THE MOTHER LODE BY ABRAXIS
Chapter 31 – Out Of A Cell But Into What
The cold rock wall of the dungeon had taken a lot of the heat out of Riddick's wounds but it had also sucked out more of his normal body heat than he could afford to loose. The cold iron of shackles; wrists, ankles and neck – all of the pulse points; had accelerated this. His muscles screaming as his body shivered for survival awakened him.
Using what freedom the rather ample chains allowed him, he forced the autonomic spasms into more effective flexing. It hurt like hell but slowly brought his body under control. It was then that he realized that the tiny pager tucked into the band of his shorts was vibrating frantically.
Periodically during their four days as Sulleman's 'guests', Riddick had activated the device's panic button and received short buzzes in return. For it to be going crazy like it was had to mean that something serious was happening. He punched the button in reply. The pager paused for several seconds and then began pulsing in a repeating pattern. It was a standard Forces distress signal.
While his conscious mind was trying to figure it out, his instincts jumped to the right conclusion. Syrus! If Riddick had been awakened in the pre- stages of hypothermia, Syrus' condition couldn't be good. The tall, wiry man was tough as nails but didn't have Riddick's bulk to buffer the damage of their torture and the strength-sapping atmosphere of the cell.
Looking across the cell, his sight more disturbed than augmented by the weak yellowish bulb that was their only source of light, Riddick could see that Syrus was stretched flat against the heat-leaching stones of the floor, his body sprayed rather than balled for heat retention. Pale as a ghost and slightly purple around his lips, he wasn't shivering. Shit!! If the fucking psycho thought he was getting off that easy ... !
Scooting across the floor as far as his restraints would allow, Riddick could just reach Syrus' ankle. With a cursed prayer that he wasn't adding too much to the man's injuries, Riddick used this 'handle' to pull Syrus to him. Lying on his side and with a careful arrangement of their chains, he managed to spoon Syrus against him, place his head on one folded arm and wrap the other around him. It was like embracing ice – or a corpse.
With more cursing at heaven, the fates and particularly Syrus, Riddick searched under the neck ring for a pulse. It was there – weak, slow and fluttery but there. He turned Syrus to face him. Using his legs and feet against Syrus', his torso against Syrus' chest and belly and his free arm and hand against Syrus' back, Riddick began a rough massage. The only injury he took pains not to impact was the broken ribs. Occasionally, he turned Syrus' face toward him, parted the cyanotic lips and forced his own hot breath into Syrus' cold lungs.
After what seemed like hours, Riddick got his first sign that he wasn't wasting his depleted energy on a lost cause. As Riddick pushed another breath into him, Syrus got a hard-on and tried to taste Riddick's tonsils. As he jerked back, a weak but definitely snide laugh followed him.
Okaaaaay. The boner was a natural reaction and Riddick might have been able to write off the tongue fishing as the same if it hadn't have been for that laugh. Even though Riddick had to admit that had he awakened to a busty broad giving him mouth-to-mouth he would have taken the same advantage, he still entertained himself with very interesting thoughts of just how badly he was going to hurt Syrus when the man was healed enough to really feel it.
Riddick continued the body massage until the return of his shiver reflex tore a scream of agony from Syrus. After that, Riddick was too busy trying to keep the man's spasms from beating them both against the stone floor to do much of anything else. But Syrus' body temperature climbed rapidly and the spasms eased. His first recognizable word was whimpered weakly but savagely.
"Bastard!!"
Riddick chuckled.
"Oh, yeah. I'm that all right." Then Riddick lowered his voice into the 'jail house whisper' that he and Syrus usually used for any mention of the group in case the cell was being monitored. "No way I'm going back to Jenna and tell her I let her favorite psycho freeze himself to death." Syrus tried to pull away but Riddick tightened his hold. "You're still too cold. Stay put."
The distress signal was still buzzing against Riddick's waist but, as he continued body contact and massage, the pauses between repetitions grew longer and longer until the signal ceased completely. Whoever was monitoring the telemetry of Syrus' tracer seemed to have decided that he would survive.
