XIII. Janus: Rediscovery

Chimneys.

They rise up, obscene shades of neon pink and purple in my view, like fingers pointing in accusation. I have a hard time not struggling in the grasp of the thing carrying me, and the slashes at my midriff don't help. They burn, but I don't think I feel any venom. But fuck if I know what her venom would feel like. Other creatures flock around my captor, surrounding us with eerie whoops and wails as we careen dizzily through the forest of adobe towers.

Was this Carolyn's last sight? I've got to admit it's quite a ride. A small part of m mind's curled up inside my skull, gibbering, but the rest of my awareness is bent on survival.

Old friends, Jack?

The creature carrying me circles twice around a low chimney. Hovering over the opening, it loosens its talons and drops me inside. Deep sand covers the floor, but my landing's not exactly soft. But I'm still alive, so I can't complain. The clicks and screeches outside echo oddly as I stand: I'm in some sort of cave. Faintly glowing lichens spatter the walls, but there's no tunnels like Carolyn described after her little adventure in the cavern where Zeke met his end. Instead, there's a single metal door set into one rock wall.

Against the opposite wall, a figure lies curled around itself.

"Kat?"

No answer.

I move toward her; her form shimmers pink in my sight. Standing over her, I nudge her with one booted foot. Still no response. I crouch down in front of her.

Kat's legs flew out, sending Riddick reeling across the floor, but he stayed on his feet. New blood began to seep from the wounds at his waist, as Kat unfolded herself and rose.

"Give me one good reason not to kill you, Riddick." Her eyes narrowed. "I'm not yours anymore. I refuse."

Silvered eyes studied her, then locked on a collar that was cold and unmoving. "Like I said, Kat, you'd be mine as long as that collar wore you."

Her hand rose to the behavioral inhibitor, only now noticing its quiescence. "How...?"

"I wore one once," Riddick grated out. "The trick is to get mad enough that the inhibition can't hold you. Simple for a convict... not so easy for a fully trained slave."

"Everything you did to me," Kat hissed, her breath quickening.

Riddick shrugged. "Just consider it another kind of training."

"Why?"

He grinned. "I was bored."

"What?"

"Come on, now," he snorted. "You don't actually expect me to tell you I've got some sort of atrophied sense of charity in here."

Fury rose up in her, and she lashed out again, sending the big man flying. Some small part of her thought, I didn't know I could do that! and then she was straddling him, snarling.

"Once a Trainer," she growled, "always a Trainer." Drawing out one of her blades, she carved a quick and messy glyph in the flesh of Riddick's left wrist. Then, extending one glistening claw, she let a drop or two of liquid fall into her mouth, and licked the bloody wound on his wrist.

His legs kicked and jerked. Kat thought she could hear the stuff sizzling into his skin, then realized the sound was his wheezing laughter.

"Oh, shit, Kat. What the hell did you do to me?" Pulling his arm out of her grasp, he cradled his wrist.

Though still raw and open, the wound had stopped bleeding. The venom seemed to have clotted the blood, but Kat knew it would also ensure a permanent scar--a lower case 't' with a slanted double crossbar.

The sign of a Trainer.

Ripping a strip of cloth from the bottom of his already ragged shirt to bind up the lesion, Riddick gave a pained grin and said, "I'll wear it proudly."

There was a creak from the far end of the cavern as the rusty door began to open.

Riddick let Kat pull him to his feet as she pressed one of her daggers into his hand. They waited together, blades and claws ready for whatever was coming.

"If you are quite finished killing each other," Imam's voice called, "there is someone here who would very much like to see you."

Riddick dropped the dagger, and Kat gasped.

Imam's face was creased like old leather, his goatee streaked with white. He smiled at Riddick, then at Kat, and the creases deepened into valleys.

Riddick stared into the next room. A girl--a young woman--stood shadowed in a further doorway.

But shadows didn't matter to a man with a shine job and too many years spent with the shadows of his own mind.

Tall, slim, and graceful. He recognized the color of the jeans as black, the tank top a dark gray. On one hip hung a pistol; on the other, a long dagger. Her stance said she and those weapons were old friends. Her hair had been cut painfully short, and with an inner lurch he realized he didn't know what color that hair was.

Kat's protesting voice came from somewhere behind him: "But it's only been a few months! How could she--"

"Riddick!" And then she was embracing him, as Imam quietly led Kat away.

"Hey, Jack--what color is your hair?"

"It's brown, you stupid ass."

