Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ Written in The Stars ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 3 )

Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin belongs to its creator, Nobuhiro Watsuki, and to Sony and several other companies. However Jihan Masshwov do belongs to me, as several other OC in the story. I intend no profit from this fan fiction, it's only made for enjoyment.

Thank you to Fujifunmum and Michaela, who helped me a lot with suggestions and thorough beta reading, plus encouragement and positive criticism.

Thank you also to Midori, for warm encouragement and positive feedback. Good luck with exams and College works, Mids!

Last but not least, I know this is not a typical or easy story, positive criticism and suggestions are welcomed

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Somewhere in subspace, unknown time period.

The man in front of him was already not a man anymore, but a pile of whimpering, bloody meat, sliced precisely with his long, loyal watou.

The sound of his own laugh, tinted with wicked pleasure echoed, against the walls of the wide room. The trembling heap kneeling on the floor lifted his head slowly.

Suddenly, something was wrong, very, very wrong.

There, where he was supposed to look into a man's face, he found the familiar, ivory features of a young, sad woman, covered in blood. Blood drawn by his own hand, by his own sword… The young lady, dressed in a white kimono, held an imploring hand to him, asking for mercy…

Tomoe, his sister, he was…

His mouth broke in a cry of horror and agony…

- 'Nishi…- a distant voice was dragging him into a cold mist of gray and passing bright lights.

Trying to escape from the terrifying scene, he snapped his eyes wide open, looking in confusion around him. A pair of strong hands took him by the wrists, preventing the frantic movement of his arms. He desperately tried to focus and calm down. Unexpectedly, he found himself staring in strange yet somewhat familiar silver cat eyes.

It was the annoying strange girl again. He brusquely unlocked himself from her restraint on his wrists, growling menacingly.

The girl shook her head while passing him a bowl with some unknown concoction in it.

Yukishiro Enishi discovered himself eating the disgusting mixture plastered into the bowl almost eagerly. It had been nearly three days since someone remembered to feed them, and from the looks of some of the other creatures in that strange, metallic dungeon, the girl by Enishi's side had put up a hard fight to keep that share of the meal for him.

Soon his mind wandered again, trying to understand the strange puzzle he found himself pushed into for the millionth time. He analyzed his surroundings while crouched against the wall, trying to solve the puzzle.

Enishi had no real recollection of how or when he had ended up there in the first place. His last conscious memories were those of running amid the streets in Kyoto, with two guys on his trail. The white haired man remembered how he had taken down a third companion of these two with a bullet from his gun, sprinting immediately to escape through the general confusion and panic of the passersby.

Then suddenly, he had been hit by an unknown surge of power that had felt like a full load of bricks falling on his back. He had tried not to fall, to go on with his flight, but his body hadn't obeyed him anymore. His lungs had felt like exploding and his body had gone totally numb. For a moment, he had thought they had broken his spine somehow, because he hadn't been able of moving a single muscle. Then, though he had recovered his ability for movement shortly after the initial excruciating minutes, he had only been able to crawl on the floor. At that time, those two guys had come to him, giving him a few vicious kicks on the ribs, though he had been sure these were meant only to assure themselves that he was unable to attack them again. He highly doubted they had been meant as a form of revenge for their fallen comrade. In that line of work, there were no such things as loyalty or friendship.

As they'd expected, he had been left totally defenseless, his only response an awkward attempt to deflect their blows with his still insensitive arms. When they were certain that he did not present any more risks to them, they had picked him up from the floor.

He was a good head taller than they were and they had to drag him over the pavement, his feet suffering the brutal treatment which had left a long trail of bruises and cuts. He had made then a desperate last attempt to offer at least a little more resistance but he only could take off the hood of one of his attackers, revealing his features.

And the nightmare had started right there.

He had frozen at the sight. A red skinned guy, with semi-reptilian features had fixed his stare at him.

That was it, he had thought then. The demons had come to drag him to Hell at last. He was going to pay for all the evil things he had done, at least he had thought so at that moment.

That had marked the moment when he had decided to give up. To fight against demons was useless. When a third hooded figure had turned the corner, he only had time to register that they had been suddenly wrapped in some kind of light beam and at the same time a sound like a thousand bees buzzing painfully had stabbed his ears making him pass out.

