Hello all! This is my first Pitch Black fan fic and i've only decided to
publish it on FF.net becuase of a friend's encoragement. Here's hoping you
all like it to. Do please read and review. here's chapter 1.
Kayla
Chapter 1: The Next Chapter
Jack sat in her piloting chair with her knees pulled up to her chest as the autopilot kicked in. Most of the time she hated that damned piece of equipment, if the programming got much better she wouldn't have a job anymore. She took her sunglasses out of her breast pocket and put them on as the ship came out of the planet's protective shadow and into the glare of it's sun.
In the seven years since the crash on the Dark planet Jack had been to a lot of places and done a lot of things both stupid and smart to find peace but being anonymous was the only thing yet that had given her a chance to forget and then feel some sort of peace. That was if there really was peace after everything that had happened in that one seemingly endless night and the things that followed in the years of wondering afterward.
"Everything all set up here?" Captain Tex Manor asked walking into the cockpit of the ship, the forty year old man always seemed to walk in right when she wanted a moment or two alone to think. It was as he put it, a talent.
"Yes sir." Jack said sitting up properly again and grinning, her thoughtfulness all but gone in a moment as she put her headset back on. Technically they weren't supposed to take them off when they were on duty but there were moments...
"You ready to go down to mess O'Donnell?" He asked but she shook her head.
"I want to sit in the light for a while." She answered. "The light is why I like this particular run more then the others Captain."
"I should give up asking shouldn't I?" He shook his head as he took his dark cap off his head and played around with his auburn hair, making it stand up in static spikes for a moment before putting his cap back again, squashing the spikes flat as he did so.
"Might be a good idea sir. The answer will never change." She nodded. "I like the light too much."
"I don't blame you." He shrugged; he was one of the only people to know who she really was and what had really happened after the crash. He turned to leave then turned around again and said. "One more thing before I leave you to your light O'Donnell." The captain put his hand on the back of her chair. "There's a Merc on board, he won't leave us to go about our normal business until he's spoken to you about Riddick. He'll pay you for whatever information you give him."
"I don't talk to Mercs." Jack stiffened and her grin was replaced by a frown, it was a good thing that he couldn't see the expression in her eyes through the sunglasses, her eyes spoke of murder. "I don't talk to Mercs and I don't talk about Riddick. The crew doesn't know who I really am and I'd quite like to keep it that way. The damned Merc will only raise unwanted questions." She stared at him. "You said you'd never make me talk to them if I took on this damned job!"
"Don't get hotshot on me Kit!" Tex snapped. "You were good and I wanted you to pilot this thing but you're not that good and if I remember correctly, I did you as much of a favour as you did me! You're going to talk to the Merc Jack and the crew aren't going to know you as anyone but Kit O'Donnell, a damned good but cocky as hell pilot. I'm having you talk to a Merc; I have Sam and John talk to Mercs all the time. The stupid ass isn't going to touch you unless he wants to get himsef thrown out into space."
"I'm not going to talk to that fuckin' Merc!" She hissed getting uptight.
"You are or you're going to give up that seat to Danny, you know how much he'd love that. Does demotion sound like fun to you?" Tex said evenly. "I'll see you in mess in ten minutes and you can give me your answer. The merc or your seat."
"Damn you." She hissed after the captain had left but it wasn't the captain she was cursing as she looked at the planet's red sun. Riddick seemed to like to pop in and out of her life, he couldn't physically anymore but the damned Mercs wouldn't believe that if she had showed them a body. He had tricked them once and she wasn't going to be given the chance to trick them again. Only thing was, this time she wasn't lying to them, Richard B. Riddick had died. She had seen him.
She had been trying to move on and separated herself from everything that Riddick had embodied for two years now; only the stupid Mercs wouldn't let it rest.
The inquiry into the crash on the dark planet had been inconclusive so they had happily said that Riddick had killed all those people even though they had no proof of that either. They wouldn't listen to her or the holy man, she was a girl that was happy to pretend to be a boy and the interviewer didn't like Imam because he was a "religious nut". The one thing it did do however was up the bounty on Riddick's head and she was the one paying for it now.
