The beast, the rage, had always existed, bubbling under the surface of Riddick’s skin. The kids from the orphanage home attended the local public grade school, and the kids who had homes and parents often picked on the kids from the Home. Maybe that’s why the fifth-grade bully Mark thought third-grade Ricky Riddick would be an easy target. "Hey, Dumpster Dick," he said, shoving the younger boy against the wall. A circle of kids immediately formed around the two of them.
"Don’t call me that," Ricky replied. He hated that nickname. It wasn’t his fault he’d been found in a Dumpster or that the entire school population knew that little unsavory fact.
Mark grinned. "You got any lunch money, Dumpster Dick?"
"You know I don’t. The Home pays for the lunches ahead of time."
"Then I guess there’s nothing to keep me from punching your lights out, is there?"
"You don’t have the guts," Ricky retorted. "And my name’s Richard, not Dumpster Dick!"
Mark’s blow sent him to his knees. The crowd of kids laughed, but they were abruptly quiet when Ricky got to his feet and charged Mark, tackling him with an angry cry. He pounded Mark as hard as he could with his fists, bloodying his nose and blackening an eye before a pair of teachers waded through the kids and pulled him off. Mark recovered, but never bothered little Ricky again.
~~Aboard the Emergency Skiff~~
"Riddick?" the girl said. He’d heard her pad over and then stand hesitantly a few feet away from him, silent. Now she’d finally spoken.
"Yeah?" he grunted.
"Can I...can I sleep near you? I’m...scared." It sounded like the confession had taken some effort.
He rolled on his back and stared up at her through the dark. She gazed back at him, unflinching, although he knew his eyes were doing their glow-in-the-dark bit. "Whatever you’re scared of, it ain’t me, huh?"
"I’m not scared of anything in particular. I just don’t want to be alone."
"Why not sleep with the Muslim?"
She bit her lip. "I guess...I just wanted to ask you first."
Why? he wanted to ask, but instead made a soft non-committal sound and rolled back onto his side, away from her. "Do what you want. It won’t bother me."
He heard her lay down and shift around until she was comfortable. In truth, her presence was kind of distracting, but he did his best to ignore her and closed his eyes. There were a few minutes of silence, broken only by their breathing, and then he heard her shift around again. He was startled when he felt her back come in contact with his, but she was warm and for some reason, less distracting than before.
They passed through the next "day", trying to conserve what little food and water they’d been able to store aboard the skiff. Jack was already bedded down when Riddick passed her on his way to his chosen sleeping place by the ship’s controls. She glanced up at him hopefully. He took a few more steps, pretending he hadn’t seen her look, then stopped and looked back at her. She was watching him. After a moment, he jerked his head toward the controls, indicating that she could join him if she wanted. Apparently she wanted, because she got up and followed him.
They settled on the floor, backs against one another again. Riddick was just drifting off to sleep when he became aware that Jack’s body was shaking as if she was crying. "You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah," she replied after a moment. "I’m fine." From the thickness of her voice and the long pause before she spoke, he knew that she wasn’t as fine as she claimed to be. On top of that, her body continued to shake, although somewhat less than before.
He surprised himself by turning around so that he was curled around her, his chest to her back and one arm draped across her waist. "What’s wrong?"
"It’s all my fault," she said.
"What is?"
"Everyone dying. If I hadn’t gotten my stupid period, those things wouldn’t have been after us and everyone would’ve made it out okay."
He laughed softly. "You can’t blame yourself for that. It wasn’t something you could prevent or change. You might as well blame the eclipse for happening in the first place."
"But there must’ve been something I coulda done..."
"Maybe told us earlier, but that’s about it. We were the only other living things on that planet besides those creatures, so no matter what, they would’ve been after us. Nothing that happened was your fault."
She wiped at her face with her hands and snuggled closer to him. "Thanks," she murmured. Her eyes closed, and after a deep sigh, her breathing fell almost immediately into a sleep pattern. He stared down at her head. He really hadn’t intended for them to sleep like this, but apparently she was comfortable. He gave a mental shrug and grin and indulged one of his private fixations. Bringing his face close to her shorn scalp, he fell asleep breathing the smells of old fear, dried sweat, and underneath that, the unique scent of Jack herself.
Rick delivered a crushing blow to Eric’s nose, and the 17-year-old went down hard. Rick himself was only sixteen, but he’d begun going through puberty last year and was already at his full height of six foot four. He’d been lifting weights, mostly to fill out his long, lean frame, but the muscle came in handy in situations like this too. "Emma’s done nothing to deserve your comments, except maybe refuse you when you wanted to fuck her," he growled, pleased that his relatively new bass voice hadn’t cracked. "So shut your trap and leave her alone."
The object of their "conversation" stood a few feet away, staring with wide eyes. Emma James, one of the high school’s "good girls," was often the target of Eric’s juvenile commentary, and Rick had had enough. He himself was a subject for teasing, too, even if they didn’t do it to his face. Most of the kids had grown up with him and knew about his past. The rest of them only knew that he was one of the unwanted kids from the Home, not to mention dark-skinned in a world of pure Caucasian families, and that was enough for them. Rick could take it. He didn’t care what they said about him. But the poor innocent named Emma was not so lucky. The right amount of teasing could reduce her to tears.
Rick was about to demand an apology from Eric when he saw the sly gleam in the other’s eyes. At that moment, a hand descended on his shoulder. "Fighting again, Mr. Riddick?" the principal asked.
"Not really, sir," he replied.
"Not really?" the principal echoed.
"Eric was giving Emma a hard time again, and I stepped in to help her," Rick explained.
"I see. Instead of going to the proper authorities, you thought you’d take the law into your own hands, so to speak."
Rick sighed. He knew he was going to get a detention no matter what, so he just agreed. "Yeah, I guess that’s what I thought, sir."
"You know the drill, Mr. Riddick. Room 214 on Saturday."
"Yes, sir."
The principal released Rick and walked away. Eric’s friends helped him up off the floor and to a bathroom to clean the blood off his face. Emma hugged her books tighter and offered Rick a smile. "Thank you...for defending me."
"You’re welcome," he said, wincing when his voice broke and the last half of "welcome" came out in a squeak.
Emma giggled, and then, moving like a timid deer, she walked up to him and kissed him on the cheek. "I’d better get to class. See you around."
"Yeah," Rick replied, watching her as she walked away, a faint smile on his face.
It had been a night for dreams, and in Riddick’s case they had been disturbing. His subconscious had spent the night reliving the moment when Carolyn had died and his subsequent unexpected anguish. He woke with the words "not for me" following him from sleep and ringing through his mind.
He spent the day in brooding silence, spending long hours sitting in the pilot’s seat and staring out the window at the stars. A few times he felt Jack hovering over his shoulder, but he didn’t say anything and she didn’t attempt to start a conversation. After a few minutes, she always left as silently as she had come.
Imam approached and sat in the copilot’s seat. He was silent for a few minutes, staring out the window much the same way Riddick was. "Perhaps your mind could be eased if you shared what weighed on it so heavily," he said finally.
