The Fallen

Chapter Three: Falling

Riddick sat in the waiting room, his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees. Imam was in critical condition, his heart and breathing monitored by tubes and machines attached to every part of his body Riddick had been able to see. Medical treatment on New Mecca wasn't nearly as advanced as most places, the lack of violence among Muslims and pilgrims to the planet being a point of pride amongst its people.

Surgery, the doctor told Riddick, had lasted for thirteen hours as they fought to put back together what Clark had broken during his torture of Imam. Both lungs had been punctured by broken ribs, his stomach had been violently bruised, as well as his kidneys and liver. Too many broken bones for Riddick to count, including fingers, his right thigh, left arm, dislocated shoulder and most of his ribs. Mild skull fracture that had resulted in brain swelling. The doctors had been forced to drill into Imam's skull to relieve the pressure. Not to mention numerous knife wounds.

Imam would have died had Riddick been even two hours later. They told him Imam should make it. They'd patched hemorrhaged organs and checked all bruising; but the surgery had been major and would take a long time to heal from.

All Riddick could do now was wait. He didn't know how long he would have to wait before he could talk to Imam and tell him what this was all about. Before he could tell him who Clark was and why he'd come for Imam. Why Riddick had come for him.

Right now, Riddick was falling. He didn't know when he would hit the ground.

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Four Months Earlier:

Riddick was on his way back. Back to the tiny bit of peace he'd worked so hard to find. The bit of peace that had finally found him.

It had taken five years for Riddick to put his old identity to rest. Five years to pay for his new identity as Kyle Ryan. His new identity retained much the same appearance as the old one. Preferred hairstyle being shaved almost clean, clean shaven face, always in shape. But a lot of men were built strong, and hair and beards could be grown or manufactured. It was the shine that Riddick had had a hard time hiding. Shades and goggles couldn't be worn at all times, but contacts had been a must for the first few years he searched for a solution.

The contacts had been originally designed for miners that couldn't pay for the more expensive shine jobs, the ones that allowed you to see during the day and the night. Riddick had worn those until he'd found a doctor that could upgrade his shine job, replace the slam manufactured lenses shot onto the back of his eyeballs with a specially made lens of pulsate-falade. Pulsate-falade didn't reflect light like slam made lenses did. It was its own light source, and was tinted dark and unreflective by a special process Riddick really knew nothing about. And because pulsate-falade was its own light source, it didn't cause light to burn your retinas the way reflecting lenses would. It also allowed Riddick to see in full color.

Riddick's eyes looked almost the way they had before his first shine. The brown was lighter, due to the glow of the pulsate-falade, but they were still brown instead of that eerie glowing silver he'd become so used to. In the dark they didn't glow at all, the tinting process doing its job. It didn't really matter if people noticed he was shined, though, as pulsate-falade was only commonly used among the more respectable citizens of the universe. This new, expensive shine job didn't mark him as a lowly miner, scamming merc, or convict. It was more likely to get him confused with a money-tossing yuppie that had seen the shine job as interesting cosmetic surgery.

Once he'd established his identity as Kyle Ryan and had put together plenty of additional aliases to fall back on while he performed his business, Riddick had gone back for her, just as he'd promised.

He'd gone to see her as often as possible. That had usually panned out to once a year. Sometimes less, sometimes more. He'd send messages when he could, but never used a vid or comm to get to her; those were too easy to trace.

When he'd shown up for her, a few months after her nineteenth birthday, she'd been the one to open the door. He'd been unable to believe how beautifully she'd grown up. It had been amazing, the transformation from girl to woman. He'd known from that moment that he could never be just her "big brother". He was in love with her in a completely different way.

And now, as he approached the suite they'd been staying in before he'd left, Riddick found himself whistling a tune beneath his breath. But just as he reached for the door handle, he knew something was wrong.

His fingers froze, just touching the knob. His breath caught in his chest and he felt his heartbeat accelerate.

Adrenaline pumping through his veins, Riddick shoved the door open roughly and pulled the revolver from his waistband. He pressed his back against the wall and stared into the dark of the suite.

"Jack!" he called, his voice pitched to carry throughout the entire suite. "Jack! You in here, darlin'?"

Riddick waited in silence, fingers flexing on the grip of the revolver, finger gently touching the trigger. When there was no answer, Riddick stepped farther into the room, his booted feet eerily silent for a man so large. He crept quietly toward the hallway on his left, seeing the pale glow of light from his and Jack's bedroom door.

"Jack?"