Jack couldn't say however, that Riddick had gone all servile instinct on her and split. Iman had, he ran as far as he possibly could and as fast as he was able and only a year after the crash and their living hell. Riddick had become invisible and Jack with him, he had stuck with her, though why she could never really be sure. With Riddick there always seemed to be other motives and as long as she hadn't threatened his freedom she was as safe as she could be hiding out with a man with a huge bounty on his head. She never really took him being around for granted; she was never given the chance but she had never pitied herself. She would have picked being with Riddick over being alone anyday.
She had known the rules.
She kept her nose clean and stayed inconspicuous. When people started looking at her or Riddick funny, they left and in the middle of the night if possible. If she got herself in trouble with the law he wouldn't rescue her, if she got in trouble with the people of the planet, he wouldn't help her and if the Mercs caught up with her, he wouldn't stick around to save her ass. He taught her how to fight and how to depend on herself. They were some of the most valuable lesions of her life, they taught her how to deal with the fake life she was living now.
Together, they lived a hopscotch life for four years and she never said anything or complained. They left a lot of people behind but she never showed any emotion. He had taught her to let go. People didn't matter but not being alone did and Riddick was the one person she didn't want to leave or get left by. She spent the last of her teen years knowing what it was to be truly expendable, she knew that she might wake up one morning and he'd be gone. To be honest she didn't know why he stuck around at all, in the end she only ever got them into trouble.
He had died doing the one thing that he swore he would never bother to do again; save her life.
They had been leaving a planet where a war had just broken out. Riddick as always wanted nothing to do with it and so she didn't either. She wasn't about to be left behind because of the morals of other people, wither she agreed with them or not was another story all together and not really that relevant under the circumstances at that time. He had gotten himself out unscathed, like he always seemed to manage but she had been stupid again and got caught in the crossfire, she was unharmed but stuck and couldn't for the life of her see a way out. With the bullets flying over her head she was almost too scared to try.
Jack hung her head as she thought about it, sometimes memories were too painful to drag into the present, sometimes the past had no place in the future, these memories were too painful to want to revisit but if she was going to have to talk to the stupid Merc then she had to be able to recall the facts. It didn't hurt telling every gold digging Merc that came her way that Riddick was really dead this time. Dead and gone, disappeared into the killer's legends, after all he had never been recaptured. He would have killed himself before going back to one of the many slams.
Riddick had gone back for her sorry twenty-year-old ass. "I've saved your life too many damned times for you to loose it now." He had growled as he arrived at her side unexpectedly. Jack thought he would already be in space and without her. She thought that she would already have been forgotten, part of his past like the many other people they had left behind.
They were almost out of no man's land, so close to safety and then she was on the ground and he was hit as he pulled her up by her belt. She couldn't remember where he had been hit but he wasn't dead, not then, just in pain.
"Come on Riddick!" She had yelled trying to get him back to his feet like he had been trying to get her back to hers only moments before.
"Get your damned ass off this fucking planet!" He had yelled at her pushing her away. "There's no fucking way I'm going to let you die saving my fucking ass." He said the last line through clenched teeth as the second bullet hit.
She winced as the sun came into full view and she had to put the light filter up. She had had her ten minutes of light and it was the light that would keep her mind off the darkness that haunted her dreams and her life. The darkness that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't escape or forget and the faces... She couldn't figure out what was worse, the darkness and the beasts or the faces of those who had died, frozen as she had seen them look at her the last time.
Everyone died or everyone left, that was the story of her life.
She took her sunglasses off and folded them up before putting them back into her breast pocket and putting on and zipping up her black vest jacket with it's many useful pockets, over her brown t-shirt. The light however couldn't keep out her memories. They were as tangible as ever.
