Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Amy S. Foster 2018

Cover illustration © Larry Rostant

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Amy S. Foster asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008190415

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008190408

Version: 2018-09-18

Dedication

For Vaughn, my warrior prince, who showed Ryn what was worth fighting for.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Amy S. Foster

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

“Stop scratching,” my mother commands tersely. Her fingers grip the steering wheel tightly and instead of the radio that is usually playing in the car, there is only silence. Even at seven years old I can tell that she is annoyed, but mostly, she is worried. I stare down at my slender, bony wrists. Even though it is October, I am wearing only a tank top and shorts. I cannot bear the weight of actual fabric on my skin, and even this little amount is torture. I grit my teeth. I can feel my face flush and a sheen of sweat starts to form on my forehead. I want to do as my mom says, but my skin is on fire.

I need to scratch.

I stare at my legs, two skinny toothpicks. They, like the rest of my body, are covered in red, angry welts. I have had this rash for three days. Seventy-two hours. During that time, I have slept for maybe ten of them, and my parents have survived on even less. No one knows what this is. Not my pediatrician and not the doctors at Doernbecker Hospital. Nothing has helped. I’ve had three shots of different medicines—exactly three more than I like. They put some kind of lotion and then a cream on the rash. I screamed in agony and threw up because it hurt so bad. So far, everything has just made it worse. I am trying not to cry. I have cried so much these last few days that my throat hurts and my eyes sting in the corners where the tears come out. I feel like the pictures I’ve seen of the deserts in Africa, empty except for miles and miles of sand that go on forever. That’s how I feel on the inside: like a thousand pounds of sand.

On the outside, all I want to do is scratch.

One of the doctors from the hospital has told us to go to another doctor in North Portland. A special doctor. This doctor only knows about skin and now my mom and I are driving there in the quiet car where I only hear my own heartbeat and my mother’s occasional muttering of swear words under her breath because of the traffic.

When we get to the address, I see that it is a normal office building, white and gray. This place doesn’t look all that special. In fact, it looks pretty shabby compared to the hospital and my own pediatrician’s fun and fancy office that even has a fish tank. We park the car near the entry and climb out of our seats. I am slow and deliberate.

“Come on, Ryn,” my mom says, a little calmer now that we’ve arrived. She reaches out and then pulls her hand back. If no one touches me, the rash is only itchy. If someone tries to do something else with it, even brush up against it, the rash gets angry and hurts me. Like it’s mad at someone else touching me. My mom opens the door and we walk up a flight of rickety stairs and end up in a hallway. She is looking for the name of the doctor on one of the doors. When she finds it, she opens it swiftly and we move inside. There is a small waiting room and a lady sitting at a desk behind thick glass. This is the same kind of thing that I have seen at our bank. The people who give out the money sit behind a clear wall like this. Maybe this doctor really is special. My mom does not seem to notice this. She is giving the lady our name. She is talking faster than normal. I hear the lady say through the tiny holes in the wall that our visit is covered by Doernbecker Hospital. My mother doesn’t understand.

“This is free?” she asks. Her accent is thicker now, the way it usually gets when she’s excited. She is Swedish. I speak Swedish, too. Why is my mom arguing about paying? Who cares? Let me in there behind the thick wall where the special medicine is so I can stop feeling like this!

“Don’t I have to fill out some forms or something?”

I sigh and look at a particularly large welt on my right hand.

“The hospital sent everything over. Let’s just get Ryn in to see the doctor right away,” the woman explains calmly. “Poor thing, she really looks bad.”

“Yes,” Mom snips, “of course she does. It’s—it’s just so unusual to not have to deal with paperwork.” I know this tone. This is the tone that makes me go to my room on my own without being told to.

“Well, it seems like your daughter has a very unusual rash,” the lady says while smiling at me. She is trying to be friendly, but I don’t like her smile. It’s too big. I hear a buzzing sound and a door opens. The lady ushers us inside past her desk and into an exam room. I do not want to sit. Sitting hurts. I stand in the middle of the room.

“You okay?” my mom asks. I just nod my head. I’m too tired to talk. After about five minutes, the door opens. It is not the doctor, but the lady again. She has a mug in her hand.

“I thought you could use this,” she says kindly as she thrusts it toward my mom. “I know you must be very anxious about Ryn. This is a valerian and chamomile tea to calm your nerves. I don’t know if they told you that while—of course—we believe in traditional Western medicine here, we also practice Eastern, homeopathic, and naturopathic medicine as well. This is a very holistic office.” My mom takes the mug and says thank you, and I can see she means it. She loves all that kind of stuff with plants and yoga and juices. The lady stays and watches my mom drink the tea. No one is saying anything and it feels weird.

After a few minutes, the lady leaves again and immediately there is a light knocking on the door. She doesn’t wait for us to answer. She just walks right inside. I thought the doctor would be a boy. I am happy that it is a girl because girls are better.

“Ohhh,” the doctor says, looking me up and down with sympathy. “That looks sore, Ryn. Let’s see what we can do about it.” The doctor looks at my mom and says very sweetly, but firmly, “You should wait outside.” My mom blinks. She looks at me and her eyes frown. I don’t want my mom to go. I want my mom to stay. “I should wait outside,” she says stiffly and she does. She actually leaves!

“I want my mom,” I say to the doctor. She is a tiny woman with very dark skin and bright blue eyes.

“Well, you can have your mom or you can get rid of that rash. You choose.” That doesn’t seem fair at all. My mom never leaves me in the doctor’s office alone. I stare for a quick minute at the doctor who is just looking at me. Her eyes are raised and her eyebrows would be, too, but she is bald there. Her skin is almost shiny.

“I guess I want you to fix the rash,” I tell her.

