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,
