(AN) Thanks for the reviews! Please, keep them coming--you motivate me to actually sit down and work on this.
He shifted, felt cool metal pull at his wrists. Chains.
Shit.
He wasn't wearing his goggles, so he was cautious when he opened his eyes. The spot where he sat wasn't as shadowed as he would have liked, but if he squinted it didn't hurt too bad. He lifted his head, looked around.
Lynn sat across from him, handcuffed to the stairwell.
"Mornin'," she said.
"Nice bracelets," he told her.
"Yeah." She rattled the cuffs. "Johns hit me, I hit back, he got pissy."
"Thought the others liked you."
She shrugged. "They mighta. Before I got Zeke's blood all over me."
It was still all over her, he noticed. Dried flecks on her face and neck, probably in her hair. Larger smears on her arms. "You know we'd both be free now, if you hadn't wanted to play hero."
She laughed dryly. "I knew there was a reason I hate being the good guy. Thanks for the reminder."
He wondered how she could look so young and so cynical at the same time.
"I been out long?" he asked.
She shrugged again. "Not too long. Hour, hour and a half?"
He nodded, and they fell silent. Few minutes later, Johns was in to interrogate them.
X
Shazza didn't cry. Waste of water. He hated waste.
Had. He had hated waste. Past tense.
Fuck… It hit her then. He was gone. Gone.
Imam put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a concerned, caring looked.
She was breathing hard. She couldn't get air. She tried to slow her lungs, closed her eyes, but painted onto her eyelids was a vision of crimson. Bright, shocking crimson, crimson that practically glowed in the light from these damned suns. Blood. So much blood.
His blood.
She screamed. Sank to her knees, to the ground. Imam followed her down, but he barely registered.
He was saying something, but she couldn't hear it over her own terrifying refrain. He's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone…
She shook, she raged and whimpered. She hit the dusty ground until her hands went numb.
But she did not cry a single tear.
X
Lynn would not have killed Zeke. Jack knew that, even if all the others had gone crazy. She would not have killed him, and she would not have stood by and let Riddick kill him.
The girl wasn't so sure about Riddick, but she figured he wouldn't have killed him without a good reason.
Imam had said to stay away from them. He'd said it without thinking, so sure she would listen. Like she was one of his charges. She wasn't. He didn't have the right to tell her what to do, not when she'd worked so hard to free herself.
She'd listen to Fry, since she was the captain. She'd listen to Lynn, because she was smart and strong and had saved a man's life. Maybe she'd listen to Riddick, because he obviously knew how to survive. But Imam? What had Imam done to earn it?
Still, she went around the back way, so he wouldn't see her. She didn't want a lecture.
She was easing down the stairs when Fry came storming in, looking mad as hell.
"So where's the body?" she demanded, directing the words at Riddick. Jack decided to sit back and watch the show. Below her, Lynn crossed her legs—apparently she'd had the same idea.
Riddick stayed silent, head down.
"You wanna tell me about the sounds?" More silence. "Look, I talked to Johns. He said you told him you were trying to help. That you'd heard something…" More silence. "Fine. That's fine. You don't want to talk to me, your choice, but just so you know…" there was a pause, and Jack saw her turn to look at Lynn. "There's a debate right now on whether we should just leave the two of you here to die."
Jack tensed. They couldn't. They couldn't. Even if they do, she decided, I'll get them out, I won't leave them…
Fry started to walk away.
Finally, Riddick responded. "You mean the whispers?"
Fry stopped, turned back. "What whispers?" she asked, almost whispering herself.
"The ones tellin' me to go for the sweet spot—just to the left of the spine, forth lumbar down, the abdominal aorta."
Jack shivered with something that wasn't fear, or not quite. She wasn't sure what the feeling was, but she leaned forward, hoping for more.
"It's a metallic taste, human blood. Copperish. If you cut if with Peppermint Schnapps, that goes away quick—"
"You want to shock me with the truth now?" the woman interrupted, sounded disgusted.
Riddick paused, cocked his head to one side. "All you people are so scared of me. Most days, I'd take that as a compliment. But it ain't me you gotta worry about now."
"Show me your eyes, Riddick," Fry commanded.
Jack blinked. Where'd that come from?
"You'd have to come a lot closer for that."