“Excellent,” she says as she walks over to a cupboard above a counter with a sink. She opens the cupboard door and takes out a package. “Now, I’m going to have to give you a shot. I am not going to lie to you. It’s a big shot and it will hurt. But I promise—as soon as I give it to you, the rash will go away.” My bottom lip starts to quiver. I hate shots. I’ve already had three! This room is cold. I want my mom. I try not to let the tears fall. Not because I care about being brave, but because the tears actually hurt my face. Doctors don’t lie. If this doctor says she can fix the rash, then she can.

“Okay,” I say quietly. I don’t watch her as she gets the needle ready. I don’t want to know how big it is. I close my eyes. I just have to get through this next part and then I will be better. The truth is, I’d probably take a hundred shots to get rid of this rash. The doctor moves quickly and without warning I feel the sting in my arm. It really hurts. It isn’t the quick kind of shot the nurses usually give out. This is taking a long time. Real long. But after about five seconds, my skin stops itching. After ten seconds, I feel the doctor pulling the needle out.

I look down at my legs and the backs of my hands and I watch the bright red spots begin to fade. They disappear almost immediately. It doesn’t take long at all for the entire rash to be gone. I let out a long steady breath.

“You fixed me,” I tell her.

“Yes. I’ve made you better, but now we have to make sure the rash never comes back.” The doctor is standing behind me and she places her hands, which aren’t that much bigger than mine, actually, on my shoulders. “You’ve been very brave so far, Ryn, and now you must continue to be brave.”

“I must continue to be brave,” I say. At least, I think I say that. I don’t remember thinking it. I don’t remember agreeing with her in my mind.

“Lie down on the table. Not on your back, but your front. There is a little cradle for your face.” Lying down on that table is the last thing I want to do. I want to go and see my mom, but my legs move toward the exam table anyway. I’m shocked to find that I am doing exactly what she has ordered. I feel the doctor move my hair up and away so that it is falling over the headrest. My blond locks are scraggy and unbrushed because of the rash.

“I am going to do a biopsy. That’s the word I want you to remember when we talk to your mother. I have to do this in a special place, right at your hairline on the back of your neck. So first, I’m going to shave the area.”

“Biopsy,” I repeat. I can’t really see anything from this vantage, just the middle section of her body, but it’s enough to notice the razor in her hand. I feel a cool liquid on my neck and the funny tickling sensation of my hair being shaved.

“Now I’m going to give you a bunch of tiny needles to freeze the area. These won’t hurt like the last one I gave you. Just lie still.” I want to jump up. More shots! I don’t want more shots! I want my mom and I want to get out of here but I can’t move.

But I am lying still just like the doctor told me to. Why is my body listening to her when my brain doesn’t want to?

I feel the teeny pinpricks go into my head. They actually don’t hurt all that much, but I am getting another feeling, like, suddenly, this is all very wrong. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be letting this doctor do this to me. When I see her remove the large scalpel from a paper container, I lift my head up. I stare at the doctor, who seems genuinely baffled that I am looking at her.

“I told you to lie still,” she says calmly. I put my face back in the cradle, but every instinct I have is screaming to get up. The doctor gets closer and just as she is about to move into position above me I jolt up and grab her arm.

I am no longer seven.

I am no longer wearing a tank top and shorts. I am in full uniform and I am ten years older. I watch as the doctor’s face morphs. Her eyes, as blue as a neon sign at night, get bigger and wider. Her body shrinks. Her hair disappears and her skin, which was already dark, becomes jet-black and reflects the fluorescent lights from above.

“You will let me do this to you,” she tells me. Any warmth she may have had has been drained from her tone.

“No …” I say firmly, “I won’t.” She tries to move her hand, the one with the scalpel in it. She can’t. She raises her other hand and I grab that, too, so that we are locked in a bizarre kind of dance. Her wrists are as hard as rock but I know, deep inside, that I am stronger than her. I can beat her. I can kill her. Yet when I kick her in the stomach, expecting her to go flying, she barely moves.

What’s happening? This isn’t right. My strength is waning. She is getting the upper hand. She pushes me back against the table, whips me around, and shoves my head into the tissue paper cover.

“Stop! Edo! Stop it!” I beg.

“You cannot beat me, Ryn. And why would you want to when I am about to give you such an extraordinary gift?” She sounds almost seductive in that raspy inhuman voice of hers.

“I don’t want it. Please, please.”

But her hand remains on my neck and I am stuck. I feel the slow painful drag of the scalpel—which is also wrong. She gave me anesthetic to numb this area, but it still hurts. I scream out loud. I am squirming and kicking, but I can’t get away. I begin to truly panic when I see the little black box in her tiny childlike hand. I know what it is. I know what it will do to me. It will change me. It will turn me into a Citadel, a soldier, a monster. She shoves it into my open wound with brutal intensity.

“No! No!” I keep yelling, begging, screaming, but it’s done. I can’t undo this. I can take the box out, but I can’t change what it did to me all those years ago. The fight goes out of me and a single tear leaks out of my eyelid. It’s hopeless.

“Ryn!” I hear another voice calling me from far away. It sounds like it’s coming from another room. The waiting room? My mother? But, no, this is a male voice. “Ryn, wake up! It’s just a dream! If you keep jerking your head around, you’re going to open up the cut again. Ryn!

“Ryn!”

I’m asleep.

I cannot be asleep.

CHAPTER 2

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

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

Arif carries me in his arms. I expect it to feel dangerous. I expect my own control freak issues to take over and hate that I’m at Arif’s mercy, but I’m wrong. In the drag and drift of his movements, I find a sort of peace on the airy current. It’s so quiet up here. There’s just Arif’s heartbeat and the wind, which blows like a tiny whistle.

The base is indeed set inside a mountain. It is majestic and imposing, but it is not weathered or aged. This place looks new and gleaming. From what I can see there are six stories, separated by huge panels of tinted glass and metal beams. The metal isn’t silver or steel, but a sort of copper color, almost the same color as the mountain itself.

