(I created a lot of this, but not Riddick, as stated in COPYRIGHTS listed in chapter 1)


A◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊†◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊Ω

Chapter 12

Even Then

Acknowledgements: Shaden, remember a few chapters (and a short eon) ago when you commented Turn About would be a perfect opportunity to reveal more of the history I've created for Riddick... well, this is your chapter. Thanks for the supreme suggestion! And my continuing thanks to Starnyx, of course, for her patient and persistent grammar patrol and savvy critique.

A◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊●●●●●◊Ω

Riddick opened his eyes slowly. It was dark, but the faint flicker of a fire cast a muted golden light over the uneven surface of his location. His last memory was sitting with his back to a tree... but he wasn't there now. He was horizontal, wrapped in a glittery emergency blanket and staring at the backside of leaves pressed against a thin mesh over a wooden frame. The air around him reeked with an overpowering flowery stench that hung in the air like a miasma. Beneath that there were subtler notes he couldn't quite read, but the blend was familiar. Prompted by the realization, his memory stretched a bit further to the world going dark again... to the loaded end of a hypo slapped in his hand... to the one who did it... Coulter! He turned his head from the leaf wall to find her sitting beside him near the 'entrance' of the shelter with a fire outside, her knees pulled up under her chin, arms wrapped tightly around them as she stared through the netting. At his movement she turned to look at him, her expression haunted, but as soon as she realized he was awake it transformed before his eyes.

"Mr. Riddick, thank God," she exclaimed breathlessly. Her entire posture shifted as her arms fell away, and her knees quickly dropped to the side to parallel the ground. "I was so frightened. How do you feel?"

Riddick stared at her a moment wondering if he should kill her now or when his head stopped throbbing. "Like hell," he muttered, surprised to find a dull ache in his jaw as he spoke. He didn't remember getting hit there. He struggled to raise himself up on one elbow, and Denise unconsciously shifted back as far as the netting would allow as he glared at her. He reached up to gingerly touch to the back of his head. His skull was intact, but the skin was tender - recently healed. Under snuggly wrapped bandages, about half of his chest felt likewise, while the rest ached with the sharp pain of newly glued wounds. "That was some stupid stunt you pulled back there. You want to give me one reason why I shouldn't ghost you right now."

She froze, staring at him with that bird-in-snake-gaze look again, fearful to meet his eyes, but even more afraid to look away. "Please, ,I'msorry," she pleaded, "Iknewwhatwouldhappen...," Her words were rushing together as she tried to explain before he decided to carry out his threat, but his aching brain managed to pry the syllables apart. "I knew what would happen if you sealed those wounds before they'd been cleaned. Those were Gryphyian Fever Cats! They were in a documentary I saw in a zoo about mythic beasts created through genetic manipulation. Male Fever Cats have an oil gland by their claws that they use for marking their territory. It's poisonous to other mammals, and you'd been clawed so badly…."

She was barely taking a moment to breathe. "The way you were sweating, the way your eyes were dilating; I knew it was the male that mauled you. I couldn't let you seal those wounds up with so much poison inside. Even if it didn't kill you outright, it would have most certainly made you very ill, and they probably would have festered badly." She shuddered. "The Dar-Gen wouldn't have had enough juice to seal you up twice. It didn't even have enough to seal you up once, so who knows how long it would have been before you could travel. I don't even want to think about it. I need you. I won't leave this place without you." An animal screamed in the darkness and she jumped fearfully. Her first instinct was to shift toward him, then just as suddenly she pulled back, terrified. Her expression clearly wondered if she might be safer outside in the forest than she was in the shelter with him.

"I ain't been to a zoo...," he commented less threateningly and the mention of the place tugged at his memory like a pass code accessing a restricted file... Life had been hell... was hell... for as long as he could remember, and it had started early, but he had been to a zoo... once. He'd been adopted, which for a baby found abandoned half dead in a trash can seemed a good thing, but good things didn't last long in his life. They'd gone someplace where the stars were different and both of his adoptive parents had been killed by a drunk driver. With no recorded kin that could take him he was left a ward of the system – a lousy thing to be in that little corner of the galaxy. Even worse when he earned the enmity of a crooked case worker. He had knocked the man on his ass in front of the whole funeral party as the "gentleman" tried to politely drag Riddick's almost three year old butt away from the last image he'd ever see of his mom and dad... A mom and dad he desperately missed and was just beginning to understand weren't coming home again.

So began a long string of new "families", one much like the other. The pain didn't change, only the faces... and the greater Riddick's rage and rebellion grew, the harder he became to handle. It got so that he knew the judges in juvenile court longer than any one "family," but no one stepped in. No one intervened. No one really gave a damn.

There had been one exception. A few months shy of Riddick's 6th birthday his case worker had an accident that got the man weeks in the hospital and an extended leave of absence. It was while he was out of action that Riddick's current "family" decided the cash wasn't worth the grief and they'd had enough of the monster. His temp worker had been a spunky young red head with a ready smile not too far off from Denise in build and profile. Wonder if that played some into my inclination to save Coulter from her tube, he mused.. This gal placed him with a family –- a mom, dad, and three other kids, two of them system kids like him –- and he soon found out this family was different from the others.

The first thing he found out was they were just a little whacked in the head. They talked about God like He was a personal friend, and you'd have thought His Son was living with them too. Riddick certainly never saw Him, but that delusion kinda screwed things up for him.

