Title: The Icon Lab Experiment
Author: Magicflute
Fandom: Riddick at Butcher Bay, One-Shot
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence
Orientation: Het
Pairing: Riddick at Butcher Bay
Summary:Riddick is forcibly enroled to participate in a scientific experiment. Just the life of the average convict at Butcher Bay. Nobody cares what happens to the cons...
This is an alternate story to the official game version. In the game, Riddick gets his shine-job as a gift from Shira. I never cared for cheesy Shira. I like my version better...
Disclaimer: I do not own Riddick or any other character of the movies. The new characters introduced have been invented by me.
Archive: yes.
Warning: This is Dark Riddick. And he is suffering something bad. Don't say I did not warn you...
Feedback:Please! I love to get your feedback. Feel free to reply!
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The Icon Lab Experiment
A near inaudible hissing sound was all the warning he had. Not that it did him any good. He could not see or smell the gas they were injecting in his cell, but he could feel the effect it was having on him. The incapacitation was immediate.
Fu-
He was unconscious before his head hit the floor.
A whirring sound, the reminder of the gas was being aspirated from the cell. The door opened and two heavily armed warders entered with a stretcher. One of them poked the body on the floor with his taser and watched, amused, as the unconscious man jerked from the voltage.
"What did you go and do that for, Bill Johns?" asked the other man.
"I like to watch them jump for me," answered the man with the ill fitting uniform and the tightly coiled red hair.
"You want to be careful around that one. Word is, he was security on Sigma 3 before blowing the whistle on the company. You know what that means."
They considered the limp body at their feet for a moment. The unconscious man was around 6 feet tall. He had a muscular, athletic frame, and looked extremely fit. His head was shaved and his half-open eyes were a deep, warm brown color.
"Yeah. Means he's a moron. You don't fuck the company. The company fucks you," said the man called Johns. "What do they want with him anyway? Fuck, he weighs more than I'm paid in a month."
"New Guinea pig for Lab 4. Looks like he pissed off somebody important enough that they want him to suffer before he bites it."
For the first time, Johns looked uncomfortable, "Better him than me…"
They wrangled the unconscious man on the stretcher and carried him out with much swearing.
"Sign here."
Riddick squinted with bloodshot eyes at the paper placed under his restrained right hand. His vision was still blurred from the narcoleptics, but he could make out the some words. He scanned the document as fast as possible. I, Richard B. Riddick hereby declare that I consent of my own free will to undergo… I discharge Butcher Bay Correctional Facility of all responsibility… authorize Icon Laboratories to …
A pen was forcibly thrust between his fingers. He let it drop.
"No."
He was feeling nauseated, but now his nausea was not just a side effect from inhaling sleeping gaz. Icon Labs. He had heard about them. Nothing good. Rumors about Cons disappearing down that road. Never to come back. All in the name of scientific research. He was sweating. He really was in for it this time. They could and probably would ghost him here and now, but the fuck if they could make him volunteer for it as well.
"Sign here."
"No."
"Sign here."
"Something wrong with your fucking hearing? No."
"There is no reason to be alarmed, convict X23. The improved ophthalmic surgery, which you have been signed up for, is not lethal. The preparative drugs are still in an experimental state though and may cause some discomfort as there are no known assorted anesthetics that work yet. This is why we approach convicts of the penal system for the last testings. If you submit to surgery out of your own free will, Icon Labs has been assured that your time in detention may be reduced to fifteen years; you will receive improved food rations, you will have the very best medical attention and follow-up money can buy-"
"No!"
"You're being uncooperative." The non-descriptive man in the clean, white labcoat looked mildly irritated at this irksome subject.
"No kidding." said Riddick.
"We can force your cooperation." said the man in the white coat.
"Do your worst." growled Riddick. "I'm not gonna sign your fucking form. Nobody is gonna say that I volunteered for being a bloody guinea pig. The company may fuck me over, but signing this is like bending over first and dropping my pants. It's not gonna happen."
He watched impassively as the second man prepared the hypospray.
"Inject him."
He felt the coolness of the hypospray against the skin of his neck. Cold was spreading in his neck. He roared in defiance, startling the man into dropping the spray, a Pyrrhic victory if he ever had one. He yanked at the restraints with all his might, but the hardplast material held fast. Then he was bucking at the sensation of thousands of needles taking him slowly apart from his neck downwards, muscles locking and unlocking, he could feel two of his teeth shattering under the strain the cramps put on them. Blood started to fill his mouth and dribbled over his chin.
That's what he calls 'some discomfort'? In my world they call it torture.
He dimly could hear white coat's cool voice, "Too bad. Let's write another cross here then. He's going to be another illiterate subject."
Hypospray chuckled.
Promoted with First Class Honors at Strikeforce Academy on Sigma 3's moon. Illiterate. Sure.
Another wave of intolerable pain hit him. Riddick vomited blood and passed out.
When Riddick opened his eyes again, he nearly panicked. He was blind! His fingers jumped to his face and met the rough texture of medical gauze. What had they done to him! He started to hyperventilate. His hands were strangely weak, he felt his fingernails scrabbling over the material, making soft scratchy noises, but he was too weak to tear the gauze away. He was not even certain that he wanted to anyway. He seemed to be lying on a metallic table of some sort. His eyeballs were burning as if they had pumped full with acid. Perhaps they were that.
"Don't touch the bandages."
He knew that voice. And that distinctive scent of drugs and death. It belonged to the man with the white coat.
Riddick did not answer. His right hand had found a loose bit of bandage and was busy unraveling it some more.
"Don't touch the bandages, or we will have to restrain you. Lay back down and relax. The bandages will be removed in three days."
He forced his arm, his hand back down, forced his fingers to relax against the cold metal of the table he was lying on. He could wait. He had to find out first what exactly these assholes had done to his eyes. Then he would get back at them.
The last bandage unraveled and slithered down his face like some old, dry snakeskin. He did not dare open his eyes yet. They had cuffed him to his chair and shackled his feet.
"Lights to 5 percent." said whitecoat. Riddick had not asked for his name yet. The man had never asked for his name either. Riddick was just guinea pig X23 for him.
Riddick would ask for whitecoat's name and tell him his own name. Later. Then he would introduce him to his own kind of eye surgery. But for now he was just 'whitecoat'.
"You can open your eyes now," said whitecoat.
Riddick opened his eyes. Colored flashes causing him a blinding headache slowly resolved themselves into a world of purple and white shades. He turned his head and looked at whitecoat. The coat was still white, but the face, hand, fingers of the man were an interesting array of reds, pinks and whites, he realized that could see the heat signature of the man's body. He could see the waves of heat pulsing around the man's neck.
"What do you see?" asked him purplecoat curiously.
"Everything," answered Riddick. "I can see everything."
"Your night vision should be improved to 90. You will need protection for your eyes in daylight.. It appears that the operation was a success. Some more tests and we will release you back into the main Butcher Bay Correctional Facility. Thank you for voluntarily entering the scientific research program of Icon Labs & Inc." said purplecoat in such a serious manner, that the sarcasm was nearly not perceptible in his voice.
Then he added, "You will feel more comfortable in environments with a low light level. Lights over 15 will cause you discomfort, do you understand, convict X23?"
Riddick considered this. "Understood. I'm not afraid of the dark. There's nothing in the dark worse 'n me."
His new eyes shone with a whitish blue light, as he pictured everything he would do to a certain Icon Lab company man, once he got out of this slam.
(The End)