She woke up to the sudden sensation of warmth near her body as she slept. The shifting of the air around her goose bumped skin made her body become stiff and held in the solid grip of fear. She could feel the pulse in her neck threatening to burst through her skin, as her heart rate became a primal drumming. Still and aware in the darkness, she strained her ears to tell her of what had snuck inside her holding cell. But all they could reveal was silence and the primal drumming inside her. The guards were all too happy in her reaction when they approached her cell door, the keys ringing out their arrival as they hung from their belts. The silence confirmed one thing. It was no guard.
She couldn't even recall exactly how long she had been in this place. It felt like forever due to the almost never-ending darkness that consumed every corner of the complex that she was now held in. There was no sun, no moon or stars. No ringing of a bell from a distant tower to greet in the coming dawn. It wasn't like New Mecca. New Mecca now seemed like a distant paradise, a Heaven in which she would never reach. The simple feeling of the warm breeze at night while Imam wished her goodnight from her bedroom door every night and the little chirping voice of Ziza in the morning waking her to the smell of breakfast.
How delicate and simple her life was with them. So full of life, it seemed to burst from every movement, every corner of that place. Now, the only corners that surround her were full of darkness and the cold. Bone achingly cold. She could just about move without her gasping in pain as the ice within her pinched and stabbed in response to movement. But she had noticed, in the brief moments where a light was turned on, that she couldn't see her own breath or find a surface covered in ice.
Another sudden shift in the air around her brought her back into focus as she felt the warmth close in on her. Ignoring the cold as it tore through her body, she rolled across the floor she had come to sleep on since she had arrived and slammed herself into the first solid surface she could find. Her cell was bare, with only a drain in a corner she could squat over when she needed to. Her nose told her that she was lucky enough to have moved herself to the opposite side of the room to the drain.
Trying to keep her ragged breathing steady she moved herself up onto her toes, back flat against the wall and her arms groping the surface around her trying to navigate. Her body screamed in icy pain but the adrenaline now running through her system was keeping the edge of it all at bay. She strained her eyes so much with effort to penetrate the darkness that they actually hurt and she had to squeeze them shut to stop the pain. It was then that she heard it. A deep growl, long and purposefully pronounced. It had been years since she had heard a rumble like that. It always made her think of a storm just before it was about to break into rain.
Too scared to believe her own senses, she believed that her mind had finally started to give way. The trauma had smashed its way through whatever walls she had hurriedly placed to protect what she could. In the first time in what felt like days, she licked her cracked lips and spoke out in a shaky voice "You're not real". She waited. Silence seemed to have returned as the darkness lost its voice until she heard footsteps…boot steps. Long slow strides, each echo of a solid step ringing through the world of shadows like a crack of thunder.
For a long pause she stood paralysed by her own mind as her body screamed for her to move. It wasn't until she felt the air around her become warm again that her body regained control and she jolted sideways along the wall, her back sliding against the rough surface. She acted too late as a powerful hand grabbed her as if she were a doll and pulled. Pulled her into the darkness, away from the security of the wall, away from any kind of solid mass to make her feel safe.
The warmth surrounded her, powerful limbs engulfed her and she felt the thumping of a great drum against her cheek. Steady, slow rhythm. It was hypnotic and she fought against the sound. The smell of earth and musk filled her lungs quickly and she whimpered as reality and fantasy, hope and despair crashed into each other. It was more painful then she imagined it would be. Above her, a storm rumbled into the crown of her head. "I'm real. Let's go".
He led her by the hand acting as her eyes as they walked through the dark. Her bare feet slapping against metal grating and on occasion what felt like warm water. It didn't take long before she grew tired. She had barely been fed since she had been taken and the cold was rushing back over her again. In fact, it was coming back with a vengeance; worse then she had ever felt. She gripped her chest with her free hand and tried to breathe but found herself gasping. Her cry came out stuttered "Ri…Ri….Riddick". She felt his pull stop immediately and as she dropped to her knees, he had rushed in. Again, she felt his warmth as she was lifted into the air. The drumming steady and hypnotic against her ear as he held her in his arms.