Riddick had gone in with a plan to raise hell. He had learned quick in his few short years that he was leftover trash from somebody else's family, and he could neither expect nor deserved any affection. He'd learned the best way to protect himself was to beat them to the punch, sometimes literally. It was a simple defense - he couldn't choose his enemy or the terrain, but he could certainly start the war. That way he knew what to expect. That way, when nobody cared, he didn't get disappointed... he didn't get hurt, at least not emotionally.

That had been the plan, but it hadn't mattered how foul his mouth was or how sullen his attitude, this mom and dad didn't scream or curse or hit. That's not to say they let him get away with stuff – they drew their boundaries clear and expected him to stay in 'em, but when he didn't, things happened to him the same as things happened to the other kids - no harsher; no leaner. They didn't play favorites.

And there was something else about this mom that was way off kilter. She wanted to do things... she wanted to hug him, tuck him in at night, read him stories, make him cookies, be... nice. He was just sure they were messing with his head... setting him up so they could do something bad... really hurt him... but then one night after he'd been there a month he overheard something.

It had been a bad day. Not for him - his day had gone just as planned - but for them. Riddick had picked a fight with the boy closest to his age and, despite the boy being his elder by two years, Riddick had finished the fight too. While the mom took the boy to the hospital to get his face fused back together, the dad tried - futilely - to make Riddick realize what he'd done was wrong. Wrong for them maybe, but for Riddick it was basic self preservation.

Riddick was just sure something like that would put him on their blacklist - put things back on ground he understood - but then the strangest thing had happened. After the mom was back and everyone was supposed to be asleep, Riddick heard voices. He snuck out of his room to see if he'd finally pushed the limit... to listen in when they made the call to get rid of him... but that's not what he heard. Instead he heard the mom crying... not for the boy he'd trounced; she was crying for HIM! She was so sad that he felt the only way he could protect himself was to make people hate him, and she was angry that anyone had ever let him be hurt, and she was heart-broken that he couldn't see that they really wanted to help. The dad defended Riddick's actions like he'd been scouting in Riddick's head, and told the mom to give the boy more time.

They weren't sending him on. They weren't messing with him. They really did care.

He went back to his bed - a real bed; not some pile of blankets in a corner - and spent the rest of the night thinking. When morning came he went downstairs to the mom and apologized. Things weren't fixed - old habits were hard to kill - but it got better. When his sixth birthday came around, because he didn't have friends to invite to a party the way the other kids did, they took him to a zoo... just him.

That had been an incredible day, and as they rushed from exhibit to exhibit viewing creatures from all over the galaxy, as the mom and dad marveled with him and bought him treats and even as they let him pick out a cybernetic winged snake they said was his, there was nothing that made more of an impression on Riddick than the fact that no one looked at them twice. One stranger had even complimented the dad on his "strapping son," and the dad hadn't corrected the man. Instead he'd simply said "thank you," and put his hand on Riddick's shoulder like he really did care... as if he really was proud of him... it was like he really mattered. It was a good feeling. It was that day that finally reached deep enough to touch a seed planted years before... a seed so crushed and buried by abuse and hate that the source had become a distant dream by contrast. But the seed had never died and these people... this day gave it the strength to fight again. He wasn't some abnormal mutation. He wasn't a monster. He was like the other kids, and it was like they were a real family. Amid all the enclosures, Riddick's heart found freedom.

Even then it had seemed too good to be true. Even then there was a part of him that had wondered if it could be real. After running into Joshua Jacobson and Daria and seeing how someone really could care about another man's kid enough to call them their own, he had an inkling it had been the Riddicks that planted that seed. But it was this mom, this dad, that made it live again... that made him realize he wasn't what he'd been told he was... that he was a some-one, not a some-thing.

It was a weighty revelation to be grasped by such a young mind after all the crap it'd been fed, but grasp it he did... grasped it, latched on to it, possessed it and buried it in his core. On that day he found his defense against the world. What he told himself he was might not be entirely accurate either, but it was what he was going to hold on to. He didn't need stupid idiots that didn't give a damn to tell him what he was anymore. He wasn't going to let assholes tell him what to become or what to do. He knew what the galaxy thought he was... most of it anyway... but that didn't mean he had to think it too.

That realization would eventually become a barrier between himself and humanity. It would eventually get condensed to not needing anybody, but back then it turned out to be the only thing he got to keep from his stay with that family and it had been enough. It was only who he thought he was that really mattered, and anybody that wanted him to listen to what they thought would have to earn the privilege.

There had been few enough of those since then.

Four months later his original case worker showed up at the door, and it quickly became evident that he intended to take Riddick with him. The mom asked Riddick to please go to his room for a little while, and he sat on his bed thinking again as a discussion escalated down the hall. His grades were up... displays of violent behavior were down... why couldn't the man see that this was a good place for him, but Riddick knew it wasn't a matter of what was good for him. This case worker hated Riddick. Riddick knew it was because this place was good for him that the man didn't want him to stay - that, and because this mom and dad weren't going to share their support money. Every argument the mom and dad made was met with a technicality, and as the discussion continued the technicalities became threats. When silence finally fell upon the house, Riddick knew who had won. The mom came to his door, her face twisted and tear streaked, and she fell to her knees to pull him into an embrace, but he couldn't return it.