Things had gone from bad to worse since then. If the red skinned guys had resembled demons to him, what he had found when he awoke in a room without windows and surrounded by metallic walls had been even more terrifying. Nothing remotely human could be found among the two dozen or so strange, grotesque creatures he had been placed with at the moment he recovered consciousness.

Looking around himself, he suppressed an involuntary shudder at the sight of the spawns who where his only company in that strange place.

However, something told him that this place where he woke up couldn't be Hell.

He was contemplating three distinct possibilities.

The first one was that he has been truly dragged alive to Hell, though he didn't take this option seriously almost from the beginning.

Hell was a place, according to all traditional descriptions, where the rules of normal universe didn't apply anymore. According to that reasoning, even if you are taken alive to such a place, where you are supposed to be punished for Eternity you didn't need to eat, sleep and fulfill other physical necessities, as it had been happening to him during the last few… days? (Or had there been weeks? He simply didn't know.). Of course, he always could be wrong but he truly doubted it.

The second option was that his madness had come back full force and he was sinking in the most elaborate delusion his mind had created to date. It would be a sort of punishment because he had abandoned his Tomoe image fixation.

This alternative was less likely than the former, since a clear pattern of fulfilling his own goals using Tomoe as a pretext for it had been always present when he 'saw' his sister's image. The circumstances didn't call for such a measure. He already had admitted his own self-delusion and his necessity of coming to terms with life. It was at that point that he tried to find a second chance, and to share it with his long lost father.

The third alternative was that someone from his enemies had planned a sophisticated revenge, creating a living Hell as he had done to his brother in law, with the goal of driving him totally mad this time. This was the one that made the most sense to him.

This might not be Hell, but resembled it more than any place he could ever have imagined.

However, he could not yet grasp many things.

When he had awakened, in a sort of a prison cell with a glass door (a glass he couldn't break, by the way) a new surge of horror and fright had coursed through him at the sight of what could be seen through the glass. However, the primal instinct of survival had prevailed over any fears, when he had found himself pushed from the cage into the metallic room, and from the mass of grotesque creatures, some of them advanced towards him, in a clear hostile fashion.

At that moment, no matter how horrifying the creatures he was facing, he had done what he knew best: he had established his territory and limits as soon as he had been challenged. He could tell that the other inhabitants of the place hadn't expected his reaction at all, and they had retreated after he had smashed two of them against the walls. He had killed a third without any hesitation, when he had caught him trying to steal his haori at night. At that moment, he had discovered that those actions had awarded him with some privileges among part of the horde. He could take food, blankets, and possessions from those who had challenged and had lost. He had made quick use of those advantages, taking everything that he had deemed useful from the losers, except the corpses, which had been promptly looted among some of the other creatures. His own early experiences in Shanghai came to life again, dancing before his eyes, when he had seen some of the creatures fighting over the remnants just to have a bigger piece of meat for supper.

He wondered how much time it would take for him to become someone else's supper, while his sight wandered around the place, analyzing it.

There were some bizarre creatures placed in the opposite extreme of the cell, which certainly looked menacing and dangerous, but were separated from the rest of the inhabitants of the place by another of those glass walls, rarely lowered.

They seemed to not even give a second look at him or the other creatures in the area he was placed, as if they were some sort of worms unworthy of their time and energies, so Enishi prudently avoided being around them during the occasions when the glass wall was lowered. As long as he was not forced to face any of them voluntarily, he would not engage them in battle.

After all, he had only been challenged by those who had believed they were his equals in strength… Enishi didn't seem to be inclined to press his luck against the fierce looking things behind the glass wall.

He didn't want to be involved in more fights than were strictly necessary.

This reminded him of the fight he had mindlessly thrown himself into when they carried the girl that was now standing by his side in the cell.

Fights inevitably happened: for space, food, or possessions, even to get a corpse to provide food for the cannibalistic groups within the prisoners. However, the population in the cell never decreased because new captives were thrown in almost every day. Most survived only the few initial minutes, others, like himself were tougher and had endured several days… or weeks. It was difficult to have a real sense of time in that place, without any sunlight, stars, or external indications of the passing of time.