She closed her eyes as the cold pulled her into a dreamless sleep. The sound of pounding boots on metal never made it to her ears and the hypnotic drumming that lulled her away from him had turned into a crescendo.
…………………………….
He ran as fast as he could the moment he got her into his arms. He could feel her trembling and her breathing struggled as it rasped past her lips. His eyes saw her eyes rolled back and her head flopped away for his chest. He jerked her up, so that she was curled inward to his massive torso and started to run. He ran past the rest of the dead guards, their blood dripping through the metal flooring. They were easy to take out once he had removed their radio operator from the control booth below.
This place was too cheaply run to have bothered on computer systems. If they had been more worried over their security instead of their pockets they would have had a chance. Manual systems always had a flaw and the flaw turned out to have a pulse and an artery he could cut. With no eyes to watch over them, the guards fell one at a time in silence. Even with their night vision goggles, once removed, they were as terrified and as weak as Jack.
After coming to the end of the walkway, he took a sharp right turn into a hallway and through the electronic doors he had wedged open with the plasma rifle of one of the guards he had killed. The first and only light ahead was the elevators that would take them both to the underground docks. The small cargo ship he had "borrowed" from a not-too-willing captain would be waiting to take them back to New Mecca. But before then, he would have to deal with Jack.
The elevator doors closed in on them and started to descend quickly. The lights were dimmed and red thanks to the blood spatter on the ceiling from another warm body made cold at the docks. He didn't need to use his goggles. He took the time waiting to move his hands so that he could just catch a small flicker of a beat in her chest. He realised now where the money had gone. Not for laser beams or automated systems. Bio-chains. Expensive but the most effective way in controlling a prisoner.
A person would be injected with a concoction of nanites, programmed in bringing the host to the brink of shock my manipulating the electrical signals in the spinal chord and brain. A magnetic field surrounding a cell would send a signal to the machines if the prisoner were to come out of range giving a kill command. Execution was by sending the person into shock, leading to coma and death.
The problem with the system was that it was expensive and was shut down due to its "inhuman methods of control". Like something as small as human rights could stop its use. The last reason was that in some subjects with strong anti-bodies, the nanites were rejected and processed out of the host but this was very rare. Jack's body seemed to be unable to save itself this way. Riddick's mind raced to figure out a way to save her. There was no guarantee that returning her to her cell would stop the process leaving him with only one option. Cryo-sleep wouldn't stop the process but it would slow it down enough for him to flush the bio-chains out of her system using the life support systems.
As he approached the rear of the ship, he yelled out "Open rear access!" and the cargo doors opened so that his manic run to save a life would not be delayed. He had enough time already to learn the layout of the ship and within seconds he was in the small medical bay. The two cryo-chambers were open, waiting like hungry mouths to be fed. Throwing whatever little manners he had to the wind, he laid Jack down inside the nearest chamber and ripped her dirt covered shirt open exposing her chest.
Her breathing was shallow and her skin was looking even paler then he had remembered it to be. Working swiftly, he placed the electronic pads on her that would send information to the medical computer and then locked in the cuffs that would feed her the liquids to sustain her while flushing out the nanites. He shut the chamber and stepped back as the cryo chamber sealed itself with a long hiss and gas surrounded the resting figure.
Looking over to the monitor, it showed that Jack's heart rate had dropped to 42 beats per minute and that brain activity was being detected at a minimal level. Just enough to give signals for the lungs to expand and for her heart to continue to beat among other basic functions. He took a moment to watch her through the glass, her head lulled to one side exposing her neck and her hair had grown to medium length showing dark brown waves. Her chest he now noticed was covered in bruises around the collar bones. As if she had been pinned down on her back.
His eyes moved lower and saw that her exposed nipples had turned hard from the cold inside the chamber. Only a moment he had gazed at her still form before catching himself. Embarrassed and angry for having even looked at her vulnerability, he took a final glance at the monitors and left to fly them both to a safe distance.