Kalena felt that only a special type of person to use a knife or a shiv. Riddick was one of those people. The knife was the most intimate of weapons. You had to get up close and very personal. Only a shiv could show how fragile the human body really is. A gun, a wire, poisons; they were cold, impersonal. A knife invokes fear like no other weapon. Kalena couldn't help but imagine trying to eviscerate another person. What sort of human being could stand having the blood of his victims spilling over his hands? Maybe that was the reason she couldn't help but fear Riddick. He didn't scare her, but she feared him.
Riddick had always been so careful. His natural instinct and intelligence ensured that. Yet here she stood in his hotel room door. He was facing off with what would usually be his worst enemy. Something made it different this time. Kalena Johns. He killed her brother. Never regretted it. Not so long ago, he could have killed her, as well. But he chose not to. Why? Riddick surely knew this day would come. Pain swelled in his chest, because she looked so like Carolyn. She stood strong and proud, with that same tilt to her chin. He began to study his options. The only exit was past Kalena. She was standing there staring at him. Riddick grinned inwardly. He couldn't smell fear on her at all. He wasn't at all surprised when she shot him.
"Riddick," she admonished. "You're going to make me think that you're not happy to see me." She shot him without hesitation, but not without remorse. For over three years, her sole purpose had been to find him, to hunt him down. Where would she possibly go from here? Kalena had had no other purpose but Riddick for so long that her future seemed empty without him.
For a moment she sounded so like Johns that he imagined he heard the man's voice overlaying her own. Riddick pulled the dart out of his shoulder and spun it in his right hand. He could feel the drug the moment it entered his body. Already it was dulling his senses and slowing him down. He moved from the doorway and sat on his bed. Her voice broke through his thoughts. "I'm going to miss you in the game, Richard Riddick."
"Then let me go." His words were coaxing, coercing. "The game doesn't have to end here." They were almost tender, like quiet words spoken to a lover.
The man had a great charm, she would admit. Kalena felt an almost blinding terror at his next words. "If you send me back to that Hell, you will die a slow death at my hands."
Riddick awoke to total darkness. Of course, to him it was never dark, but he knew. He knew where he was. His bitter laughter echoed through the empty halls of the prison known as Slam City. At least, the laughter that could be heard around the horse bit in his mouth. He pulled on the chains that secured his hands behind his back and the biting pain in his arms assured him that this was no dream. They had gotten smart this time. His hands were secured to the floor with a long chain.
Richard Riddick, whose only goal in life had been survival, contemplated a dark thought His own death would be better than the bleak future staring him in the face. Kalena. He closed his eyes and imagined her. So like Carolyn…
A wave of sorrow overtook Riddick, causing him to double over. Since his escape, he had kept himself busy and he only went to sleep when he was exhausted. Now he would have days, weeks, years. Years with nothing to do but think of how he couldn't save her. Come on, Riddick… Let's move… I said I'd die for them, not you…not you…