The Rift Coda

I notice a large, wide staircase at the end of the room, but there is also a perilous-looking ledge. I peer over the edge, careful to keep my feet well away from the lip. There is a significant drop-off in the middle of the mountain, its cavernous wall lit by strips of LED lights.

“We are going up a level. It’s faster if you just let me take you up, all right?” Arif asks. Right. The Faida wouldn’t need elevators.

“That’s fine.” And once again I am swooped up in his arms. The flight is quick, maybe ten seconds or so. I’m sure I could have done the stairs in the same amount of time, but I have to admit, it’s an interesting way to get from one place to another inside a building. This next level is also cavernously large, but it is broken up by a labyrinth of walls and doors. Navaa places her hand on a metal scanner, presumably a security measure to lock and unlock the doors.

“You will wait in here until we are ready to question you and your colleagues. Please don’t misinterpret our wariness for rudeness. We can’t afford to let our guard down,” Navaa says.

“You’re going to separate us?” I ask, because she was clearly addressing me and me alone.

“Protocol,” she answers haughtily, while folding her slim fingers together. All things considered, I suppose I can understand that, though Levi’s stance has me worried. He’s deposited his weight to his feet, leaning forward just a fraction, the way he does when he’s about to fight. Ezra is watching us all, taking it in, going on body language alone, but he seems to be tensing, too. I don’t like the idea of us not remaining together, but as I am learning, when it comes to diplomacy, it’s all about concessions, agreeing to things that leave you feeling vulnerable. “I will take your bag for inspection,” Navaa orders.

Then again, diplomacy isn’t always the answer. I grip the handles on my pack lightly, to prove a point.

“Well, you can try. But then I’ll have to snap your wings off and open a Rift before you can call in reinforcements.” There are only six Faida. I am confident that Levi and I could neutralize them. They can lock me in a room. They can observe me, as I assume they will from the two-way mirror on the far side of the room. But they are not getting anywhere near my equipment.

Navaa has dropped her hands. Her blue-black wings look almost flexed. Her breathing has increased. Although she is ready to fight, I can’t help but get the sense that she doesn’t want to. For all her bravado, there are eggplant smudges, like tilted crescent moons, beneath her eyes. She is tired.

I know the feeling.

“Navaa, let the humans keep their things. They brought us home,” Arif tells her gently, placing a palm over her forearm.

Navaa answers in a lilting string of Faida. They argue gently back and forth until I see Navaa give a slight nod of her head and a weak groan of agreement. She walks briskly out the door, taking Levi and the remaining Faida with her. Ezra, though, obviously has no idea what’s going on.

“Ryn!”

“It’s okay, Ezra. They’re just separating us for a bit. I promise—it will be fine.”

His eyes are a little wild now, but he nods and follows the rest out of the room. Just before the door closes, I see Levi looking back at me, a smirk on his face at Ezra’s panic.

Jerk.

The ivory-colored room has the same high ceilings as the rest of the compound. A large wooden rectangular table is shoved up against a far wall with two upholstered wooden chairs. The setup seems odd. I drop my pack to the floor to investigate. I run my hand along the smooth edges of the grain. It’s thick. At least a foot, which is a strange depth for a table. I bend down and peek at the underside. A mattress is tucked into it, and a pillow and blanket are strapped there as well.

I maneuver the table by pulling it forward, then up and down. The legs bend back down the other way for stability. I have no idea how long I’m going to be stuck here. Given that I now have a bed, though, it could be a while. Clearly this isn’t just an interrogation room; it’s a brig. I step back and consider the walls. I notice an ever-so-slight fracture running down the length of one of them. I push it and hear a click and hiss. The wall retracts and a platform moves forward. It’s a toilet and a sink. Yeah. This could be an issue. I decide that I will be cool until it’s not time to be cool.

I retrieve my laptop and my wireless earbuds from the SenMachs. I know I am being watched, but they have no real idea what I can do, or more accurately what this computer can do, so I’m not all that worried.

“Doe,” I say in a hushed tone as I sit on the bed. “Quanti hoc possibile est in composito Faida?” As Levi did before we Rifted to this Earth, I decide that Latin is the best option. Have at it, you angel dicks, you can even watch me pee, but you don’t get to understand what I’m asking, namely, how many Faida there are in this base. Doe plays along, speaking in Latin as well, and tells me he can wirelessly connect to their computer files, but without direct access via the computer’s sentient component, the data may be incomplete. I instruct him to do his best with what he’s got and extrapolate if he has to.

“There are 388 Faida currently on this base. There are 622 not present but nearby.” I sigh and chew my bottom lip. This is both good and bad news. I like the numbers as allies, but if Navaa decides not to trust us, I don’t know how we’ll get past that many.

“Can you detect any Roones here?”

“Yes. There is one Roone present, although given this Roone’s location, I must conclude that he or she is being detained. The last Roone entries into the database are consistent with the rebellion Citadel Arif spoke of and I cannot detect their unique heat signatures.”

Well, I guess that’s good news, although prisoner or not, I’m not crazy about the idea that there’s an altered Roone here.

“Can you patch me through to Levi’s cuff?” I ask as I shuffle my butt around and give a little bounce. The bed is surprisingly soft. I didn’t think the Faida would care much about the comfort of their prisoners, but maybe they do.

“I can. Go ahead and speak,” Doe instructs me.

