“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,”