Anyway, he had noticed that each new 'recruit' was thrown into the place in the same fashion that he was, except the girl. She had been totally nude, shackled and bleeding, dark big bruises forming in her tanned skin. She had been dragged by her long blue hair while their captors had poked her ribs with some sort of spears[1], causing her great pain every time she had been touched by them, yet they couldn't stop her from furiously fighting back… and even causing serious injuries to a couple of them.

Wild little thing, he had thought in that moment, in admiration of her bravery and rage at the cowardly behavior of her tormenters.

Finally, just before closing the door behind them, one of the guards had put something close to her neck, and she had finally collapsed to the floor, trembling, while another of the guys had said something in an uncompressible language. Immediately, a wave of whispers had risen among his fellow inmates and as soon as the door was closed some of the creatures had launched forward to get a hold on the girl.

Whatever the guards had done to her, she had been left in no condition to defend herself. Naked, defenseless and shackled. It didn't take a genius to figure out what would happen to her if he hadn't step in.

He could have been a monster, a killer, he could have maimed and tortured, but there was one thing he had never done nor allowed his men to do: to rape a woman.

In his recent past, he could have inflicted the worst injury on his most hated enemy by raping his woman, yet, even while he was sunk in the deepest madness, he would never, ever, have committed such a hideous act. He would not have been able to live with himself after such a deed.

Even a monster like him had his limits.

He had reached the spot where the girl had been put down, pushing, beating, and breaking some bones just when some of those bastards had already submitted and pinned her to the floor.

Her eyes had met his for the briefest moment. The look in them had carried a strange mixture of the deepest hatred he had ever seen, desperation, and extreme fright.

Enishi had not needed to know anything else to act.

The strange thing above the girl had been too occupied trying to restrain the fierce young girl (who despite her state still managed to offer some resistance) to register Enishi's approach from behind. It had been his last mistake. He had failed to register the moment he had ceased to exist when a quick flick from Enishi's wrist had twisted his neck in a strange angle, snapping with a sickening sound at the human's touch.

A fight had ensued among the avid beasts to take the place of the dead thing above the fallen girl, as soon as he had dragged the limp body off her.

Taking advantage of the confusion of the battle, the white haired warrior had used the dead body as a sort of ram to hit against them. After a while, he had stood between them and the girl, glaring threateningly, covered in blood, both foreign and his own. Few had stood still in front of him, and he had been in far better condition, so with menacing growls and promises of future retribution in their eyes, they had finally retreated.

Though he was only one, he had shown them that they had better think twice before underestimating him again.

He had taken the still trembling, naked girl, putting her on his shoulder, walking to his corner. She had grunted in frustration, and Enishi could tell that in that moment she had cried out of rage and hate.

When he had lowered her down on the floor, she had seemed to be somewhat recovered, enough at least to hiss at him unknown words in a strange language. Her murderous glare had left no room for doubt: she had thought that he would take her for his pleasure.

Enishi chuckled lightly at the memory. Even in Hell, he could find things to amuse himself…

Her hissing and fury had increased tenfold when he had taken off his gi but she had soon been cut off by his gesture when he put the garment over her shoulders. It was much longer than his haori and would cover her better than the other clothes. Then he had taken one of the blankets he had gotten from his past combats and offered it to her, with a bowl containing some of the insufferable mixture they were served as 'food' and he couldn't almost bear. Considering that he had eaten even rotten human flesh, it spoke volumes about the quality of the concoction.

The girl's glare had never lost the edge; mistrust still dancing into the silver orbs. She had looked like to cut through him with the strangest eyes he had ever seen. Even the other creatures' eyes were more natural than hers were.

However, she had seemed to relax a little at his offerings. He had stayed by her side only until the effects of whatever drug the guards had put in her neck were gone off her system. When he had been sure she was capable of defending herself, he had left her side, keeping a prudent distance from her. He had been sure she could handle the situation after how she had fended against the guards that had brought her into that place. She was not as defenseless as it might seem at first glance, and he had been sure she would have put a hell of a fight against her attackers after being fully recovered, probably discouraging the bunch of coward bugs they shared the place with from any possible rape.

None of the inhabitants of the cell were stupid, they knew they were on their own and attacks only occurred to extract any possession or satisfy any need. Obviously, the weaker ones in the pack were the natural targets of such assaults.

When the intended target (or victim) proved to be more troublesome than the valuables to be extracted from him, the attackers retreated immediately.