Well, that was just fucking fantastic! How long did they think he would keep on surviving if they didn't get their butts in gear and figure some way to get him out of here. Riddick was hurting but nowhere near the end of his resources. Hell, he'd cut his baby teeth on worse than this. Syrus was another matter. It was doubtful if the man could last another two days with only the cell, starvation and dehydration to contend with. With the stupid fuck Sulleman had for an inquisitioner, he definitely wouldn't survive another torture session.
Riddick would have loved to send an expletive laced message to whoever was on the other end of the pager but the panic button didn't reset quickly enough to allow that. He settled for activating both his and Syrus' units in an alternating pattern for several minutes. This process was interrupted by a snigger from Syrus.
"Lower, please."
Riddick removed his hand from the waistband of Syrus' underwear and growled at him.
"Shut up, Syrus, or I'll roll you back across the cell and let you go back to killing yourself."
"No you won't." Then whispered, "You care too much for Jenna's good opinion. If it's possible, you'll keep me alive as long as that bloody buzzer keeps answering you." Then in a normal voice again, "I always wondered what personal hell would be chosen for me and now I know. It's being incarcerated for eternity with a total optimist who's also totally straight. Didn't you pick up any bad habits in prison?"
"Not that one. Now, shut up!"
Much to Riddick's surprise, Syrus did. The next few hours were spent in silence as Riddick followed the pattern of pulling away to flex and build body heat then returning to his position against Syrus to share it. But, he didn't go to all that effort just because of Jenna's affection for the man.
During their imprisonment and torture, Riddick had developed a respect for the dark humored bastard. Not one word of whining had passed his lips. Nor had he given any thought at all to turning traitor to save himself. Riddick had also discovered that they had a lot in common in their attitudes about life and their fellow men. Hell, even Syrus' occasionally off-side remarks were delivered with a sardonic wit that Riddick could appreciate. Not that Riddick would ever admit it out loud but he had come to enjoy Syrus' company.
Added to that, he'd be damned it he was going to let Sulleman destroy one more life if he could prevent it.
Then, while he was in a body contact stage of the pattern, Riddick felt the pager again. It was buzzing a 'coming in' signal. This elicited a sigh of relief from Riddick but a quite different reaction from Syrus who wasn't aware of the contents of the message. He tried to jerk away. When Riddick didn't allow this, Syrus broke his silence with a whispered but intense rant.
"You stupid idiot! Have you totally lost your instincts?! If they were able to do something, they would have done it before this. The only way you are going to get out of here alive is the same way you always have – by making your own escape! I'm a lost cause and Jenna needs you more than she needs me! Now stop wasting your energy trying to save me and make better use of it. Break my frigging neck. When they come to take out the garbage, they'll have to have keys to the shackles to do that. You can pretend to be too weakened to move away from me and can make them come close enough to you to get the body that you have a chance kill them and get those keys."
Riddick's opinion of Syrus went up another notch. Given the circumstances they were in, it wasn't a bad plan. Now, it might be argued that Syrus' tendency toward suicide took something away from the heroic aspect of it but Syrus' unconventional 'methods' for attempting that had always made Riddick suspect that death wasn't really what the man was looking for. He suspected that Syrus was more a 'bottom' looking for a 'top' tough enough to force him into it than a potential suicide.
He thought that Jenna, for all her knowledge, either hadn't delved deeply enough into the study of sexual dysfunction or, more likely, had been too personally close to the patient in Syrus' case to have caught that. After all, other professionals had put the suicide label on him and it wasn't like Syrus was doing any deeper 'couch talking' to her than he had to them – probably a lot less because of their personal connection.
Riddick saw Syrus' volunteering to become a corpse to give him a chance at escape as a hell of a lot bigger favor than any other fellow inmate had ever offered him. He quickly made a whispered effort to reassure him.
"Shut up and pack your bags. They just signaled that they're coming in."
Syrus hissed back at him.
"If you're lying to me ... "
Riddick answered with the only thing that he knew would quickly convince Syrus.
"If I'm lying, I'll give you a free shot at my dick."
Syrus laughed as heartily as his ribs would allow and then whispered, "Evil. Very evil but convincing."
