I never wear, he’s right about that. Green clothes feel like work. Levi’s eyes are the color of a faded book cover. They are the same shade as my mother’s rain boots. I notice that in his irises there are lightning bolt streaks of brown and yellow.
Ever so slowly he brings his hand to my face. He traces my eyebrow and cheekbone with his thumb. I want to tell him to stop. This is not how the deprogramming should work. Deprogramming is not about sex. Deprogramming is about feeling safe when someone you find attractive touches you. It’s more about recapturing a feeling of childhood security than hormones. I want to say these things to him, but it’s almost as if those green eyes of his have me in some kind a constrictor knot, one that gets tighter the more you try to get loose.
Levi’s hand moves into my hair and he balls it in his fist. It shouldn’t be like this. We should be watching animated films and listening to lullabies. He should be eating his favorite foods as I read a book out loud while we hold hands, but I suppose we’ve already done some of that stuff. Maybe there aren’t any rules to this. Maybe the way I deprogrammed won’t necessarily work for him. Levi is a superintense person. It’s hardly surprising his process would be intense too. When he takes a step closer, I feel a twinge of guilt.
Ezra.
I just had sex with Ezra two days ago. Then I shake that thought away. I’m not Ezra’s girlfriend anymore for this very reason. So what if I was with another guy a couple days ago? I could sleep with a hundred guys and it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make me a bad person, despite what good girls are “supposed” to do. I’m a loyal friend. I’ve literally taken a bullet for someone on more than one occasion. I keep this awful secret so my parents aren’t destroyed. I am trying to save the world.
I am a good girl.
But I am not the same girl who left Battle Ground.
Levi’s mouth hovers at my face and then he plunges it into my neck, breathing me in. I feel his lips brush against my ear. He had told me before that I smelled safe. Smell can be a visceral sense, so I hope that this is his way of taking additional precautions. But when he brings his head up, he doesn’t waste any more time with safe. He kisses me deeply, intently. I probably shouldn’t be comparing them, but I can’t help it. Ezra’s kisses were sweet and light and good. Levi is all fire. Levi kisses me like a drowning man clinging to a capsized boat.
I stop thinking about Ezra.
We continue to kiss, our tongues snaking in and out of each other’s mouths. He picks me up in one fell swoop with a single hand and in the crook of his elbow carries me to the bed. For a moment, everything is perfect as he props me on top of the thick duvet. My hands are wrapped around his neck and his fingers are holding on to the sides of my face. And then.
And then …
Those green eyes change. They narrow and glare. Levi’s accelerated pulse begins to get even faster. The Blood Lust. It’s kicked in. I go perfectly still. I bow my head. I try. I try so hard to disappear in that moment, but there’s no point. He’s been triggered and I really thought that maybe we were past this. In truth, I’m more disappointed than I am scared. Still. If he kills me, I’m not sure how that would go down with the Faida. He could even be tried for murder. Citadels in Battle Ground are protected from stuff like that, but here? I have no idea. Levi yanks me up. He snarls in my face as he digs his fingers into my shoulders. He has me at least a foot off the ground. Of course, I could get away. Inside of two seconds I could have him out cold. I’m in my uniform and he’s not. He wouldn’t stand a chance against me.
If I hurt him, I’ll ruin everything. That’s the thing. That’s the thing that keeps pulling me back to Ezra. He knew his life was on the line when he deprogrammed me and he did it anyway. I almost killed him. Twice. He believed in me. He somehow knew that I was stronger than my abuse and more powerful than my abusers. That’s what makes this whole situation a total fucking shit show.
And now, here I am. Levi’s hot, sticky breath growling up against my face. I cannot fight back. My strength is my vulnerability, and I have to hope that it’s where Levi’s lives, too. He keeps me in midair for a full twenty seconds. He’s fighting this, I can see it. It’s the inherent problem with the Blood Lust. You can’t fight it. You have to balance on the knife edge of it. You have to surrender your body and your instincts and let that spark of innocence wriggle its way to the surface.
I want to tell him this, but talking will only make it worse at this point. Levi lifts me higher and throws me like a dart, with all his (very significant) might at the door. I manage to contort myself somewhat in the air, spinning so that my head won’t hit the wooden frame. This maneuver works, sort of. I knew that my suit would absorb most of the impact, but I am not wearing my boots. So, while I’ve managed to angle my body sideways, to protect my skull, I have totally forgotten about my foot. When it hits the door, it hurts like hell. It makes me want to scream, but I suck the sound back into my throat because that would only excite him more.
Since I’m right here and since killing me might ruin our chance to save the world and all, I think my best option is to make a run for it. Figuratively at least. Before he can get to me, I leap up on my good foot and fling the door open. I close it behind me and hold it shut. The door is thick and solid and the handle is iron so I’m hoping I can keep Levi in there long enough for it to pass.
