Lifeline

Chapter 9

He drove the car into an empty hangar, glancing around quickly before getting out. Chikage remained in the car as he walked toward his cruiser, and when he realized she wasn't beside him, he paused, glancing over his shoulder. Her forehead was leaned against the dashboard, hands behind around her neck. He sighed, then turned and headed back toward the car. She didn't move as he opened her door, crouching down next to her.

"We have to go, Chi," he said quietly. No response. "Now." She lifted her head, leaning back in the seat, her eyes closed. He reached out to grasp her arm as he said her name again. She nodded, and he pulled, helping her out of the car. His arm slipped around her waist as they walked, and she kept glancing over her shoulder where the car was stashed. He glanced down at her.

"That hangar important for anything?" she asked quietly. He shook his head, brow arched. She produced a small, round device.

"What's that?" She glanced up at him quickly, halting her steps. "Chikage?"

"Close your eyes, Riddick," she told him. He turned around, his back facing her and the hangar, and she depressed the center of the device, glancing over her shoulder once more as she reached out, twining her arm in his as she continued walking. He started to turn to look back, but her grip tightened. "Not yet," she warned. He instinctively ducked as the car, along with the hangar, exploded.

"What's with you and explosives?" he asked quickly, letting a grin surface. She shrugged, still all business now that he'd snapped her out of whatever zone she was in once she found out Marcus and Amy were dead. His forehead crinkled, eyes narrowing behind tinted goggles as he glanced back at the now burning hangar before leading the rest of the way to the cruiser. "You didn't bring anything with you, did you?" She shook her head, ignoring the hand he offered her through the cockpit door as she hoisted herself off the ground. He shrugged, watching her secure the door behind her. "We can stop planet side in a couple days."

"You really think that's a good idea?"

"Not really," he said with a small smile. "But as long as we're both quick and inconspicuous it shouldn't be a big deal."

"Riddick," she said, sitting in the navigator's chair as he strapped into the pilot's seat, "you never have been and never will be inconspicuous." He snickered. "Tell me what you need and I'll get it."

"You're not going out by yourself," he said quickly, fingers moving rapidly over the controls. Her eyebrow rose.

"You know as well as I do I can take care of myself doing something as simple as shopping so shut the fuck up and just give me a list before I leave, okay?" He stared at her for a moment, goggles resting on his forehead, silver glinting in the darkness. His expression was a mixture of uneasiness and anger, but he finally nodded, turning his attention back to readying the ship for takeoff. She watched his fingers move across the control panel as she strapped herself into her seat. He'd stashed his transport on an unused section of a private landing strip, and didn't have to worry about calling in their takeoff or even filing a flight plan. She watched in fascination as he pulled the ship off the tarmac and guided it out of the planet's atmosphere. The cruiser took a wide arc away from the ground, giving her a gorgeous view of the globe as they left it, heading out toward the stars. He shifted into autopilot and quickly programmed in a course before leaning back in his chair, the leather creaking with his movements. "Wanna give me a quick tour or should I explore on my own?" He stood, and she followed him down the hallway, down into the belly of the ship. She thought it a little odd that the cockpit was cut off from the rest of the second floor, meaning one had to go downstairs, to the back stairs, and back up to get to the other half of the top level.

The front stairs opened to the mess hall, a small kitchen on one wall and a table on the other. Down the hall were two bedrooms, one on either side of the hallway, a bathroom on the right, and the second set of stairs on the left. She ducked into her room for a moment, not seeing much difference from his, or, for that matter, from the rooms she'd had on the Army cruisers. Pretty standard. She followed him up the stairs, smiling at the sight that greeted her. The front room was built into a library, bookshelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling, complete with locking mechanisms across the books to keep them from falling out when the turbulence got rough.

"Nice," she commented quietly. He stood there watching her take in the room, running her fingers along the spines of some of the books. Everything ancient to modern psychology, medicine, geography and geology, even philosophy. "Never pegged you for a serious thinker, Riddick," she smirked. He shrugged.

"Get bored every now and then," he answered gruffly. She nodded toward a door on the opposite wall.

"What's behind that door or do I not want to know?" He gestured for her to enter, and she obliged, laughing quietly. "Shoulda known," she said, shaking her head. Light padding covered the floor and halfway up the walls, a punching bag hanging in a corner next to a shelf holding yoga mats and blocks, boxing gear, and other various workout necessities. "You'll never get me out of here."

"Try me," he quipped, smiling evilly. She laughed, shaking her head.

"What, no med-bay?"

"There's a pretty exhaustive kit in the bathroom under the sink if you ever need it. Panels in the walls behind the beds have IV bag hooks and shit." She nodded, seemingly impressed.

"You outdid yourself this time, darlin'," she said quietly. He shrugged.

"Just the necessities." His modesty prompted a cackle from his female counterpart.

"Yeah, like the dojo is really a fucking necessity, but whatever." He opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand. "I know, I know," she said, shaking her head. "For people like us, it is a necessity." He followed her back into the library, pulling the door shut behind him. "Where'd you find this?"

"Well, I got the shell at a junk yard. Did a little engine work," he explained, following her back down the winding stairs. "Once I got her working, I started in on the belly."

