The Rift Uprising, page 23
“Hello, fellow Maribeh, and welcome. I know that you are afraid. I know that you are struggling to understand this new and strange place. Please, offer up your fears to the one true Goddess, Akaela-Han, for it is she who has brought you here. From the moment of your birth, she has been watching over you. She has taken note of your good deeds and your hard work. You are special. You were destined for greatness. Yes, it is your destiny that pulled you through the shimmering green light so that you may live here, in Akaela-Han’s paradise. The language I am speaking in to you now is the language of the Goddess. You are reading my words at the bottom of the screen only so that you might understand what has happened to you. It is a great honor and privilege to be able to speak in Akaela-Han’s divine tongue. You will learn it in time; do not worry. In truth, friends, fellow Maribeh, you need not ever worry again. Akaela-Han has brought special souls like yours from all the heavens in the universe. You will see wonders. Akaela-Han will provide for your every need, just as the great book of Lrok-M’hain promises. You will never be without food or shelter. You will never be sick. You have a sacred purpose now, to accept this higher calling. Eventually, you will be given a divine task that you will attend to daily. If you can leave your fears and doubts behind and listen well to the representatives of Akaela-Han, you will be granted a great reward: a meeting with Akaela-Han herself who sits in her divine temple watching you right now. But you must let go of your old life. You must embrace this new life with an open heart and mind. You must make yourself worthy every day of this great honor that has been given to you. Go now. Follow the other pilgrims on this road. Heed them well and work hard. Peace be with you.”
The four of us look at one another after the screen goes blank. The Maribehs in the next room do seem pretty excited, elated even. I know they aren’t a dumb species, but they are naive. Maybe it will be easier for them, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling a little nauseated after having to watch that bunch of absolute bullshit. It makes me wonder what ARC tells the other, more advanced species. My team and I, we are all unsettled by this lie, but we keep our faces impassive—no signal is needed for this; we just all do it instinctively. We thank Kendrick and head out to train. As we travel, we try to deconstruct what happened there in that room. What was the worst part? The blasphemy? The fact that they used a god to explain why they are here or that they will use the idea of pleasing that goddess in exchange for compliance?
I keep coming back to the thought that the reason it bothers us so much is that it worked so well.
CHAPTER 18
When I get home, I shower and change and walk up to meet Ezra. He’s sitting at his desk with a pencil in his mouth. I see that he’s printed up a map of all The Rift sites around the world. I just want to go and hug him. I’m tired of the stupid baby steps. I want to be normal or—well, as normal as someone like me can be. Instead I sit on the bed. I cross my legs and rest an elbow on a knee so that I can hold my head in my hand.
“Hi.” I am so happy to see him, but I know that’s probably not coming across in my body language or my tone. I had told the truth before to Kendrick: We Citadels don’t know how to let our guards down.
Whatever my body is conveying, it doesn’t seem to bother him. “Let me ask you something,” he begins. “The Rifts.”
“What about them?”
“There’s the big one in California, which they explained was an earthquake and which made that town essentially a ghost town. But the others, like the one here—look at them. Look where they are. Notice anything strange?”
“Well, they aren’t smack in the middle of any populated areas, if that’s what you’re trying to say. But statistically, there are only fourteen, and there’s far more of the world that is remote than the other way around.” I lift my head and lean back against the wall.
“Yeah, but still, not one in the middle of even the smallest little village. All of them—the forest, desert, the jungle. And yet not exactly inaccessible, either. Like, none in the Himalayas, for example. Hell—this one is in the middle of a military base. It just seems pretty lucky for ARC.”
I think about it for a moment and concede that yes, it’s lucky . . . unless, of course, you’re me or my friends.
“It’s unsettling to me. It doesn’t make sense. The more time I spend analyzing the data, the less I’m comfortable with the word coincidence. I don’t have any proof yet, but the scientist part of me feels instinctually that it’s not likely, all these happy accidents.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. He says he’s a scientist and then in the next breath he says he’s going on a gut feeling. Scientists don’t really do that, but it feels combative to point that out. “Hmmm,” I say, which feels like a neutral enough answer. “So, how’s it going, then?” I ask, leaning forward, looking at one of the monitors on the desk.
