The Rift Coda

“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

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.

“Fly there in stealth mode and report back verbally as soon as you get visuals,” I command.

“Okay,” he responds quickly. Levi and Ezra both shoot me a look.

“Look, he kept saying ‘affirmative.’ It was creepy. I asked him to be more casual with his responses,” I tell them both a little defensively. Levi rolls his eyes, but Ezra just keeps staring at me. I never told him the extent of what we acquired on the SenMach Earth—there was no time, with the whole deflowering me and then the going macho caveman act. I wasn’t exactly in the sharing mood. And now, I don’t even know what’s between us. He gave me an ultimatum to stop helping Levi with his Blood Lust. The fact that he thought he could give me an ultimatum at all made me angry. He had wanted me to choose, so I chose myself. I’ve had enough of people trying to control me. If he wanted to talk about it, fine. But at this moment, there are more important things to focus on … so I just ignore him.

We stand in silence and wait. I try to focus past the Faida’s anatomical machinery. I try to throw my hearing out beyond anything I can even begin to see. I filter out breath and heartbeats, growling stomachs and a low careening tone that is likely a Kir-Abisat thing, but I hear nothing else. I wonder if everyone on this Earth is dead.

“I have the base in visual range,” Doe’s voice says quietly. Arif looks at me and in that moment, I am anxious for him. “There are Faida on the ground and in the air.”

“What?” Arif exclaims as he half flies, half jumps beside me. “What are they doing? How many are there?”

“I told you. This program won’t answer your questions. It only follows my orders. Or Levi’s,” I say, trying to get him to back off a bit. “First things first. Doe, is there an active Rift here?”

“There is no Rift activity on my sensors.”

“Well, that could be good. If the Roones had won, you would assume they would just go back to business as usual.”

“Or maybe they are just exercising control. An open Rift isn’t necessary anymore. The Faida know the truth. At this point, Immigrants would just be a hassle,” Ezra points out astutely.

“We must go!” Arif says. He grabs my arm. I look at his hand and tense until he, very smartly, removes it. Softening his tone, he says, “Your drones are all very well and good, but unless they have the ability to see through walls, they won’t be able to provide us with any real information.”

“They can’t see through walls, but they can pick up life signs and read heat signatures. We should at least know how many Faida we’re dealing with and if there are any visible Roones,” I argue.

“You want us to wait? That is unacceptable! We must know if our comrades are alive. Ryn, you can’t tell me that if you were in my position you would be able to sit idly here.”

I sigh and run a hand over my scalp. My hair is up, in a messy topknot. The back of my head is sticky with dried blood, and the biopatch is beginning to chafe.

No, he’s right. I wouldn’t wait, but I would hope that there would be someone like me there to be objective. Someone who wasn’t involved emotionally and who could give me the most strategically viable option.

“It’s too risky to just go barging in, though. So why don’t you let Levi and me go down there. In our sensuits. We could get actual eyes on the situation.”

“Go down there? There is no down. Our base is a thousand feet in the air, inside a mountain. You can’t get there. And even if you could, you don’t speak our language. What could you possibly learn? I know of a place where we could land undetected.” Arif is almost frantic now. His wings are practically humming with energy.

“Just because you could land there before doesn’t mean you can now. If your side lost, the defenses would be shored up,” Levi says without hostility.

“You don’t know—”

“Ryn,” Doe voice says, and I raise a finger to silence Arif. “There is a squadron of fifty potential hostiles coming in from the east at 126 kilometers per hour. They will be at your location in less than a minute.”

“We have incoming,” I say to the group quickly as I inventory my options. If I open a Rift, we won’t have any answers. If this is not Arif’s faction but is instead a faction loyal to the altered Roones, we’re screwed. Obviously, they have some sort of device that trumps SenMach Rift cloaking.

I reach down into my pack and grab an extra sensuit, which I throw to Ezra. “Put this on,” I tell him. “Doe, have the sensuits go into stealth mode.”

“What is happening,” Arif says looking around wildly. “Where did you go?”