It wasn't Jack that walked out into the main corridor of the huge cargo and passenger ship but her latest character creation, a girl that had no conspicuous past or burdens of guilt, a part that she could almost get lost playing, that was why she loved being Kit O'Donnell so much but even Kit couldn't keep that something of Jack from surfacing in her attitude and character.
"How was the light today Kit baby? Ready to give up your job then?" The twenty-seven year old co-pilot, Danny Becker sat down next to her when she got herself seated at one of the tables in the mess room. "And all because you won't speak to a stupid Merc. You're bloody stupid girl. Nothing more then a stupid kid." That was what Becker's favourite pastime was, tormenting her.
"How the hell do you think it was Becker?" She answered. "The light was bright and oops, that rhymed. You're only sore that a girl a whole five years younger then you managed to get the job you wanted. Need I remind you of who the better pilot is?"
"As cold as always." Samantha Anderson put her tray down on Jack's right and sat down. "The stupid Merc won't bite."
"I know that Sam. Why the hell do you think I'm going to talk to the idiot?" She took a bite of whatever was in the brown sloppy mix in her bowl and made a face. It tasted as close to crap as could be, but then the taste never did change.
"I'm glad to hear you say that." The captain said sitting down next to them with John behind him.
"Why is he wanting to asking you about Riddick anyway? I heard he was killed in a little war near Demedia." John asked squirting a ton of ketchup in the bowl with the brown muck and mixing the two together. The color certainly didn't improve much, though the taste might have slightly, though she doubted it.
"I was in Demedia, was the pilot of a little ship that was hauling crystals from there to a classified position. I saw Riddick, saw him get killed saving some stupid kid." She shrugged. "I've told the Mercs over and over again that he's dead but they seem to like to come back for more conformation. Riddick would have been better off leaving that kid to her fate."
"Like I said," Sam smiled taking a bite out of a piece of bread. "Stupid."
"You really have to get better food on this sucker." John complained after taking a bite and making a nasty face that said it all but also made it obvious that he was happy enough with her explanation. Sam on the other hand looked puzzled again and clearly didn't get something.
"Riddick's this big killer right, I mean his bounty is one of the largest out there." She said.
"You're point is?" Danny gave her a blank look.
"My point is: why would he die saving some kid's life?" She pointed her fork at him and frowned her line of thought obviously clear in her head even if the idiot on the other side of Jack didn't get it. "I mean, Riddick took lives, hell of a lot of lives but he wasn't superman, he didn't save them."
"Well I know what I saw. Damn! I was there and Riddick, the feared saved that kid's life or I'm an ass." Jack said suddenly not feeling hungry for the slop in her bowl. Those people never got to know Riddick, what did they know!
"Well we always knew you were stuck up yourself." Danny laughed at his own joke, not caring that he was the only one who really found it funny. Jack stood up abruptly, her meal totally forgotten as the blood pounded in her ears. It wasn't like she could tell them that she was the stupid kid that Riddick got killed saving. She'd never be trusted by any of them again if they found out that she had lived and thrived with a convicted murderer for five years.
"Where's the Merc's quarters?" She asked the captain before leaving. Her problem was that she liked belonging a little too much.
"E7." Was the reply. "He doesn't eat dinner."
Jack walked swiftly down the corridors till she reached room E7. She wanted to get the ordeal over with as fast as possible so that she could go get a couple hours of sleep before all the lights automatically turned off. She could never get to sleep if it was dark. She always imagined sounds, their sounds. Even the thought made her shudder.
She knocked on the door but there was no reply. She waited for a couple of minutes, not that it took ten minutes to reach the door, then she kicked it solidly. It made a satisfying thudding sound that seemed to let a little bit of steam out of her blood so she did it once more before walking away to her own quarters, angry that she had to put seeing the damned beast off.
The Aurora's quarters could be said to be nothing less then a small walk in closet, big enough for a small single bed and a small table and chair with a shelf for storage above the bed where she kept her clothes and meagre collection of belongings. It was bigger then some of the places that she had lived in but it was certainly not the biggest.