"I’m just thinking," Riddick said.
"Ah, I see," Imam replied. He remained seated through a few more minutes of silence, then got up and began to walk away.
"Carolyn Fry," Riddick said, and Imam paused. Riddick took a breath. "I was going to leave without you, and she stopped me." Imam sat back down, and his expression was gently encouraging. "I asked her if she would die for you and Jack, and she said yes," Riddick continued. "So we went back to help. When we were separated at the campsite...when she came back to...get me, I was injured and disoriented. She had to help me get up, and she said ‘I said I’d die for them, not you’. But then she was killed."
"And that makes you feel...guilty?"
"Yeah, I guess. If she wasn’t willing to die for me, then it was pointless for her to even come. She should’ve just left, like I was going to do."
"Are you sure she wasn’t willing?" Imam said thoughtfully. "We were safely at the ship. She could have left without you, but she didn’t. She didn’t even hesitate to run back into the darkness. She must’ve known the risks. She could’ve been killed before she even reached you. In other words, if she truly hadn’t been willing to risk her life for you, why would she have gone back for you at all?"
Riddick mulled that over in his mind. She hadn’t been angry, he realized. Her voice had been coaxing with undertones of fear and frustration. Even when she’d been hit and they’d stared at each other for that short eternity, her face had shown no anger, only surprise.
"I think you’re right." He hesitated, then said, "But it still makes no sense. If anyone was going to die, it should have been me. She died for a murderer. I don’t think death can get much more pointless than that."
"There is a reason for everything that happens to us. I believe that God has a great mission for each one of us. Perhaps she had fulfilled her mission. Perhaps her death was the fulfillment of her mission."
"What mission?"
"I don’t know the mind of God, but maybe her mission was to help a murderer recover the humanity he believed he had lost."
Riddick closed his eyes, reliving that moment yet again. It had been a shock when she came back for him, and an even greater shock when she died. The emotions that had ripped through him had been frightening in their intensity. Anger he was familiar with, but the despair, anguish, fear, and grief that had come on the heels of that well-known emotion had shattered the inner walls he’d built up. For a brief second, all he’d wanted to do was curl up and cry.
The idea that some invisible power had chosen her, had decided--maybe even when she was only a baby--that she would die to jolt him back to real life was mind-blowing. He opened his eyes and looked at Imam. He didn’t know what the holy man saw in his silvered eyes, but Imam got up and laid a hand on his shoulder, saying, "I’m glad I could be of help to you." He patted Riddick’s shoulder once before walking away.
Jack appeared a few moments later. "Hey kid," Riddick said.
"Hey," Jack replied.
"Did Imam tell you the coast was clear?" He glanced up at her and grinned when she looked away, embarrassed. "Don’t worry about it. You were probably better off laying low."
"You didn’t seem to be in a very good mood, so I figured you didn’t want any company."
"Just some things to think about. Anyway, company’s fine now."
Jack dropped into the copilot’s seat and sat sideways, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her heels on the edge of the seat. She wrapped her arms around her legs. "I’ve been thinking a lot today, too."
"About what?"
She asked, "Why did you tell me not to cry for Johns?"
Riddick looked at her, mildly surprised. "You really wanna know about that?"
"Yeah."
He sighed. "You ever hear the word ‘triage’ before?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Well, I’m sure he left something out of his definition, but in our little conversation, Johns told me it’s the term people use when battlefield doctors decide who lives and who dies. He didn’t think we’d all make it if we kept going the way we were, so he wanted to use someone as bait to give the others a better chance."
Jack hugged her legs tighter. "Who did he want to...use?"
Riddick said nothing, but his steady gaze was enough of an answer.
A chill passed through Jack, and she shivered. "Me?" she asked in a hushed voice. Riddick nodded. "But why? Wait, scratch that, stupid question. I was the one attracting them." She paused, then said, "There wasn’t anything I could do about it, and he was still going to kill me for it."
Riddick gave a soft, dry laugh. "Johns wasn’t going to stain his lily-white hands. ‘You do the girl, and I’ll keep the others off your back.’ That’s exactly what he said to me. Maybe he figured killing a frightened kid in front of everyone wouldn’t bother me. Maybe he thought he was being clever, that I wouldn’t figure out that if I did it, the others would hate me and wouldn’t complain if he chained me up again." He glanced over at Jack, who had hidden her face, her forehead resting on her knees. His voice softened, and he made a small confession. "Maybe he didn’t realize that even a badass murderer can have a soft spot."
She looked up, a hint of a smile on her face. "Me specifically, or kids in general?"
"Kids in general. I’ve never killed a kid, never plan on doing it."
"Why kids?"
"Well, my own childhood wasn’t all that great. Guess I don’t wanna ruin anyone else’s. There was this one woman," he said, shocked at himself for telling Jack this but unable to stop, "I’d followed her home, broken in her house, and taken her down in the kitchen. I was just about to...finish it, and then there’s this kid’s voice out of nowhere saying ‘Mommy?’ The kid must’ve been down a hallway or something, I don’t know. I froze, and this woman, she turns her head to look up at me, and she whispers, ‘Please, not my baby.’ I bolted, just ran like crazy. I wasn’t going to kill her kid, and I couldn’t kill her either, not when I knew I’d be ruining the poor kid’s life." He looked at Jack to see how she was taking this confession. She was watching him and met his eyes calmly, no hint of horror or damnation on her face. "The funny thing is, nothing came of it," he continued. "I was watching the papers for the article. I was already in the news, so she had to have known who I was, and she got a pretty good look at me, but there was no story, no police artist’s sketch. Maybe she was afraid I’d come back."
"Or she was just grateful that she and her kid were alive," Jack added softly.
"Yeah, that too." Riddick sighed. "I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I shouldn’t have told you any of that."
Jack got up out of her chair and then surprised him by sitting in his lap and curling against him. "Tell me about when you were a kid," she said, resting her head on his shoulder.
"Why?"
"I wanna know about you."
He put his arms around her and tilted his head slightly to better catch her scent. "How about we make it an exchange of information? Tell me something about yourself, and I’ll tell you about me."
"What do you wanna know?"
"Everything."
"Okay...my real name is Audrey Holloway, and I’m thirteen. My parents were Jack and Veronica, and they died in the Alpha Centauri accident two years ago." Riddick winced slightly. The Alpha Centauri had been a space cruise liner. On a trip around Jupiter, some faulty hull pieces gave way. Those who hadn’t been sucked out the huge hole had died when the ship went down on the planet and was crushed by the atmospheric pressure. "I don’t have any extended family," Jack continued, "so I got put in a foster home. It was okay, I mean they didn’t mistreat me or anything, but they didn’t love me either. After a while I couldn’t stand it. My parents left me a little bit of money, so I bought passage on a ship and got out of there. I traveled around a lot, and I found out it was easier to get around if I pretended to be a boy. I attracted less attention that way. I eventually wound up on the Hunter-Gratzner, no particular destination in mind, just...on the move."