Wise measure, Enishi thought, considering that everyone in the place seemed as confused about their present situation and the future ahead as he was. It was prudent to reserve as much strength as possible for those uncertain situations they might be facing soon.

Anyway, the expected retribution for his intervention had come sooner than expected, several hours later according to his calculations. This time however, the attack had been organized, but only a few had joined it.

It had been clear to him that his behavior had caused a sudden change in his popularity, he had thought grimly, facing a multi-front attack.

Then he had seen her standing by his side, and he smirked. His guesses about the girl had been right, because as soon as she had any attacker at her arm length, she had engraved on their skins a good souvenir to remember her by. She had used the long chain attached to her shackles to her advantage, breaking bones and at least two necks with it. .

Judging by her performance then, it was obvious that she was heavily trained in any kind of hand-to-hand combat and she was very efficient at it.

The horde had considered an attack targeting only him, but with another tough player on his side, the odds had been clearly against the creatures again… The losses would have been significant and the profits, zero: two blankets, some clothes, his dead body to be eaten by them and a woman who they would not submit except by killing her, therefore no fun would be extracted from her body…

The resented group had retreated again, dragging with them the corpses of the fallen comrades. Someone had a feast moments later.

To his utter relief, he knew that this was the last attack he would receive. They had learnt their lesson.

From that moment on, the girl seemed glued to him, like a shadow of his own shadow.

Though Enishi felt annoyed by that behavior, the white haired man had to admit that she was an asset: the girl always managed to get more 'food' for both of them and he was certain he wouldn't get killed during his sleep due mostly to her vigilance.

He understood her deeds as much as a display of gratefulness as well as a somewhat forced but useful alliance.

The girl only slept when he was awake and kept a vigilant eye when he was asleep.

Too vigilant sometimes, he thought wryly, remembering the recent incident.

During no less than eight years he had stopped dreaming at all, his mind totally consumed in his plans for vengeance. However, after his failure, Enishi had started to dream again, or more accurately, he had been thrown into a chain of hellish nightmares each and every night. He had hoped he would stay dreamless, to keep the haunting ghosts from punishing him from his bloody sins.

Enishi found himself awakening crying or shouting until his voice was raw and hoarse, but his pride had made him reject all his father's attempts to soothe and alleviate him while they were together, and after a while the old man had given up, leaving him alone with his guilt and his ghosts. The blue haired, however, did not seem to be the type who gave up easily, and she had kept annoyingly attentive to him during his 'incidents'. Well, in due time he was sure she would leave him alone too.

Enishi gave her a sidelong glance.

She was slightly smaller than he was, slim built, yet her body was shaped by toned muscles. Long blue hair framed her exotic but strangely beautiful face. She had tied it up in a braid, which hung down her back. However, the most remarkable of her features where her cat shaped eyes. They looked exactly like a cat's, even with the black line-shaped pupils, except that her irises were in a metallic shade of silver. Her similarity to cats did not ended with her eyes, because he could say that she was a predator in the same graceful, unconcerned way that felines displayed. The way in that she was studying in deep concentration the other inhabitants of the cell and the place itself, as if looking a way to run off (of course, there was no way out, if so, he already would have been out of there), was enough proof for him of her felines-que nature.

She had managed to make a makeshift 'dress' with her blanket, tying its extremes above her breasts, using his gi as a sort of coat over her shoulders or as a blanket when she slept.

The blue haired girl had insisted on learning his name (which she could barely pronounce) and he vaguely remembered she had addressed herself as something like Jeehan or Jihan. As a matter of fact, he didn't care about her name or even her. Once the danger she had been exposed had passed, she could be left on her own. The one thing that had prevented him from kicking her out was her value as an ally in such a place.

It was clear she could speak the languages of the other creatures and she tried to learn how to communicate with him. That fact alone made him bear her annoying company, because as long as he was stuck in this strange place he needed every piece of useful information and as many allies he could get. Besides, it was always easier to survive when you were not on your own, he thought.

The sudden sound of feet moving and the commanding voice of the guards entering the place shook him from his reveries. Something serious had to be about to happen and something big, because the guards never entered the cell except in extraordinary circumstances.

He soon guessed their motives when the guards formed a two-row corridor while they started to push the captives out of the cell with their spears poking into their flesh, extracting outraged cries of pain in the process.