It seemed like forever before Riddick heard the sound of the key unlocking the cell door. He immediately faced the door, straddling Syrus in a defensive posture. This seemed to take the four men entering by surprise. They froze. They were natives but were wearing the livery of the royal compound's main guards rather than Sulleman's personal house livery. They were also carrying two extra sets of robes and dragging the corpses of two of Sulleman's men. Deciding that they were indeed the rescue party, Riddick motioned them forward.
They again showed surprise when, after they had removed the shackles, Riddick waved them away from Syrus and helped the injured man to dress before dressing himself. The surprise turned to amazed respect when Riddick picked Syrus up off of the floor and was just as adamant about carrying him himself. As he followed them through the underground labyrinth, Riddick was amused at their comments on his ability to have survived Sulleman's dungeons so well and his apparently close attachment to his companion.
He was even more amused by their nervous speculation on just how dangerous he might be. It never hurt to keep people nervous.
He played dumb, not revealing either his ability to understand the language or his real motives. After all he had been through keeping Syrus alive, he wasn't about to risk him suffering further injury by any manhandling during their rescue. However, his main reason for carrying Syrus himself was that it was a good way to prevent any possibility of them being separated, either accidentally or intentionally.
He felt that this precaution was well justified as his sense of direction told him that they weren't being taken toward the outside but rather deeper and deeper into the compound. He didn't feel much better about it when they began to climb out of the dungeons and rose higher and higher into the upper structure of the buildings. All that meant was that whomever they were being taken to had royal rank and the higher they went the greater that rank would be. That he was going to start out being a better host than Sulleman didn't mean that he would stay that way.
After all the speculation he had made concerning where things had gone sour, it didn't take Riddick long to develop a deep suspicion that he was about to meet Ackbar Mosser's employer, Sulleman's cousin, Casmir.
That all things were not sweetness and light was reinforced when his escort motioned him into a room. It was rather lavishly furnished, already supplied with food, iced water and wine and he could see an attached bath through an open doorway. However, the natives didn't follow him in and they locked the door behind him. Once he had made Syrus as comfortable as possible and explored a little, he found that the room and bath were windowless and had no apparent exits other than the door he had entered.
On the positive side, they were being fed and watered, it was warm, and Riddick found a good supply of bandages, salves and even some pain killers in the bathroom. He helped Syrus to strip, washed and salved his wounds and rebound his ribs. Then he got as much food and water down him as he could without making him sick before giving him a good dose of pain killer and ordering him to go to sleep.
In unspoken truce, Syrus took all this TLC in silence – no objections, no complaining, no lascivious remarks - until it came to the order to sleep. At that point, he refused and stayed awake until Riddick had bathed and allowed him to give similar medical attention to any of Riddick's own injuries that he couldn't easily reach.
Riddick had to exercise some heavy control to keep from letting Syrus know how uncomfortable this made him – not because of Syrus' sexual orientation but because Riddick had so little experience with anyone being concerned about his injuries. Jack's binding up his leg after they had escaped T2 was the only time he could remember since leaving Beshue.
The fact that Syrus was a doctor didn't really explain it either. Any doctors Riddick had known would have let him rot before they would have suffered the pain it was causing Syrus to help him. As he sat eating and drinking, he watched Syrus sleep and puzzled on the fact that allowing others to take care of him was proving even harder to deal with than being responsible for taking care of them.
As soon as he ran out of stomach room, he moved a large cabinet to block the in-swinging door and began a deep search of their new quarters. It wasn't long before he discovered a piece of the metal frame of a side table that he could break free without causing the table to look obviously damaged. Pushing the couch not occupied by Syrus aside a short distance, he began using the stone floor to whet a sharp point and edges on the metal. It wasn't good for a shiv but, while he didn't prefer stickers, he knew how to use them and any weapon was better than none.
Once he was satisfied with the shape of the weapon, he used some of the bandages to wrap the hilt and hid it in his robes. Then he moved the couch back to cover the marred floor. Only then did he curl up on the couch and succumb to his body's need for sleep.
The cabinet blocking the door was too light to keep anyone out for long but it would make enough noise to awaken him.