"So you named yourself after your father?"
"Yeah...don’t call me Audrey, okay? I hate my name."
Riddick chuckled. "Okay."
"Your turn."
He sighed. "I don’t know who my parents are. Some young homemaker found me in a Dumpster with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. After she stopped screaming, she called the cops and they took over from there. They took me to an orphanage, where they decided to name me after the janitor."
"They named a baby they found in the garbage after the janitor?" Jack sounded aghast.
"Yeah. Somebody’s idea of a bad joke, I guess. Bradley Riddick. They tacked ‘Richard’ on the front in honor of the former director or something. Anyway, I grew up at that orphanage. The people there didn’t love us, but most of us didn’t have a clue what love was anyway, so we didn’t miss it. They took care of us, and that was enough." He was silent, contemplating his next revelation. Finally, he just said it. "I committed my first murder there."
She looked up at him. "Really?"
"Yeah. I was..." He gave a short laugh. "I was your age."
"What happened?"
"Well, to start with, I should tell you about my namesake the janitor. He was a pervert, a pedophile. We called him Queen Brad. He liked his boys old enough to endure his games but weak enough to not be able to fight back. He’d stand in the mess hall and watch us while we were eating. He was supposed to be monitoring us so we didn’t start a food fight or whatever, but he’d be watching one kid or another, picking a victim. We’d try to see who he was watching and we’d pass the warning ‘he’s eyeing you’ or just ‘H-E-Y’.
"Anyway, I’d just turned thirteen..."
* * * * *
Rick had yet to reach puberty and the growth spurt that went with it. Short and scrawny, he could have passed for ten. It had been pizza day at the Home and he was still burping pepperoni flavor when Timmy and Paul came up to him. "H-E-Y, Rick," Paul said.
Rick froze. "No way."
"Yes way," Timmy said. "We saw it for sure. He was eyeing you, Ricky."
"I sure hope you don’t end up like Harry," Paul said before they walked away. Harry had been Queen Brad’s last victim. He spent three days in bed, shaking and crying, before some doctors came and took him away. Rick clenched his fists and swore to himself that he wouldn’t end up like that.
That night he crept down to the kitchen and found a butcher’s knife. He stared at the shining blade a long time before he snuck back to his room. He hid the knife underneath his mattress. "He won’t get me," he murmured to himself before falling asleep. "He won’t."
The next day passed uneventfully, even though he caught some sympathetic looks from the boys who knew he was Queen Brad’s next intended victim. That night he dressed for bed with some trepidation. No one except the victims knew when or how Queen Brad got to them, and nobody ever dared to talk about it. He wanted to be as prepared as possible.
He got into bed and pulled up the covers. He was drifting away into sleep when a hand on his shoulder shook him back awake. Queen Brad was standing over him. "Hey Ricky," he said with a grin. "Don’t fall asleep yet. I’ve got a surprise for you."
"Really?" Rick asked, sitting up.
"Yeah, it’s a really secret birthday present. I didn’t want to show you during the day because all the other kids would be jealous."
"Wow, cool," Rick said, feigning excitement. He leaned down to put his slippers on, and before straightening back up, he slid the knife out from under his mattress. He was afraid Brad had seen him, but when he looked up, the man was at the door, glancing up and down the hall. Rick hid the knife against his leg.
"All set?" Brad asked, turning back to him. Rick nodded and stood up, then followed him out of the building and across the orphanage grounds to the garden shed. Brad opened the door and motioned Rick inside. Then he shut the door and flipped on the overhead light.
"Where’s my surprise?" Rick asked innocently.
Brad grinned. "You’ll see pretty soon." Then he caught a flash of light off of the knife blade. "What’s that, Ricky?"
Rick brandished the knife at him. "I know what you do out here, and you’re not gonna hurt me." His heart was pounding. Queen Brad was so much bigger than he was...and he was laughing.
"You gotta be kidding me! What are you gonna do with that thing, huh? Stab me?" He laughed harder.
"If I...if I have to," Rick said uncertainly.
Brad suddenly snarled and started toward him. "Drop the knife, runt, or you’ll wish you had."
Terrified, Rick thrust the knife out. Brad was still moving forward, not expecting any resistance, and he impaled himself. He jerked backward, a cry of pain bursting from his mouth. Rick stared at him and then at the knife he still clutched, wide-eyed in surprise.
"You little..." Brad gasped out, holding his stomach. "They’ll send you away for that!"
There was a voice in Rick’s head, and it said, protect yourself...protect the others. It hit Rick with a clarity that made him gasp. If he stopped Queen Brad tonight, he and everyone else would be safe. Nobody else would end up like poor Harry. With a cry that was half terror and half wild determination, Rick charged toward Brad and stabbed him again, then yanked the knife out and stabbed him a third time, right in the middle of the chest. A queer blank look came over Brad’s face, and he collapsed. He stared straight ahead, unblinking, and Rick suddenly realized he was dead.
Rick sat down hard, shocked by what he’d just done. "I killed Queen Brad," he said aloud. It didn’t sound real. He was only a shrimpy kid, how could he have possibly killed someone? He tried to gather his scattered thoughts. He knew that he couldn’t get rid of the body, so he had to get rid of the knife, at least. When somebody found Brad’s body, the police would be searching for the killer, and Rick knew they’d be able to get his fingerprints off of the knife. There was only a little blood on his knife hand and none on his clothes, so he didn’t have to worry about that.
He pulled the knife out of Brad, careful not to step in the growing puddle of blood underneath the corpse. Grabbing a trowel that was hanging by the door, he pushed it open and walked outside. He looked around, then ran into the woods that bordered the orphanage property. When he felt that he was far enough away from the shed, he dug a hole with the trowel, dropped the knife in, and buried it. He knocked a few clinging clumps of dirt off the trowel and went back to the shed. He returned the trowel to its place, turned off the light, and shut the door. Stopping at the garden hose just outside the shed, he washed his hands. Then he took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and headed back to the orphanage and his bed.
* * * * *
"They found Queen Brad a few days later," Riddick said. "There was an investigation, but they didn’t find any conclusive evidence and eventually dropped the case. We got a new janitor, a nice old guy we ended up calling Grandpa or Gramps, depending on how old and cool you were."
Jack giggled, then asked, "Did anybody ever figure it out?"
"Nobody ever asked me about it, but some of the kids who were real jerks were nice to me all of a sudden, so I think that some of them suspected I had something to do with it."
Jack yawned. "Can I sleep here?" she asked, abruptly changing the subject.
"No." She looked up at him, confusion and hurt on her face. Riddick sighed. "My legs are fallin’ asleep, kid. If you stay here all night, I won’t be able to walk in the morning."
"Oh," she said, her expression clearing.
She got up, and he felt the tingle of returning circulation. He looked at her and noticed her pensive expression. "What?"
"Nothing," she said, looking away.
"Jack, tell me."
"Will you..." she began, then looked directly at him. "Will you hold me again?"
He blinked in mild surprise, then smiled. "Sure."