Kat followed Imam through a labyrinth of tunnels and caves, most dimly lit by the bioluminescent lichen spotting the walls. She touched it, and her hand came away faintly glowing. From time to time, they passed other people, nearly all of them pets like--and yet not like--herself. They came to a large cave--a cavern, really--and Imam bade Kat sit in a long nook carved into the wall. He lowered himself gingerly down next to her.

"I will begin simply, with the age discrepancy. It is called relativity. You have been traveling in space for quite some time. Because of the speed at which you traveled, time, for you, slowed down. While you may have only lived some few months, we have lived five years."

That the universe would behave in such a way was beyond Kat's comprehension, but she couldn't argue with the evidence of her eyes. Imam had aged. Jack had grown up. Kat thought of Riddick's face when he'd seen Jack, the strange smile he'd given to the lovely young woman. What the hell are you waiting for? she'd asked Riddick once. The right time, he'd replied. She hadn't understood that until now.

Imam continued. "And as for our... hosts." He looked off into the darkness for a long moment. "When humans first colonized Janus, they did not realize it was already inhabited. And it was a long time before they recognized that the natives were not simply beasts."

A shiver ran down Kat's spine.

"Jack heard them when we were on Janus, before," Imam whispered. "She told me about the terrible birdsong, but I... I did not realize..." His voice trailed off.

Then he shook himself and resumed his explanation. "After Janus was colonized, one of the nesting grounds was invaded, and the largest nest was kidnapped, taken away in a ship for study--to the crew's great misfortune. The crew of that ship, the Chivalrous, did not expect any such ferocity from the fledglings. The young ones must have survived on the flesh of the hapless crewmen until the ship crashed."

"Onto--" Kat hesitated. "Onto a planet with three suns...?"

The holy man nodded, solemn. "After many generations, living only off each other and what little life was on that world, the creatures had descended into savagery. The monsters which killed so many of our companions were beasts in truth. But on such a deadly planet, with so little food, they will eventually wipe themselves out." For a moment, he didn't speak. Then he took her hands in a firm grip. "The people of this world are not monsters, and they are not savages."

A stray thought--A Trainer-turned-priest would know the difference--slid through Kat's mind. Then, at a sudden rasping from the gloom, she looked around. A shadow detached itself from a darkened tunnel. The dim light reaching out from the walls didn't seem to harm the thing. It stopped a short distance away, wings moving slowly, sightless head weaving in time to its slow thrum.

Kat swallowed hard, and her hands tightened on Imam's. The creature gave a hideous grin, chittered at them, then turned and melted back into the murky corridor from which it came.

"Come, now." Imam rose. "There is a man you must meet. He will answer the rest of your questions."

This one slipped through the hive corridor like a whisper of wind. The touch of the dim light speckling the walls did not affect it--its kind had long since become inured to the weak glow. The new female had been afraid of this one, but newcomers were always alarmed. This one had heard, though, that she had killed a hivemate thoughtless enough to frighten her with a ceremonial greeting. She would be respected.

This one slipped into a burrow which opened out into a courtyard. It observed two human figures sitting near each other in intense debate. Why did the other ones constantly use speech? Movement, song, and scent carried so much more immediate information, but the other ones always insisted on formal language. This one stopped briefly to listen to the discussion. The intricacies of human conversation were difficult to untangle, but this one could make out the general meaning.

The two were male and female, but this one had long since despaired of ever understanding genders or their interactions. It had hatched from its egg cluster neither knowing nor caring who its parent had been. "Love" was utterly foreign to its kind. Their closest concept could only loosely be translated as "companionship in one another's abilities." These wingless things had puny claws and teeth, but this one had learned that their strengths lay elsewhere.

The big male--who, this one conceded, would likely be a challenge in any test of dominance--was insisting on returning to That Place. Why would he want to kill off the descendents of the Lost Nest? If they were consuming each other, as the human elder had reported, they were already as good as dead.

The female's voice was strident.

This one was accustomed to this female, who had arrived several years before. She had never become quite comfortable with this one or its kin.

The sonar used by its kind was often too high-pitched for the other ones to hear, but it could pick out the finest detail. The drops of wetness creeping along the female's face were a sign of distress. This one could appreciate her reluctance to pit herself and her mate against the remnants of the Lost Nest--but perhaps, if she accomplished such a thing, the fear of this one and its kin would no longer hold her so.

Tiring of trying to untangle alien thoughts, this one turned its head to the sky. The shape and texture of the atmosphere roused its wings to flight. All this one had ever really needed were the wind, the hunt, and the song of its companions.