“It’s going. Nothing new to report, though. Not really. Should we do some red-pill stuff?”
“Definitely.” As stressful as today has been, the idea of spending quiet, close time with Ezra is pretty much all I want in life. I so badly want this to work, but there is this small nagging part of me that feels like I’m getting away with murder. The last time we did this was easy, maybe too easy, but I don’t want to be a downer or make him more anxious than he already must be, so I say nothing except: “I took one when I first got home, so I’m ready when you are.”
“Great,” Ezra says. He stands and stretches. I see the muscles on his stomach when his T-shirt lifts up. I turn away. His abs are really good.
Like, really good.
I start the mantra in my head. I’m safe . . . I’m safe . . . I’m . . .
“Go get your knitting, your iPad, and a copy of Harry Potter—you choose the volume.”
I can’t help it. My shoulders sag. So far, this is like the romantic life of a ninety-year-old couple or a ten-year-old couple. I don’t bother to argue, though. I just go and get what he’s requested. When I return I see that there is a pillow on the floor right in front of the bed.
“By the way,” Ezra says as he sits on the bed, “I guess you haven’t heard anything about me at ARC? No all-points bulletin or anything?”
“Would have led with that,” I say.
Ezra motions to the pillow and I sit down on the floor. I lean back against the bed and position myself between his legs.
“Right. Obviously. They always say that no news is good news. Not sure that’s the case here. But hey, what are you gonna do? Such is the life of a wanted man.”
I turn to look at him and squint. Ezra is the least fugitive-y fugitive ever. He looks down and smiles, and I have to quickly look away. Slow my breathing.
“So,” he says, clearly noticing my reaction, “why don’t you start knitting and turn on one of the podcasts that you like listening to?” I begin one of the NPR shows that I wrote on my list. I like them well enough personally, but mostly they trigger a strong emotional childhood response. My parents only listen to NPR in the car, and on any long road trip that’s all my brother and I heard. I pick up my knitting. I’m making a warm cowl to fit over my uniform for the coming colder months. I thread the needle through the woolen loop, wrap it, and pull it through. There’s a rhythm to the knitting itself that is calming, a click, click, click that Zens me out. When I add This American Life to the mix, the whole experience is positively peaceful. Ezra is wearing another of my dad’s sweaters. The whole setup is about as sexual as Sunday school.
“All right, I am going to put my hands on your shoulders and then your hair. Remember to say your mantra and just know that you are totally safe. Everything will be fine. Nothing—”
“Is going to hurt me, I got it. You can start.” I say the words softly to myself as I see Ezra’s hands move. Ever so slightly, he rests them on my shoulders. Ezra’s hands are big and warm. I can feel the heat through my shirt. My breath catches. I grit my teeth. Things don’t feel as easy today as they did last time. I’m emotionally drained from the intake session and it’s harder to focus. Ezra’s fingers sit lightly on my skin. I feel the Blood Lust start to build.
“Shit,” I say as I leap up away from him.
“What?” he says with alarm.
I close my eyes. I can’t answer him. I try to control my breathing, but it’s coming so ragged and quick. I’m close to panting. I slap my hands over my eyes. Logically, I know that I am safe. I really do, but something else is going on inside of me. I get quick visions, flashes of taking those lovely hands of his and bending each finger back until it breaks. I picture punching him again and again.
With the last shred of self-control I have left, I leap up, knocking Ezra back. I see him wince. I don’t know if I’ve actually hit him or just knocked the wind out of him and right now I don’t care. I tear open the bookshelf, practically rip the access hatch off the hinges, and jump down the hole that leads to the second floor, scraping a good portion of my back on the ladder that is folded up like origami.
I run to my room and slam the door so hard the whole house trembles. The Blood Lust has me, but even I can feel its grip is not quite as strong as it was with the vampire at The Rift. I take my hand and clench the doorknob. I want so badly to go back out there and hurt Ezra that I start to shake. I keep telling myself that I am safe, but my blood is screaming so loud I can’t hear it over my own thoughts. Instead of opening the door, though, I punch the wall beside it. I keep punching until the plaster breaks and my hand goes through it. Scarlet droplets pool on the wooden floor at my feet from where my knuckles have been sliced open. I pull my bookshelf down and the books hit the floor with a thunderous boom.