Betrayed again. His heart closed down hard... harder than before. His new wall came up, strong and impenetrable, and it had him bunking in full-time Juvie-Dee not long after he turned seven...

But he remembered the zoo.

"Ain't been to a zoo..." he repeated more softly, "...for a long time." His mind gave a definition to 'long' no dictionary contained; different universe, different time, different life, and he quickly felt uncomfortable with a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with cat scratches. "So where'd you learn to seal wounds like this?" he glanced down at the tightness around his chest grateful for a distraction. Professional job of bandaging, and her doing it to him couldn't have been easy. "You said you took a class?"

"First Aid classes... basic Emergency Med-Tech," she answered uncertainly.

He grunted his approval then he glanced out beyond the netting and found sufficient reason to put memory lane behind him completely. They were in the same location. The carcasses of both beasts were still lying where they'd fallen. "Not a good place to camp, Coulter."

"Yeah, I know, scavengers, but there was no way I was going to drag any of you anywhere. Do you have any idea how much you weigh?" Her voice became plaintive. "I did the best I could."

"And that was?" He added a little more energy to his effort and gained a sitting position.

"You said most scavengers are drawn by scent, so…" She suddenly seemed embarrassed. "Well… you were complaining about my perfume."

"Uh-huh?" he pushed when she faltered.

"I... I rolled on the things," she finally snapped. "I'd worked up a sweat doing all this by myself so I rolled on them... made them smell like a damn hot house full of flowers".

Her solution was so novel and unexpected that Riddick actually laughed, then caught himself as his wounds warned against the levity.

"Now really, Mr. Riddick, it's not funny," she exclaimed stretching out her top so he could see a few uneven splotches of blood on the fabric, "Do you know how much this outfit cost?" And that only made him laugh harder. He groaned as his chest ached and his head throbbed.

"Alright, Coulter, you done good," he chuckled, rubbing his head. "Don't know how many people would've thought of that." His impression of her went up another notch. Her flowers might not cover the blood, but it might well confuse the scent. Might not, but it was a novel solution.

"Really, Mr. Riddick, you think so?" She stopped pouting as she caught his praise.

"Yeah, and no more Mister. Just call me Riddick." Her eyes widened as if he had just handed her a metal. "So what happened?" he asked curiously. "Last part of the fight I remember was you whacking the cat with your bag. How'd you kill the thing?"

He pulled a water bottle and took a drink as a remembrance of her fear came back to haunt her face and she shuddered. "I'm not entirely sure," she admitted sheepishly. "I was so scared when it came after me I thought I was going to pee myself. I remember pulling my pistol again..." She drew her gun unconsciously reenacting the event. "...tried to aim..." She aimed it at Riddick as if he were the cat. "...then I must have closed my eyes and started shooting..." She closed her eyes, and Riddick reacted, his breath catching painfully as he ducked below the barrel and his hand pushed her aim into the roof. She didn't fire and had the wits to look chagrined at her stupidity. She hastily put the weapon away. "At least I think I closed my eyes," she added softly. "I'm not sure. It's all a blank... I started shooting, then the next thing I knew the screeching had stopped, and I'm looking at the thing lying on the ground."

Riddick rolled his eyes. So much for being impressed.

"I guess we're even then," she added quietly after a moment.

"What?" he returned sharply.

"I mean you saved my life, now I saved yours. Really, that's not the kind of thing you'd expect a city girl like me to get to do for a guy like Richard B. Riddick. What are the odds that I'd get to return a favor like that?"

"My hero," he muttered, feeling a wave of weariness wash over him. He knew from experience what that meant. His brain still needed time to heal from its introduction to the tree, and he knew what would likely happen if he didn't get it. He just hoped a good night's rest would do the trick and that Coulter wouldn't let them get killed while he got it. He took another drink and then capped up the bottle. A brief shake confirmed the quantity as he put it away. Third left. He wondered what condition the others were in. They might be hurting tomorrow, but that was neither here nor there at the moment. Right now all he wanted was some shuteye. "Fine, you and your lucky little pistola can keep watch. My heads hurts, and I need to do some heavy sleeping. Don't wake me up unless something's tryin' to eat us." With that he lay back down and in a matter of minutes he was asleep.

A◊◊◊◊●◊◊◊◊◊●◊◊◊◊◊●◊◊◊◊◊●◊◊◊◊◊●◊◊◊◊◊●◊◊◊◊Ω

The night was, evidently, uneventful. Leastways nothing happened that panicked Coulter into waking him up. He slept hard through the night, through the heavy morning fog and didn't begin to rouse until the light was pushing color back into the ferns and ground cover. Except for the lighting, the view inside the hut, however, had changed very little. Coulter remained beside him by the opening, although she now sat cross-legged, her head fallen forward over her little gun which she now held cradled in her lap. For a moment Riddick was certain she was asleep, but he hadn't more than shifted his arm when her head came up and she looked at him. There was a new edge to her... worn, weary, maybe a little haggard, but there was no surprise. If anything there was relief. She actually manage to pull off an all nighter? But it made sense when you factored in her fear of things that went bump in the trees.

"You're awake," she murmured redundantly, and she stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she slipped her little mousegun back in its holster. "You slept in awfully late. I was beginning to worry."

