When morning came, Naru opened her eyes and yawned, looking about her. Rinec was sitting on a rock near the entrance of the little room. Right beside Naru was a pancake and milk, and she wondered where Rinec had gotten it … could they really have such a normal breakfast-or breakfast at all-in a place such as this?
"Good morning. Did you already eat?" Naru asked Rinec.
"Yeah. I told you that it gets brighter here in the morning. Last night too much for you to handle?" Rinec broached the subject as lightly as he could.
Naru sat up, frowning. "I had a bad dream that I killed someone. You were there, and a man was going to shoot you. I didn't want you to end up like mama or papa so"-she stopped, and didn't finish.
Rinec didn'tbother telling her it hadn't been a dream. If that was what she thought, well fine, it would help her not make a big deal out of it. If she was lying and she really did remember what she'd done, maybe if she lied to herself enough she'd come to believe she really hadn't killed anyone.
Naru began eating, and when she was done, she drank all her milk and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Thank you, Rinec."
First time she's ever said my name.
She got up and stood beside him, looked out of the cell. The cave was much brighter, just as Rinec had said. She could see little air holes all over, but they seemed much too high to get to. "It's not so scary now. If we could actually get out of here-if there was no metal door to keep us in-I would want to live here," she told Rinec. "Where's the bathroom?"
Rinec pointed out a little door in a corner of the cave not too far from them, and Naru headed toward it. Bored, he pulled out his knife and stared at it. He'd had it for a long time. It was special, very special ... the people who created it were all dead, but their artisanship was renowned, and many of their weapons were still around. When he put the knife in its sheath, within two minutes the blade would be perfectly clean, without a spot of blood or dirt on it, and very sharp. He put it back.
"Hey, man. You think you're getting out of here? You probably won't. Anyone old Baril doesn't like, he keep sin here for a long, long time. I should know, been here for thirty five years," one of the older men came over to him, the one with the cough.
Rinec was silent.
"That your daughter? You two look alike," the old man tried again.
Rinec shifted position, finally acknowledged the man. "No."
But he had—he'd a daughter once. Leana, the one Lsai girl that the Eiqner's men had killed … never told her he was her father, but he loved her. Now she was dead. "Get away from me, old man," Rinec said in a thick, throaty voice.
He felt like killing something, he was so tense. He didn't want that Naru girl to come and find him by a dead body. The old man cackled, turned around, and headed for some other men playing cards. Rinec sighed with relief.
Two minutes later, Naru came back. "How long do you think we'll be here?" She asked Rinec as she sat down beside him.
"However long Baril feels like keeping us here until he notifies Eiqner that he has us. He's the only way out," Rinec explained.
"How can he sell us? Is this allowed? It sounds kind of like the slavery thing mama talked about," Naru was puzzled. "We aren't his."
For some reason, Rinec found her comment amusing. He gave a short laugh, stretched. "Kid," he began, "on this planet, there is no law. The other bounty hunters could come and raid this place, take all the valuable prisoners. Nobody but Baril would think anything of it. These hunters don't care what they do with us as long as we can be exchanged, and no one else cares either.
Some of those men over there, playing cards-this is their life. They've most likely been here for at least ten years, because whoever wants them is taking too long to come up with the money, or simply because they did something to Baril years back. The hunters only care about the money they can get when they hand one of the guys over to whoever wants them dead or alive. Those men don't matter to anyone, and they've learned not to care."
"Like you?" What Naru had been thinking unintentionally came out of her mouth.
"Yeah, kid. Like me. I don't matter to anyone, and I don't care." Rinec's tone was flat and hard.
Naru gazed at him with her bright blue eyes, and he could see them soften as she looked at him. "But you matter to me. Why would no one care about you? You saved that one planet, and you're really brave. I don't get it."
"The very few people who ever cared about me are dead. That's what you get for caring. So I don't bother to care."
"Yes you do."
Rinec lifted his head. Naru was back in the cell, on the mat. Staring at the wall of rock and singing to herself in some language he didn't recognize.
Something tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled, whipping out his knife. Five men, all with guns pointed at him, surrounded him. All the other inmates were being watched the same way. Baril was there too.