“Ryn?” I hear Ezra say from above me.
“Stay away!” I scream back, although I barely recognize my own voice. It’s the throaty, desperate roar of a caged animal. I pick up my bed and fling it backward as if it were nothing more than a sheet of paper. I jump up to the ceiling and grab the pendant light fixture, peeling it away from the wires so they crackle and spark before I heave the light against my mirror. The shards of both fly everywhere, including at my face. I feel a dozen pinpricks of pain on my cheeks and forehead. I stare at myself in the cracked reflection, looking every bit the monster that I feel. Somehow, though, seeing myself in this state makes me stop. I stare. I am a living Picasso. I touch my fingers to my lips and taste the salty copper of blood.
My breathing starts to slow. Reason is slowly creeping in. What is happening? No one can swallow back the Blood Lust once it goes full force.
“But I did,” I whisper to myself. That night in the Village. I stopped myself from killing Ezra and that was even before I knew about the drugs or the programming. “And I’m doing it right now.”
How?
There is so much about this I don’t understand. We’re smart, Ezra and I, but we aren’t psychiatrists. We’re fumbling around, clasping the best parts of the research he’s read, but we have no real idea what’s going on. I hear a soft knock on the door. The Blood Lust has receded, coiled back inside me like a viper. I walk slowly over to the door and let it swing open. Ezra stands just outside the door frame appraising the damage. My room looks like the back end of a coke-fueled rock star’s bender. I hear Ezra’s heart start to beat faster. This room scares him. As it should.
“You’re hurt,” he says, though he doesn’t come inside. I stare at my hand. I gingerly touch my face. I’m sure my back is bleeding, too.
“Yeah,” I admit. “But you’re not. And I guess that’s something.” I am conflicted about the state of my room. I want Ezra to see how dangerous this is, how dangerous I am, but I am also ashamed. The embarrassment twists my stomach.
Ezra still makes no move to come inside and I certainly don’t invite him to investigate further. “Come on,” he says gently. “You’re going to need me to help you with your face.” He reaches his hand out toward me and I look at it, eyes wide.
“Are you insane?”
“Are you feeling particularly horny right now?”
For some reason the question makes me wince a little. It hits too close. “No.”
“Ryn,” Ezra says as he glances beyond me into the wreck that is my bedroom. “Step back from this for a minute. Yes, it’s crazy in there,” Ezra says, eyeing the chaos behind me. “But we can be rational about this. We can work with the facts we know. The most important fact? You’re all soldiers. They did this to you to make you better, less distracted. Boone and Violet are a really great litmus test for this. They like each other, right? That’s what you told me? But they haven’t killed each other. And that is significant. You can’t succumb to the Blood Lust unless you’re physically touched by someone you find attractive at a time when you don’t feel anything else but turned on. If you’re terrified, angry, sad, or even, uhh . . . murderous, it can’t activate because then you wouldn’t be effective Citadels.” He moved a little closer. “So, how are you feeling right now?”
“Well, to be honest I’m a little embarrassed at what I’ve done here . . . and I’m in pain. Pretty bad pain,” I admit.
“So come on,” he says with his hand outstretched once again. I glare at it and turn my head away. I’d really rather just deal with this myself. “Here,” he says, holding up a bottle of red pills. “Take some more of these.” I don’t know if he’s offering me the drugs to make me feel safer or to make himself feel safer. Either way I take a pill out of the bottle. “Maybe you should take two. See what happens,” Ezra suggests.
I dump another pill into my hand and walk toward the bathroom. I put them in my mouth and wash them down with water from the faucet. I don’t even bother to look at myself in the mirror. I just open the medicine cabinet and take out some tweezers and hand them to Ezra. For the next twenty minutes he goes about digging every shard of glass from my skin in silence. Whether or not he’s just concentrating or is freaked out by how I look and what he has to do, I can’t say. His hand is on my head. His face is just an inch or so from mine . . . but he’s right. There isn’t anything sexual about this and the Blood Lust isn’t anywhere close to surfacing.
