Amy Foster - The Rift Coda

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.”

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.