"Lights!" She commanded as she opened the door to her small room and then she stopped dead in her tracks. There was a tall but lean man standing in her room with his back to her looking at the one picture that she had of Riddick and herself, a picture that had been taken by accident but that had enough sentimental value for her to it to keep.
"Kit O'Donnell?" He asked. His voice wasn't unpleasant to listen to, smooth and soft, but there was an underlying current that could only be described as purely dangerous. He wasn't the kind of man that anyone would really want to mess with unless they had no other choice. His voice alone would intimidate most people but most people hadn't been trained by a killer.
"Yeah?" She crossed her arms. "Are you the stupid Merc going after Riddick? You not afraid that you might end up dead? A lot of your buddies that went looking for him have."
"So he is still alive Kit or should I say, Jack?" He turned around, a grin on his face, his brown eyes sweeping over her like the eyes of a hungry animal and she knew she had been right; this was not a man to toy around with. She closed the door behind her.
"Riddick is dead! How many times do I have to tell you bloody stupid people that? My stupidity killed him, get over it already and move on." She glared at him.
"Why didn't he kill you?"
"He saved my life you idiot. He had invested far too much in me, God! He invested his life." She sat down on her bed and took off her heavy black boots and then her vest jacket, but not before pulling a candy bar from out of one pocket. "He got shot twice, I saw him take both hits. He's not alive."
"You feel guilty about the death of a mindless, heartless killer?"
"We must be talking about two different people."
"And why is that sweetheart?"
"He wasn't mindless, he wouldn't have escaped so many of you before his death if he had been mindless and he wouldn't have been able to kill half the people he had killed either if he didn't have a brain." She took a bite out of the chocolate.
"Alright. Mindless he wasn't. Do you feel guilty over it?"
"What's your name Merc? You know mine; it's only fare that I know yours. Maybe I can use it against you sometime." She said as she finished off the bar and laid down flat on the bed, her hands behind her head and her ankles crossed. "I'm not too high up there for a little bit of blackmail."
"Bradley, James Bradley." He answered her question. "What do you mean he took two shots?"
"I tripped, he pulled me to my feet and in the process of getting me up again got hit by two bullets. Is that clear enough for you Mr. Bradley?"
"Why are you so upset over this guy? He is a killer, as evil as they get." He said and she laughed, a hollow empty laugh, like she was just laughing to unnerve him.
"Like I said, the man saved my life on more then one occasion and each time he didn't have to. That wasn't the actions of an evil man. He wasn't evil. You don't know what evil is."
"And you do?"
"Better then you do. I can name people far more evil that are walking around free, or at least used to walk around." She said thinking of Johns, Riddick told her about the conversation that they had had in the canyon about her. She knew the truth and now wished she hadn't shed the tears over him that she had but then she had just been a silly fifteen year old girl. A lot had changed. "Why don't you track those men down Mr. Bradley? Close the door on your way out."
"I'm not done asking you questions yet?"
"What else then?"
"Do you recognise me?"
"Should I?" She closed her eyes.
"I met you and Riddick when you were seventeen, only I didn't know that he was Riddick or I would have put him in the slam then. We lived next door to each other for nearly three months before you disappeared."
"I disappeared a lot. I left a lot of people behind."
"I know."
"To be honest, I don't know why you and your kind keep going after Riddick. If I remember you right at all then Riddick didn't get in your way or hurt you or anyone." She said as she swivelled her head around to look at him. "Riddick is dead! Let him be bloody well dead!"
"Chill out Jack. I'm not here to take you in."
"Goodbye Mr. Bradley. You try and talk to me again or tell my crewmates or anyone else for that matter that I'm anyone else then Kit O'Donnell and I'll gladly take on a few of Riddick's more charming personality traits, after all you didn't think I lived with him for five years without picking up a thing or two?" She threatened coldly and the tall Merc made his way out of her room, slamming her door behind him.
"Damned merc." She swore as she sat up and scanned the room before laying down again, checking for any sign of planted devices. The walls were bare; a clean metallic grey, the bed was silver, the sheets and pillows white and most importantly the light was strong and clear. She could never get to sleep without the light on anymore. It was part of her condition. When the lights went out, so did her peace.