Hesitantly, Fry moved. So did Jack, easing down the stairs for a better view.
"Closer."
Even knowing the command wasn't for her, Jack followed. She felt strange. Almost intoxicated.
Chains clanged as Riddick slammed upward. Fry jumped. Jack didn't. Instead, she moved down onto the last step. Closer. Lynn glanced up at her, her face shadowed and unreadable. Jack barely noticed.
Then silver eyes met her green ones, and she couldn't look away. The first thing that came into her head flew out her mouth.
"Where the hell can I get eyes like that?"
"You gotta kill a few people."
"'Kay, I can do it," she replied, stepping off the stairs, moving around Lynn. Closer.
"Then you gotta get sent to a slam where they tell you you'll never see daylight again. You dig up a doctor. You pay him twenty Menthol Kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyeballs."
Jack felt a strangely wicked smile slide onto her face. "So you can see who's sneaking up on you in the dark?"
He grinned back at her. "Exactly."
She was about to step even closer when Fry interrupted.
"Leave," she snarled. Three sets of eyes snapped to her face, and her voice softened slightly. "Leave."
Reluctantly, the girl turned to go.
"Jack," came Lynn's voice, making her pause. "Think you could go through Paris's shit, find me some new tools?"
Jack smiled again. "Sure." She made a lot of noise banging up the steps, then eased back down the first few.
"Cute kid," she heard Riddick say, sounding real amused. He probably figured she was still there. "Did I kill a few people? Sure. Did I kill Zeke? No. Ya got the wrong killer."
Knew it, Jack thought.
"He's not in the hole," Carolyn countered. "We looked."
"Look deeper."
If the captain responded, Jack missed it. The next thing she heard was a single pair of footsteps moving away.
A moment of quiet, then, "Tools, Lynn?"
Jack scampered off, grinning. She knew just the thing.
X
Fry glanced back at Shazza. The other woman's face was hard, her entire body tense and drawn. She was worried about how the widow would take this search, but figured it would be better for her to know.
"Let me tell you what I think happened," Johns snapped, interrupting her thoughts. "I think he went off on the guy, buried him in the hills somewhere, and now he's got you thinking there's something else out there."
Would it kill you to be a bit more delicate? Fry wondered, thinking of Shazza again.
"Well, let's just be sure," was what she said out loud.
"Look, murders aside, Riddick belongs in the asshole hall of fame. He loves to jaw-jack, loves to make you feel afraid, 'cause that's all he has. You're playing right into it."
"I don't even know why I'm trying to explain this to you, Johns. You're a cop. For godsakes, we've gotta find his body."
The argument didn't end there, but a strange thought made it harder to focus on it. Find the body. Evidence was needed—innocent until proven guilty. Basic, right? So why did she have to explain this to a cop?
X
Johns watched, frown on his face, as the pilot kneeled in the blood covered sand. He was right—this was about guilt. Not Riddick's though. Hers. She felt guilty for trying to off them, and was trying to make up for it by being all righteous now. Stupid. It'd been too long since he had a fix, and he was hurting. He didn't need to be standing in the sun watching some bimbo search an empty hole.
They waited. She was taking a hell of a long time.
Suddenly, the rope jerked. Imam frowned, started to reel her in. Then he stopped, passed the rope off to him, and jumped down.
"I thought I heard something."
They stood in silence for a few minutes, listening hard. Then Jack started wandering off.
"Where you going?" he asked.
The boy glanced back at him. "This way. I can hear her."
Kid was probably just looking for attention, but he followed anyway. Then he heard her too. He started running.
"Get over here!" he called over his shoulder.
The busted a hole in the spire she had climbed inside, reached in for her.
"Give me your goddamn hand," he demanded. They were all demanding things.
"What's down there, Fry?"
"I heard you first!"
"Did you find Zeke?"
She stood, bent over, panting, for a long moment before she responded.
"Fuck!" she yelled. "So fucking stupid. I don't know what the fuck those things are, but they got Zeke and they nearly got me--"
Her last word ended in a shriek as she flew backwards, ripped out of his hands. They chased her, caught her before she was pulled back down.
"Get it off of me, get it off of me!"
He managed to cut the rope, saw it slide back down into darkness. She collapsed, shaking, and the only thing he could think was Of all the fucking times for Riddick to start telling the truth…