“I hope for your sake and ours that your side won, Arif. But if they didn’t, don’t let them take you alive.” I don’t feel great about throwing our newest potential allies to the wolves, but they did say they wanted to go home. If Arif and the rest lost, we are losing a squadron of Faida, which would be helpful for the sake of intel but wouldn’t make much of a dent in the numbers, not really. But that’s not why this is a massive risk, because if even one of them is captured and gives us up, we’ve lost before we’ve even begun. We might have forty-eight hours, tops, to warn our own people. But there is no “safe” when it comes to war. There is only risk and retreat. There is no point in retreat now. They already know we’re here.

Now, there is only hope.

I listen for Ezra’s heartbeat and find him. I touch him lightly on the hand and whisper, “Hush.”

The incoming Faida dive and land with such intensity that the ground quivers beneath our feet. I watch Arif and his troops. They have no ammo thanks to the pigs, so they have made themselves ready by taking a stance that is mostly crouched, presumably to take off in the air with considerable force. Everything is resting on a knife’s edge.

And then a Faida woman comes forward, and I watch Arif’s entire body relax. His arms lower, his legs straighten, and the look on his face goes beyond relief. It is almost ecstatic.

The woman he is looking at is all cheekbones and red curls. She does not smile. Her lips tremble, though, and she stops herself by covering her mouth with a single hand. Her other hand is outstretched, as if it has just received an impossible prayer in her palm. Or maybe she waiting for Arif to take it?

Arif says something in Faida and then—as with a jolt, as if he’s just now accepting what he’s seeing with his eyes—he races to her and they embrace tightly. I let go of the breath I was holding and lift my head to the sky. This all could have gone very badly. It still could. Whatever is transpiring between these two is fiercely intense. I almost feel like looking away, but there is too much at stake to allow them a private moment. Despite their intimacy, this woman could be compromised. Even worse, this could have been Arif’s plan all along—to get us right here, lulling us with stories of rebellion and spycraft. I put my hands on my holster, my fingers a breath away from the trigger of my sidearm.

The two of them begin speaking in Faida. It is a language as light and airy as their wings. Words fall into and over one another. It’s almost like Mandarin, but less nasal. I try to follow what they are saying, or at least the tone. For all my linguistic prowess, though, I have no idea. Finally, after a few minutes, Arif points over to where we’re standing, still in stealth mode. Our cover blown, I deactivate my suit, and Levi does the same. The woman walks over to me.

“My name is Navaa,” she tells me in Roonish without even the tiniest speck of emotion.

“Hello,” I say matching her deadpan tone.

“Arif tells me that you rescued our squadron from the Spiradael Earth. And while I am pleased at his return, I also find the circumstances unusually convenient.”

“Interesting,” I tell her as I plant my feet firmly in the ground, legs locked, shoulders back. I may not look like an angel, with the hair and the perfect skin and all, but I won’t be intimidated. “Because I felt exactly the same when I discovered your people were trapped on an Earth that wasn’t theirs.”

Navaa tilts her head to one side, eyeing me warily, as I do her. “I see,” she says slowly. She doesn’t trust me and I don’t trust her. I’m surprised that Arif himself isn’t being more cautious. How does he know that these Citadels haven’t been drugged by the altered Roones, forced to forget their rebellion and made to recommit to the other side by torture, psychological simulations, or both?

“You will come with us to our base. There are many questions, on both sides. But there are no answers here, not in this wasteland. It is a place so full of death and regrets I can’t concentrate.”

“No, wait.” Levi jumps forward. I look to him and then to Ezra, who speaks only English and Arabic. As annoyed as I am at him, I can’t help but feel badly at how lost he must feel. “How did you even know that we were here?” Levi continues. “There isn’t an active Rift on this Earth.”

Navaa locks her eyes onto my own. “I am a Kir-Abisat. I felt the Rift open the moment you arrived.” She continues to stare at me. There’s no misinterpreting that look. She knows. She knows that I am Kir-Abisat, too.

CHAPTER 4