Riddick dragged the emergency blanket off completely, feeling the movement through his chest like a dull remembrance of getting clawed. He shifted, warily eyeing the roof as he pulled himself up. There was barely enough room to sit upright at the shelter's highest point. He took up a cross-legged position under it and put his back to a familiar piece of tree as he took silent inventory of the sensations the movement caused. "Yeah. That crack on the skull needed more down time." The shoulder was still an issue, but the head was feeling better, and while the lacerations ached, they weren't nearly as bad as he expected they'd be. He'd have guessed she'd given him a pain killer, except there was none of the fogginess or whacked out thoughts he'd come to associate with them. All in all, he figured he was doing pretty good for a man who was nearly 'cat' meat.

"So how do you feel now?"

"Workable. Know better when I get moving."

She nodded, stifling a yawn, and held out a ration bar. "Hungry?"

Riddick took the bar with a grunt. "Got water?"

She pulled the bottle he'd drunk from the night before and rocked it, judging the slosh of the contents. She frowned as she handed it to him and pulled her own, handing him that as well. "Not much. This is it."

Hers was half full. Between the two, even if he drank sparingly - the ration bars required at least 250 ml or they'd cause cramps - "not much" was an overstatement. As he ate she stirred herself and pulled the discarded emergency blanket to her. After a deep breath, she forced herself to crawl outside the shelter... alone. "The cats are dead," he heard her tell herself. "The cats are dead. We're leaving soon." She searched the area hard, and then put her back to the shelter and began the touchy process of refolding the uncooperative material. She made it look relatively easy. When she was done, she replaced it in the duffle and starting to pull the fire apart. It took Riddick a moment to put it together, but he realized she was breaking camp. No complaining. No fuss. She'd thought he'd said it was time to 'get moving,' and she was taking it upon herself to make it happen. Whatever he'd thought of her to begin with, she was proving herself to be something else. She had her problems, but it was becoming plain that weak, lazy and cowardly weren't among them. She'd been scared, but she'd pulled it together when the chips came down and now was willing to push through without sleep.

Short on water... bunking with carcasses... There were reasons to push through, but Riddick wasn't quite ready. Heads were touchy business, and his chest was rightfully sore. He wanted to get a feel for where he was, condition wise, and - with any luck - see if there was a water source nearby. He strongly doubted Coulter had gone looking. He put the bar back in the duffle and, after a single swallow of water, tucked the bottles on top before crawling out. He glanced over the shelter. It was a little thin in places and the support lattice was wider than he liked, but she'd been stretching supplies to rig a little more cover this time around. She'd taken the lean-to design he'd first shown her and adapted it to an A-frame using the tree he'd been leaning against after the fight as support and a block for the back door. Rain would have brought out some flaws, but it wasn't a half bad job, considering. Twice the work, but easier than trying to transport an unconscious man weighing ninety plus kilos any distance. He couldn't fault her. She'd done what she could with what she had. She deserved some consideration since it served his purposes anyways.

"We're not leavin' quite yet," he announced.

"We're not? But you said..." She glanced at the dead cats.

"Yeah," he agreed. "I did, but we need water. If nothing's shown up for breakfast yet I suspect we can squeeze a couple more hours out if we keep some smoke in the air. You can grab forty winks while I see if there is some sort of H2O nearby."

She looked dubious. "If you think it's wise..." She cast a wary... but weary... glance around her.

"You'll be safe enough. I ain't goin' far." Riddick assured. Then a smile twitched at the edges of his lips. "But if I'm wrong you'll be the first to know, and I'm sure I'll be the first to hear about it... one way or another."

She stared at him, irritation and annoyance making her eyes sharp. "You think you're being funny," she muttered darkly, "but you're not." Anything else she might have said was overridden by a yawn, but instead of picking up where she left off when it was over, she shrugged. "But you're in charge, and I am tired." With that she dropped to her knees and crawled back in the shelter. A moment later the duffle was shoved through the netting with the water bottles still on top. He heard some movement as she made herself comfortable, and then the interior went quiet.

Riddick took a few minutes to salvage the fire noting the decent job she'd done with the fire ring. Not that that was an overly difficult job, even considering she had managed to build the fire and keep it burning all night. The fact was nothing he'd taught her was overly difficult... laborious, perhaps, but not difficult. He wondered how she'd take to something a bit more challenging like starting a fire without a firebug. Might be something to kill some time with. He finished up throwing the last of her wood on the fire. It was definitely an amateur's selection. Some of the pieces were a little green, but for his purposes now a little extra smoke wasn't necessarily a bad thing, and there were enough dry pieces to keep it burning. When he was done he drew the netting aside to look in on her. The girl was curled up in the back of the shelter using her bag for a pillow and, to all appearances, was already fast asleep.

"Then again, if I'm wrong," he chuckled softly to himself, "you may just sleep right through it."

Riddick found an open spot where he could stretch his legs and went through an easy kata testing his limitations. His head suggested not pushing things while the lacerations and his shoulder absolutely forbid him to consider any fights in the near future. Actually they preferred he skip all upper body movement in its entirety, but they weren't hurting nearly as badly as he expected. The only thing he couldn't account for was a tender cheek and jaw. It was nothing he couldn't ignore safely, but it bothered him he couldn't remember where it came from. All things considered, however, he had no complaints.

Muscles loosened up, head throbbing only slightly, Riddick surveyed the terrain hoping to see some sign of water. When nothing jumped out at him, he plotted a walk around the perimeter that would serve two purposes. Outside Coulter's floral influence he might be able to nail down water by smell. Likewise, he should be able to find out if any scavengers were nosing around... find out sooner than later if staying a bit longer was a good idea or not, and maybe answer a few curiosities as well. The first thing he found was her latrine. It wasn't hard, not once he was out of her perfume bubble, and he couldn't fault her technique, just her location. Way too close to camp, but understandable considering.