When Imam came forward to check on them, drawn by the silence, he found them bedded down, asleep. Riddick was once again spooned around Jack’s smaller body, his arm across her waist and his head tucked down close to hers. The Muslim leader watched them in thoughtful silence, then offered a small prayer of thanksgiving for the redemptive power of a child’s trust before heading to his own bed.
With nowhere else to go after graduating from high school, Riddick joined the military. He’d gotten along with the other recruits until Madigan hacked into some files he shouldn’t. He found out about Riddick’s past and told the others, and the teasing started all over again. They were as merciless as the young boys of his childhood, and something within Riddick’s well-worn psyche snapped.
One night he killed them.
All twenty-three of them.
With his combat knife.
The wake-up call sergeant opened the door the next morning to find him sleeping peacefully in his bed amid the mangled bodies of his squad mates.
He expected to be sent to prison. He didn’t try to plead insanity. In fact he told them very calmly that of course he did it; he wouldn’t have been the only one left alive if it had been someone else. But after a few days in the brig on base, he had some visitors. Quiet, serious men that were not at all appalled by his actions. Instead, they were impressed. They offered him additional training if he was interested. If he liked to kill. They didn’t say who they were, but he knew. Assassins. Black ops. He gave them a predatory grin and said yes, he was interested.
So the military geniuses made up a story to explain the twenty-three deaths and Riddick joined the ranks of the real killers. He learned how to kill people with almost every weapon invented, and a few things that weren’t normally used as weapons, besides. He learned how to move silently and strike quickly. He learned how to hack into computer systems and pilot ground, air, and spacecraft. He learned all they had to teach him and then used those skills to skip out. Disappear. They searched for him for a few days, then gave up. They’d already spent enough time and money on him, and there were other promising recruits in training. So the military forgot Richard B. Riddick, and a killer was let loose on the galaxy.
The things they’d taught him in black ops training had left him less human than before. The only thing that remained was the viciousness with which he attacked his prey. He stalked them at random, waiting for one that seemed vulnerable. He’d killed eight men and one woman before he came across the one with the child. It had been a bad jolt to hear that kid’s voice and to suddenly see the fear in the woman’s eyes. Something human had reconnected, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from killing again. This was his last before-prison victim, though, his mistake, because there’d been a witness to the man’s murder and Riddick was caught. The jury convicted and the judge sentenced him to serving ten life sentences without parole at Ursa Luna Penal Colony.
At Ursa Luna, "The Dark" was the dream of all convicts, to escape from the patrolled, lighted cells above and reach The Dark below. It was supposed to be a place of freedom, a stronghold against capture within the prison itself. Certainly the guards never went down there. They’d have had their throats slit before they took ten steps.
Riddick lived above for five years before he decided to go for The Dark. He maimed one guard and killed another in his escape from his cellblock. He found an elevator and rode it down into the lightless black below.
~~Two Years Later~~
Quitting time, and Riddick punched out and started for home. "Johns! Yo, Johns! Wait up, buddy!" Riddick winced inwardly at the sound of that name. He hated that name. Why the hell did he decide to be William Johns when the trading ship found them? Because you told them Riddick was dead, and who else would you be? The pansy-assed art dealer? A good Muslim like Imam? He smirked slightly to himself as he waited for some of his coworkers from the mine to catch up with him. Johns’ personality had almost matched up with Riddick’s own. Probably just as much of a criminal, in his own way. That’s why it had been easiest for Riddick to assume the role of Johns. He’d just have to live with being called by that name for the rest of his life.
After escaping the hellish planet and a week of heading nowhere in particular, the skiff had been picked up by a trading ship and brought to the planet Axion. Imam had continued with his pilgrimage to New Mecca. Jack had begged to stay with Riddick, and he hadn’t fought all that hard. He knew he wasn’t the ideal role model for a teenage girl, but she’d threatened to run away if he forced her to go with Imam, and he caved. Maybe something in him realized how much her simple trust would help him hold on to his newly recovered humanity. Or maybe it was just his fascination with physical contact. She liked to hug and snuggle against him when they watched TV, and after years of dealing with people who would virtually or even literally run the other way when they met him, the feeling of her body against his was still new and unexpected. And she was happy. Being with him made her happy, and that thought continued to surprise him every time it crossed his mind.
Riddick, for his part, had found rejoining society to be relatively painless. As Johns, he had gotten a job with a mining company and had worked the mines ever since. He was able to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment and his paycheck kept him clear of debt. He found the rough-and-tumble but generally amiable personalities of the other miners easy to deal with, and working deep in the mines gave his sometimes achy eyes a rest from all the lights outside. He was content.
Mack, Tom, and Carl joined him, jolting him out of his reverie. "So ya gonna come with us tonight?" Tom asked.
Riddick sighed. "I don’t know."
"We’re gonna keep askin’ ‘till you give in, ya know," Carl said.
Or until I slit your throats, Riddick thought, and suppressed a grin. Maybe he hadn’t changed as much in the past two years as he thought.
"Come on, man, just a couple of drinks with the guys," Mack added.
"All right, all right," Riddick said, giving in. He couldn’t kill them and they wouldn’t leave him alone, so he might as well go along with them. He saw a pay phone and walked over to it.
"Where ya going?" Tom asked.
"I’ve gotta make a call," he replied.
"Does Mommy’s little sweetums need to call home and ask if he can go out and play?" Carl said teasingly.
Riddick gave him the finger as he dialed his apartment number.
"Johns residence," Jack said when she answered the phone.
"Hey, kid," Riddick said.
"Hi. What’s up?"
"We didn’t have anything planned for tonight, did we?"
"No, why? You want me to make something up?"
He laughed softly. "Nah. I’m going out to a bar with some of the guys, so I’ll be back a little late tonight."
"You are going out with people? You must be getting better."
"Yeah, well, it was either that or kill them all, and I’m just not in a homicidal mood today."
Jack laughed. "Okay, I’ll see you later then. Have fun."
"I’ll try."
"Don’t get plastered and pick up some cheap whore."
"Jack!"
She started laughing again. "Bye," she managed to say, and hung up the phone.
Riddick hung up, shaking his head and grinning. The things that came out of that girl’s mouth...
The Dark turned out to be just that: dark. There was no eternal party going on, just the law of the wild--survival of the fittest, kill or be killed. Riddick fumbled around blindly for a week before he ran across the "shiners." Their eyes gleamed in the dark as they surrounded him.
"What you doin’ here, Darkeye?" one of them asked.
"He come to get hisself kilt, I ‘tink," another replied.
"Leave me alone," Riddick said. They laughed as they moved in on him.
He injured or killed three before they knocked him out. As one of them raised a knife to finish him off, light suddenly lanced through the darkness and they fled, shrieking. A man walked over to Riddick, found that he was still alive, and hauled him up over his shoulders before going back the way he came.
Riddick awoke and opened his eyes to the light. He blinked and squinted, eyes adjusting slowly after so much time in the dark. He sat up and saw the man across the room, dressed in a white lab coat.