Chapter 31 – Out Of A Cell But Into What
The cold rock wall of the dungeon had taken a lot of the heat out of Riddick's wounds but it had also sucked out more of his normal body heat than he could afford to loose. The cold iron of shackles; wrists, ankles and neck – all of the pulse points; had accelerated this. His muscles screaming as his body shivered for survival awakened him.
Using what freedom the rather ample chains allowed him, he forced the autonomic spasms into more effective flexing. It hurt like hell but slowly brought his body under control. It was then that he realized that the tiny pager tucked into the band of his shorts was vibrating frantically.
Periodically during their four days as Sulleman's 'guests', Riddick had activated the device's panic button and received short buzzes in return. For it to be going crazy like it was had to mean that something serious was happening. He punched the button in reply. The pager paused for several seconds and then began pulsing in a repeating pattern. It was a standard Forces distress signal.
While his conscious mind was trying to figure it out, his instincts jumped to the right conclusion. Syrus! If Riddick had been awakened in the pre- stages of hypothermia, Syrus' condition couldn't be good. The tall, wiry man was tough as nails but didn't have Riddick's bulk to buffer the damage of their torture and the strength-sapping atmosphere of the cell.
Looking across the cell, his sight more disturbed than augmented by the weak yellowish bulb that was their only source of light, Riddick could see that Syrus was stretched flat against the heat-leaching stones of the floor, his body sprayed rather than balled for heat retention. Pale as a ghost and slightly purple around his lips, he wasn't shivering. Shit!! If the fucking psycho thought he was getting off that easy ... !
Scooting across the floor as far as his restraints would allow, Riddick could just reach Syrus' ankle. With a cursed prayer that he wasn't adding too much to the man's injuries, Riddick used this 'handle' to pull Syrus to him. Lying on his side and with a careful arrangement of their chains, he managed to spoon Syrus against him, place his head on one folded arm and wrap the other around him. It was like embracing ice – or a corpse.
With more cursing at heaven, the fates and particularly Syrus, Riddick searched under the neck ring for a pulse. It was there – weak, slow and fluttery but there. He turned Syrus to face him. Using his legs and feet against Syrus', his torso against Syrus' chest and belly and his free arm and hand against Syrus' back, Riddick began a rough massage. The only injury he took pains not to impact was the broken ribs. Occasionally, he turned Syrus' face toward him, parted the cyanotic lips and forced his own hot breath into Syrus' cold lungs.
After what seemed like hours, Riddick got his first sign that he wasn't wasting his depleted energy on a lost cause. As Riddick pushed another breath into him, Syrus got a hard-on and tried to taste Riddick's tonsils. As he jerked back, a weak but definitely snide laugh followed him.
Okaaaaay. The boner was a natural reaction and Riddick might have been able to write off the tongue fishing as the same if it hadn't have been for that laugh. Even though Riddick had to admit that had he awakened to a busty broad giving him mouth-to-mouth he would have taken the same advantage, he still entertained himself with very interesting thoughts of just how badly he was going to hurt Syrus when the man was healed enough to really feel it.
Riddick continued the body massage until the return of his shiver reflex tore a scream of agony from Syrus. After that, Riddick was too busy trying to keep the man's spasms from beating them both against the stone floor to do much of anything else. But Syrus' body temperature climbed rapidly and the spasms eased. His first recognizable word was whimpered weakly but savagely.
"Bastard!!"
Riddick chuckled.
"Oh, yeah. I'm that all right." Then Riddick lowered his voice into the 'jail house whisper' that he and Syrus usually used for any mention of the group in case the cell was being monitored. "No way I'm going back to Jenna and tell her I let her favorite psycho freeze himself to death." Syrus tried to pull away but Riddick tightened his hold. "You're still too cold. Stay put."
The distress signal was still buzzing against Riddick's waist but, as he continued body contact and massage, the pauses between repetitions grew longer and longer until the signal ceased completely. Whoever was monitoring the telemetry of Syrus' tracer seemed to have decided that he would survive.