He took his time, not wanting to push things right off. The little valley was narrow and cluttered eliminating the possibility of an easy walk, but it quickly became evident that between the porous rocks and loamy soil, there was little chance of finding much water gathered in one place, either standing or flowing. It was a rainforest. The place was lousy with water, but that didn't mean it was immediately accessible. Nor were they going to take the time to do any long drawn out processes like drain vines here. Long processes plus scavengers were a bad mix. That meant they'd be moving before long. The sign on the trails showed the native populace was pretty stirred up at the moment. Tracks led toward their "camp" but then doubled back as soon as they got within scent range. He didn't know if it was the cats, the unnatural flowers, the man smell, the smoke & fire or some blend of the four that was sending them back, but he could see a few had come pretty close. His guess was that it depended on which way the breeze was blowing. Coulter had probably had an interesting evening considering how every little sound set her off.

Thankfully, the tracks that had the look of potential scavengers weren't large ones and were traveling singly... so far. They seemed as put off by the abnormalities as the rest, but he knew it was short term. The trails through the valley meant main routes to and from things the animals considered critical... food, water, hunting grounds. That meant they'd only be put off so long. When they started getting desperate, things would start to get dangerous, but he expected to be gone by then. If what was keeping them chary would hold for just a couple hours longer, he'd consider it good.

He made his way back and stopped to look over the carcass of the 'cat' Coulter had killed. Several bloody spots on its back were evidence that the girl's first failed attempt to distract the beast hadn't gone wide, and he counted himself lucky a stray bullet hadn't caught him. The front end of the creature, however, made him wonder just how much luck might have actually been involved. If Coulter hadn't managed to kill the thing, it would have suffered a slow death because her high tech purse had done a number on its face... one of its canines had snapped at the base and the lower half of the beak was so grossly misaligned it was obvious the jaw was broken...

But she had killed it.

The way of it was also obvious, but Riddick wanted to know more than just the 'way'. He crouched in front of the dead animal and studied it. Coulter had a small caliber gun, and the wounds hadn't had much time to bleed. He had a recollection of three shots when he'd been down on his knees searching for a weapon... and after a few minutes he found all three. It was a linear trail working its way toward a bull's-eye, or, in this case, perhaps a more accurate term would be a 'cats-eye'.

The first shot was buried in the beast's shoulder, the next in its cheek and it was the last one that took the animal out... straight through the eye into the brain. Are we talkin' luck? She said she didn't even remember doing it. Instincts kick in? Two misses; one kill but she'd kept them all on the target. That practice Gallo insisted on paying off? And she'd managed to nail the only shot that'd work short of stuffing the gun in the thing's ear or up its soft palate... He had to at least consider the possibility she could shoot better than she claimed, and if that was the case, was it understatement or outright lie?

So, it had to be asked. Was she who she said to was? Were there any other situations that might place a girl carrying a small bore with a concealer holster in a merc crew's possession? He could think of one or two. More to the point, did any of them make her a threat to him? The fact that she'd been in a lock down tube like himself lent itself to the idea that there was no love lost between her and the merc hunters, and that Jenner had thought her worth keeping for one reason or another. If there had been information on her in the ship's data banks at anytime, it had been destroyed with most everything else of value on Jenner's ship. Riddick knew he'd been lucky to recover what he had. So what did he know?

A lot if she'd been telling the truth. Little to nothing if she'd been lying. There was no way to check her out, but the tales she told had a real ring to them... incidental little details that didn't necessarily need to be there like Boravine eggs, and buffalo steaks from Wyoming on birthdays... idiosyncrasies a rich guy like Gallo could really have. Someone like Gallo would also most certainly have touchy jobs that needed running, and the longer she was out of the malfunctioning cryo tube, the more he was starting to see what a man like that might have seen in the girl to start with... guts, tenacity, adaptability, able to function under pressure. She'd started off shaky, but when push had come to shove, she'd kicked it in - all in an inoffensive, if not pretty little package. That much was a good fit.

Her fear of him - when she thought she had reason - and the woods also seemed real enough. He could practically feel it every time something unexpected happened. It nearly bled through her eyes. That wasn't something he remembered experiencing before... but then he couldn't remember having so much one-on-one time with another person before either. He stood, shaking his head, and ran his hand over his stubbled skull ignoring the twinge in his chest where it was glued. The one thing he knew for certain was how close they'd both come to getting ghosted by his bloody boot. He set a new level of caution against getting vindictive in his mind.

He made his way back to the fire rubbing his hand thoughtfully over his head again. He'd been close to needing a shave when Jenner grabbed him. With the crash it hadn't exactly been a priority, but since he had the time... He settled himself near the lean-to and dragged the duffle over, pulling out the top layer of goods. He had planned for the possibility - a can of pressurized lube from the toolbox. The way he figured the oil spray had multiple uses. If they got hit by a good rain it might help get a fire started, boost the water resistance of their boots or even play blow torch if there was a need. For his purposes it wasn't his first choice, but it was better than nothing. He sprayed a palmful of the foamy stuff watching as the roiling bubbles quickly dispersed leaving a thin creamy gel in his hand. He slicked it back over the last few day's growth feeling the twinges grow a little sharper with increased movement. Maybe this wasn't such a bright idea. If he wasn't careful, he'd tear wounds open.