“Levi,” I say casually. All the evidence is pointing toward Arif’s account of what happened here and the current state of things being true. Navaa’s suspicions about us and the timing are not unwarranted. I don’t need to win her over exactly, but I can’t be acting like a spy. “Go get your earpiece and computer. Be casual about it.” I wait for a few seconds until I hear his voice.

“I’m here. I’m in some kind of a cell, but unharmed. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say softly in English, hoping they won’t understand it. “Listen, we need to use this time productively. Start learning the Faida language and ask Doe to download all files pertinent to the altered Roones, their experiments, and the rebellion. Once you learn the language you can begin to sift through it. I do believe Arif’s story, but better safe than sorry and the more intel we have, the better.”

“Copy that. I assume you’re going to begin to learn it as well?”

“I am, as a sign of good faith.”

There is a slight lag. “If that’s how you want to play it, okay. Besides, we either Rift out or let them call the shots, because we have zero advantage here.”

“Roger that. Let’s get to work.” Without my asking, Doe pulls up the Faida lexicon on the laptop. I don’t know how much time I have until someone begins to question us. I assume Arif is debriefing the rest of the Faida. I have to also assume he’ll want some alone time with his wife—will that come before or after they chat with us? No way to know.

I let my thoughts drift for just a moment, wondering about Arif having a wife. What would marriage even look like when you’re a Citadel? Well, it would probably look like what I’ve just seen with Arif and Navaa, spending the majority of your time thinking that your partner is either injured or dead. I’m not sure why anyone would sign up for that.

I spend the next four hours learning how to speak Faida. It is a fluid language with long pronounced O sounds and clipped S’s. I memorize the many different words the Faida have for flight. Heouine—flight during exceptional winds. Youshin—flight in the dark when the moon is full. Dawlbei—gliding flight on a wind from the Northeast. Kaisu—high-velocity flight. Theirs is a language that rarely uses metaphor or simile, presumably because there are so many different words to describe what English has only one or two for. While this makes it in some ways easier to learn than a language like ours—which can be deceptively confounding—its massive vocabulary pushes even my brain to the limit.

When I am finished, I close the laptop and lean back on the wall. I look up at the cathedral ceilings. I am sure that I could leap to one of the beams, which might give me some kind of advantage in a fight, but I need to be honest with myself about the situation we are in. If it does come down to a fight, I have already lost. On some level, I trusted the Faida enough to bring them here, to their turf. It’s a disturbing wake-up call to realize that I felt like this Earth was somehow safer than my own.

The large wooden door swings open and Navaa enters without asking. She doesn’t say anything, but she does place her delicate hands on the thick back of a chair and lift it so that she can sit down squarely in front of me.

“So you are a human Citadel. I must admit. You aren’t what I imagined.”

I glare at her, my eyes narrowing as I take her in. “I don’t know why. You’ve been to our Earth before. You’ve seen us already,” I answer her in Faida.

Navaa gives just the briefest shake of her head. “You can do that? You can learn our language in a matter of hours?”

“I can. Is that surprising? You know what we can do. What did you think us human Citadels were going to be like? Dumber? Moodier?”

Navaa folds her hands on her lap. Her fingers are so long and her nails so neatly trimmed and perfect, I’m not sure how she could possibly do much fighting with them. I look down at my own hands, which aren’t exactly ugly but are dry and nicked and calloused from punching and blocking and holding weapons.

“No,” Navaa answers. “I thought you would be outraged. You’re adolescents whose childhood was stolen. There is little doubt that you will die young. I assumed you would be angry. Instead you seem”—she tilts her head up and looks at the wall as if it was a window—“resigned.”

I lean forward on the bed, swinging my legs around. “That is true. In a way. Although I’m not necessarily resigned to dying young. I guess it’s more that I’ve accepted what’s been done to me because bitterness won’t serve me. It won’t help me figure out the truth, or what to do with the answers once I find them.”

“And you believe that we have the answers?” Navaa asks, even though I’m not sure it was a question exactly.

“I want to know what happened here. I want to learn from your mistakes because, clearly, despite your age and experience, you made several,” I tell her boldly.

Navaa raises a single, perfectly arched eyebrow. Her spine straightens. It’s clear she doesn’t want to relive any of it. Maybe it’s pride. Maybe it’s pain, but her mouth sets in a firm, straight line.

I’m being combative and I don’t necessarily mean to be. I’m just feeling anxious. The Faida are so extra … everything. It worries me that they of all races find themselves in this position. I clear my throat and try a softer tone. “You don’t want to have to justify anything to me. I get it. I understand how distracting my face must be to you. You think I’m young. You don’t think I could possibly understand.” I lean closer toward her and grab the bottom of the bed so tightly the wood creaks. Navaa looks at me for a moment, then speaks.

“I won’t make the mistake of underestimating our enemies or the creatures of our enemies ever again. I don’t doubt your skill or your intelligence, but you are correct. I fear your youth makes it impossible for you to grasp the scope of what is happening here.”

“Well,” I say, chortling back to her nervously, “that’s just not true. I mean, yes, it’s true that I’m finding it difficult to wrap my head around the entirety of this, but it’s not because I’m young. It’s because the situation is absurd and I’ve only come into possession of the facts—if that’s even what they are—a very short time ago. That’s why I’m here, to try and figure out fact from hyperbole. I took Arif at his word when he said you rebelled against the altered Roones, but I gotta say, you’re not doing a lot to get the whole trust ball rolling by throwing me in a cell.”