THE LONG RUN

JET FOUGHT TO keep her face totally expressionless.

She stared only at the blank wall.

She refused to look at the Nirreth sitting at the table across from her, or to give him the satisfaction of reacting to the eyes she felt boring into her through the one-way window on that same featureless wall. She didn’t glance over when he gave a low hiss, or flinch when her peripheral vision caught the threatening dart of his tail from behind the low bench.

She’d already spent a night fending off beings like him.

Pretty much exactly like him, in fact.

The venom still coursed through her, confusing her mind, but she remembered where she was now. She knew exactly where they’d taken her, even though she couldn’t remember the goal they’d given her on this run.

She was in the Rings.

She hadn’t seen it before.

She only recently came to understand.

She might not remember the virtual goal, the one that would make the crowds cheer wildly when she attained it... but the rules felt perfectly clear to her now, too. They wanted to break her. Richter. Trazen. All of them. They would turn her into one of those blank-eyed house pets, erase everything that Jet was. It wasn’t a short run, like the ones she’d done on Earth. She’d stumbled into Richter’s game now instead, the long run... the run for the ultimate prize of all.

Maybe they’d been playing this game since the first time Richter saw her, in that restaurant following her debut match. She suspected it started before that, though, when he’d decided to design a run the Nirreth themselves couldn’t beat.

She was one of the game pieces now.

And really, it didn’t matter if she made it all the way through this. At the end of every chess match, most of the pieces were already off the board, after all.

Maybe it always would have come to this, sooner or later.

Jet understood now, though. She finally knew what she was doing here, why her mother and father decided to have her in a world where she’d be a slave. She’d come here to beat this thing, these people. That one thing now comprised the whole of Jet’s purpose. All of that crap about who became king or queen or prince or rook or pawn, or even what the “New Order” of the Nirreth and humans would look like... that all just felt like window dressing.

Jet had come here to stop Richter from the making the world his.

She’d come to stop Trazen, who might even work for Richter by now.

Richter seemed to know Jet’s true role from the beginning.

Maybe Laksri and Anaze did too, even as they told themselves they’d found a way to compromise with the devil for the greater good. Maybe they’d known that Jet would come, at some point... or someone like her. Maybe they’d been waiting for her, biding their time and keeping the devil on his leash.

Or maybe it was simply Jet’s turn.

One more pawn to go for the rook, and hopefully not end up forced off the board.

She didn’t know what they’d done with Laksri’s body.

She didn’t know where Anaze was, either.

Richter would squirm out of this, the way he managed to squirm his way out of everything. His expertise in the long run, after all, centered on convincing other people to do his dirty work for him. He skulked off when they got killed, until he could find someone else to rope into his game, willingly or not.

But Laksri must have really pissed him off.

Laksri, Richter killed personally.

Fighting a tightening in her throat, Jet glanced up at the camera embedded in the wall, knowing it would be recording infrared images, as well as those within the visible light spectrum for humans. Possibly it would record her in those other spectrums, as well. A kind of Nirreth lie detector, it would pick up more than just the standard yes and no. It would pick up Jet’s anger. Her frustration. Her hatred. It would pick up her arousal, too.

It might not know what caused those things, not precisely... not in all cases. But it would know. It would record that knowing.

She still stared at that camera when the Nirreth caught hold of her wrist.

“Mammal!” he snapped. “Answer me! Or I give you back to the guards!”

Jet let her eyes travel slowly back to his. “Answer what, sir?”

He paused, as if the look on her face startled him. Whatever he saw in that single pass of his gaze, it brought a curl to his dark lips a frown that touched the rest of his expression.

“Do you really think you can succeed in this?” he said. “This game of yours, of using silence? Of pretending ignorance?”

“Ignorance about what, sir?” she said politely.

“We know you work for them,” he said. “For the traitor, Laksri. For the rebel slave, Anaze...”

When Jet said nothing, he let out a low hiss.

“...You pretend ignorance of this, too?”

Jet arched an eyebrow, laying her hands flat on the table. “My ownership papers should all be in order, sir. I belong to the Royal family. I run for our Queen and her exalted family in the glorious Rings, imagined and enacted by the grace of the Royal Bloodline and their servants most loyal among the––”

“Stop!” he snapped, slamming the table with a palm.

She fell obediently silent, watching him.

The Nirreth’s tail lashed in another of those hard arcs. His dark eyes didn’t move, but she saw something in them, something that indicated her words managed to jab at him, despite the faint smile that now colored his lips.

“What do they offer you?” he said, still watching her sagely.

“What does who offer me, sir?” she said.

“Is it wealth? Freedom? Or do you just like the prince’s personal attentions?” He let his eyes wander down her body, which was entirely without clothes, bruised from her first night in the cells under the compound on Astet. “...It seems you suit our kind quite well, Jet Tetsuo.”