As soon as he realizes I’ve trapped him in there, he begins to scream.
“I’m gonna kill you!” Levi shouts. “You hear me, Ryn? I’m going to rip your lungs out while you watch. Open the fucking door!” Levi begins to pound and it’s enough to alert our neighbors all along the hall and they come rushing out. Ezra is first. He’s wearing nothing but his boxers and the look of sleepy-eyed confusion that he may just be dreaming. Levi keeps banging on the wooden planks.
“Are you afraid to fight me, Ryn? Because you should be. I’m going to wrap my hands around that pathetic neck of yours and squeeze until you turn fucking blue, you bitch, let me out of here!” There are now at least ten other Faida in the hallway. They look baffled. I don’t know what to say exactly. This is the very definition of uncharted territory. The Blood Lust plays itself out. In person. Well, that’s not exactly true. The first time Ezra triggered me, I told him to run to the bathroom before it well and truly had me in its grip. I bashed my head against the floor until the pain dragged me out of it. Still, that had been just a hand on my clavicle. I think the more sexual things get, the more fierce the Blood Lust becomes.
So all this yelling and these verbal threats are unexpected. It’s the kind of thing you just think. Hearing Levi say this shit out loud is both embarrassing and unsettling. My heart sinks as I see Arif and Navaa approach slowly. “This isn’t him,” I tell them, still holding the ever-increasingly jerking door. “This is the thing they did to us,” I try to explain. The two look at each other and then me with barely veiled judgment. And then, Arif adds his own hand to the long black iron handle. Levi is just screaming now, his voice getting more and more hoarse as he continues to try and get out. Then, there is a great crunching squeal, the sound you hear when a tree splinters after being cut down. Levi has ripped the door off the hinges and it goes flying back into my room, crashing against the post of the bed.
Without even hesitating for one moment, Arif grabs me and pulls me down, wrapping his wings around my entire body for refuge. All the other Faida join him, creating a giant teepee of protection.
“Don’t hurt him!” I yell, though the feathers muffle and dampen my scream. “If he gets hurt, he’ll never get better. Just defend yourselves.” I realize in that moment, I am asking quite a lot of my new potential allies. Levi is stronger than any of them, but he’s not stronger than all of them. Also, thankfully, the protective grid that makes their wings bulletproof seems to be a permanent modification. As Levi begins punching and kicking, I hear the distinctive buzz of an electronic force field at work.
After about a minute, the sound stops. It’s pitch-black inside. I can’t see what’s going on, but I do feel the slight shift of air as the whirling mass of wings slowly unknits itself around me. Eventually, my vision returns. I am on my knees, curled into a ball, my hands covering my head. I look up and see the Faida have all backed away and Levi, poor Levi, is just standing there. The Blood Lust has run its course. It has hollowed him out and he looks more broken than I’ve ever seen him.
I know he must be humiliated. I stand up and realize, my foot. I wince and pull it up behind me. “I’m okay. Everything is fine,” I tell him softly. I have my arms out in front of me, hoping he’ll come to me, hoping he’ll show them all that he isn’t some crazy monster. He doesn’t quite seem to see me, though. He is looking through me. “No one got hurt and everyone understands,” I assure him. “Let’s just go back to your room. We’ll get you settled, you can get some sleep. You need to sleep.”
My pleas seem to snap him back to reality. He swallows hard. I watch as he begins to back away. “I’m sorry. Everyone. I’m …” Levi’s voice is barely a whisper. He hasn’t been physically injured, but emotionally, I don’t know how this will affect things.
As if reading my mind, Navaa walks gracefully toward him. “In truth, Levi,” she says with a sweet and gentle tone that I didn’t even think she was capable of, “we are all aware of what the altered Roones did to you. It is unsettling to witness, but also necessary, I think, to better understand the depravity of our common enemy. We do not judge you.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s cool. Let’s just go back to your room,” I say. I attempt to walk, but it hurts to put too much weight on my foot. I disguise my pain with a smile. I sort of shuffle toward him, dragging my painful foot behind me.
“No!” Levi says with sudden authority. “I don’t want to be around you. Or anyone. I’m very sorry.” And with that, Levi turns and rushes into his own room. An awkward silence weaves its way around all of us as soon as his door closes. Ezra walks swiftly over to me. I’m thinking he might be concerned. I’m thinking he may be worried that I am actually hurt. As soon as I see the furious look on his face, I know that is not the case.