Jack sat in her piloting chair with her knees pulled up to her chest as the autopilot kicked in. Most of the time she hated that damned piece of equipment, if the programming got much better she wouldn't have a job anymore. She took her sunglasses out of her breast pocket and put them on as the ship came out of the planet's protective shadow and into the glare of it's sun.
In the seven years since the crash on the Dark planet Jack had been to a lot of places and done a lot of things both stupid and smart to find peace but being anonymous was the only thing yet that had given her a chance to forget and then feel some sort of peace. That was if there really was peace after everything that had happened in that one seemingly endless night and the things that followed in the years of wondering afterward.
"Everything all set up here?" Captain Tex Manor asked walking into the cockpit of the ship, the forty year old man always seemed to walk in right when she wanted a moment or two alone to think. It was as he put it, a talent.
"Yes sir." Jack said sitting up properly again and grinning, her thoughtfulness all but gone in a moment as she put her headset back on. Technically they weren't supposed to take them off when they were on duty but there were moments...
"You ready to go down to mess O'Donnell?" He asked but she shook her head.
"I want to sit in the light for a while." She answered. "The light is why I like this particular run more then the others Captain."
"I should give up asking shouldn't I?" He shook his head as he took his dark cap off his head and played around with his auburn hair, making it stand up in static spikes for a moment before putting his cap back again, squashing the spikes flat as he did so.
"Might be a good idea sir. The answer will never change." She nodded. "I like the light too much."
"I don't blame you." He shrugged; he was one of the only people to know who she really was and what had really happened after the crash. He turned to leave then turned around again and said. "One more thing before I leave you to your light O'Donnell." The captain put his hand on the back of her chair. "There's a Merc on board, he won't leave us to go about our normal business until he's spoken to you about Riddick. He'll pay you for whatever information you give him."
"I don't talk to Mercs." Jack stiffened and her grin was replaced by a frown, it was a good thing that he couldn't see the expression in her eyes through the sunglasses, her eyes spoke of murder. "I don't talk to Mercs and I don't talk about Riddick. The crew doesn't know who I really am and I'd quite like to keep it that way. The damned Merc will only raise unwanted questions." She stared at him. "You said you'd never make me talk to them if I took on this damned job!"
"Don't get hotshot on me Kit!" Tex snapped. "You were good and I wanted you to pilot this thing but you're not that good and if I remember correctly, I did you as much of a favour as you did me! You're going to talk to the Merc Jack and the crew aren't going to know you as anyone but Kit O'Donnell, a damned good but cocky as hell pilot. I'm having you talk to a Merc; I have Sam and John talk to Mercs all the time. The stupid ass isn't going to touch you unless he wants to get himsef thrown out into space."
"I'm not going to talk to that fuckin' Merc!" She hissed getting uptight.
"You are or you're going to give up that seat to Danny, you know how much he'd love that. Does demotion sound like fun to you?" Tex said evenly. "I'll see you in mess in ten minutes and you can give me your answer. The merc or your seat."
"Damn you." She hissed after the captain had left but it wasn't the captain she was cursing as she looked at the planet's red sun. Riddick seemed to like to pop in and out of her life, he couldn't physically anymore but the damned Mercs wouldn't believe that if she had showed them a body. He had tricked them once and she wasn't going to be given the chance to trick them again. Only thing was, this time she wasn't lying to them, Richard B. Riddick had died. She had seen him.
She had been trying to move on and separated herself from everything that Riddick had embodied for two years now; only the stupid Mercs wouldn't let it rest.
The inquiry into the crash on the dark planet had been inconclusive so they had happily said that Riddick had killed all those people even though they had no proof of that either. They wouldn't listen to her or the holy man, she was a girl that was happy to pretend to be a boy and the interviewer didn't like Imam because he was a "religious nut". The one thing it did do however was up the bounty on Riddick's head and she was the one paying for it now.