When he’s sure that all the glass is out, he takes a warm washcloth and gently cleans off my face. This part is far more intimate, but the act itself reminds me of how my mom or dad used to clean me up after a fall. It’s nurturing and I embrace that feeling.
“You’re done,” he says as he backs away to get a look at me. By now the cuts have all stopped bleeding, and most of them, all but the deepest few, have even closed entirely. He shakes his head. He knows I’m different, obviously, but seeing it like this—my healing—might be freaking him out more than the injuries in the first place.
“What do you want to do?” I ask him while chewing on my bottom lip.
“I’m stubborn. I want to try again upstairs.” He leans against the door frame and crosses his arms.
“Are you serious? Were you just where I was? Up in the room and then down in my room . . . all the punching and the exploding glass everywhere?”
He sighs and smiles slowly. “You don’t know me that well yet, but I will tell you that when I say I’m going to do something, I do it. I’m determined as fuck. This isn’t supposed to be easy, but it’s the right thing to do. No one should have to live like you do. I want to help you beat this.”
“Well, beat could be the operative word here. I’m tired and sore. I don’t know if that will help this process or make it worse.”
“Only one way to find out,” he says, and then walks away and back upstairs to his room.
He’s leaving the decision up to me, which I have to say is ballsy as hell. Part of me thinks I should just go straight to my room and start putting it back together. Truthfully, though, I don’t want to face it right now. The room is one big failure on my part and I’d rather clean it with some kind of victory under my belt. Even if it’s just holding hands again.
I walk up the narrow ladder leading to Ezra’s tiny space. He’s sitting on the bed and I sit down again in the same position I was, with my back against it and between his knees. I pick up my knitting and start a row. He turns another NPR podcast on. He only waits for a minute or so before he touches me. I suppose he figures that he had just been right up in my face, so there is no point in teasing it out. He slowly puts his hands back on my shoulders. I begin to say the mantra in my head. He won’t hurt me. He won’t hurt me . . . Ezra stays here unmoving for a few minutes. Then slowly, his hands move down my shoulders. He brings them up again and his thumbs trace the muscles in my neck. I tense for a moment. Ezra doesn’t move at all. He lets his hands remain there and I do relax. I focus on the knitting. I hear the voices from the podcast talking, though I’m not really listening to what they are saying. Rather, I let their voices become a droning lull that is powerfully meditative. Ezra inches his hands up to my head. He runs his long fingers through my hair. It is here where I really begin to realize the difference between sexual and sensual. The moves Ezra is making, they aren’t entirely innocent. The feeling of his hands as they comb through my hair and gently massage my skull is provocative. It’s not lust I am feeling but want, of something. It makes me ache. I am amazed that this whole thing is working. I know that I am changing. Whatever was done to me is being erased, slowly, inch by inch. Even what I had just done, to my room and the pain in my body, the shame of it, the frustration of it, ebbs away. Ezra’s hands are erasing the past. I don’t ever want to remember what ARC did to me. But if I ever do, I’m going to have to find a way to make peace with it. I have to accept that I was abused. I have to accept it and walk away from it. I have to focus on the future I want. There can only be trust in this room and maybe love, though I don’t want to use that word because that scares me, too.
In a good way.
Ezra takes his hands off me and asks for the Harry Potter book. We rearrange the pillows on his small bed. I turn off the podcast. He asks me to lay my head on his lap. I’m not sure I am ready for this. I know this will put me in very close proximity to an area of his body that just days ago I wouldn’t have dared to go near. I have to have faith in myself, in Ezra, in us together. I do as he asks. I lie down on his thigh. He starts to read from the book, and as he does, he once again gently touches my hair and my face. I close my eyes. I don’t even need to say the mantra anymore. I feel safe. There is such a tenderness in the way he moves his fingers over my skin that it leaves little room for me to feel anything else. He reads to me for almost half an hour. There is a heaviness in my bones. I am weighed down by the nearness of him, with the possibilities of him. I am sure that if I lifted myself up and touched him, kissed him even, we could take this further . . . except that even thinking of that makes my body immediately tense. I am getting better, but the Blood Lust is still lurking, still hiding out in some forgotten corner, tucked away in the back of my mind. It’s a sleeping monster. If I try to wake it too quickly, it will pounce.