Every other floor has a massive length of decking, which must almost certainly be used as launching pads. What a sight it would be, to watch thousands of Citadels take off from this vantage. Terrifying sure, but beautiful nonetheless.

Arif angles us vertically. He hovers for a second or two, I suppose to lose his momentum, and then he softly touches down and deposits me on the concrete landing. “Navaa will want to debrief me. And then she will debrief you. I hope you will not be insulted by this security measure. I’m sure you can understand her reluctance, just as we understood yours,” Arif says quietly in my ear.

“I can absolutely understand it, as long as you understand just because your girlfriend seems like she’s in charge doesn’t necessarily mean that she is,” I warn as I watch the rest of our party land. Levi’s jaw is set determinedly and Ezra … well, actually he looks a little joyous. And as annoyed as I am that he doesn’t seem to understand the seriousness of the situation, I’m also a bit jealous that he can be like that, that he has the ability to live inside a moment without thinking of a thousand things that might be coming next.

I turn back to Arif in time for him to say, “Navaa is not my girlfriend. She is my wife. No one is controlling her. The drugs don’t even work on her.”

“Oh. Well, you must be very happy that she is safe, then,” I tell him honestly. Arif just nods briefly. It seems more and more that the Faida are a reserved people, logical, tightly wound.

“I am feeling many things at once. Of course I am happy, but I am also concerned. I have no idea what happened in our absence and no clue as to how many casualties we suffered to achieve our goal.”

“Understandable,” I say as the massive windows slide back automatically. Navaa is at my side once again. She doesn’t touch me, but we are herded nonetheless into the building. The ceilings are high enough for me to have to crane my neck to see them. There is technology here—monitors surveilling our surroundings and computer terminals. Each of the stations stands tall and isolated, almost like a kiosk at an airport for checking in. There are no desks and no seats. I guess the Faida don’t sit around.

The walls are white and bare, but there are wooden beams to break up the space. While this base looks modern, it also has a strange sort of rustic feel to it as well. I suppose you get to a point in your technological evolution where you want to hold on to things from the past so that you don’t get too far away from who you were. Humans haven’t gotten there yet. We’re still at keyboards and plasma screens.

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.”

Navaa shakes her long strawberry trusses as if we’re in some kind of a shampoo commercial instead of what this actually is. An interrogation. “Oh, come now,” she practically purrs. “We’re both soldiers. You must have known a debrief was necessary. Besides, I’ve never seen a human Kir-Abisat. You are untrained and therefore dangerous. I can’t allow you into the general population until I have a better understanding of your relationship with Rift matter.”

“Yeah,” I tell her uncomfortably. “Let’s table that just for a minute. The whole Kir thing—I’m just trying to get some answers to a few of the basics first. Why don’t you tell me what happened here. How did you win?”

Navaa’s jaw sets, making her heart-shaped face almost square. “I would hardly say we won. We survived. Some of us, and just barely.”

I shake my head warily. “I don’t get it. You knew. You all knew what the altered Roones were capable of. How could there have been dissension among the ranks?”

“Power is intoxicating. The Faida are a proud and privileged people, and the Roones played on that pride and that sense of superiority. I couldn’t have imagined that we, who had seen so much, who had persevered through eras of infighting and bloodshed, could ever be seduced into believing that some of us were better than others. That those of us who had been altered were more deserving of authority and command because of genetics, but that’s what happened.”

I scratch my head. “So it was ego? God complexes?” I ask in disbelief, because despite how they look, they really do seem like they’d moved beyond all that, like they were more evolved as an entire race—and not just the genetically altered ones.

Navaa huffs out a sarcastic, two-syllable laugh. “Yes, in the most basic of terms, I suppose it was. And those of us who opposed that kind of thinking were ultimately naive enough to think we could win because we had morality on our side. But we weren’t that naive.” As she says this, Navaa straightens the fabric of her uniform, as if it could wrinkle, with her palms. “Even before we told every single Citadel what we had uncovered, we began to build a weapon. A sound barrier that could block a QOINS’s ability to function. It was our intention to rally the Citadels, throw out the Roones and any Karekin—excuse me, Settiku Hesh—forces they might deploy, and use the weapon, but we didn’t know that so many of us would side with the altered Roones. It’s not like the fighting started immediately.”

I let Navaa’s words bloom in my brain. I imagine all the different outcomes and strategies and plans. The Faida are not human, and they are certainly not teenagers. They are thoughtful, cautious even. They probably would have talked, a lot, before they started killing one another. “So you told the truth and you began to get pushback. That’s when you realized you might need other Citadel races and then you sent out recon parties to see if there might be any help on that front. That’s why Arif was on the Spiradael Earth.”

“Exactly.” Navaa answers with such force that her voice bounces and echoes off the tall plaster walls of the cell. “But after Arif left, things escalated very quickly. It was only days, really. The Settiku Hesh troops started coming in alarming numbers and we had to deploy the sound blockade. After that, there was no more room for diplomacy. The war began in earnest. Between the Settiku Hesh and the loyalists we lost almost sixty percent of our Citadels, though we have re-created the formula in our own labs and we have increased our numbers back up to fifty-two percent.”

“And what about the altered Roones that were here?”

“Very few were stationed on this Earth. We executed them,” she says, almost casually.

“All except for one. There is one, right? And you’re still making more Citadels. Don’t you think, after everything you went through, that might not be the smartest move?” I ask her with genuine curiosity.

An ever-so-slight flicker of disgust flashes over Navaa’s face. “How did you know about him?”

“Technology, from our travels in the Multiverse,” I tell her honestly. The SenMachs are going to play a part in this and the Faida are going to be all over it. For now, though, I’m sticking to the topic at hand.

Perhaps surprisingly, Navaa doesn’t press. Instead, she gives me a sly half smile. “We have a single Roone prisoner whose mind is so broken that he’s mostly catatonic with intermittent episodes of lunacy. We keep him only to open a Rift to the original Roone Earth when the time comes for it. As for the Citadels … the sound blockade was a stopgap. Your naïveté, is it genuine? Or some sort of ploy?”