"You did all this yourself?" He grunted his answer. "Doesn't surprise me. I was having flashbacks to all the heaps we occupied in Ops. Had to wonder."

"What, where I got the ideas or if I jacked one?" he asked, a touch of amusement in his voice. She shrugged.

"Pick one." He chuckled. "Question though." He nodded. "Why's the top level split like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well," she started, heaving herself onto the kitchen counter as he rifled through the refrigerator, "say you're in the dojo and I'm on bridge duty."

"Yeah."

"And then there's a blip on the screen. Something tells me you'll never trust me to fly this thing, especially if we've got a bogey, am I right?" He glanced at her with a grin. "Exactly. So I scream at you to get your ass up to the bridge, and you have to go through the library, down the stairs, all the way across the first level, and back up the stairs to the cockpit."

"Exercise," he said with a shrug. Her eyebrow rose.

"Highly unwise, don't you think?"

"Well, there's an alarm system built into every room. Once the radar picks up another craft, we'll know at the same time. It'll give you the chance to disengage auto or start finding out what's going on, mapping out an escape route, and that'll buy me the time to get there." She nodded slowly. "But, you know, it's not like it'd be a long trip from the dojo to the bridge anyway." She snickered.

"Well knowing me, I'd fall down the stairs and forget where I was going before I could get up there to start navigating." He shook his head. Her boots thudded on the floor as she slid off the counter. "I'm taking a shower," she announced, starting toward the bathroom.

"Don't get wet," he called after her.

---

Chikage closed her eyes as she let the water cascade over her head, tilting her face up to take the brunt of the water pressure. The ship's engines vibrated the shower floor, and she knew her feet would go numb eventually – it'd been long enough since she'd been on a military-esque transport vessel her limbs had forgotten how it felt. She let her head fall forward, the water now beating on the back of her scalp as she pressed her hands against the wall, the metal cool to her warm hands. With her eyes closed, images of Marcus and Amy lying in a pool of their own blood flashed in her mind. The door creaked open and her head snapped up toward the sound. She was instantly thankful the door was metal like everything else, hiding her.

"Clean clothes for you," Riddick said, raising his voice to carry over the sound of the water. She threw a thumbs-up over the top of the shower door, and he chuckled to himself. "Probably a little big, but they're clean and dry."

"Thanks," she called. The door creaked and clicked shut, and she stared at the shower door for a moment before clearing the wet hair clinging to her face. A small shelf was built into the wall opposite the showerhead, and she glanced over the few bottles placed there. Liquid soap and shampoo. She shook her head with a small smile, lifting the shampoo. Cheap, generic shampoo. He's a guy. What'd you expect? Generic shampoo and liquid soap were better than the crusty salty body she was before, and she finished her shower quickly, toweling off before inspecting the clothes he'd laid out for her. Sweats and a beater. Big surprise.

Naked feet slapped on the floor as she returned to the library, her hair toweled just dry enough not to drip, hanging in loose waves down her back. It would be tangled all to hell without a comb, and especially without conditioner, but at this point she couldn't have cared less. She stared at the volumes of books contained in the massive shelves surrounding her, wondering where to start. A thick black book caught her eye, the words 'Criminal Psychology: Classical Cases' etched in yellow along the spine. The shelf was unlocked, and she pulled it from the shelf, securing the books remaining on that shelf before sprawling on a couch. She thumbed through the extensive index, and sure enough, Riddick was a featured topic. A smirk, and she flipped through the pages.

---

He'd heard the shower shut off, but she'd not returned to the bridge yet. Probably in the library, he thought with a smile. That girl couldn't ever have enough books to keep her happy. It was one of the things he liked most about her. She wasn't just a killing machine, or just a bodyguard, or just a pretty face. She'd been one of the few people, and not just women, that made him question his level of intelligence. It was one of the reasons she'd been recruited to the Ops teams in the first place. She'd started out as a grunt – a basic soldier with no special weapons or tactics trainings. But a commander happened to thumb through her file one day when the ranks were running low, and came across her IQ scores and aptitude tests results. Riddick had never found out what her marks were, but few women were ever allowed into the Ops, much less recruited, and he'd been chosen to train her on the weapons and combat skills she'd not had.

Black Ops teams were the most elite one could get in the Company Army, highly trained, highly intelligent, and, most of all, highly dangerous. When he'd started training her, he wondered what the hell Company was thinking, bringing in someone as unspecialized as Chikage. But the more time he spent with her, the more he realized just how much potential she had. She'd advanced faster than anyone he'd met in hand-to-hand combat training, even coming up with her own skills no one else could seem to do without the level of flexibility she had, and the weapons training seemed like second nature to her. He'd show her once, and she'd nail it. Thinking about it now, her accuracy with the powerful sniper rifles they'd used at the time surpassed even his. He'd been the one to recommend her to the A Team Sniper Unit, partly because he knew she was the best and would only get better, but mostly because she was the one person he wanted watching his back. The rest of the sniper team could have been worthless and he'd still have backup as long as she was on the unit.

