The Furyan's Return: Chapter Twenty-seven

Toal and another man ran around the corner only to come up short as he saw Sunara with the gun in her hands. She immediately threw the gun away and smiled in relief.

"He's been poisoned. I can't move him," she panted.

Toal strode over to Riddick and saw the glassy vague stare. Then he hauled him into a fireman's carry over his shoulder.

"Let's move!"

Sunara and the other soldier fell in behind Toal as he hustled down the corridors towards the landing bay. They encountered more writhing bodies but no one that presented an obstacle. When they reached the bay doors, Toal punched at the console and the doors slid open… into complete mayhem.

From the far side of the landing bay, Eve and her crew had taken cover behind crates near the ship and were firing at two very scared Believers positioned near the door. Around their feet were the bodies of their once animated comrades. The weapons Eve had stowed along the ship's underbelly had come in handy when the panicked guards started opening fire on Eve's crew blaming them for poisoning their now dead companions.

Toal pulled out his weapon and fired two shots at the soldiers without breaking stride. Their eyes were wide in surprise as they fell.

"It's about fucking time!" Eve hollered.

She and her men came out from behind the crates and headed for the ship nearly colliding with Toal's group.

"What happened to him?" Eve asked Toal, concern on her face.

"Poisoned," Toal replied. "You have about eight minutes to get us out of here."

Before Sunara climbed up the ramp, she saw someone still crouched behind the crates. Aereon stooped over Malenka's prone body holding her hand. Sunara rushed over and saw the tears in Aereon's eyes. Malenka's face was drawn and her breathing labored. Sunara knelt down and took her former mentor's remaining cold hand and Malenka smiled weakly.

"…sorry, my child," she whispered, "be happy…"

And then she was gone, her head lolling to the side and eyes closing. Sunara's tears ran down her face as she let the hand go gently to Malenka's side. Aereon released her friend as well and put her arm around Sunara's shoulders as she urged her toward the ship which was revving up.

"Belts on! It's gonna be a close one!" Eve called out.

Everyone who could find a seat and seatbelt fastened it quickly, but Riddick's body was stretched out on the floor. The ship began to hover off the deck and the bay doors opened once Eve typed in the command codes. She accelerated before the doors had even opened completely.

Time seemed to contract unnaturally. Outside the Eras Fortis, a fire fight had erupted. Riddick's Necro armada had engaged the Believers' fleet. However, several Believer ships seemed inactive, not firing on other ships and listing at odd angles. Obviously, a majority of Vaako's fleet had been made up of re-animated bodies. Now with Vaako dead, the remaining Believers were in chaos.

Eve suddenly turned sharply to avoid friendly fire and small attack ships swooped in to cover their escape. The explosion from Vaako's ship behind them pushed on the Eras Fortis as the shockwave hit the craft and Eve gripped the controls tighter to control their drift. Pieces of debris clattered off the hull, but it took only a few minutes before Eve maneuvered the vessel into the landing bay of the Necropolis and set down quickly.

Once they had safely set down and the ship's doors opened, everything sped up in a blur. Medics swarmed the ship and loaded Riddick onto a stretcher. A thin sheen of sweat covered his body and soaked his clothes; his metallic eyes were glassy and unfocused. The wound on his calf already looked infected. The bite mark was black and blue and oozing a putrid slime while the veins up the leg looked angry and red.

Sunara followed closely behind the medics until they entered the med-lab where one of the medics ushered Sunara to another bed and they started to clean her wrists. From where she was, she could see the medics working on Riddick, his pant leg cut away revealing spidery veins that went from black to deep purple and extended almost to his groin, her tourniquet useless.

She watched anxiously as they tried to clean and treat the wound. They injected him with high-dose multi-spectrum antibiotics and set him up on a drip as well. She felt helpless and became impatient as the medic bandaged her wrists and gave her an injection of a cocktail of antibiotics and pain meds. Sunara finally pushed away the medic that was trying to force her to lie down. He said he wanted to check on the baby, but she wouldn't be stopped and made her way to Riddick's bedside. The looks on the doctors' faces were grim.

"We'll have to see if he responds to the antibiotics," one of them said. "Otherwise…" He shrugged helplessly.

Sunara looked down at Riddick. His body was flushed and sweating profusely, and his chest rose and fell in short bursts. His eyes were finally closed, but she could see his eyeballs flickering under the surface, locked in a personal nightmare. She placed her hand on his burning forehead, her expression pained, and leaned over to whisper into his ear.

"You can't leave me now," she pleaded. "Please, Riddick. Fight this, fight for me."

He didn't seem to hear her, but she kept pleading anyway. Tears streaked her face.

"I want our child to know his father," she choked out. "Please... I love you."

She leaned down to kiss his dry lips and saw something on his chest flicker under the bed sheet. The medics had cut away Riddick's clothing, so he was naked under the thin sheet with cooling cells packed around his armpits and neck trying to reduce the fever. Sunara pushed down the sheet from his chest and saw the same glowing handprint that marked her chest and those of other Furyans. But, now it glowed dimly and seemed to extinguish in front of her eyes.

"No," Sunara breathed.

She closed her eyes and concentrated. Her hand on her own chest, she felt the mark throb through her hand. "Please, Mother, help me save the man I love." Then she placed her hand on top of the place where his mark should be.

Sunara gasped, her eyes flying open. She felt like she was caught in a whirlwind, the breath being sucked out of her body. It lasted only seconds and then she lost consciousness.