I throw my hands up in the air and thrust my neck forward. “A ploy for what? I want this to end. That means fewer Citadels in the Multiverse, not more.”

Navaa grunts and folds her arms. “Do you truly not understand what a threat we are? The fact that you, a human, are sitting here on this Earth, is changing the balance of power. The altered Roones will find a way through and they will slaughter us all. It’s going to take more than an army of Citadels to defeat them—it’s going to take legions of armies. It is a risk, creating more Citadels, but believe me when I tell you that it is far more of a risk to be without them in a battle.”

I close my eyes. I gently stroke the delicate paper-like skin of my lids with my fingers. I am built for war. I am built to lie. I was made to protect my Earth, but this room is getting too loud. Each one of Navaa’s words feels like a lit match thrown at my face. It’s just too much. There are so many worlds, hundreds of thousands of troops. I know I have to find my way through this, but I ache, and not just physically. My personal life is a disaster and I suddenly feel so crushingly alone that I’m tempted to open a Rift right in that tall, slim cell and go home to my team. I need my friends. I need people around me that I know, really know.

I put both hands on my head and squeeze. I can’t leave, but everything is starting to buzz, or maybe it’s just me. I think about it more and realize that, actually, I am the one who’s buzzing.

“How did you get through the sound barricade?” Navaa’s voice cuts through the noise.

I look up at her and squint. “I told you. We made friends in the Multiverse,” I tell her, maybe a little too loudly, just so I can hear myself. “They gave us some toys. Don’t worry, though—we’re the only ones with this tech. For one thing, the Roones don’t know where their Earth is and even if they did, this particular race will only share with humans. I’m not saying they’re invulnerable, but they’re pretty damn close.”

I put my head in my hands and drag my fingernails across my scalp. I want to get out of here, but mostly I just want this woman to leave me alone. There is a steady thumping to my headache. The pain is keeping time. If I could just lie down, maybe put a pillow over my head, this screeching in my ears would go away.

I wasn’t looking, so it is a surprise when I feel the weight of Navaa’s body sink into the bed beside me. “Our alliance is new and fragile,” she tells me softly. “And, honestly, in this moment, I am less concerned with sizing you up as a human or a soldier than I am with your Kir-Abisat gift. It is a very distinct kind of pain you are feeling right now, with a distinct presentation. Even though we are not the same species, I recognize it on your face and it tells me the Kir-Abisat is controlling you instead of the other way around.”

“You can literally see it on my face?” I ask in surprise.

“Yes, but also, I can hear it. We do not sound the same, because we are from different Earths, but because we are both Kir-Abisat, there is an additional shared tonal layer. It’s like the same instrument being used in two different songs. I know that does not make sense to you right now, but it will.”

“All right,” I concede, sighing in frustration. “But why?” I ask, trying very hard not to whine. “Why make a person do what a machine can do better? It’s so …” I search for the Faida word. I want to say Marvel-esque, but that won’t do, so I say a word that means “fairy tale” or possibly “mythic.”

“Look, I cannot tell you why the Roones are so obsessed with the Kir-Abisat. What I can do is help you navigate this gift if you’ll let me. By that same token, you have to trust that it can be dangerous, not just for you, but for everyone around you. You have to let me see how far this ability has progressed before I can let you around my people.”

I look up into her ice blue eyes. There is distance there, but compassion, too. “I can’t hurt anyone. I mean …” I tell her as I backpedal out of a lie, “obviously, I can hurt people, but right now the only person being hurt by the gift is me. It’s like someone shoved twenty songs inside of my brain and cranked up the volume all the way.”

“Yes. It’s like that. But I can teach you how to turn down that noise. Help you build an internal system to turn it up or down at will. Hearing people or creatures from other Earths is not the true legacy of the Kir-Abisat, it’s simply a side effect or a symptom. Always, our cells are yearning to open a Rift.”

I try to take this in. Arif said as much, but it seems impossible. Literally. Like, scientifically in a world where there is no real Hogwarts, opening a door to the Multiverse defies physics.

“I can see that you are having a problem believing me. So I suppose I must show you.” Navaa taps on her earpiece. “Rotesse, please drop the sound blockade for three minutes.” Navaa lays a confident hand on my shoulder. I’m not loving the idea of being touched by her, especially while I don’t feel at my fighting best, but I suppose I’ll have to go with it.

Navaa’s eyes slowly close. She takes three deep breaths. Then, the very air in the small space becomes charged, and there is a smell. It reminds me of the woods at the base when the sky goes yellow, right before a big storm breaks. Navaa opens her mouth and, well, it isn’t singing as much as her own vocal cords being bowed over one another. It’s more instrumental than simple humming.

I can feel the power she is pulling from me. This is my tone, from my Earth that I’m hearing, the one that’s playing at the same frequency in my head. And then, I see it. At first it is a tiny dot of green. A neon speck that begins to spin out like a pinwheel firecracker. The noise in my head goes away. The proximity of the Rift is somehow dampening it. The green looms larger and larger, changing color and form from eggplant purple to jet-black. This is the Rift to my home. Navaa has actually done it.

My mouth gapes and then she takes her hand off my shoulder and the portal closes in on itself and disappears. Navaa simply looks at me with her eyebrows raised.

“How many Citadels can do this?” I ask in a rush. I don’t know what just happened. I’m not even sure something did happen. It must have, but I can’t get my mind to believe what my eyes have just seen.

“I don’t have exact numbers. Eighty-seven on this Earth. I don’t think the Karekin or Settiku Hesh have this ability, and I’m fairly certain they didn’t give this mutation to the Akshaji because they are too unpredictable.”

“That’s a diplomatic way of saying they seem to like all the killing, right?”