Whatever destiny had in store for him, it was waiting outside the cell, so he took his place in the queue. And the girl stood right behind him.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ;<<*>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>& gt;>>>>

Colonel Jihan Masshwov, fooled and hijacked undercover agent for the Alliance Fleet, shook her head again.

Her strange ally in the infernal place her failure had brought her into, had just emerged from another of his nightmares in his usual bad temper.

Jihan sighed, passing him the bowl with the protein ration[2] she had kept safe for him.

He was a strange man indeed, that human called 'Nishi.

The humans she had met before were babbling weaklings, worms worthy of nothing more than being crushed under one's foot. Typical slaves.

However, he was different. Another warrior. A true one indeed. One like herself.

After what she had witnessed since her arrival in the slave cargo bay, there was no doubt that he was a human warrior, even if the term human warrior was an oxymoron. At that moment, watching him fight, she knew he was something out of the ordinary.

Following his deeds that had saved her from the captain's sentence, he had accepted her company quite reluctantly. It was clear that he had realized by then that he was no longer in the place where he was supposed to be and she was the one who could guide him in this monstrous location.

Well, as a matter of fact, after the way she had been lead into the trap and had been fooled, she didn't feel like the best choice for a helper to anyone… However, the man was a human, and that made him an instant pariah among the rest of the prisoners. He wouldn't get any ally other than she, and she would do it just because she was indebted to him.

His choice then, was to partner with a failed undercover intelligence agent, or to remain alone. Even though she had fallen short in her last job, he could consider himself lucky to have her by his side. He would have not survived for long on his own during the last attack attempted against him.

She wouldn't have chosen him as ally if she had had any other chance. She was not fond of humans at all, and after all, warrior or not, he was still a human. A gruff and ill-tempered one by the way. For that she resented her particular predicament even more.

She was a Prakeshi, and though her memories of her homeworld were few and scattered, she was well acquainted with the traditions of her people. To honor them, she knew that she was bound to the human's fate: as long as she owed her life to that male, she would be at his service, at least until she could find a way to return the favor.

The recent challenge he faced didn't count. After all, he was not as defenseless as she was when he had saved her. It would have been a heinous act to wait until he was technically in her same situation, because at that point he would have been on the verge of death, and making an intervention then would have no meaning if she wanted to save him as he saved her.

She shrugged mentally. As things went, there would be plenty of opportunities ahead to fulfill her duty towards him.

Her mind left her concerns for her new partner.

She still had to analyze the general situation.

The way she had been caught was unforgivable. Jihan had scanned the outworlder , and beside his obvious sexual intentions she hadn't found out anything in him to be worried about. She had taken the precaution of arranging the meeting in a public place, one where she had conducted some of her dealings in the past. Jihan was well acquainted with the owner and she even had enrolled him on her payroll. He had provided her with some excellent reports in the past, therefore she had a certain sense of ease when she was at his place. If any other agent had performed such a lame mistake, she would have 'erased' him or her personally. An organization such as the one she was in charge of, couldn't allow such slips.

She wanted to bang her head against the walls; it was a rookie's mistake, even described in the books…

There was no doubt about being caught in a trap. Someone knew in advance that Londergaard would meet her there, and what she was about to retrieve from him. She had not scanned the place, as she should have if she had gone by the book.

Damn her stupidity!

The Colonel thought that she had been so self confident and excited about getting new hints on the case she had been unsuccessfully trying to unravel, that she was totally unaware of the drug that had been spilled on her drink. It had affected her capacities in a way that she didn't even realize until Londergaard touched the floor.

However, what bugged her the most were the motives her captors could have to keep her alive. It was apparent they knew that she was a telepath; from the collar they had put on her. Though she was a rarity, and her race was kept secret as most of the information of her profile, someone among the Lyrian pirates, her captors, had some hints about her.

However, they had not subjected her to the expected interrogation, nor they had made any direct attempt to kill her, even after throwing her defenseless to the cell. She guessed he had made it out of revenge, and that his orders concerning her were somewhat different. Why had they not finished her? What had they in store for her?

Nothing made sense…

Trying to get more answers, she analyzed every act, word or scene she could remember since she recovered consciousness.