"We contacted the Eiqner. He's out there right now, waiting for you," Baril smiled, revealing his rotten teeth.
"What about the girl?"
"She'll just stay here. I'm sure I can find something or someone who will be interested in buying her," replied Baril.
Rinec was about to throw his knife at him, but a man slammed a metal rod into his stomach, and he sat down hard. Bloody hell I hate bounty hunters. Visions of their lifeless, blood-spattered, slashed and hardly recognizable faces flickered through his mind, and he relished it. Someday.
"Rinec!" Naru realized they were taking him away, and tried to get to him.
Two men-one of them the man who had her necklace-held her back. She struggled, but it was a futile effort.
Rinec looked up at Baril. He hated feeling helpless. "You'd better not hurt the kid," he growled., and Baril laughed, sounding just like a braying donkey to Naru-who realized that she wanted to punch him and wipe that expression off his face.
Baril suddenly hit Rinec with the butt of his gun, and Rinec fell to the ground, senseless.
"You killed him! You killed him, you dirty, rotten old man!" Screamed Naru and Baril slapped her.
"No I didn't," he snarled. "And just for that, you'll be staying here for a long, long time."
The men left, and as they closed the metal door behind them, it clanged shut with a finality that made the air itself seem to vibrate.
"No. Now everybody I know is gone," Naru whispered to herself, falling to the ground and curling into a ball; suddenly conscious of how very alone she was.
After a moment a thought crossed her mind, a scary, bold thought. She lifted her head up, a determined light in her eyes. I'll be like him. He went after us, and I don't think he had to. I'm going to do the same for him. I'm going to get out of here, she told herself.
Looking for what appeared to be the largest air hole in the cave wall, she began climbing. Her slender fingers found and used crevices and cracks in the cave walls that other men and women couldn't, though there were several times her feet dangled and had to grip the rock with all her strength, while thinking she'd lose her grip and fall.
But finally she reached the hole and was amazed to see how big it actually was. Grunting, she pulled herself through and blinked from the bright light. She was on a ledge only a bit higher than the entrance to the prison, and could see a ship, as well as the unconscious Rinec. A dark haired man was standing by the ship, looking down at him while Baril and several other men stood on the other side of Rinec, and the man handed some sort of currency to Baril.
Naru jumped off the ledge, landed on a patch of grass and stayed there for a moment, breathless. Then she got up and ran toward the men. It appeared to her that this Eiqner man didn't like Rinec at all, held a dagger in his hand. What was it with bad people and knives?
"No! Leave him alone!" She cried, jumping in front of Eiqner.
She didn't know what else to do, she couldn't hurt him-she didn't have any weapons-and Rinec was too heavy for her to drag him away herself.
The Eiqner couldn't prevent himself from stopping the dagger, which he'd intended to kill Rinec with. It plunged into Naru, piercing her heart instead of Rinec's. She looked down at her chest, staring at the blood seeping out as though it was someone else's. She blinked. "Oh," she said slowly, ponderingly. "Oh."
Rinec's eyelids fluttered. No one noticed. The Eiqner pulled the dagger out, and they all waited silently for Naru to die. She swayed, stumbled and almost fell, then braced herself and stood straight and tall. She smiled, and it was a knowing, terrible smile. The same one has when they are expecting to die by the hand of some evil person-and they do not; and instead of gloating and laughing satanically the evil person is gaping in horror. Naru's eyes seemed to Eiqner as black pearls, shining and beautiful yet cold and hard.
I'm … alive!? she thought, heart pounding wildly, exhilarated.
"Let him go, Eiqner. He doesn't deserve to die. He oughtn't. He saved a world once, and now we need him. The Shadok are attacking earth, and if he doesn't stop them, there won't be any more humans, earth will be destroyed. And who knows, maybe your planet will be next."
"You think I care about earth? About humans? I hate your pitiful kind"-even as Eiqner said it, he came to the realization that of course Naru was not human-humans died; Naru had not-"always needing to be rescued from certain annihilation by some stronger, higher being. This man is the last Lsai. I kill him and there will be no more of their kind to help anyone. Rinec is not great. He's an overly-muscular man with a loyalty to humans that I find repulsive and disgusting. He matters to no one and so he will die," Eiqner motioned to the men behind Naru to kill the man she held so dear.