Well, that was just fucking fantastic! How long did they think he would keep on surviving if they didn't get their butts in gear and figure some way to get him out of here. Riddick was hurting but nowhere near the end of his resources. Hell, he'd cut his baby teeth on worse than this. Syrus was another matter. It was doubtful if the man could last another two days with only the cell, starvation and dehydration to contend with. With the stupid fuck Sulleman had for an inquisitioner, he definitely wouldn't survive another torture session.
Riddick would have loved to send an expletive laced message to whoever was on the other end of the pager but the panic button didn't reset quickly enough to allow that. He settled for activating both his and Syrus' units in an alternating pattern for several minutes. This process was interrupted by a snigger from Syrus.
"Lower, please."
Riddick removed his hand from the waistband of Syrus' underwear and growled at him.
"Shut up, Syrus, or I'll roll you back across the cell and let you go back to killing yourself."
"No you won't." Then whispered, "You care too much for Jenna's good opinion. If it's possible, you'll keep me alive as long as that bloody buzzer keeps answering you." Then in a normal voice again, "I always wondered what personal hell would be chosen for me and now I know. It's being incarcerated for eternity with a total optimist who's also totally straight. Didn't you pick up any bad habits in prison?"
"Not that one. Now, shut up!"
Much to Riddick's surprise, Syrus did. The next few hours were spent in silence as Riddick followed the pattern of pulling away to flex and build body heat then returning to his position against Syrus to share it. But, he didn't go to all that effort just because of Jenna's affection for the man.
During their imprisonment and torture, Riddick had developed a respect for the dark humored bastard. Not one word of whining had passed his lips. Nor had he given any thought at all to turning traitor to save himself. Riddick had also discovered that they had a lot in common in their attitudes about life and their fellow men. Hell, even Syrus' occasionally off-side remarks were delivered with a sardonic wit that Riddick could appreciate. Not that Riddick would ever admit it out loud but he had come to enjoy Syrus' company.
Added to that, he'd be damned it he was going to let Sulleman destroy one more life if he could prevent it.
Then, while he was in a body contact stage of the pattern, Riddick felt the pager again. It was buzzing a 'coming in' signal. This elicited a sigh of relief from Riddick but a quite different reaction from Syrus who wasn't aware of the contents of the message. He tried to jerk away. When Riddick didn't allow this, Syrus broke his silence with a whispered but intense rant.
"You stupid idiot! Have you totally lost your instincts?! If they were able to do something, they would have done it before this. The only way you are going to get out of here alive is the same way you always have – by making your own escape! I'm a lost cause and Jenna needs you more than she needs me! Now stop wasting your energy trying to save me and make better use of it. Break my frigging neck. When they come to take out the garbage, they'll have to have keys to the shackles to do that. You can pretend to be too weakened to move away from me and can make them come close enough to you to get the body that you have a chance kill them and get those keys."
Riddick's opinion of Syrus went up another notch. Given the circumstances they were in, it wasn't a bad plan. Now, it might be argued that Syrus' tendency toward suicide took something away from the heroic aspect of it but Syrus' unconventional 'methods' for attempting that had always made Riddick suspect that death wasn't really what the man was looking for. He suspected that Syrus was more a 'bottom' looking for a 'top' tough enough to force him into it than a potential suicide.
He thought that Jenna, for all her knowledge, either hadn't delved deeply enough into the study of sexual dysfunction or, more likely, had been too personally close to the patient in Syrus' case to have caught that. After all, other professionals had put the suicide label on him and it wasn't like Syrus was doing any deeper 'couch talking' to her than he had to them – probably a lot less because of their personal connection.
Riddick saw Syrus' volunteering to become a corpse to give him a chance at escape as a hell of a lot bigger favor than any other fellow inmate had ever offered him. He quickly made a whispered effort to reassure him.
"Shut up and pack your bags. They just signaled that they're coming in."
Syrus hissed back at him.
"If you're lying to me ... "
Riddick answered with the only thing that he knew would quickly convince Syrus.
"If I'm lying, I'll give you a free shot at my dick."
Syrus laughed as heartily as his ribs would allow and then whispered, "Evil. Very evil but convincing."