While she had been still fighting the fog of unconsciousness, the intolerable stench emanating from the burly body of a Lyrian male had assaulted brutally her senses, making her choke. The greasy, revolting pirate had been trying to rape her. Her clothes had been totally gone, her wrists were in shackles and she had soon discovered the collar on her neck when two painful discharges had coursed through her body at her attempts to use her mental abilities to get rid of the repulsive monster going near her.

The man had laughed at her painful shouts… but not for long.

In a matter of minutes, he realized he had committed the worse error of his life, and probably the last one. She broke one of his legs and an arm, immobilizing him with a pinch on the base of his skull. Then she had gone for her prize: she took out one of his eyes and ripped his right ear, and ate them before the Lyrian beast.

However, he might have been able to send a distress signal because before she could break his neck, a blast knocked her to the floor.

After the captain had been patched up by his doctor, he had ordered her were thrown into the cell, and left her there drugged. The guard had to make an announcement then: the one who could kill her after raping her would receive extra rations of food.

That was when, unexpectedly, 'Nishi stepped into the picture.

She thought then that he would be like all the others, only expecting to get a brief pleasure from her and then collect his reward from the guards. When he had given her his clothes and the blanket, and even part of his food, she had been taken aback in astonishment and suspicion.

There was a sense of wrongness in his actions, something was quite not right, at least to what she was used to and had expected from a male in his position. His later behavior was even stranger.

She'd have expected that if someone had been sent to obtain her trust, at least they would have behaved nicely and friendlier.

He was quite the opposite.

After his earlier intervention and his initial protection until she was fully recovered, he had kept himself aloof, almost avoiding her purposely.

And his personality… he was like no human she had met before.

<Submissive? Slave? Pet? Forget about it! >, She thought, dryly.

All in all, he smelled like a human, and had some human characteristics, but his features were… wrong, and he was taller than any human she had known (in fact, he was slightly taller than her), and extremely well built, especially for one of his race. Nevertheless, his strangest features were his eyes. She had never seen eyes of such bluish-green hue in any race, much less in humans.

The way he had conducted himself in the two brawls left in her few doubts of his expertise as a warrior. All in his physical posture claimed that he was used to make use of some sort of weapon, and hand-to-hand combat was undoubtedly his second choice. However, he was really good and proficient at it. No traces of the shame or submissiveness of humans when they were 'civilized' by slavery could be detected on him.

Last but not least, he was neither branded or a eunuch, considering the beard and his totally masculine features, which spoke of normal hormonal activities.

Due to the racial purity policies inside the Alliance boundaries, human male slaves were castrated, either surgically or chemically. The chemical option left a period in the year where the owners allowed their property to mate, only for reproductive purposes (to let the 'cattle' grow up), and under strict official control.

The chemicals to suppress any sexual instinct in males were administered by the authorities, once a week, and during the period where the slaves were allowed to mate, they were kept in governmental facilities with the female that the studies of compatibility showed as apt for them, to avoid any risks of racial contamination. It was a measure devised to keep the human population under control, though it was meant also to avoid violent acts happening to female owners at the hands of their own male slaves as well as consented but illegal sex between superior and inferior races.

No. Certainly, the male by her side was not branded, registered, or castrated.

This was the first wild, untamed human Jihan had ever met.

She had heard tales about the old Humans as a race of bold explorers, even conquerors, and fiery defenders of their lost homeworld.

However, it was common knowledge those were only tales, told by human slaves to make their lives more bearable.

On the other hand, the human standing by his side seemed to confirm those tales.

Cursing her luck concerning the collar that prevented her to entering his mind to find answers, she wondered about his true origin…

Jihan started to believe that this human was indeed brought from the original Earth, especially when her eyes fell on the other beings around her and behind the glass wall.

She could recognize individuals belonging to at least a dozen species already extinct, and several more she didn't recognize at all. A human from original Earth might fit into that scheme…

Jihan found out that all the individuals belonging to those races she could distinguish shared a common trait: all of them belonged to species known by their aggressive, war-like behavior, and some of them were extinct due to the constant wars they had engaged in.

Her gaze wandered again over her companions in misfortune. They were probably the most important piece in the puzzle that she had in her hands at that moment.

