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.
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