I'm back! And a new fic has begun…I know I really shouldn't start a new one when I have an entire five minute animation to draw out and colour before the end of may but I couldn't help myself. This idea came up and kicked me in the shin one day when I was sat waiting for the train in the pouring rain (bloody British weather!). It is the sequel to "The Job" though it is very different. I did really like Chronicles (oh yeah, except for the fact that Kyra went and bloody died! Gah!) and have decided to incorporate a few…details from CoR into this fic. Like the Necromongers…but I have changed them quite a bit and Crematoria is in some of the later chapters, but I'll tell you more about that when I get to it. Might even have a few familiar faces…along with a number of new ones.

Okay, this is just the prologue and takes place five years after Jack is kidnapped, when Riddick goes to Butcher's Bay to get her and just before she starts her little killing spree. If you haven't read "The Job" then I suggest you do, or a least skim over the epilogue just to jog your memory coz it might get a little confusing with the different times that things are happening.

Right, without any more of my waffling I'll get to the important part.

I don't own anything save my own characters and a few of the planets that I have created. Basically if you recognise him/her/or it then I don't own it but have simply commandeered it for the purposes of my own twisted little imagination.

Well, tell me what you think. Be brutal if you must, otherwise I won't know where I'm going wrong or how to get better.

Happy Reading!

Gem

Xxx

Oh yeah, glad to be back!

Portents of Fate.

Prologue: Loosing My Religion.

The Helion System.

Planet Helion Prime.

City of New Mecca.

The hot night air was balmy, like a warm breath against his weary cheek as he stood on the balcony staring out at the New Meccan sky, studded with diamond stars. Cradled within his heavily robed arms to his chest, the almost sleeping baby squirmed and fussed in an attempt to stop the advances of slumber that were slowly stealing her away from the conscious world.

She was coming up for a year old. His third child by his wife, Sahar, and his second daughter. His first, Hanoona, would be turning six that summer and his only son, Taaj, was nearing three and a half.

The little one in his arms, however, he had named not according to his Muslim culture and beliefs, but for the girl that he had sworn to protect. The teenager just beginning to come into herself, realising who she was, who he had failed. The child that he had forsaken to save the lives of his wife and their first daughter, Hanoona.

Audrey Jaquelin Badden. Jack. Jack B. Badd.

Allah only knew what horrors that she had faced at the hands of the mercenaries who had seen fit to abduct her, to use her to find the most wanted man in the many known universes and for their own pleasures no doubt. Horrors that had driven her to commit such acts of murder and carnage that had seen her locked away into the depths of the most notorious prison in the Multiverse, Butcher's Bay, for the entirety of her remaining life.

Imam sighed and rocked his daughter gently in his arms again, soothing her with soft words of prayer for the good Lord to protect her while she slept, blissfully unaware of the happenings around her, of the worries that her father shouldered. Slowly her eyes flutter closed and her breathing became even as inky black eyelashes brushed against her rounded baby cheeks and Imam made his way back into the nursery where his other two children slept peacefully.

Gently he lay her down into her crib, smoothing the cool, crisp white linen sheets over her and moving from the room, taking a final glance at his family. Had Jack not sacrificed herself, given herself to the mercenaries, demanded that they take her instead of Sahar and baby Hanoona, he would not have had such a family. The lives of his wife and first daughter would have been sundered, forced into a life of slavery much as Jack must have been, and the lives of his son and second daughter would not have even been sparked into existence.

Though such thoughts gave little comfort to the holy man, they did give Jack's noble sacrifice a sense of greater meaning. How Imam wished that she could have seen the little lives that she had ensured would be created with her selflessness. How he prayed night after night to his God, furious that such a beautiful, effervescent life had to be exchanged for those of him and his family.

Jack's abduction had been the second time in Imam's long life that he had ever questioned his faith, for how could He, the Lord of All, sunder a girl so full of brilliance, leave her to such a fate that befell her and landed her in the world of convicts?

Imam never found an answer to his prayers and questions, instead turning his devotion to tracking down the one man that could save Jack from her fate.

Richard B. Riddick.

Though he had immense help from a prominent New Meccan priestess, Annathea, who believed Riddick to be linked to an ancient prophecy and sought him for her own means, Imam had never found him...never heard a whisper of his whereabouts. And so, while Annathea returned to her studies and continued her search, Imam returned to his devout prayers, hoping beyond all hope that Allah may be merciful, may hear is desperate plea and send Riddick to Jack. Speed the mysterious man back to the place that had made him, the place that would either make or break Jack...

Imam sighed at his memories and moved from the nursery, closing the door quietly behind him as he exited and making his way down the stairs to the living area. Sahar smiled at him from where she stood in the kitchen drying that evenings dinner dishes and stacking them back into the cupboards, the noise from the news broadcasting upon the house's computer system keeping her company while she completed her chores.

"Audrey is sleeping." Imam murmured quietly, stepping into the kitchen beside his young wife who gave a sympathetic smile. She knew exactly where his thoughts dwelt, for so often hers lingered upon the same subject.

She grasped the dish that she was currently drying in one hand firmly and moved towards him, brushing her free hand gently over his bearded cheek.

"I worry for her too." she smiled sadly, and Imam merely nodded. "There was nothing that you could have done to save her, Imam. She saved our lives that day. All of us." she paused and returned to the sink, placing her dried plate into the cupboard above and taking another to dry. "Allah has a great purpose for Jack. He must do, for he does not make his decisions lightly."

Imam sighed wearily, rubbing a hand across his forehead and turning his attention to the com-screen in an attempt to distract his troubled mind. Instead what he saw made the blood rush from his face, made his legs buckle beneath him and sent him crashing to his knees upon the terracotta tiled floors. The dish in Sahar's grasp slipped from her hands, shattering into a thousand shards, her entire body trembling in terror as she also saw what was emblazoned across the news. Tears shimmered in her eyes as a great sob escaped her lips and she too fell to her knees beside her husband.

"…died at the hands of notorious serial killer Richard B. Riddick in the third degree security cell blocks of the five star prison Butcher's Bay. Security was unable to prevent the fight that broke out between them and the two wounded a total of six good men in the process of their private vendetta. Audrey Jaquelin Badden, or as she was better known, Jack B. Badd, wounded Richard B. Riddick before she was officially declared dead at precisely 06:00hours yesterday morning despite the best attempts of prison doctors to save her. Richard B. Riddick passed away a mere two hours later, the cause of death the wounds given to him by Miss Badden…"

Sahar glanced up from the com-screen through tear filled eyes at Imam. His face staunch and his head moving in a disbelieving shake.

"She cannot…No, she cannot be…" Imam choked out from his constricting throat, his shaking hands grasping out for Sahar's, locking onto hers in a desperate, desolate, white-knuckled grasp. "Mr. Riddick would not…"

Sahar wiped her cheeks in a futile attempt to stop her tears, though more fell, soaking her face again. "She is dead." she mumbled, her voice breaking uncontrollably. "And so is he."

-00000-

Well? What do you reckon? This is just the prologue and if you're a bit confused you should perhaps read through the prequel to this, The Job. Thanks!