Jack couldn't say however, that Riddick had gone all servile instinct on her and split. Iman had, he ran as far as he possibly could and as fast as he was able and only a year after the crash and their living hell. Riddick had become invisible and Jack with him, he had stuck with her, though why she could never really be sure. With Riddick there always seemed to be other motives and as long as she hadn't threatened his freedom she was as safe as she could be hiding out with a man with a huge bounty on his head. She never really took him being around for granted; she was never given the chance but she had never pitied herself. She would have picked being with Riddick over being alone anyday.
She had known the rules.
She kept her nose clean and stayed inconspicuous. When people started looking at her or Riddick funny, they left and in the middle of the night if possible. If she got herself in trouble with the law he wouldn't rescue her, if she got in trouble with the people of the planet, he wouldn't help her and if the Mercs caught up with her, he wouldn't stick around to save her ass. He taught her how to fight and how to depend on herself. They were some of the most valuable lesions of her life, they taught her how to deal with the fake life she was living now.
Together, they lived a hopscotch life for four years and she never said anything or complained. They left a lot of people behind but she never showed any emotion. He had taught her to let go. People didn't matter but not being alone did and Riddick was the one person she didn't want to leave or get left by. She spent the last of her teen years knowing what it was to be truly expendable, she knew that she might wake up one morning and he'd be gone. To be honest she didn't know why he stuck around at all, in the end she only ever got them into trouble.
He had died doing the one thing that he swore he would never bother to do again; save her life.
They had been leaving a planet where a war had just broken out. Riddick as always wanted nothing to do with it and so she didn't either. She wasn't about to be left behind because of the morals of other people, wither she agreed with them or not was another story all together and not really that relevant under the circumstances at that time. He had gotten himself out unscathed, like he always seemed to manage but she had been stupid again and got caught in the crossfire, she was unharmed but stuck and couldn't for the life of her see a way out. With the bullets flying over her head she was almost too scared to try.
Jack hung her head as she thought about it, sometimes memories were too painful to drag into the present, sometimes the past had no place in the future, these memories were too painful to want to revisit but if she was going to have to talk to the stupid Merc then she had to be able to recall the facts. It didn't hurt telling every gold digging Merc that came her way that Riddick was really dead this time. Dead and gone, disappeared into the killer's legends, after all he had never been recaptured. He would have killed himself before going back to one of the many slams.
Riddick had gone back for her sorry twenty-year-old ass. "I've saved your life too many damned times for you to loose it now." He had growled as he arrived at her side unexpectedly. Jack thought he would already be in space and without her. She thought that she would already have been forgotten, part of his past like the many other people they had left behind.
They were almost out of no man's land, so close to safety and then she was on the ground and he was hit as he pulled her up by her belt. She couldn't remember where he had been hit but he wasn't dead, not then, just in pain.
"Come on Riddick!" She had yelled trying to get him back to his feet like he had been trying to get her back to hers only moments before.
"Get your damned ass off this fucking planet!" He had yelled at her pushing her away. "There's no fucking way I'm going to let you die saving my fucking ass." He said the last line through clenched teeth as the second bullet hit.
She winced as the sun came into full view and she had to put the light filter up. She had had her ten minutes of light and it was the light that would keep her mind off the darkness that haunted her dreams and her life. The darkness that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't escape or forget and the faces... She couldn't figure out what was worse, the darkness and the beasts or the faces of those who had died, frozen as she had seen them look at her the last time.
Everyone died or everyone left, that was the story of her life.
She took her sunglasses off and folded them up before putting them back into her breast pocket and putting on and zipping up her black vest jacket with it's many useful pockets, over her brown t-shirt. The light however couldn't keep out her memories. They were as tangible as ever.
It wasn't Jack that walked out into the main corridor of the huge cargo and passenger ship but her latest character creation, a girl that had no conspicuous past or burdens of guilt, a part that she could almost get lost playing, that was why she loved being Kit O'Donnell so much but even Kit couldn't keep that something of Jack from surfacing in her attitude and character.