"Awake, are we?" the man said. "You’re lucky, my friend. Shiners nearly got you."
"You brought me here?"
"Yep."
"How do they see in that kind of dark?"
"Lay the cornea aside, drill through the eyejell, and spray some reflecto-coat on the retina. Cost you a thousand creds."
"You a real doctor?"
"Bovine M.D. Spent eighteen years castrating bulls in the Outback. Close enough for this work."
Riddick smirked, then said, "Okay." He pulled a pack of Kools he’d stolen from a guard in his escape out of a pocket and handed it to the doctor. "This’ll have to do for a down payment. I’ll get you the rest of it later."
The doctor nodded, taking the cigarettes and pocketing them. Riddick lay back down, watching the doctor prepare. He loaded a syringe and Riddick said, "No dope-out."
"Gonna have to drill through your eyeballs, mate. Might be a toucha pain involved."
"Pain’s good. Reminds me I’m alive."
The doctor shrugged, then put the syringe down and picked up the drill. Riddick wasn’t the first man to go through the procedure without anesthesia, nor would he be the last. He was, however, the doctor noted, the only one who didn’t scream.
He was mildly surprised when they walked in the bar. The lighting was subdued, but it still revealed a rather well appointed interior. Must do good business here, he thought. He lifted his goggles experimentally, then took them off when he found that his eyes could handle the light level in the room. He stuck them in a pocket of his work cover-all.
"Didn’t think those things came off in public," Carl said.
Riddick shot him a glance and was amused when he looked away and fidgeted, an uncomfortable look on his face. All of the other miners had seen his eyes at least once or twice, but the shine still disturbed some of them.
Tom led the way to a booth, and they settled around the table. "So who’d you call?" he asked Riddick when they were seated.
He shrugged a little. "Kid who’s living with me. Just wanted her to know I’d be home late. She worries."
"She, huh? How old is ‘she’?" Mack asked.
"Fifteen. She’s a runaway. She came to the planet with me two years ago. And before you guys start thinking the wrong thing, I’m not sleeping with her. She’s like...my daughter."
"Uh huh," Carl said, grinning. The grin faded quickly when Riddick fixed him with a silvery stare.
"Hey, that’s cool, man. At least she’s not living on the streets," Mack said.
Tom nodded, then glanced around the bar. "There’s usually more than one waitress...I guess they’re short-handed tonight."
Riddick looked over at the waitress, who was taking orders from a bunch of guys who already had too much to drink. They were loud and very annoying. She finished there and he watched her as she approached their table on her way back to the bar. She was in her late thirties or early forties and was still good-looking in spite of evidence of a hard life and her current harried expression. She scribbled something on her order pad, then looked up and met his eyes. He lifted a hand to signal her to come over. "Beers okay with you guys?" he asked as she walked over. They replied in the affirmative and he returned his attention to the waitress just as she stopped by the table.
"Can I get you something?" she asked.
He smiled up at her. "I know you’re busy dealing with those assholes over there, but if you get a moment, my friends and I would be grateful if you could bring us some beers."
She smiled back at him. "Well, I’ll be damned. Some people do know how to be polite. Four beers coming right up."
She filled four mugs at the bar and carried them back on a serving tray. "Here you go, boys," she said as she handed them off.
"Thanks, beautiful," Tom said.
She smiled again. "I appreciate the flattery, but you guys still better tip me." They laughed as she walked back to the bar.
Riddick got revenge on the shiners, and it was sweet. He spent the next ten years at the top of The Dark’s "food chain," the ultimate predator. But he didn’t completely lose his humanity again, not like he had after black ops training. So he survived and planned his escape, waiting for opportunity.
Opportunity came with the arrival of a guard stupid enough to go down into The Dark. The few remaining shiners set on him as soon as he stepped out of the elevator, laughing and shrieking. Riddick’s predatory growl cut through their higher-pitched voices as he advanced on them, shiv drawn. He sent them back into the dark, most of them wounded.
He turned and crouched down in front of the terrified guard. "You wanna live?" At the guard’s shaky nod, Riddick grinned. "Give me your clothes."
Riddick put the guard’s uniform on as the elevator rose toward the light. It fit well enough, even though it was snug through the shoulders. "Are you gonna kill me?" the guard asked in a hushed voice.
"Depends," Riddick replied, flipping through the man’s wallet. "You got a--never mind." It was a nice family portrait: wife, older daughter, younger boys. "You love your family?"
"Of course." Riddick watched as the guard’s face went white. "Please don’t hurt them. Kill me if you want, but please don’t hurt my wife and kids."
"I’m not gonna hurt your family." Riddick tossed the wallet in the guard’s lap. "I won’t even hurt you if you sit there and keep your mouth shut. Can you do that?"
The guard nodded, some color returning to his face.
"Good," Riddick replied.
When the elevator stopped, Riddick stepped off, squinting in the light. There was a pair of sunglasses in the breast pocket of the uniform and he put them on. They helped a little, but he decided they were mostly useful as a sort of disguise. He glanced back at the guard and shot him a grin. "Remember, keep quiet and don’t move." The guard nodded again and remained huddled in his corner.
Riddick’s escape cost the lives of another two guards and one med-tech that had had shined eyes and was wearing dark goggles as he tended to a corpse, the result of a prison fight. Riddick took his goggles and clothes and was actually aboard a small transport before two guards showed up. "You’re not supposed to be in here," one of them said.
Riddick ignored him.
"Hey punk, we’re talking to you," the other guard added. When Riddick still didn’t reply, the guard walked forward and put a hand on his shoulder, turning him around. Riddick came easily, quickly, and rammed a shiv hilt-deep in the guard’s gut. He jerked upward, opening the guard’s abdomen. The second guard lifted his gun and fired, narrowly missing not only Riddick but also important electronics in the transport. A second shiv, carved for throwing, whisked through the air and sliced his throat open. Riddick dragged the dying guards off the ship, retrieved his shivs, and returned to the controls. In a few moments, he was flying away from Slam City, headed for freedom.
It’s not so bad, this socializing thing, Riddick thought with an inward grin sometime later. They had sat, drank beer, and talked for the last hour and a half. Their conversation had touched the usual "guy" subjects like women and sports, as well as work and family. He discovered that Mack was single, but Tom and Carl were married with one young son and six kids, respectively. He told them a little about Jack and how they had met.
"So now she’s your leech, huh?" Carl said, wheezing alcohol-laden breath into Riddick’s face. He’d had more to drink than the rest of them and was pretty far gone. Riddick was almost ready to plunk him at the table with the obnoxious drunks across the room.
"I like having her around. It’s nice to have someone to come home to."
"Hunh. I married a leech, and now I have six more leeches. Consider yourself lucky." Then he grinned as he eyed a woman who had just walked in. "But sometimes I wouldn’t mind becoming a leech. I could suck on her legs for hours."
Tom sighed. "I think it’s time to go home."
Mack nodded. "Everybody ante up for his own drinks, and that includes you, Carl."