“Yes. The Akshaji are a race we haven’t had any luck with in terms of recon. Hopefully, with the humans as allies, that will change. Either way, I don’t know. It could be hundreds, or thousands. I don’t even know if the gift works the same way in all the different races.”

“And you really don’t know why? I mean it’s a cool trick, but we’re soldiers. They trained us to fight big scary things. How does this ability help with that?”

“I honestly do not know. My best guess is to have a force of Citadels that can ferret out and capture enemies that are hiding on an Earth they don’t belong in. Rogue Rifters cannot hide from a Kir-Abisat.” All I can do is sigh in frustration. The Faida may look like celestial beings, but they certainly don’t have all the answers.

She must sense my anxiety. “I am offering my help. It isn’t easy, but as a Citadel you already understand discipline and focus. You have the tools. I can teach you how to use them. However …”

“However, it requires trust, from both of us,” I finish for her.

She nods.

There’s nothing I would love more than to trust the Faida completely, but they are wily and arrogant. Sure, I think they want to be on the same side as the humans in defeating the Roones, but I get the feeling that they want to be in charge—both during and after. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this whole crazy mess it’s that I’m not giving up my power to anyone, ever again. Still, if things continue going as they are, I won’t be much use to anyone in this condition. I don’t think I have much of a choice.

“I can see how I would have to trust you,” I begin as I fold my hands together on my lap. I want Navaa to see that I’m open, amiable. “I don’t know why you would need to trust me. I can’t transfer this noise into your head.”

“No. But you could open a Rift and I could get drawn into it. That’s why I need to get a gauge on how far this ability of yours goes. What if your trigger is emotion? What if you’re angry while walking down one of our hallways and accidentally open a Rift there? I don’t know what you can do, so I need you to show me, to prove you aren’t a threat.”

“But the sound blockade—” I begin to protest.

“You got through the sound blockade. Maybe it was your enhanced technology, but maybe not.”

“Fine,” I tell her because something has to give, one way or another. “What do I have to do?”

CHAPTER 5

Navaa rises gracefully from the bed and walks across the concrete floor. “Stand.” Navaa has both arms reached out, palms up. I go over to her and put myself in front of her hands. “May I touch you?”

I’m not gay or bi and on this Earth pansexuality could be the norm or it could be unheard of, so it doesn’t really matter, but I joke anyway, “Aren’t you worried about the Blood Lust?”

“‘Blood Lust?’”

“Yeah—you know …”

And then it hits me: she may not know. I think of how easily Arif took me in his arms and carried me up to the level with our rooms. He didn’t even hesitate. Do they all have control over it, or …

“The Roones—they didn’t … change you, did they? Turn your sexuality against you?”

“What? How do you mean?”

So I tell her. About the abuse we’d experienced, and how it manifested. I gloss over some of the parts—no need for her to learn about the soap opera developing between me and Ezra—but for some reason it feels good to tell someone else who would actually understand what it means to be manipulated by the Roones.

After a moment, the look around Navaa’s eyes softens, but the last thing I want is pity. They don’t have the Blood Lust, but then again, neither do I now.

“Do whatever you need to,” I tell her quickly, wanting to be done with this conversation. Still, my instincts are hammering away at my gut like a battering ram. Not because of the Blood Lust, but just at the thought of making myself so vulnerable to such a powerful woman.

“I’m just going to place my hands on your shoulders,” she tells me as she does so. “It is easy to get lost in the noise and it’s important that you have an anchor in these early stages. You may experience vertigo or lose your sense of time and space. The pressure of my fingers will remind you that you are here and you are not falling.”

“Great. Sounds awesome,” I say in English under my breath.

Navaa chooses to ignore me, but I think she gets the tone. “Now, close your eyes and focus on the sounds inside of your mind. The pain is coming from dissonance. The strongest frequency is the one that belongs to you, but the others are fragments of tones that you have pulled along with you from the Rift. You are the boat, the water is the Rift, and the wake is all the different Earths that linger.”

I do as Navaa instructs, or at least I try to. It isn’t just a question of hearing all these different tones. If it was only hearing, I could probably ignore it or tune it out. But the sounds are trapped inside of me and not just in my brain. There isn’t a stretch of my skin or a bone or a joint that isn’t filled with noise. Navaa had been right. Giving in to this is disorienting and I am surprisingly glad of her sure and steady hands on my shoulders. “All you are hearing right now is the disparate tones, but what you can’t yet discern is the rhythm. This is what regulates this ability. We are all creatures of rhythm. Our hearts beat steadily. Our pulse and blood keep the same time. There is a clock inside of every living creature that tells us when to sleep and when to awaken. This is what you must tap into. Start with your own heartbeat. Find it. Concentrate on that.”

Navaa takes my hand and pushes it up to my neck, to my carotid artery, and I am grateful. I’m not sure I would have found it without being able to actually feel it first.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Once I lock on to it, I wrap it around me like a blanket knit of heat and sinew. I find my pulse everywhere—inside my chest, in the veins running up and down my arms—and slowly, the noise, which was a constant thrum, begins to echo in the short bursts of my own beating heart.

“I have it,” I tell her.

“Excellent, just keep at it. Hold on to it. Its nature will change. The Kir-Abisat is like an excited animal snarling and leaping, pulling against its leash, but eventually, your focus will make it heel. Tell me when you get to the point that aligning the noise with the rhythm is no longer a struggle.”

Navaa’s analogy is a good one. This ability of mine feels wild and untethered, but after a few long moments, the fight in it subsides. My head doesn’t hurt. The sound is there, pulsing, but it’s like hearing music in another room. “Okay, okay, it’s more controlled now,” I tell my guide.

“That’s good. That was fast. Let’s just see, shall we, if we can get you to sing one of those tones. Perhaps the loudest one, the song from home.”

“Wait, what?” I ask, my eyes flying open. “I’m not ready to do that. I don’t know if I ever want to do that. I’m only listening to you now because I don’t want to walk around with an amplifier in my head all the time.”