The first conclusion that came to mind was that they all were captured to be used as slaves. However, their aggressive traits made them a very unique kind of slaves. Looking again at her human companion, and registering more closely how many other beings could belong to a long gone past, a theory started to build up in her mind.

She knew that the Lyrians were working in something big and unusual. It was not their typical dealings with drugs, prostitution, weapons, or slaves. It was something out of the ordinary, and carefully hidden. Now she was under the impression that the whole plot had deeper roots than she first had expected

There was only one possible explanation for what she was witnessing: the Lyrians were not only kidnapping people from different locations, but from different periods of time. The notion made her to feel dizzy and nauseated, because the only way to do such a thing was utilizing of the Gate of Illuria.

The device was a mystery in itself, and as it happened with stellar jump ports, nobody knew when, or whom had created it, only that it was there when the Alliance set foot on the planet.

The planet where the Gate had been found was a forbidden place, secluded and quarantined by the Alliance Fleet to avoid hazardous mistakes or terrorists attacks which could mess with the past, present or future of the many worlds inside and outside the Alliance. This system was meant to prevent unauthorized usage of the alien device and it required a high level of clearance to gain access to the place.

Those beings all around her, and probably her human ally were the proof that someone inside the Alliance had sold his loyalties to the Lyrians, someone capable of disguising the pirates' access to the Gate and avoiding the sophisticated detection system used by the Alliance Defense Force.

She felt no mercy towards traitors. Therefore, from now on, the investigation turned into something very personal.

Jihan would make sure she would do everything in her power to learn about this scheme to alert the Fleet and stop such dangerous manipulations, hunting and killing the corrupt rats in their holes in the process.

But first things first. She had to get out of that hellhole soon.

It wouldn't be easy.

She hadn't seen any opening to act. The place was totally cut off from the rest of the ship and during the few opportunities when the guards had set foot inside the cell, they had been very professional , covering any possible attempts of revolt. She couldn't do it all alone, she needed a diversion, and maybe the human could help… if he wasn't so uncooperative.

Though the man had tried to speak to her several times, she couldn't understand even one of his words. They both grew frustrated then, but they managed to communicate somehow. He did seem eager to learn the official Alliance language, the Trasklenian, true lingua franca in that part of the space; however, he didn't pay much attention to her more serious communicative efforts. He only seemed concerned with learning to know where they were (as if she knew it…) and she tried to know where he exactly came from.

Their frustration had increased at their failed attempts of mutual understanding and she had realized that as long as she had that infernal collar in her neck, she wouldn't be able to make any significant progress with her occasional companion.

One thing was clear to Jihan and it was that despite the human's eagerness to learn, he only seemed focused in getting the straight raw facts (probably to draw future strategies) and nothing else. Her prospective partner in this place wasn't either a sociable or a talkative kind of guy, that was certain.

Anyway, it was apparent they weren't going anywhere anytime soon, and as there wasn't much to do in that dungeon besides avoiding to become other's meal, they used the time to learn some way to communicate to each other.

Jihan tried also to learn as much as possible of that strange tongue of his, that didn't match any other she knew, but it could be useful as any sort of code words for special situations.

The Colonel main's concern now was how she would deal with the moment when he learnt where he truly was. If as she thought the human male came from Earth's past, he would very shocked, and his reaction might be unpredictable. Anyway, she noticed that he had a great capability to adapt himself into the situation, and he endured drastic changes rather well.

He was tough; probably more than was apparent. He had to be. He would have lasted a few seconds in that place otherwise.

Jihan was wondering about him, when the doors of their prison were unexpectedly opened.

A large group of guards, all heavily armed, formed a double row, while other groups of Lyrians urged with their pain-sticks the more reluctant ones to get on their feet and pass through the files of pirates, to be conducted somewhere outside the dungeon.

This might be the opportunity for escaping she had been waiting, she thought, studying the surroundings and pondering all the options before her eyes.

She started to ponder about how to drag the human with her, when he suddenly got up and positioned himself in the queue, without even looking at her.

Grumbling under her breath, she had no option except following him.

Jihan swore she'd make sure he understood the necessity of coordinating their actions.

She couldn't allow him to act on his own, much less make decisions for her, she thought while they were pushed by the metallic galleries.

But this chat would have to wait.

Because their future was about to reveal itself in a few moments. And that was a thing that required her complete and undivided attention…