Carl grumbled, but he put enough money on the table for his tab, along with Mack and Tom. "I’ll go pay," Riddick said, picking up their shares.
"Sure thing," Tom said.
"We’ll try to get him out of here without his molesting somebody," Mack added. Riddick nodded and walked to the bar.
"Rough night, hon?" the waitress asked the woman as Riddick approached, adding his own tab and a generous tip to the pile already in his hand. He glanced up to see the woman nodding mutely. The waitress poured a beer and set it on the bar top in front of her. "The usual, on the house tonight."
"You don’t have to do that for me," the woman protested. "I can pay."
"I insist," the waitress said. She smiled. "One free beer isn’t going to make much of a difference. Business was good tonight, in spite of the fact that some of it was rather unpleasant."
Riddick decided that made a good entrance line. "Ah, come on. We weren’t that bad, were we?"
The waitress smiled. "You know very well that I didn’t mean your group. For the most part, you four were perfect gentlemen."
"Yeah, well, one of us has become less than a perfect gentleman, so we’re gonna pay our tab and go," he said as he handed her the money.
She smiled and thanked him as she accepted it. "Take care now," he said to the waitress.
"You too," she replied. He waved a little as he walked out of the bar.
Tom was waiting for him outside. "Mack already headed off with Carl," he said. "You able to take care of yourself?"
"Yeah," Riddick said.
"Okay. See ya tomorrow."
Riddick nodded. "Tomorrow." He and Tom parted ways, and Riddick grinned to himself. Able to take care of myself, indeed. If they only knew...
The mercs were on his trail almost immediately, but he avoided them for three years of blessed freedom before William "the Conqueror" Johns caught up with him. Their first encounter had gone entirely in Riddick’s favor. Johns thought he was like most cons: stupid. Riddick was anything but. He almost killed Johns, but a lucky blow to the head on Johns’ part had left him dizzy, and he missed the "sweet spot," nearly hitting Johns’ spine instead. Still, the shiv was buried so deep with such force that a piece broke off and remained embedded in Johns’ back after the doctors refused to attempt to remove it because of its close proximity to the spine. But if Riddick thought Johns would give up, he was very wrong.
The woman was too classy for the bar Riddick was in, but he didn’t question it, especially when she gazed around critically and then moved decidedly toward him. He bought her a drink and they talked for a while, then retired to his small hotel room a block away from the bar. They stripped slowly, interspersed with a lot of kissing. When they were down to their underwear, the woman brought out two ropes. "If you’re really opposed, we can play it straight, but I like a little bondage," she murmured in a husky voice.
"Mmmm," Riddick said in a low growl. "I’m up for that."
He lay down on the bed and she tied his wrists to the headboard. He tested the ropes experimentally and realized that he’d really have to struggle to get out of them. He looked up at his right wrist while he moved it around in the ropes, and when he turned back he was facing the business end of a gun. "Don’t move," the woman said. "Don’t even think it. I see those shiny eyes flicker, and you’re dead meat."
"Never would have figured you for a merc," he said.
"I’m not," she said with a small smile. "I’m a burglar. Got caught by a merc, and he told me he’d let me go if I helped him capture you, plus a little extra monetary compensation. Nothing personal, just business."
"Yeah, business," Riddick said flatly.
There was a knock at the door, and the woman said, "It’s open."
Johns walked in, lugging a black duffle bag. "Good job," he said.
"The fucking Conqueror," Riddick said with a sigh.
"Watch your language, boy," Johns said. He set the duffle bag down on the foot of the bed, and there was a clinking from inside. "Dress him, and then help me with this," he ordered the woman.
She obeyed, wrestling Riddick’s pants back on his body, then his socks and shoes. "You can get his shirt in a minute," the man said, opening the duffle bag. A set of heavy shackles were brought out and fastened around Riddick’s ankles. A long chain ran from the middle of the shackles’ chain to a set of handcuffs.
Johns pulled a shotgun from the bag, cocked it, and pointed it at Riddick’s head. "Now, she’s going to release your hands one at a time. You will put your shirt on slowly. You try any funny stuff, and I’ll blow your head off." Riddick gritted his teeth, but did as Johns said. Johns then closed the handcuffs around his wrists. "And now for the coup de grace," he said. Grinning, he reached into the bag and pulled out a blindfold and bit.
"No way," Riddick said. "No way in hell am I wearing those!"
"You don’t get it, do you, boy?" Johns asked. "I own you now. I can do anything I want to you. You’ll wear the blindfold, and you’ll take the bit like a good boy, or I’ll break your teeth shoving it in your mouth."
When Riddick was blindfolded and bitted, Johns hauled him up off the bed and started toward the door. "Hey," the woman said. "What about the five hundred creds you promised me?"
There was a pause, a startled cry from the woman, and then a shotgun blast split the air. Riddick didn’t need to smell the blood to know the woman was dead. "Changed my mind," Johns said, and continued on his way, towing Riddick behind him.
~~Two Months Later~~
The shift change whistle blew. Riddick stood and stretched, straightening out the kinks in his back and neck. The boss had wanted someone on the ore sorter’s analyzer, and Riddick had volunteered for the job. It wasn’t a physically taxing job, but his neck and back ached from being hunched over the view screen all day. The sorter usually did its job without human supervision, but the boss felt that the vein they were working was petering out, and he needed someone to watch the analyzer screen to see the ore-to-rock ratio. It was around fifty percent, which wasn’t too bad, but Riddick knew if it dropped too much more, they’d have to search for a new vein.
He stopped at the boss’ office to give him the report, then headed home.
The apartment was empty when he arrived, and Riddick felt a moment’s panic before he saw the note on the table. Studying at Neil’s, it read. Back for dinner. Riddick glanced at the clock. Jack would be home soon.
He walked into the kitchen and started water boiling for pasta. A soft smile briefly crossed his face. Neither he nor Jack had been a gourmet chef, so they’d had quite a few dinner disasters before their cooking skills improved. Now both of them were fairly proficient at cooking, at least to the point that the food was edible and decent-tasting.
Someone knocked on the door, and Riddick frowned to himself. He wasn’t expecting anyone, and Jack would’ve just walked in... He shut the burner off before walking to the door. The old stove wasn’t too reliable, and he didn’t want to risk a fire starting while his back was turned.
He opened the door to four men, one in a suit, one in combat fatigues, and two in some official-looking uniform. They looked like cops. Oh shit, Riddick thought, suddenly realizing what was going on.
"Richard B. Riddick?" the man in the suit said.
"Of course it’s him," the man in combat fatigues said. "It sure isn’t Johns."
"You," Riddick said, looking at him. "You were that ‘wrong number’ caller a few weeks ago."
Combat Fatigues smirked. "Give the man a prize." The smirk disappeared. "I knew Johns. We teamed up a couple of times when we were going after the same target. I found it strange that he’d suddenly up and quit the merc business, and when I call, I find out why. It ain’t Johns living on this planet. It’s the psycho he was transporting."
"You are Richard B. Riddick, then?" Suit asked.