“Some people are afraid of weapons,” Navaa’s voice lulls just inches away from my ear. “They find it distasteful to even touch one. A soldier does not have that kind of philosophical leeway. If it’s possible for you to open a Rift, then you must learn how. You cannot waste the tactical advantage.”

Damn—she’s right. Of course she’s right. But there is something about this that terrifies me.

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” I tell Navaa honestly.

“It’s a question of multitasking,” she tells me. I look slightly over my shoulder at her tapered fingers and the slight curve of a wing. “It’s like playing an instrument. You must always keep time; your muscles know how to keep the beat going, but then your fingers play the melody. This is no different.”

I did use to play the cello. I would have never made it professionally as a musician, but I had some talent. Maybe that’s why the Roones chose to insert this mutation into my genome. “Fine. All right,” I relent. “You want me to sing?”

“I want you to become the tone. You start with your voice, but you must try to pull it out from every inch of your being. It should feel more like a meditation than singing a simple song.”

I close my eyes again. The noise is still tethered to my heartbeat, but with considerable effort I am able to find the strongest frequency. I clamp down with my molars. This feels dumb and wrong, but I suppose I have to see how far this ability goes as much for Navaa as for myself. I begin to hum with clenched teeth, matching my own pitch to the one I hear. And then, something shifts. I feel my entire body relax as if I was slipping into a warm bath. I open my mouth and eyes and continue to sing, although that word no longer applies. Navaa is right. The frequency of home infiltrates every cell of my body. I become the tone.

Within seconds a green neon dot appears on the plaster wall in front of us. The dot begins to spread out, but only a little. It isn’t the spinning pinwheel of Navaa’s Kir-Abisat. This is a shimmering circle. It is a small, glimmering thing, certainly not big enough for me, or anyone else to slip through unless they were action figure size. I sing louder but the circle doesn’t grow, and it doesn’t change into the inky black of a Rift that’s ready to take on riders.

“Stop,” Navaa says loudly.

“What? I can do it. I think. Maybe?”

I turn around and face Navaa. Her heart rate has increased and there is a faint crease between her brows.

“Possibly,” she says with concern. “But you shouldn’t have been able to get that far. The sound blockade is up again.”

I practically grunt in frustration. “Then why did you have me even try?”

“I wanted to see and now I know. Your Kir-Abisat gene has expressed itself differently. Like everything else with the humans.

“The Roones have made you stronger.”

CHAPTER 6

Navaa has said nothing more about what had transpired in the cell. I don’t think she’s concerned that I will open a giant Rift because of a bad mood or because someone pissed me off. I’m nowhere near being able to do that, even by accident. Still, I’m quite impressed with my first attempt at opening a Rift. It wasn’t anywhere near usable, but it was green. However, I am an unknown. I think she had dismissed us human Citadels as petulant and possibly easy to maneuver. Spending time with me, she is beginning to understand that while we are young, we have been forged in pain and sacrifice, just as her own people were. Our strength and my Kir-Abisat ability is not what she expected. Soldiers don’t like the unexpected.

She has taken me to the floor above. Well, she flew there in the cave elevator. I took the stairs. These are the living quarters, large wooden doors running down what looks like an almost endless hallway. There are plush rugs on a wide-planked floor and gorgeous oil pictures with no frames. The Faida are confounding. They enjoy their luxuries, but don’t seem to want to admit that they do.

My room is across from Levi’s and beside Ezra’s. I have promised Navaa that she can look at our SenMach computers, as long as all of us are present. She is concerned about the sound blockade and the technology we used to get through it. I told her that even her most gifted computer scientists would not be able to get into our system. I understand why she’d be worried, though, and there might be something that we can do to help boost the sound blockade’s efficiency without it interfering with us being able to Rift out if somehow this all goes to shit (which, let’s face it, is a distinct possibility given my luck).

I dump my things in my room and take a look at the accommodation. The bed is unnaturally large with a fluffy duvet that must be three inches thick. Several leather books are lined up in a built-in bookshelf, and a delicate glass lamp sits on a bedside table. There is also a tall wooden armoire. When I open the two doors, I expect to see maybe a TV, but there are only hangers and drawers. Are humans the only race to have TV? I feel like we might be. Those bear people certainly aren’t sitting around watching some bear equivalent to Downton Abbey, that’s for sure. I continue my exploration of the room and find a small electronic panel on the wall hidden behind a piece of carved wood. There are controls here, for the lights and temperature. There is also a mystery button, which I push. Suddenly, two Faida are in the room speaking about the current unrest. I crane my neck and find a holographic projection system in the corners of the ceiling. It makes sense; the two are arguing in a studio behind a large desk, so the image isn’t life-size and I can tell it isn’t real—more like a diorama. I press the button again. If this is what passes for entertainment on the Faida Earth, no thanks. Even if there is a way to change the channel, it seems like a pretty dumb question to ask given what’s going on. Besides, my head is still pounding, and my hair and neck are sticky from the pig debacle. I have done enough today. More than enough. It’s time for a shower and that insanely comfortable-looking bed.

The next morning everyone assembles in the mess hall for breakfast. Like everywhere else on the compound, the dining room is awash with contradictions. The tables are all rustic wood but covered in fancy, starched white tablecloths. Food is set up buffet style in large ceramic dishes over blue flame warmers on either side of the room.

The three of us humans sit together at a table in awkward silence. I’m not exactly sure what it is that I’m eating. I think it’s a sort of oatmeal, it’s the same color, anyway, but it tastes more of corn and cinnamon. There is enough to look at so that we don’t have to look at one another. The Faida Citadels with their angel-like plumage are gape worthy. Is no one ugly on this Earth? Or even average? I don’t know their long and intricate history, but if I had to guess, I would say somewhere along the way there was some kind of eugenics program. It wouldn’t just explain their common coloring, but also why they would be so casual about the altered Roones “perfecting” their genome. I’m white—super white—but the lack of diversity among the Faida makes me intensely uncomfortable. I stare at the mushy lumps in my bowl, at the unblemished tablecloth and the wooden fork that looks like something you could buy on Etsy. I look at everything except the two young men I am seated with.