"How was the light today Kit baby? Ready to give up your job then?" The twenty-seven year old co-pilot, Danny Becker sat down next to her when she got herself seated at one of the tables in the mess room. "And all because you won't speak to a stupid Merc. You're bloody stupid girl. Nothing more then a stupid kid." That was what Becker's favourite pastime was, tormenting her.
"How the hell do you think it was Becker?" She answered. "The light was bright and oops, that rhymed. You're only sore that a girl a whole five years younger then you managed to get the job you wanted. Need I remind you of who the better pilot is?"
"As cold as always." Samantha Anderson put her tray down on Jack's right and sat down. "The stupid Merc won't bite."
"I know that Sam. Why the hell do you think I'm going to talk to the idiot?" She took a bite of whatever was in the brown sloppy mix in her bowl and made a face. It tasted as close to crap as could be, but then the taste never did change.
"I'm glad to hear you say that." The captain said sitting down next to them with John behind him.
"Why is he wanting to asking you about Riddick anyway? I heard he was killed in a little war near Demedia." John asked squirting a ton of ketchup in the bowl with the brown muck and mixing the two together. The color certainly didn't improve much, though the taste might have slightly, though she doubted it.
"I was in Demedia, was the pilot of a little ship that was hauling crystals from there to a classified position. I saw Riddick, saw him get killed saving some stupid kid." She shrugged. "I've told the Mercs over and over again that he's dead but they seem to like to come back for more conformation. Riddick would have been better off leaving that kid to her fate."
"Like I said," Sam smiled taking a bite out of a piece of bread. "Stupid."
"You really have to get better food on this sucker." John complained after taking a bite and making a nasty face that said it all but also made it obvious that he was happy enough with her explanation. Sam on the other hand looked puzzled again and clearly didn't get something.
"Riddick's this big killer right, I mean his bounty is one of the largest out there." She said.
"You're point is?" Danny gave her a blank look.
"My point is: why would he die saving some kid's life?" She pointed her fork at him and frowned her line of thought obviously clear in her head even if the idiot on the other side of Jack didn't get it. "I mean, Riddick took lives, hell of a lot of lives but he wasn't superman, he didn't save them."
"Well I know what I saw. Damn! I was there and Riddick, the feared saved that kid's life or I'm an ass." Jack said suddenly not feeling hungry for the slop in her bowl. Those people never got to know Riddick, what did they know!
"Well we always knew you were stuck up yourself." Danny laughed at his own joke, not caring that he was the only one who really found it funny. Jack stood up abruptly, her meal totally forgotten as the blood pounded in her ears. It wasn't like she could tell them that she was the stupid kid that Riddick got killed saving. She'd never be trusted by any of them again if they found out that she had lived and thrived with a convicted murderer for five years.
"Where's the Merc's quarters?" She asked the captain before leaving. Her problem was that she liked belonging a little too much.
"E7." Was the reply. "He doesn't eat dinner."
Jack walked swiftly down the corridors till she reached room E7. She wanted to get the ordeal over with as fast as possible so that she could go get a couple hours of sleep before all the lights automatically turned off. She could never get to sleep if it was dark. She always imagined sounds, their sounds. Even the thought made her shudder.
She knocked on the door but there was no reply. She waited for a couple of minutes, not that it took ten minutes to reach the door, then she kicked it solidly. It made a satisfying thudding sound that seemed to let a little bit of steam out of her blood so she did it once more before walking away to her own quarters, angry that she had to put seeing the damned beast off.
The Aurora's quarters could be said to be nothing less then a small walk in closet, big enough for a small single bed and a small table and chair with a shelf for storage above the bed where she kept her clothes and meagre collection of belongings. It was bigger then some of the places that she had lived in but it was certainly not the biggest.
"Lights!" She commanded as she opened the door to her small room and then she stopped dead in her tracks. There was a tall but lean man standing in her room with his back to her looking at the one picture that she had of Riddick and herself, a picture that had been taken by accident but that had enough sentimental value for her to it to keep.