He was almost surprised when the thought of getting the girl's help crossed his mind. It was quickly dismissed. She may have saved his life, but that didn't mean he felt comfortable letting her behind him with a knife! Presuming she even knew how.

He worked carefully, trying not to stress his injuries as he dragged the smaller of his blades over the greasy surface and flicked the accumulation off into the fire. The little drops of oil and hair snapped and flared adding a new dimension to the scents freaking out the wildlife... hopefully one that would keep them thinking twice just a while longer. With his chest sending out rip warnings it was a slow, painfully tedious job. It definitely wasn't, he decided, the wisest course of action he could have chosen, but once started he was determined to complete it. When he was finally finished, it was a relief and the only task left was cleaning off what remained of the oil. He figured a wipe from the first aid kit would do the trick, if they had one to spare. He popped the lid and was surprised at what else he found... or rather what he didn't.

The first thing that struck him was how empty the box seemed. Granted, bandages were bulky. It took a lot to wrap a chest like his even when you were talking Spyder Wrap's fine synthetic spider gauze, but there was more than that missing... a lot more than he expected. He found a wipe - there weren't many left - and cleaned up. Then he started a serious inventory to see just what had been used. There wasn't much Clotto/spray left and only two staunch pads. Coulter didn't strike him as the wasteful type. Had he really been bleeding that bad?

As he explored further, he found his answers. There was no way to sort out the particulars. She'd used the bio-guide, but its batteries were totally depleted and without the recharger there was no way to recall the data it had stored away. The supplies that had been used, however, suggested things may have been dicey for awhile. The Dar-Gen was completely dead, and the derm-glue was three quarters gone. In fact the kit was down to nearly nothing in anything that had to do with bleeding wounds, but that wasn't all. In the compartment that held the hypo, there were several new holes, and each one said something... Two vials of Anti-All were missing. That meant an organic venom or poison. The girl had said as much when he woke up last night... something about oil on the male cat's claws being poisonous to mammals.

Anti-All's name was a little misleading. Anti-venom technology had taken a big leap back in the 21st century when a team of Earth Prime scientists learned how to make a single base anti-venom that treated the bites of nearly every venomous snake on their continent (1). That eventually led to Anti-All, a multi-species mix of base anti-venoms that covered most the poisonous animals on Earth Prime. That versatility made Anti-All a good choice for a "generic" anti-venom in med-kits since it was likely to work for any creatures engineered from these animals for other planets. But, despite sciences best efforts, there were still some venoms that just couldn't be countered. And then there was the issue of unnatural blends. It was a simple formula to a big problem... the more mixed up the DNA in the beast that nipped you, the higher the chance of getting a venom strain, all or in part, outside Anti-All's envelope. When that happened, you'd best hope your 'doctor' was equipped to handle it. Sometimes it was having local anti-venoms or the stuff to treat the damage the toxins did; sometimes it came down to having a way to keep the victim breathing until the venom lost effect.

It looked like they might've been dealing with something in the last category this time around if the vials missing were any indication. Either the reaction or the volume of toxin had made it serious. If the Anti-All had been all that was missing, he still would have figured things might have gotten pretty severe there for a while, but it wasn't.

There was a Spectracillen-V missing, but with cat scratches you'd expect an antibiotic. There was also a Clotto/internal missing. It was touchy stuff, so if it had been used, it meant he had been bleeding... bad. Two bags of Gen-Hem blood substitute absent from the inventory backed up that theory and accounted for a whole steri-bottle of water. And there was Stabrafin missing. That meant he'd been riding a fine line. Stabrafin was a carefully blended cocktail of stimulants that didn't get used unless it was serious touch and go, if not actually gone. It could kill you if it wasn't... and Coulter'd used two. It made her use of the Siestinal a little more judicious. He hadn't exactly been interested in listening at the time, and she was right about the poison. No telling what would've happened if he'd sealed the wounds, but it wouldn't have been pretty.

It had been another bit of quick thinking on her part. He tossed the bio-guide and Dar-Gen, lightening the load, then closed the lid thoughtfully as he considered just what all Coulter had done. She'd actually pulled it off. Kept her head and pulled him through. And, even if she'd just been following the bio-guide's instructions, the tale told by the medicine was that she'd managed to save his life, not once, but twice... first from the cat and then again from its poison. What were the odds, she'd asked. That was a good question. What were the odds that someone would be able to do something like that for him... would do something like that for him... twice! But she'd called them even. That was good enough for him.

Unfortunately, the results of the whole incident left their med-box short. Between the bio-guide and the Dar-Gen, she'd used up their most critical tech as well as most of the basics. That left the rules for the rest of the hike pretty simple... No more incidents. If someone got hurt, they'd be treating it the old fashioned way.

He shoved the med-kit back in the duffle and took inventory of the rest of their supplies, this time finding a little more than he ought. The palm light was in there, but it didn't take much imagination to guess why or how. She must have filched it from his pocket when he was unconscious, but a quick inventory revealed they jewelry in the other pocket remained. There were more ration bars than he expected, and he found his tank top wadded up in a stiff ball in the bottom. He almost pitched it over with the dead equipment, then relented. It didn't weigh much and would work for tinder if nothing else. Likewise the little piece of netting he'd had the snake wrapped in. He hadn't even realized she'd kept it, but since she had, he left it. It was while he was reorganizing the gear, making sure things were where he wanted them and there was room for the big netting when they tore down, that he found something new. His knuckles brushed it... an object tucked in an end pocket that he didn't remember packing. The object was short and cylindrical... a little shorter and a little thicker than a butterfly knife folded. He finished his task, and then carefully pushed the bag around bringing the pocket in question in front of him.