I wonder if the Faida catch this. I am hoping from their perspective the fact that we aren’t gabbing makes us look more badass. I would be mortified if they knew this is teenage drama being played out in front of all of them.

When we are done, we are escorted down two levels to the science lab. This place, at least, has very little of the rustic charm that has otherwise been inescapable here. There are wood beams of course, buttressing the ceiling, but other than that there are actual stainless steel and computers. The huge room is sectioned off. On the far right, based on the refrigerators and freezers and various microscopes, I’m guessing it’s for biologists or chemists or both. There is another area with equipment that I don’t recognize but looks pretty high-tech—although that’s pretty relative at this point considering I’ve been to an Earth populated by robots.

We are herded into a space with multiple terminals and what looks like a long line of data storage towers, blinking red and orange, lined up against the wall. Navaa and Arif introduce us to Hanniah, who is clearly a scientist (lab coat). Not sure if she’s a Citadel, even less sure if that matters. We ask Doe to show them the code that boosted our QOINS and begin to work on their sound blockade. Ezra is intrigued entirely by this tech—even more so when one of the glowing tendrils shocks the hell out of him when he attempts to tamper with the space bar.

Ezra volunteers to stay, which is convenient because I was going to ask him to anyway. Levi and I excuse ourselves. Ezra is so enraptured that he barely notices, which leaves me feeling surprisingly relieved.

Arif catches up with us on our way out of the lab. “We have a busy day today,” he says amiably. “However, one of the other Citadels can show you around the compound, even take you out of it and into the city if you wish.”

I glance at Levi. We have a body language shorthand now. One slight tilt of the head. A furtive look to the right. I know we are both thinking the same thing.

“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

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.

“What you are looking at is over fifty-seven shrines that both our flyovers and the Roone drones have photographed. These are temples dedicated to the altered Roones. We knew they had cast themselves as deities, but we didn’t realize it was to the entire planet. Every Orsaline believes the altered Roones are their gods, not just the Citadels.”

I take a closer look at the “shrines,” squinting as I inspect them on the screen. They are massive multicolored spheres, clearly representing the bald heads of the altered Roones. Some are just three or four rocks in neat pile, while others are actual structures (of a sort) with doorways. The images show Orsalines making their way in and out of them with offerings of … rocks …

Typical.

“We made two recon trips before the sound blockade went up,” Sidra, head of the Faida’s intelligence unit, offers. She speaks with a lulling cadence. This must be muscle memory for her vocal cords. No doubt she’s been trained to keep people at ease, to get them to open up and offer their secrets. Torture really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes, all a person needs is to feel like they have someone who’s on their side, someone who understands. Sidra, with her pearly white wings and long curly ashy-blond locks is clearly that kind of operative. “The Orsalines were living in huts when the altered Roones arrived. They were given an origin story, a bible of sorts—they aren’t big readers. The Orsalines may or may not have been drugged, but they have most certainly been brainwashed. To go against an altered Roone would be akin to blasphemy.”

“Levi and I were worried about this; they’re zealots,” I chime in. “Extremists and extremely stupid. I still find it hard to believe that given the altered Roones’ MO that they would even waste their time genetically enhancing such an infantile race.”

“Sometimes it’s good to have foot soldiers,” Donav, the munitions officer says. “Put the dumb ones in front. Let them get the worst of it. But also see what kind of damage they can do—and these guys can do some serious damage. It’s a good way to make sure that your best soldiers survive.” Donav’s voice is a syrupy baritone. I could listen to him all day, mostly because he would be talking about guns and explosives. And also—cheekbones.

Seriously, with his red hair, he’s like an insanely hot Archie Andrews with Batman’s toys.

I force myself to respond to what he’s saying, and not what my mind is imagining.

“Right,” I say. “So my feeling is that if an entire race of people have proof—well, what they think is proof—of the divine, I don’t think that’s something we could shut down. Even if we got one and explained what was going on, I doubt they’d understand it.”

“That’s our assessment as well,” Navaa said, nodding. “An Orsaline alliance is not an option. So that makes two Citadel races solidly for the altered Roones.” There’s a clear thread of frustration running through her voice.

“So what about the Daithi? Did you ever send a recon team there?” I ask hopefully.

“We did, but the sound blockade went up before they could return home,” Sidra answers in that calm, almost seductive voice of hers. I keep the sigh I want to let go of locked inside my rib cage. That’s two teams they had out and they basically cut them off before even attempting a rescue. Not cool, angel people, not cool.

“However,” Navaa jumps in, “we do believe the Daithi are our best chance at an alliance. As you know from the research, which we’ve gained even more of since you shared Edo’s computer with us, the Daithi are not a technologically advanced race, but they are a conquered people.”

That’s not as impressive to me as it sounds like it is to Navaa—it only proves to me that the Daithi are easily subjugated.

“They put up a fight, Ryn,” Navaa says as if reading my mind. I sit up a little straighter in my chair. There are few images of the Daithi on the panel in front of me. What images do exist are tiny blurs, like a dark fingerprint getting in the way of a shot. They are fast, I’ll give them that.

“The altered Roones assumed they could be easily conquered, but it took months rather than days. They made strategic strikes and had the Settiku Hesh and altered Roones scrambling … all before they were ever given any Citadel enhancements,” Sidra adds.

“So you think we could get through to them?” Levi asks.

“I do believe that if we could get some of them alone and get the drug out of their system, then, yes, I think we have a very good chance,” Navaa says with confidence.

“We’d have to get one first. And they are fast. They’re like little bolts of lightning,” I tell her with obvious skepticism.