She screamed in pure rage and frustration. She couldn't stand it anymore ... Rinec's the only one who can save earth, and every stupid idiot can't see that saving the earth DOES matter and so does the man who's gonna save it!
Her body seemed to ripple and almost split in two and then there were five of her, six, seven, and eight. All eight girls glaring at the surrounding men with ghostly eyes while forming a protective barrier around the unconscious Rinec.
"Stay away from him you fools!" She spat.
To her, only she spoke. To everyone else, one solid girl and seven transparent ones raised their voices and spoke as one. Panicked, the men shot at them. Naru barred her arm and the bullets bounced off the eight figures' arms like super balls as they moved them to connect with the bullets. All eight heads turned to look at Eiqner when the astonished men stopped firing. "I'm borrowing your ship," they hissed.
With a speed unknown to mortals, they picked Rinec up, hurried into the ship, took control after shoving the pilot out and flew off.
Naru was exhausted. She put in the coordinates for earth, pushed autopilot, and leaned against a wall. The last thing she saw before closing her eyes was Rinec slowly standing up.
She slept.
When she woke, she was lying on the floor and Rinec was sitting in the pilot's seat. "Have we landed on earth yet?" Naru asked him.
"No. you were only out for about five minutes, and this ship doesn't have hyper speed. How did I get here? You couldn't have carried me all by yourself," Rinec speculated.
"I don't remember."
And she didn't; at least she thought she didn't. After all, how could seven ghostly, transparent figures looking exactly like her have appeared and done what they did? And how could someone have stabbed her and not died? As soon as she thought of that, she looked down-there was still blood on her shirt, some of it drying.
"However you did it, thanks." Rinec was business-like and gruff again, looking out at planet Earth, which was getting closer every minute.
Naru spoke up. "I saw seven of me. Only they looked like ghosts. I sort of remember carrying you, only like you said; it couldn't have been just me."
Rinec seemed to have started when she mentioned ghosts that looked like her. He remembered time-years ago-when he had encountered a being like that … "Do you remember how you got out?" He asked her to get his mind off it.
Naru looked straight into his eyes, holding his gaze with her own. "I looked for the biggest air hole I saw and I climbed up to it. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I saw you and Eiqner-I was on a ledge-and I jumped off it and ran over to you. After that, I think he stabbed me with a knife, but it didn't really hurt and nothing happened. And then was the ghost thing."
Rinec looked down at Naru's hands. "That must have been some climb-your hands are all scraped and bloody," he commented, making no mention of the holes, which seemed almost natural to them both, and too little to make much of compared with other things they had to deal with.
Following his gaze, she looked down at her own hands. They were just as he said yet she hadn't noticed until now, they didn't hurt much at all. Nothing compared to that knife sliding through her soft flesh, into her heart.
Watching her, Rinec suddenly realized that he was talking much more than he ever had. Was he going soft? He searched the tiny heart he had and was relieved to find that he was as loyal to her and committed to protecting her as always. Nothing more … and yet he wondered.
Naru, too, was doing her own thinking. Where would she go after Rinec was done 'protecting' her? There was more danger being WITH Rinec than if he'd dropped her off at some other planet. Yet he was always bringing her with him. She was sure he was tired of watching over her. So why not just leave her somewhere safe? Then he would've repaid his debt to her father and he could go save the world all by himself, like he had before.
"Here's the deal. We-I mean I-kill some Shadok. We get into their armor and go into that big ship that we were in the first time, the one with Tsar in it. As soon as I am close enough to Tsar, you can go and hide somewhere," Rinec briefed her…he then wondered if there were any Shadok who wore armor that would fit Naru-probably not.
"Why must I hide? Can't I help you?"
"You can't really fight Shadok, so there's no point in you coming with me after that. Since we escaped, most likely Tsar will be well guarded. I will have to get rid of the guards, fight Tsar, and kill him…I can't do that with a little kid hanging around. We're in Earth's atmosphere now-I hope the Shadok don't see us coming."
