Helion Prime, New Mecca

Dried dates had always been a favorite treat. She'd eat them, the whole container, one at a time. Wash down the sugary mush with sips of cold milk. Riddick had bought her a box of dates once; after she made him bleed for the first time. She only ate one a day, back then. It was the only present he had ever bought her, and they were the best things she had ever tasted.

But that was nothing but a fever dream now. Life with Riddick was just an irregular blip in an otherwise uneventful cycle of REM sleep. And the date she'd shared at the end of the wedding ceremony had the sickly sweet and slightly acrid after taste of vomit.


They'd be leaving in the morning, her and her husband and his soldiers. To her new home, she supposed. Or her prison, either way it didn't matter. She was already on her way to becoming somebody, something else. But for now, she supposed she was satisfied with just floating somewhere in the grey.

She pressed her face against the window and watched the rain splatter against the grounds below. She remembered vaguely, that she used to like summer storms. The warm rain, the smell of wet dirt.

There was sharp knock on the door and she turned towards it dully, "Come in."

Adric stepped through the door, closed it behind him and smiled thinly. "Madam," he bowed.

Without responding she curled into a recliner and stared at him. His fingers played with the radio, she heard it click. "You leave tomorrow, kid. I suggest you pull it together."

"What do you think I'm doing, Private Adric," she asked quietly, swiveling the chair around to face the window again.

The rain made his reflection waver and dance in the window. "You're falling apart. I saw your face at the ceremony this morning, you looked like death. Like it or not, this is your life now. You can't run from that fact."

Audrey froze, fingers digging into the recliner arms.

I didn't run. I'm fighting. And then, I'm losing.

Her lips pressed thin, white with fury. "Get out."

Behind her, Adric nodded turned his radio back on and faced the door, "Your transport arrives at oh eight hundred. Be up by seven." He was gone, and she sank back into the recliner shaking.

She caught her reflection in the window and stared.

She was flushed, bright patches of pink standing out on her neck. Her hands shook, but not from fear. Finally, not from fear. Fresh, hot anger. She had almost cursed at him, almost told him to get the fuck out. She hadn't felt that good in years.


She was in the shower when the lights flickered, then died. She froze, listening , then shut off the water.

Stepping silently from the shower she wrapped herself in a fluffy towel, "Lights."

Nothing. A little louder she called, "Lights on." No lights.

She slipped into the main room, and paused as her mind tried to comprehend what she was seeing.

Glass was strewn across the floor, glittering with the pulsating red glow of the emergency lights. Emergency lights and blood. She tripped over the body trying to get to the phone, it was dead.

Of course it would be, something mocked in her head.

Clutching her towel tight she turned to the man on the floor. It was Adric, his kind blue eyes were wide open, and he too was most definitely dead. She dropped beside him whispering to herself, "No. No, no, no." Her hands fell to his chest, felt the handle protruding, she jerked back as if burned. Looking closer in the strobing light she could see it clearly.

The inlay, the grooves. She slapped her hand over her mouth, retching. She knew that knife.

Something ugly was working its way through her body, telling her that this was wrong, wrong, wrong. The broken window, the absence of guards, the familiar handle.

Her body, her mind screamed 'run'. She did, holding the towel around her she gave one last look to Adric and stumbled out of the room and into the hallway, into blackness.

Completely blind, listening to the staccato bursts of gunfire from the grounds below, she felt her way down the hall. Her hands, outstretched hit something impossibly warm, impossibly hard. Before she could scream she was hefted up over a shoulder and carted off down the hall and into the stairwell.

Ineffectively, she tried to dislodge herself from the man's shoulder, twisting and kicking. The grip around her legs increased until she cried out, and the man continued to ascend the stairs.

Something below them exploded, rocking the entire foundation of the building. She felt scorching air start to blister her skin, but as her captor rounded a corner, her head connected with a wall and she knew no more.