“I do not understand the question,” she said politely, unflinching under his stare.

“Is being consort to the First Son really such a prize for you, mammal?” His eyes flickered down her body a second time, even as the motions of his tail grew more sinuous. “Why would this mean anything to you, given what you are... ?”

“Why would I not be honored by such a position, honorable guard to the Retribution?” she said. “Any mammal of my standing would, of course, be honored, if only––”

But he lost patience before she could finish.

“Silence!” His mouth curled into another of those angry frowns, but before he could go on, the door opened to his right and her left, causing him to turn.

Jet continued to stare straight ahead.

She didn’t move her eyes in that direction until the familiarity of the new voice caused her head to shift on its own, causing her to stare up at the tall Nirreth who stood there.

“That is enough,” he said coldly.

Jet blinked, still staring uncomprehendingly at Trazen.

“She will come with me now,” he added, his voice equally cold.

“You do not have the authority––” the other Nirreth broken in angrily.

“I do have it.” Trazen held a flattened monitor towards the guard to support his words, his dark eyes unmoving, not looking at Jet where she sat on the metal bench.

She watched him anyway, her mind still shifting slowly through the venom. She saw the Ringmaster’s arms flex below the short-sleeved tunic, his mouth harden he watched the other Nirreth read the screen he’d just handed him. As if growing impatient with the man’s ability to draw his own conclusions, Trazen exhaled in an irritated sigh.

“...It is plain,” he said in clipped Nargili. “Our beloved Queen is overthrown. The new First Son, soon to be king, has given this mammal to me, as reward for leading this operation, and bringing the traitors to justice.”

For the first time, Trazen’s gold-flecked eyes met Jet’s, holding so little emotion that they appeared to be dead.

“...She will come with me now,” he added. “Back to Earth. Our First Son and soon-to-be king would like to witness this mammal’s re-training and assimilation personally. She is a star of the Rings, after all.”

The Astet guard frowned at him, lashing his tail in an angry arc behind his back. Seemingly unable to come up with a good argument, he handed the monitor back to Trazen.

“Take her,” he hissed, his Nargili holding a stronger accent. “Take her, then. We have no need for her here. And send my regards to the new King.”

Trazen nodded, folding the monitor back to its smaller size and clamping it around his muscular wrist. He didn’t look at her as he addressed the other Nirreth politely.

“Have you managed to find either of them?” Trazen said. “The human, Richter, or his boy?”

The guard gave him an irritated look. “No,” he said. “We made the deal with him, to let the boy go. He left within an hour of his part in this.”

“But you put trackers on them, surely?” Trazen said.

Jet frowned, looking between the two of them. Why would Trazen ask about this in front of her? Even as she thought it, she glanced at the tall Nirreth and found his eyes on her, a warning to be silent clear in his gaze.

“We did,” the guard acknowledged, bowing to Trazen, although the reluctance in the gesture remained apparent. “We did as you asked, honorable Ringmaster Trazen.”

“Good,” Trazen said, giving a more friendly flick of his tail. With scarcely a beat of pause, he looked at Jet, his dark eyes holding an overt command. “Up, mammal.” He motioned sharply with a hand. “We are leaving.”

Jet stared at him, feeling her jaw harden.

At her hesitation, Trazen’s eyes grew cold, as hard as stones.

“Now,” he said, his voice holding an open threat. “You belong to me now. You might as well learn this early, Jet. I do not like having to ask anything twice.”

Jet felt her jaw harden more, until it hurt her face.

Even so, she rose slowly and deliberately to her feet, not bothering to hide her lack of clothes from his eyes, either. She barely saw him glance at her, though, other than a sharp look down her form, as if to assess whether she could move under her own power.

“Come,” he said, his voice more cordial that time, but still brooking no argument.

Jet walked towards him, still deliberately slow, not taking her eyes off his face, or his tail. She half-expected him to sting her as soon as she got close, but he didn’t do that, either. Instead, he caught hold of her by the back of the neck, and held her there, firmly. Looking at the other guard, he gave a short bow of his head, flicking his tail a last time, a near salute.

“I thank you again,” he said.

He waited for the other to bow back, then turned, steering Jet towards the door.

She didn’t look back, or look up. Instead she followed the tug of his fingers without protest, feeling a harder knot settle into her chest.

She was going home. She was going back to Earth.

She knew without being told that Richter would be there. Richter would be there, and he had her family. He had her brother, her mother, her uncle and aunt. He would be back for her, too. She was sure of it. She knew it even apart from Trazen’s odd allusion to the same.

So she would wait. She would endure whatever she had to.

This wasn’t over.

The long run for Jet had really just begun.

~ END OF PART III ~