The end pocket held a little commercial osmo-doser such as could be picked up in any pharmacy or grocery store. Preloaded with over-the-counter medicines and prescriptions, the little devices were capable of delivering measured doses of what ever they held to the user directly through the skin without needles. But Riddick had no idea what this one was loaded with. It wasn't something he had packed, and there weren't any brand names on it... there wasn't anything. No indication of contents, no dosage instructions, no 'filled-at' location ... Other than some general wear and tear, the little doser was as anonymous as you could get, and Riddick felt a twitch in his gut as the best guess reason for such a nondescript delivery system reared its ugly head again... drugs?

How long had the little device been in there? Had it been in there yesterday morning when he'd caught her digging in the med-kit? Was the whole "I wanted to pack your shoulder" bit just a ruse to cover her getting in the duffle? She'd been in her purse the morning before. She'd had free reign of both since she knocked him out...

Another portion of his mind quietly suggested an alternate ending for the last thought... since she'd saved his life... but he couldn't help finishing what he'd been thinking. Was that, maybe, why she'd been so particularly uptight that first day? Why she'd been settling in the last couple? Not because she'd been recovering from the cryo malfunction, but because she'd been managing to get her fixes in... hiding them right under his nose? With that damn perfume there was no way for him to tell if her body chemistry was altering one way or another, but it still didn't fit. She really didn't act like an addict. But he'd met functional drunks, and not all drugs affected people the same way. If it was meds, you'd think she would have said something, unless... Was she afraid he wouldn't believe her? He had come down pretty scary back at the ship. But if that was the case, why was the doser unlabeled?

He lifted the device to his nose trying to identify the scent left by the last use. He could almost make her scent, but, oddly, it seemed under another that smelled faintly like his own. It was hard to tell as both were pretty much overwhelmed by the clinical scents of the recently used drugs. It was a mix. He picked up at least one note he'd place as a narcotic, but there were others he couldn't identify. A designer drug? That wouldn't surprise him. As many places as this gal traveled, she might very well have found a drug he'd never heard of, and hopefully never would... well, unless he needed it. Drugs occasionally had their uses in someone else's bloodstream, but there was no way he was going to start messing with the stuff himself. He'd had more than enough at Altair.

He growled to himself as he recalled his second and most recent place of confinement. His records probably read Ribald S Correctional Facility... as if they would ever keep someone like him in a mere correctional facility. Rehabilitation for Richard B. Riddick? Yeah. Right. In actuality there was another place under Ribald... a research facility where test subjects were little more than numbers, and select prisoners filled the slots. Lifer. No chance of parole. No family. No visitors... He knew why he made their list. He'd already known some pain killers affected him funny... dulled more than he wanted them to or had side effects that came on more like street drugs affecting the way he thought... affecting the way he felt, but the "doctors" in the Altair Prison Network had had heydays with him.

Slotted for some Doctor's psyche project, what they did to him - what they did to all their lab rats - would have been criminal if it hadn't been authorized by the prison network itself, and he was one of the lucky ones. In Altair they'd kept pumping him with all sorts of chemical cocktails and asking him to draw pictures, to answer questions about his childhood, to explain why he'd done things... trying to get in his head... and the doctor kept murmuring over his notes like Riddick was the most fascinating thing since sliced bread. His system blew through some drugs, and he'd amused himself skewing their data by pretending to be affected and feeding them crap, but other drugs had taken him for some serious rides. Under one age regression "treatment" he'd evidently drawn them a blueprint of the entire prison and his planned escape route, but the idiots had been too sure of their security to take it seriously so his escape plan went forward. Good thing, because he wasn't given time to come up with a Plan B. He was a pet project right up until they decided he was too dangerous to keep with his brain intact. The day he cut fence - with extreme prejudice - was the day scheduled for his lobotomy. After that it took him near two weeks of serious pain and hard sweats to get clean.

Trouble was the "doctors" at Altair hadn't always told him what was in their cocktails, so he didn't know exactly which drugs would affect him how, or how much of the ones that did were drug interactions rather than the drugs themselves. At Sigma he'd learned by name a couple he needed to avoid, but after his stay at Altair he was a lot more leery of everything. He'd long ago decided pain tolerance was more a mind over flesh matter. That old cliché about 'that which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger' was tripe in his opinion. It only worked if you made it happen. "That which doesn't kill you is only an obstacle" was more his personal philosophy, and if it was a person, they'd better watch the hell out. If he wasn't dead, wasn't nothing going to stop him... preferably keeping his wits and his body in working order in the process. Altair had come near screwing that up in more than one way. It wasn't going to happen again. That was his personal pledge to himself and part of it was avoiding chemicals unless they were absolutely necessary, and then only if the benefits outweighed the risks.