It seemed like forever before Riddick heard the sound of the key unlocking the cell door. He immediately faced the door, straddling Syrus in a defensive posture. This seemed to take the four men entering by surprise. They froze. They were natives but were wearing the livery of the royal compound's main guards rather than Sulleman's personal house livery. They were also carrying two extra sets of robes and dragging the corpses of two of Sulleman's men. Deciding that they were indeed the rescue party, Riddick motioned them forward.
They again showed surprise when, after they had removed the shackles, Riddick waved them away from Syrus and helped the injured man to dress before dressing himself. The surprise turned to amazed respect when Riddick picked Syrus up off of the floor and was just as adamant about carrying him himself. As he followed them through the underground labyrinth, Riddick was amused at their comments on his ability to have survived Sulleman's dungeons so well and his apparently close attachment to his companion.
He was even more amused by their nervous speculation on just how dangerous he might be. It never hurt to keep people nervous.
He played dumb, not revealing either his ability to understand the language or his real motives. After all he had been through keeping Syrus alive, he wasn't about to risk him suffering further injury by any manhandling during their rescue. However, his main reason for carrying Syrus himself was that it was a good way to prevent any possibility of them being separated, either accidentally or intentionally.
He felt that this precaution was well justified as his sense of direction told him that they weren't being taken toward the outside but rather deeper and deeper into the compound. He didn't feel much better about it when they began to climb out of the dungeons and rose higher and higher into the upper structure of the buildings. All that meant was that whomever they were being taken to had royal rank and the higher they went the greater that rank would be. That he was going to start out being a better host than Sulleman didn't mean that he would stay that way.
After all the speculation he had made concerning where things had gone sour, it didn't take Riddick long to develop a deep suspicion that he was about to meet Ackbar Mosser's employer, Sulleman's cousin, Casmir.
That all things were not sweetness and light was reinforced when his escort motioned him into a room. It was rather lavishly furnished, already supplied with food, iced water and wine and he could see an attached bath through an open doorway. However, the natives didn't follow him in and they locked the door behind him. Once he had made Syrus as comfortable as possible and explored a little, he found that the room and bath were windowless and had no apparent exits other than the door he had entered.
On the positive side, they were being fed and watered, it was warm, and Riddick found a good supply of bandages, salves and even some pain killers in the bathroom. He helped Syrus to strip, washed and salved his wounds and rebound his ribs. Then he got as much food and water down him as he could without making him sick before giving him a good dose of pain killer and ordering him to go to sleep.
In unspoken truce, Syrus took all this TLC in silence – no objections, no complaining, no lascivious remarks - until it came to the order to sleep. At that point, he refused and stayed awake until Riddick had bathed and allowed him to give similar medical attention to any of Riddick's own injuries that he couldn't easily reach.
Riddick had to exercise some heavy control to keep from letting Syrus know how uncomfortable this made him – not because of Syrus' sexual orientation but because Riddick had so little experience with anyone being concerned about his injuries. Jack's binding up his leg after they had escaped T2 was the only time he could remember since leaving Beshue.
The fact that Syrus was a doctor didn't really explain it either. Any doctors Riddick had known would have let him rot before they would have suffered the pain it was causing Syrus to help him. As he sat eating and drinking, he watched Syrus sleep and puzzled on the fact that allowing others to take care of him was proving even harder to deal with than being responsible for taking care of them.
As soon as he ran out of stomach room, he moved a large cabinet to block the in-swinging door and began a deep search of their new quarters. It wasn't long before he discovered a piece of the metal frame of a side table that he could break free without causing the table to look obviously damaged. Pushing the couch not occupied by Syrus aside a short distance, he began using the stone floor to whet a sharp point and edges on the metal. It wasn't good for a shiv but, while he didn't prefer stickers, he knew how to use them and any weapon was better than none.
Once he was satisfied with the shape of the weapon, he used some of the bandages to wrap the hilt and hid it in his robes. Then he moved the couch back to cover the marred floor. Only then did he curl up on the couch and succumb to his body's need for sleep.
The cabinet blocking the door was too light to keep anyone out for long but it would make enough noise to awaken him.