He gets right up to me and whispers sternly in my ear, “I can’t fucking believe you did that. Here. With them. In this place.” He grips my wrist and pulls me even closer. “Your Blood Lust was nothing compared to what I just saw. Levi is going to kill you. I hope to God you know what you’re doing.” He jerks his hand back as if suddenly my skin is toxic and stomps away, practically slamming the door behind him. Well, I suppose I know where things stand between us now. He’ll never be able to forget what he just saw and I know without a shadow of a doubt that he will never, ever, look at me the same way again. And as much as his masculine sense of entitlement disgusts me, it doesn’t change the fact that his rejection rips at my guts nevertheless.
I don’t know what to do. Everyone is looking at me. I go to open my mouth, but Arif speaks before I get the chance. “You don’t need to explain. It seems you are injured. Can I offer medical assistance?”
As if this whole situation wasn’t embarrassing enough, I’m not about to add to it by waking up one of their doctors. “No. I’m sure it’s just a bruise, but thank you. Thank you all for your help with this. I’m going to go back to my room.”
I hobble away before any of them can say anything else. When I get to my room (now annoyingly without a door), I peel my uniform off and tend to my foot. I don’t think it’s broken, but I take all the medicine the SenMachs and altered Roones have provided in my med kit just to be sure. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep at all because of what happened, but my body overrides my absolute mortification. I need to heal more than I need to brood and worry. My last thought is of Levi. The look on his face, the shame and desperation. Hatred for the altered Roones quickens my pulse. I keep my fists clenched as I drift away.
CHAPTER 7 (#ubca2da7c-28d1-5585-ad0f-d48d883733ff)
Several hours later we are sitting at a large oval wooden table. Unlike many of the rustic pieces of furniture on the base, this one is polished with a slick lacquer that is so shiny I can see my face in its surface. I try to keep things as professional as possible given what happened the night before. The best way to do this is not to look too closely at Levi and Ezra. Denial will always work in a pinch.
I am sitting at one head of the table, the unofficial boss of the human race. I’m actually pleased to see Navaa at the other end. Maybe with two women in charge, communication will be front and center of these briefings. Navaa had very cleverly separated Ezra and Levi and seated them among the other Faida. If we are all to be on the same side, the three of us can’t be seen set apart from the rest.
This is a dark, lush room with a bluish light cascading down from the unusually low ceiling. The chairs are black leather with a slim column of padding for the back. It’s a highly functional piece of furniture for people with wings, but as for the rest of us … not so much. Still, the entire vibe of this space has a subdued elegance about it. This is a room meant for comfortable sequestration and I find this a bit surprising. Citadels aren’t supposed to ever get too comfortable. Then again, on our Earth, Citadels are only soldiers. But Arif had told us that on this Earth they are other things as well—doctors, engineers, diplomats. Considering that 60 percent of the Faida Citadels were annihilated, I’m not sure theirs is the better way to go.
A large, flat glass panel emerges from the center of the table. I notice again how they like to keep their technology hidden away, beneath panels, under floors. Perhaps the Faida, with their giant, glorious wings don’t like the reminder of what technology has done to them, or maybe they feel that it is somehow crass. Their posturing is disingenuous. There is only science here, all of it hard and none of it forgiving.
Navaa opens the meeting. She has an illuminated screen at her fingertips that she is using to control the images we are looking at on the panel in front of us. She brings up all seven of the Citadel races.
“Let’s begin with what we can safely assume are absolute facts,” she says with her usual air of authority with a dash of arrogance. “Ezra was able to bring us up to speed about his time on the original Roone Earth. Most of what he told us we already knew, but it was nice to hear that the original Roones want to stop their counterparts as badly as we do. Basically, what we are looking at is a game of numbers.”
“You mean, which of the Citadel races we can get to side with our cause,” Levi says. If he had any residual issues about the incident in my room, he left them outside this one. I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. He’s not about to let what happened distract any of us from what’s truly important and by speaking up now, he’s proving the point.
“Exactly. So, the Spiradaels.” Images of the Spiradaels begin to pepper the glass in front of us. “Our team spent a considerable amount of time observing them and we have ruled that they are as brainwashed as the Settiku Hesh. It’s our conclusion they cannot be turned. Humans, do you concur?”
I don’t need to confer with my fellow humans to make a decision about this. Ezra, for all his knowledge of the Citadel races, never fought one or spoke to one. He never learned their language. Only Levi and I looked any of them in the eye and we had both agreed on this last night.
“We agree.”
“Good. Then let’s talk about the Orsalines,” Navaa says as she brings several photos and video footage up on the screen in front of us. I glance over at Ezra. I see that the interface below him has been activated as well. As Navaa speaks, lines form in an iridescent white on the table, just in Ezra’s eyeline. Somewhere in this room there is a mic and a translator hard at work. Not an actual person, but a program and I’m glad of it, because it means I don’t have to do it myself. I have to pay attention to what’s going on here and that requires all my focus.
Plus the idea of talking to Ezra right now makes my stomach roil.