Every instinct Riddick had was screaming fight! flee! but he only sighed. "Yeah," he said, "that’s me."
"You’re under arrest," Suit replied. "Do you know your rights?"
Riddick nodded. One of the officers came forward with handcuffs. Riddick gritted his teeth but let himself be cuffed. If it was only handcuffs, he could deal with it. The real law wouldn’t blindfold and bit him, would they?
When the officer moved to grab his arm and lead him out the door, Riddick backed up a few steps. "We have to wait," he said. "There’s a kid living with me, and she’s gonna be home in a few minutes. We can’t leave without her knowin’ what’s going on."
"You gotta be kiddin’ me," Combat Fatigues said, but Riddick ignored him and kept his attention on Suit. Eventually, the man nodded.
Five minutes later, the door opened, and Jack walked in. "Hey, Riddick, you’ll never believe..." Her voice trailed off as she took in Riddick, seated on the couch with his shackled hands hanging between his knees, and the two officers who stood close by in case he decided to make a break for it.
"What...Riddick, what’s happening?"
Judging by the stricken look on her face, he knew that she knew very well what was going on. He chose to ignore that topic for the moment. "I’ll never believe what, Jack?"
She blinked a little, clearly confused, but then remembered what she’d been about to tell him. "Neil tried to cop a feel, the dweeb."
"Tried to cop a feel of what?" Combat Fatigues asked, smirking. Riddick tried to quell the hot rage that began to boil up. Jack’s relatively under-developed body was a running joke between them, and under different circumstances he might have even said the same line. But to have some bastard say it just to be cruel...
Riddick looked up at Jack, who was glaring daggers at Combat Fatigues. Apparently, she was just as pissed as he was. "They’re called breasts, faggot," she said, rather lewdly cupping her hands under them. She crossed her arms and continued, "or has it been so long since you’ve been able to find a woman who’ll let you touch her that you forgot?"
Riddick hid his laughter in a coughing fit, but he caught the officers’ eyes gleaming with merriment and the shocked look on Suit’s face.
"You little cunt," Combat Fatigues snarled, starting toward Jack. Riddick tensed, ready to jump to her aid even as she dropped into her favorite fighting stance.
"Please, enough," Suit said. "We really need to get going now."
"I’m going with," Jack said, then turned her eyes to Riddick as he stood up. "Right?"
"Of course," he said. "If that’s okay with you," he added, looking at Suit.
"That’s fine," Suit said.
He was already locked in his cryotube when the other passengers came aboard the Hunter-Gratzner. "Are you sure it’s safe to be transporting him, Cap?" a woman asked.
"The officer said he was under control," a man replied, apparently the captain. "Why don’t you help Owens get prepped for takeoff and I’ll help the passengers into their tubes?"
"Yes, sir," the woman said, and her steps retreated.
"Is everything all right, Captain Mitchell?" Johns asked.
"Yes, although I must admit we’re all a little nervous about transporting a murderer with innocent civilians," the captain replied.
"It’s safe, believe me, it’s safe. Even if somebody opened his tube on accident, he’s chained hand and foot. There’s no way he could hurt anyone."
"I certainly hope so. The last thing I need is some rampaging psycho--"
"Wow!" a kid’s voice cut through their conversation. "Is that really him? Is that Riddick?"
"What do you know about Riddick, son?" the captain asked.
"His picture was on TV a lot a few years ago when he escaped from prison," the kid replied.
"Yep, that’s Big Evil himself. He’s getting a one-way trip back to prison," Johns said.
"Do his eyes really glow in the dark? I heard they did." The kid sounded like he was right outside Riddick’s cryotube, interest undaunted by the captain’s cautious tone or Johns’ gloating one.
Probably has his hands and face plastered to the glass, gazing at his anti-hero, Riddick thought, and would have laughed out loud if he could.
"Don’t know," Johns said. "It’s probably just some story, though."
"You should get into your tube now, son," the captain said. "What’s your name, by the way?"
"Jack. Jack B. Badd."
Jack nestled against Riddick in the ground car as they headed to their destination. One of the officers drove while Suit sat next to him in the front. A wire partition divided that area from the back, where Riddick, Jack, the second officer, and Combat Fatigues rode.
"What’s going to happen now?" she asked.
"I don’t know, babe," he replied. "They’ll probably place you in a foster home while I get a trip back to Slam City."
"But they have prisons here, right? Why would they send you...back there?"
"What difference does it make?" Combat Fatigues asked with a laugh.
"Spoken like a man who’s never been in prison," Riddick said. "What’s your name, anyway?"
"Paulson. What happened to Johns?"
"Got eaten on the hell planet."
"Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy," Jack muttered.
"What’s that supposed to mean?" Paulson demanded.
"It means Johns was a dick," Jack snapped.
"Bitch," Paulson said.
"All right, both of you knock it off," the officer said, and Jack and Paulson subsided.
"What’s your name?" Jack asked him.
"Ashton. My partner’s Brinley."
"What about the suit?" Riddick added.
"Sullivan. He’s with the District Attorney’s office."
Riddick nodded, then asked Jack, "So, did you kick Neil’s ass?"
Jack smiled. "More or less. We were sitting side-by-side in the kitchen, and he just leaned over and grabbed me. I elbowed him in the gut, then kicked his chair over. He wound up on the floor with my knee in his chest. I gave him a look and said, ‘If you ever touch me like that again, you’ll be wearing bruises for a week.’ I guess he believed me, ‘cause he didn’t try to touch me anymore."
Riddick chuckled. "I wish I could’ve seen the look on his face when you took him down like that."
Jack giggled. "He was very, very surprised."
"I’ll bet." He looked down at Jack and watched as the smile faded from her face. He glanced at Ashton and Paulson. Ashton was expressionless, but Paulson looked like he was just waiting to break into a smirk.
He returned his attention to Jack and sighed. Fuck Paulson, he thought. I don’t care if he laughs. "C’mere," he said to Jack, lifting his arms. She crawled into his lap and settled against his chest as he lowered his arms around her. He ignored the now-obvious smirk on Paulson’s face and bowed his head, burying his nose in Jack’s hair. "Damn, Jack, you using that fruity shampoo again?"
"Cucumber Melon, and I like it, you Neanderthal. Neil likes it, too."
"Which is probably why he groped you."
"Bastard."
Riddick sighed dramatically, ruffling her hair. "I can’t believe you. They’re carting me off to prison and you’re sitting here hurting my feelings."
That provoked a burst of laughter from Jack. "Your feelings don’t get hurt that easily," she said.
"How do you know?" he asked, chuckling.
"Because I know. You’re my big, tough protector, not some geeky accountant or something."
"Yeah," he said quietly, rubbing his cheek across the top of her head.
They were quiet for a few minutes. Jack sniffed a few times, but Riddick didn’t say anything until he felt his shirt growing wet from her tears. Then he said one word as he held her tighter. "Jack..."
A couple of sobs burst from her before she regained some level of control. "It’s not fair," she murmured against his shirt. "It’s just not fair."
"Most of the time life ain’t fair, darlin’. You know that better than most."