It didn't look like that was Coulter's philosophy, but did the doser hold drugs or something else? That was the real question. He wanted to get angry and confront her, but the other portion of his mind reminded him he owed the girl enough to give her the benefit of the doubt. He didn't have any solid answers, only suspicions. Oft times that was all he went on, but this was different. She wasn't going anywhere without him for the next few days. He slipped the little doser back into its pocket and closed it up. He could afford to wait and see.

When he was finished, he set the duffle aside and peeked in on the girl. She was still curled up in the back of the shelter, the purse scrunched up under her head, her far arm loosely wrapped around it. The strap lay across the floor, and he reached in to pull on it experimentally. At first it seemed she was sleeping too hard to notice, and he was able to ease the purse out from under her several centimeters. Then she murmured softly and reached up to pull it back before wrapping her other arm around it as well. Riddick chuckled. She was as protective about the bag asleep as she was awake. That was some deep programming. If protecting the contents ran as deep, Leone was going to have a real challenge on his hands.

And for the first time that thought didn't sit so well with him.


-OoO-


WRITER'S THANKS, NOTES & NEWS:

NOTE

THANKS:

beautifulmess2005 - Thanks! I've had a lot of fun watching the relationship between them grow myself - LOL. While the plotline is pretty set, the dynamics pretty much happen as I write and its been interesting trying to figure how each would react in the different situations. Hope you continue to enjoy it.

Nephilim Familiar - Thank you SO much. I really appreciate it. Such high praise - I hope I can continue to 'amaze' you :o).

Nelle07 - Glad you are enjoying it - *GRIN* - Sorry about not making the soon part, but I hope you continue to enjoy it.

Shaden - I am so sorry! I really thought I'd have this chapter up sooner. GRRRR! I'm delighted you like the way things are developing, though. I know what you mean about wishing Riddick could get the girl once, Poor boy. It just doesn't seem fair. And I have to say, that even though I'm writing it, Denise sometimes surprises me. She's taken on a life of her own. Great to hear I managed to slip in something unexpected - haha - that's a writer's job right? Give the reader something unexpected now and again to keep things interesting. Hopefully I can keep it up to the end ;o).

Anna's pastime - Thanks! Was that 'whopper' size wise or punch wise - LOL? Maybe both? Turn About's chapters have definitely gotten longer, but hopefully not TOO long. Let me know if I am trying to cram too much in. Compared to a book, I think they are on the short side of average, but online is a different media. I really don't know what length people prefer online. Thanks for the compliments on the fight scene. I was hung up on it for so long. I'm glad you found it exciting! Seat edger :o) LOL! High praise to my ears :oD! Hopefully I've managed to keep things moving this chap as well, and I hope you continue to enjoy!

Hades Daughter - Thank you! I am so glad you have been enjoying it. Denise has been a fun character to develop and I hope I can keep things going to the conclusion. I definitely haven't abandoned any of my stories, but I must apologize for the interminable wait. I hope to get Turn About finished in the near future (relatively speaking) so I can focus on one of the others.

Blade for Hire - Thanks for coming back! Yes, I do know the feeling. Grammar and typos - yeah, I can believe it. Grammar has never been a real strong suit. Through Starnyx patient beta-ing, I've been improving slowly... I hope :o), but if you see something I'm doing consistently (especially in these latter chapters), feel free to point it out (and how to correct it). That way I can start watching for it. The typos? *SHAKES HER HEAD* I've got my word processor's "helps" on and I'll proofread ten times myself, and as soon as I post I'll find half a dozen. I can only hope they are not the sort that distract from the story. If they are, point them out to me... please. And finally, thank you so much for the characterization compliments. As a fanficer, I feel one of the highest compliments I can receive is that I've kept an individual "well characterized" and that my rounding out of the character is believable :o). Heh - 'A little healthy paranoia.' My children occasionally accuse me of that too, and don't even realize how often it has kept them out of a bind - *GRIN*.

RESEARCH NOTES:

1) Delving into anti-venom production, even as shallowly as I did, is fascinating AND scary. Did you know many of the places that go through the laborious process of make these critical life-saving antidotes have been or are shutting down? In February of 2009 the USA's last vials of Coral Snake anti-venom expired, and unless the government has approved getting it through Mexico, we don't have a source for more! Australia's main producer of anti-venoms is also in jeopardy according to my reading, and Australia has some of the deadliest spiders and snakes in the world, not to mention octopus and jellyfish! On the up side, who knows? "Generic" anti-venoms such as my Anti-All might be less fiction and more science in the future. Check this out... (replace '?'s with slashes and '-'s with periods) - www-newscientist-com?article?dn9277

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

MY CONTINUING PROMISE:
As much as I hate it when other writers get 'distracted' by other stories and don't update the one I'm reading as fast as I'd enjoy, I have discovered that there are times other stories insist on being written. The result? I have four stories currently 'in progress' for your perusal – as they are all of a 'back story' nature in Riddick's timeline they would occur thusly: Saved by Grace, Be Still: Chances, Turn About and Nigh Unto Christmas.
The good news is that each story has been generally plotted and outlined, and only ("only" LOL) needs to be fleshed out. The bad? That takes time, especially when divided between 4 stories, 3 kids, (2 six and under), 1 husband and the life that contains them all and more, so writing time comes at a premium. What it means for my readers is that updates to this story may be intermittent. I do, however, promise it won't be abandoned barring death or other equally drastic life change. Updates will come, please be patient, (and, of course, be aware that feedback is an incredibly powerful motivator ;o) but until then, may God bless you all the time in-between.