Nothing. Riddick tried to avoid thinking of the phrase "deafening silence." So cliché. And it always meant something was wrong. Something bad had happened.

Something horrible has happened. Something horrible has happened. He couldn't get it out of his head.

He finally got to their bedroom door. It was cracked open slightly and dim light filtered through to spill across the thick hallway carpeting. The lights were probably on medium-low setting. He tilted his head toward the small opening, ears straining for any noise coming from within.

That's when he heard it. The faint, rasping breath that indicated that his search was over and that his head had been right. Something horrible had happened.

Riddick kicked the door wide, stuffing the revolver into his waistband. He flew to the bedside and looked down at the woman laying strewn across the sheets. He dropped to his knees.

"Oh god. Jack. Baby, look at me, darlin'."

The sheets were covered in blood. Jack's clothes were ripped away, leaving only tattered remains in their place.

Jack's eyes fluttered slightly and her breathing caught in her throat. She seemed to be struggling with something internally, then she finally managed to turn her face toward his. "Ri-- Riddick," she whispered, her eyes cracking open just enough to see him. "Riddick." Her voice was thick, raspy. Pain contorted her face.

Riddick was a blur of motion as he leapt onto the bed and gathered Jack into his arms, disregarding blood that was still damp. "Baby, what happened?" Riddick questioned, desperately reining in the beast that was raging at this offence.

Jack's eyes closed for a moment as she gathered enough strength to answer his question.

"Merc," she started, opening her eyes slightly. "Clark. Said his name was Thomas Clark. I wouldn't give you up, Riddick. Wouldn't do it." Her eyes closed again and she gasped for breath.

Riddick could see the damage done. She'd obviously been raped repeatedly. "How long ago did he leave?" Riddick gritted out between clenched teeth.

"Few hours, maybe. I don't know... He was here for three days. I wouldn't betray you. I swear. I'm sorry." She started to cry, her face twisting, fear that he would leave her and think she'd betrayed him evident in her eyes.

"Jack, you shoulda just told him what he wanted to know, baby. Don't be sorry. Please." Everything was starting to spin. Riddick could feel the beast taking control of everything, flushing out all his humanity until all that was left was the piece of him that Jack resided in. His balance.

"I'm dying," she whispered. "I don't want to leave. Not now."

"You're not dying. C'mon, darlin'. You're going to be fine. Don't talk like that." Growling, bristling. Riddick could feel it wound up in the dark corners of his mind, just waiting for the moment when it would be released. It knew he would release it this time.

She tried to smile, coughed up blood, shook her head. "No one would ever believe that Big Evil was an optimist."

"You're the only one who really knows me." Riddick felt his throat closing up, the tears welling up in his eyes. They spilled unchecked down his cheeks to land on her upturned face. One landed on the corner of her mouth and she licked it away with the tip of her tongue.

"You could always cry in front of me," she whispered. Her hand lifted, as if she were drawing strength from his presence, and she pressed it against his cheek. He turned his face against it, placed a kiss in the center of her palm.

"You can't leave me, Jack," he said and leaned down to press his forehead against hers. "You can't. I'm lost without you."

"You need to know, love. I know that now you'll have to go after him. So you need to know. His name is Thomas Clark and he's going after Imam. I don't have much time left, so you have to go and save Imam before he gets him too, okay?"

"Stop! You're not gonna die."

"You have to get him," she continued, ignoring him. "Please, go."

Riddick shook his head and pulled her closer. "You know I won't. I can't."

She stopped asking, and he held her, while she held onto him best she could. It didn't take much longer. Memories of their life together played through his mind again and again. He knew those memories would be with him until the end of his days. Picture perfect.

He thought of how everyone important to him, everyone he'd cared about, had died much like this. Bleeding out in front of his eyes. Taken away into the dark.

His best friend as a teen who'd been beaten to death by his father. That was the first man he'd ever killed, in revenge. The man in the slam who had taken a young Rick Riddick under his wing and protected him from men that would have used him and tossed him aside, or worse, kept him for a play thing. He'd protected Riddick, taught him to fight, given him a love of literature, art, martial arts, and his closest companions for years, blades. Allison Lambert, a little girl that had tried to pick his pocket and gotten caught, and he'd taken her in for over a year, killed by Johns to get to Riddick not long before the crash of the Hunter-Gratzner. Carolyn, saving his life.

And now his Jack. He knew she was dying. He was helpless to stop it, and he hated being helpless.

Riddick held Jack tightly, rocking gently back and forth, singing and whispering into her ear in a voice that was rough and raw with grief. It only took an hour.

It only took an hour for Riddick to start falling.