“But you’re faster,” Yessenia argues. She is the chief medical officer for the Faida Citadels, so I suppose she would have the most expertise on our biological differences. “All the human Citadels are.” I don’t bother telling her that she’s right. We are faster. The Daithi rely almost entirely on their speed. But we have a much larger toolbox, giving us both the advantage and disadvantage in that context—it’s the difference between a specialist and generalist.

Navaa clears her throat. “How we proceed in further negotiations is not why we’re here today. We’re here to come to a consensus on which Citadel races we try to ally with. We can figure out the how later. So do we agree that the Daithi are our best chance?”

“The human contingent agrees,” I offer, “but for the record, it’s not with the same amount of confidence you have.”

“Noted. Let’s move on to the Akshaji.”

The gruesome images of these Citadels come roaring onto the screen on the table. There is blood—not necessarily red, since not all species bleed crimson—against the shimmering purple of the Akshaj Citadels. The sinister pleasure they derive from killing is clear from these images. They don’t just shoot or stab. They gut, maim, disembowel, and rip limbs, all with a sly smirk of enjoyment. Ezra turns away and I understand. He isn’t built for this kind of violence. I am and it’s not like I’m enjoying any of this.

“Before you ask,” Sidra announces to the room diplomatically, but I know she’s talking to me, “we did send a team, well before the sound blockade went up, and they never returned. They never checked in after the first twenty-four hours. We thought it best given the already tense situation here that we not send another unit.”

“The Akshaji are unpredictable, mercurial, violent, and more mercenary than other Citadels. However, I think if we make a compelling enough argument, we could get them on our side,” Navaa says with a slight tilt of her head. One of her long strawberry locks falls onto her cheekbone and she sweeps it aside efficiently.

I absentmindedly fiddle with the zipper on my uniform. She might be right—and I’m not really sure she is, based on what I’ve seen—but even if she is, I’m not so sure I want anything to do with these animals. They are killers. Murderers. I can’t deny that I feel a certain amount of pleasure when I take out a particularly nasty hostile, but I don’t wear their entrails afterward like a necklace.

Levi has even more doubts. “Why would you think that?” he interjects. “Why would the Akshaji take sides in a war they don’t care about? Especially considering that, by all accounts, the altered Roones have been completely transparent with them.”

Good point. I fold my arms together, waiting for an answer from Navaa.

“I highly doubt the Akshaji know about the Midnight Protocol,” she says. “It would be easy to plant seeds of suspicion and doubt. They are as paranoid as they are violent.” I’m not sure if Navaa is overreaching here, but it does make a certain sense.

“So basically what you’re saying is we have to convince them that we are the stronger force and that eventually the altered Roones will turn on them,” I ask, double-checking to make sure we’re all on the same page.

“Exactly. It would be difficult, but not impossible. It is the Faida’s suggestion to this joint council that we seek an alliance with the Akshaji, the caveat being we bring the Daithi in before going to them.”

“Great. What’s our next step, then?”

“I propose we loop in Gomda.”

“Who’s that?”

“He heads up the team that’s in charge of deployment operations. Their sole job is to make sure that all soldiers have everything they need to survive on a mission, from provisions to ammo. Gomda and his staff are extremely thorough and I have no doubt that they will be able to help us mount an immediate and successful expedition to the Daithi Earth—”

“Wait.” I interrupt her again and she clenches her jaw ever so slightly.

I don’t want to run roughshod over her, so I choose my words carefully. Finally I say, “I’m impressed with the speed at which you feel comfortable deploying troops for a covert op. I also understand that time may be our biggest enemy here, but we have to go back to Battle Ground first. We need to check in with the people we left in charge, make sure Camp Bonneville is still in our control, and debrief them on everything we’ve learned.”

Both Levi and Ezra swing their heads around in my direction at the same time. I hadn’t discussed this with either one of them. But then again, I hadn’t even realized how badly it needed doing until I got to this room. We don’t have all the answers, not by a mile, but we have some of them. Beta Team needs to know what we know. We need the greatest tactical minds working on this problem, which most definitely includes my team and the rest of the higher-ranking human Citadel officers.

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Navaa suggests rather haughtily. “If the altered Roones find you, this alliance will be over.”

“If ARC takes back Battle Ground, then the alliance is over anyway,” I say with a shrug. “Right now we control a single Rift and thousands of Citadels. If we lose that advantage, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. And you have to remember, humans don’t even know there are other species of Citadels, let alone that the Settiku Hesh are Roones and that the Roones are altered, too. They don’t know anything. Imagine a Spiradael unit coming through and acting compliant until the intake, inside the compound. Our people have no idea how many enemies are really out there, and I’m not about to leave them so exposed.”

Navaa puts her hands together, slender tapers that she squeezes tightly on the table in front of her. “If we lose you, we lose any chance of being able to Rift off this Earth safely, of forming alliances with other Citadels. At least take a strike unit of ours with you in case—”

“No way,” Levi jumps in. “If a Roone sees you, then we’re busted. Not to mention that we can’t do things the way you did them here. We kinda tried that already and it led to a coup. We need to find another way, and maybe some of our people will have an answer,” Levi argues, echoing my own internal thoughts.

Navaa frowns, as if there was no way us pitiful humans would be able to solve the problem if they couldn’t.

“Enough,” I say, leaning back into the seat. “We’re going. Today. Navaa, please don’t be offended when I tell you that I wasn’t asking permission. I was simply informing you of our plans out of courtesy.”

The entire Faida delegation is purse lipped, as if they had been sucking on lemons. “Thank you all,” I tell them as I stand. “The briefing was illuminating. I’m really encouraged.” I don’t mean to sound like a smart-ass, but I probably do. And I really don’t care. I can’t defer to them. Not now. Not ever.

Everyone else around the table also makes a move to leave. Ezra ambles over in our general direction and we all walk out of the room together. He kept his mouth shut. I’ll give him that much.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.