(This is a short, 2000 words total that I wrote for The Diesel Engine's pitch black challenge and have completed on my computer… If you're interested in reading more, let me know.)

In Darkness… the survival of the fittest, the most determined, and the hardest to kill had been granted. Leaving Jack, Riddick, and Imam as the sole survivors of the Hunter Gratzner crash. Nearly six years later, all three had finally broken all ties and gone their separate ways. Riddick had remained with his companions after they had been rescued from the skiff just long enough for the ship they were on to dock on a hospitable planet, and then he was gone. Jack and Imam had continued on together to New Mecca, this time taking short hyper Jumps in the vessel which they had been rescued by. Afterwards, Imam had decided to remain on New Mecca, living a peaceful life as his mosques' spiritual leader.

 As the years passed, Jack began to feel that old restless feeling she'd gotten when moving from place to place. When she was fifteen; she enrolled in a local flight school, and became certified as a docking pilot just before her nineteenth birthday. By the time she'd seen Riddick again, it had been six long years, and both were surprised to see the changes they'd both undergone. 

Jack had been signed onto the small freight ship the "Glory Gold", which ran short Hyper Jumps between the three inhabited planets along the Agrarian belt in the Galois System. She had been a part of the crew for almost seven months when talk about Riddick started stirring up again. Jack had been walking through the main cabin lined with Cryo lockers when she'd heard Eric, the head engineer on the vessel talking to one of the freight loaders.

"So, this bastard kills over a hundred people and then disappears for six years, and then all of a sudden what do you know they catch the guy trying to break into a ship in the Delphi system. Of course they don't know if it's him or not but I'm certain it's Riddick, when they caught him he was fighting perfectly with shined eyes and shivs. Took ten guys shooting him with high level tranquilizers to knock him out."

As Eric walked through the cabin to the holding crates at the back of the ship, Jack turned to follow the two men still deep in conversation. As the two men reached the airlock that separated the main cabin from the rest of the ship, Eric turned around, nearly running over Jack who stood only a few paces behind him.

"So what's this I hear about Riddick being alive?" She asked, hands on hips. Legs spread apart on the grating of the cabin.

"Hey, Jack, where'd you hear something like that from?" he asked uneasily.

She glared at him arms moving to cross over her chest. In one hand she held a shiv, in the other the keypad she'd been running directional tests on. Dropping both arms to her sides she sighed heavily.

 "You want to know where Riddick is?" She asked feeling deflated, Eric had been bugging her since he'd signed on three months after her what had happened to her that turned her so off talk of Riddick, he had avoided talking directly to her about it, but enjoyed rubbing her nose in rumors he'd heard and watching her reaction. Now she was tired of hearing his bullshitting lies, tired of doubting her heart, which told her he was still alive. She needed to talk to Imam; she needed her fears to be refuted.   

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Gymp.