"Kit O'Donnell?" He asked. His voice wasn't unpleasant to listen to, smooth and soft, but there was an underlying current that could only be described as purely dangerous. He wasn't the kind of man that anyone would really want to mess with unless they had no other choice. His voice alone would intimidate most people but most people hadn't been trained by a killer.
"Yeah?" She crossed her arms. "Are you the stupid Merc going after Riddick? You not afraid that you might end up dead? A lot of your buddies that went looking for him have."
"So he is still alive Kit or should I say, Jack?" He turned around, a grin on his face, his brown eyes sweeping over her like the eyes of a hungry animal and she knew she had been right; this was not a man to toy around with. She closed the door behind her.
"Riddick is dead! How many times do I have to tell you bloody stupid people that? My stupidity killed him, get over it already and move on." She glared at him.
"Why didn't he kill you?"
"He saved my life you idiot. He had invested far too much in me, God! He invested his life." She sat down on her bed and took off her heavy black boots and then her vest jacket, but not before pulling a candy bar from out of one pocket. "He got shot twice, I saw him take both hits. He's not alive."
"You feel guilty about the death of a mindless, heartless killer?"
"We must be talking about two different people."
"And why is that sweetheart?"
"He wasn't mindless, he wouldn't have escaped so many of you before his death if he had been mindless and he wouldn't have been able to kill half the people he had killed either if he didn't have a brain." She took a bite out of the chocolate.
"Alright. Mindless he wasn't. Do you feel guilty over it?"
"What's your name Merc? You know mine; it's only fare that I know yours. Maybe I can use it against you sometime." She said as she finished off the bar and laid down flat on the bed, her hands behind her head and her ankles crossed. "I'm not too high up there for a little bit of blackmail."
"Bradley, James Bradley." He answered her question. "What do you mean he took two shots?"
"I tripped, he pulled me to my feet and in the process of getting me up again got hit by two bullets. Is that clear enough for you Mr. Bradley?"
"Why are you so upset over this guy? He is a killer, as evil as they get." He said and she laughed, a hollow empty laugh, like she was just laughing to unnerve him.
"Like I said, the man saved my life on more then one occasion and each time he didn't have to. That wasn't the actions of an evil man. He wasn't evil. You don't know what evil is."
"And you do?"
"Better then you do. I can name people far more evil that are walking around free, or at least used to walk around." She said thinking of Johns, Riddick told her about the conversation that they had had in the canyon about her. She knew the truth and now wished she hadn't shed the tears over him that she had but then she had just been a silly fifteen year old girl. A lot had changed. "Why don't you track those men down Mr. Bradley? Close the door on your way out."
"I'm not done asking you questions yet?"
"What else then?"
"Do you recognise me?"
"Should I?" She closed her eyes.
"I met you and Riddick when you were seventeen, only I didn't know that he was Riddick or I would have put him in the slam then. We lived next door to each other for nearly three months before you disappeared."
"I disappeared a lot. I left a lot of people behind."
"I know."
"To be honest, I don't know why you and your kind keep going after Riddick. If I remember you right at all then Riddick didn't get in your way or hurt you or anyone." She said as she swivelled her head around to look at him. "Riddick is dead! Let him be bloody well dead!"
"Chill out Jack. I'm not here to take you in."
"Goodbye Mr. Bradley. You try and talk to me again or tell my crewmates or anyone else for that matter that I'm anyone else then Kit O'Donnell and I'll gladly take on a few of Riddick's more charming personality traits, after all you didn't think I lived with him for five years without picking up a thing or two?" She threatened coldly and the tall Merc made his way out of her room, slamming her door behind him.
"Damned merc." She swore as she sat up and scanned the room before laying down again, checking for any sign of planted devices. The walls were bare; a clean metallic grey, the bed was silver, the sheets and pillows white and most importantly the light was strong and clear. She could never get to sleep without the light on anymore. It was part of her condition. When the lights went out, so did her peace.