"Yeah, I know. I just wish whoever’s in charge would cut us a break for once."
"Me too." He breathed her scent again. "You never told anyone in the crash group who cut your hair, did you?"
"God no," Jack said with a weak laugh. "They were unnerved enough about it as it was. They’d have been hysterical if I told them that I’d trusted a serial killer to not ‘accidentally’ slit my throat with his blade while he was turning me into a carbon copy of his bad-ass self."
Riddick chuckled, remembering Jack the way she’d been, a gutsy kid who chose a very unusual role model. Almost the wrong role model, he thought, his thoughts flitting over the way he’d nearly left them all behind. Thank you, Carolyn.
"Did you always know I was a girl?" Jack asked, interrupting his contemplation.
"Not at first. You weren’t close enough or around long enough. But after the haircut, I did. Scent reveals everything, especially blood scent when I knew damn well you weren’t hurt."
There was more silence. Riddick had the impression that Paulson was bored with their conversation but that Ashton was discretely interested in what kind of relationship a convicted murderer had with a fifteen-year-old girl. Jack broke the silence. "Hey Riddick?"
"Yeah?"
"Where the hell can I get eyes like that?"
Riddick almost grinned ear-to-ear, but kept his face blank. The repetition of their first conversation was a ritual between them, one they started back when Jack still woke screaming from nightmares and Riddick would hold her until she calmed down. For some reason, the routine comforted her. It had been a long time since they’d used it. "You gotta kill a few people," he replied.
"Okay, I can do it."
"Then you gotta get sent to a slam where they tell you you’ll never see daylight again. You dig up a doctor and you pay him twenty menthol Kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyeballs."
He felt her smile against his shoulder. "So you can see who’s sneaking up on you in the dark?"
He dropped his voice into its deepest register and murmured the word in her ear. "Exactly." She shivered and giggled a little in response. "Feeling better now?" he asked in a more normal voice.
"Yeah, a little."
The ground car stopped in front of a building. A sign reading "Station 14" was on the front. "I guess we’re here," Riddick said.
Get to the skiff, you pathetic bastard, Riddick told himself furiously. Get up and get to the skiff.
The rain pounded on his body as he struggled to his feet. He gave one lingering look in the direction Carolyn had been taken, listening for a sound he knew he wouldn’t hear, the sound of her voice calling for help. Finally, he turned and stumbled toward the skiff.
He was still too far away when the creatures began to track him again, their echo-calls sounding eerily in the sky above him. "Not gonna make it," he muttered.
He registered the blue light ahead of him just as he heard a voice cry, "Riddick!" Jack ran up to him, holding one of the bottles in her hands.
"What the hell are you doing out here?"
"I came looking...I ran out while Imam’s back was turned. Carolyn?" she asked, her voice that of someone who was hoping against hope.
He shook his head. "Fuckin’ things...yanked her right outta my arms..."
His leg began to give out, and Jack’s arms came around his waist, supporting him. "C’mon, we gotta get back to the ship," she said. She moved to his side, one arm still around his waist, the other holding the light bottle aloft as they struggled toward safety.
"You an’ me bleeding; we’re a fuckin’ walking buffet," Riddick muttered. He was surprised when she laughed.
"We’ll make it. We’re almost there."
They came out from between two buildings and one of the creatures flashed in front of them, shattering the bottle in Jack’s hands. She gasped and dropped the remnants of it. The dark was now unbroken except for the dim glow of the skiff’s lights from behind the building in front of them. Maybe if we run, Riddick thought. Maybe.
"Shield your eyes, Riddick," Jack said.
"What?" he asked, then saw the flare she was pulling from a pocket. "Where’d you get that?"
"It was under one of the seats."
Smart kid, bringing a backup, he thought, lifting a hand to protect his eyes while she lit the flare. It glowed with a bright red light. "Lower that a little."
She lowered it, and he gazed over her head into the darkness in front of them. One of the creatures perched on its tail in front of them, claws ready for an attack, just beyond the reach of the light. "There’s one right in front of us," he said.
"But it can’t come into the light, so we’re safe, right?"
Riddick didn’t answer as a thought occurred to him. He whirled around and saw another creature approaching from behind, safe from the light that was blocked by Jack and Riddick’s bodies. "Don’t turn around," he said. "Keep the light forward, hold off that one in front."
"Okay," Jack said, and Riddick moved forward in the darkness to meet the creature head-on.
Even injured, Riddick was more than a match for the creature one-on-one, and he dispatched their ambusher quickly. He returned to Jack’s side. "Hold the light high, kid, and let’s get out of here."
They started to move forward, and the creature in front moved back. It dared the light a few times, making swipes at the flare, trying to knock it out of Jack’s hand. Suddenly she dropped to one knee, the flare almost dipping into a puddle. Riddick crouched beside her, his wounded leg screaming a protest at the movement. "You get hurt, kid?"
"No," she replied.
"Then what--" He broke off as the creature came in for an attack and Jack lunged forward, ducking under the claws and shoving the flare against its belly.
"Take that!" she shouted triumphantly as it shrieked and fell into the mud, thrashing. Then her eyes widened and she muttered, "Holy shit." The creature was burning. In spite of the rain, flames spread from the original wound and raced along the creature’s skin, growing brighter and higher as it continued to thrash and shriek.
"Nice job," Riddick said admiringly. "Let’s go while it’s still providing a distraction." She nodded and they continued toward the skiff, arms around one another.
After hearing that they wanted to send him back to Slam City, Riddick asked for and was granted a hearing with a judge. He requested only one thing: that he not be shipped off planet. He knew that his humanity would be severely threatened and probably destroyed if he had to survive in Slam again. The predator would once again reign supreme. He couldn’t let that happen.
The judge took a day to decide, but eventually agreed. Riddick was remanded to the maximum security prison on Axion.
Jack had insisted on attending the hearings, and Riddick turned to face her where she sat behind him. "I guess that’s it, then," he said softly. Noticing an older woman in a dress, he nodded toward her. "She with the foster home?"
Jack followed his gaze. "Yeah. That’s Mrs. Morrison," she said. "She’s okay. Kind of strict, though. She didn’t want me to come here. I don’t think she likes the fact that I’m associating with a notorious criminal."
Riddick chuckled. "Notorious, huh? I guess I am."
"Big Evil," Jack said, grinning.
"Sir Shiv-a-lot," Riddick added, and they snickered. Both had found that media nickname patently ridiculous.
"Time to go," one of the guards said. Riddick glanced at him and then stood up. Jack stood up as well. On impulse, he reached out and cupped her face with his hands. She leaned her cheek into his right palm. He leaned forward and breathed her scent, then placed a gentle kiss on her temple.
"Gotta go now," he said, releasing her. "I’ll see you ‘round, Jack."
Jack nodded. "Yeah," she managed to say. "See you, Riddick."
Just before the guards led him out of the courtroom, he looked back and made eye contact with Jack, who hadn’t moved from her spot. Then the contact was broken as the hallway wall came in between them.
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