There was an entire list of unwritten commandments each Black Ops operative understood and abided by. The top of the list contained directives such as not leaving a fallen team member behind and an unquestioned and unhesitant willingness to take a bullet for another team member if and only if necessary. There was a hierarchy to the Ops, and snipers were at the top. Good snipers, unparalleled in Chikage's case, were extremely hard to come by and unbelievably expensive to train, in both man-hours and money. Those on the strike team were required by unwritten consensus to take one for a sniper, no matter what. Riddick had fulfilled that requirement on several occasions, and not just for Chikage. What puzzled him was the one time she'd taken one for him. He'd never questioned it, but never understood it. And he'd never figured out why she'd left the Ops, even with the offer of an honorable discharge. He'd assumed she'd be a lifer, like he'd planned to be. She'd hinted at it, but unlike him, she'd not been forced to give it up. He never blamed her for letting him take the fall that night. There was no way she could have seen what happened to be able to testify in his defense, and Company would have taken her down with him if she had. A part of him was glad she'd decided not to even testify as a character witness, though he'd been angry with her at first. Now he understood she'd either not been allowed to or able to take that risk on him. And that was assuming she would have wanted to take the risk for him in the first place.

---

Chikage stared at the picture on the page, and had been staring at it for quite some time now. The only picture of him printed in that book broke the barrier holding down her rage and contempt for Company researchers. Being chained to the wall was one thing, and understandable for an operative allegedly gone wrong. He'd been shackled and handcuffed, chains linking through his arms to attach to the wall, his shackles anchored to the wall as well. They'd all been subjected to those bindings while undergoing hostage training, but she focused now on the bit between his teeth and the blindfold over his eyes. Purple bruises marked his skin, lacerations imbedded in the discolored flesh, and he hung limply against the chains, probably beaten into unconsciousness. A deep frown marred her features as she stared at the photo, wondering why they'd take things that far.

The case file held declassified information about his time spent in the Ops, ranging from training breakdowns, preferences, a few sparse assignment descriptions, and an overview of the screening process for the teams with his scores listed for comparison. She didn't know if he knew his scores – after all, she didn't even know hers. It went on to detail the long list of every diagnosis he'd had attached to him: post traumatic stress disorder, high levels of stress, lack of proper socialization, lack of conscience, mental insanity, severe psychosis, even dissociative identity disorder.

She inhaled deeply and turned the page. Biographical history. Foster homes, group homes, homeless shelters, shelters for troubled children, juvenile corrections facilities, and then the Ops. None of his early offenses had been serious – mostly misdemeanors and minor felonies, and those would have depended on which planet or which solar system he'd been in at the time. Judging just from the information contained in these files, he'd never been given a chance to be anything but trouble. His whole life had been a self-fulfilled prophecy as far as she could tell. And even so, every offense in his adult life not connected to the Ops, as they had military immunity, could be argued to have been self-defense.

"You're an interesting read, Mr. Riddick," she said quietly, hearing his soft chuckle as he left the doorframe to settle onto the couch next to her. "Then again, you never know how much of this shit is lies," she added, shutting the large book resting in her lap. "Lack of conscience?" He shrugged. "Severe psychosis?"

"Only on Thursdays," he answered with a smirk. She found herself returning the smile, but it fell quickly.

"Post traumatic stress disorder?" His jaw tightened, and her eyes focused on the cover of the book instead of his face. "That picture, Riddick," she said quietly. He rubbed his eyes.

"Yeah, I know."

"When was that?"

"First jailbreak," he answered with a sigh. "I got smarter after that and made it harder for them to catch me." She nodded slowly. She felt his eyes on her as she stood to replace the book, locking the shelf quietly before turning back to him, hooking her thumbs in the back of the sweats that hung loosely from her hips. He smirked, watching her start as he stood slowly. "Don't tell me you're scared of me after reading that." Her eyebrow rose as a small smile worked its way to her lips. "I'd have to chuck that book then, and I'd really hate to deprive you of even one piece of reading material." Her smile fell as she broke her gaze from him, and his brows furrowed, but he waited for her to say something next.

"You'd think with everything I've seen now," she started with a snicker, "that a photo like that wouldn't bother me the slightest." The light smirk turning her lips upwards faded as she raised her eyes to his. "I wasn't expecting that." He shrugged. "And don't even say it didn't bother you too." He blinked.

"Nothing bothers me," he said quietly. "Shit happens and I deal with it." She shook her head.

"If nothing bothers you, why are you so worried about this girl you're trying to save?" she asked quietly. She left the room before he could answer, walking slowly, quietly down the stairs back to her room. The sheets were softer than she'd been expecting after assuming everything on this ship was military standard. Her eyes closed, mind alternating between the image of Marcus and Amy and that photo of Riddick. She heard him shuffle to the doorway after a while and pause, felt him watching her again, and forced her breathing to slow and her muscles relax. The air shifted as he entered the room, crouching beside her bed. He remained there for a moment, so silent she had to fight not to look and see if he was still in the room. Then she heard his clothes ruffle as he stood and exited the room, counting ten seconds before allowing herself to open her eyes. The lights flickered for a moment before falling from low to dim, and she let herself relax back into the mattress, the engines lulling her to sleep.