A/N: Enjoy! And pretty please review!
Carolyn was escorted down the cold corridors of the shaceship wondering what she was going to tell them. The Company wanted to know what had happened to the Hunter Gratzner and she wasn't sure where to start, or what to leave out. She couldn't tell them about Riddick. Although she considered things even between her and the escaped convict Carolyn did not trust the Company to leave Jack and Imam alone, which left her a bit stuck.
The pilot was jarred out of her thoughts by the 'swish' of a door opening just inches from her nose when she nearly collided with it. The people escorting her gave her odd looks. It was those expressions that gave her inspiration; she'd pretend to be disoriented (as opposed to just being absent-minded). The blond was ushered into a cold, metal room with a bolted-down, metal table and two bolted-down, metal chairs. Mounted in the upper corners of the walls were holographic cameras and in the centre of the ceiling was a fractal camera, which would record everything in the room down to the molecular level.
Alarm bells went off in Carolyn's head.
That was expensive tech. That one camera alone would require a computer the size of a space frigate just to record five minutes of footage. How long had she been dead for that they would be so interested in her? It suddenly sunk in that she was on a very expensive, probably humungous, ship. Carolyn could almost guarantee that there was a large fleet to go with this one ship, which was most likely the heart of said fleet.
She was led to the chair by her escort and Carolyn gingerly – still deliberately acting slightly disoriented – sat down in one of the chairs. Her escort walked out and she was left to sit and stew for awhile. They were likely waiting to see what she would do, how she would behave. Carolyn wasn't sure how long she had been sitting there by herself, but she kept up the act the entire time, praying that she was convincing enough.
The door finally opened and the blond pilot didn't have to pretend to jump. When a man in military body armour walked into the room and took a seat across from her Carolyn knew that her acting was going to have to be top-notch because this was nothing more and nothing less than an interrogation. Her best bet was to avoid details as much as possible and if she screwed up pretend – as convincingly as possible – to be dazedly confused.
He grilled her for six hours and by the end of it she was exhausted. They took her back to her quarters, locked her in and she crawled into bed and dreamt of (of all people) Richard B. Riddick being chased across an alien landscape of snow and ice to escape Mercs. The truly strange part of the dream was that he had hair... And a beard.
When she woke the next day-cycle Carolyn finally realized that she had been acting on instincts that she'd never had before. Since when did she question the Company? Since when did she not trust them? Pulling herself off of the bunk (her blankets were on the floor, as per-usual) she stumbled into the bathroom and, wishing that she had the simple luxury of splashing cold water on her face, looked at herself in the mirror. Seeing what was reflected Carolyn jumped back violently and collided with the opposite wall.
A dark-skinned woman with her hair in multiple, tiny braids was staring back at her, a jungle in full bloom behind her. Carolyn's heart started pounding in her ears as the scene spread to encompass the entire room, following the woman as she stepped forward.
"Do not trust them." The woman said firmly.
And then Carolyn woke up with a start back in the medbay with pale-faced doctors hovering over her.
"What?" She asked, confused, "What happened? Why am I here?"
"Because you vanished for two hours without a trace." A voice said from somewhere around her feet.
Startled, Carolyn zeroed in on the voice. It belonged to an older man that screamed 'MILATARY' in a capital letters.
"I did?" She asked faintly.
Carolyn tried to remember what had happened after the woman gave her warning, but all the pilot could summon up was a vague impression of a long conversation and a splitting headache. The man all-but glared at her gaugingly for several moments before ordering everyone out. All but one of them left. The one that remained turned out to be a telepath, whom the military man had make an attempt at invading her mind. An image of the woman with the braids flashed behind Carolyn's squeezed-shut eyes and rebuffed the person so hard that they dropped dead almost instantly.
From then on it was a blur of chaos, blood and violence. When it passed Carolyn found herself in a ship headed away from the Company fleet and wondering what had happened. For some reason she had the sickening feeling that it had mostly been her doing and not the braid-woman's.
'Shirah.' The woman's voice echoed in Carolyn's mind, 'My name is Shirah. And you're right; for the most part the carnage was not my doing, but neither was it yours.'
Carolyn didn't have the courage to ask what that meant and went to go find someplace to sleep. Perhaps she'd have another weird dream about Riddick. It would certainly be far better than the nightmares that she was anticipating. The former Company pilot had no such luck and woke several times from nightmares before she finally did dream of Riddick, right when his ship came within a kilometre of her own.
A mark on the small of her back glowed brightly as he passed by.
A/N: As I said at the top; please review! Just so that I know that you guys are reading and enjoying this!