Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.

He didn't like it, sitting in the cramped space of this hole. The light from the torch echoed in a peculiar way, an eerie way that wasn't right. Sounds were either muffled or amplified. The walls loomed close around him, and the chill in the air seemed to flow in, but not from anywhere he could identify. The book he had been fitfully thumbing through returned to the pile, and his large hand reached out to the torch. The light disappeared.

With a cry, the blanketed bundle exploded. The girl was scrambling for the light, her hands shaking as she lit it, eyes wide, breath rapid. She fixed her stare on him, still holding the torch in her hands, shrinking away from him. He simply raised his hand to shield the light.

"Thought you were asleep, rabbit."

She only nodded, still clutching the light to her.

"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?" He almost smiled when the quip earned him what she obviously felt passed for a fierce look. "Poor rabbit." He glanced around the hole again.

"There's no way out but the one." Her voice trembled. "That's what you're looking for, right?"

His shined eyes stared at her, boring into her, looking through her. He tilted his shaved head. He cleared his throat. He let his gaze wander to the crate, to the opening it hid, then around the small room.

She shook herself out of the blankets, extinguished the torch, moved the crate. On hands and knees she entered the shaft.

"Going to see if it's clear," was all she said before slipping away.

You're getting stupid, girl, she berated herself, feeling the cold tunnel around her, carefully placing one hand in front of the other, sliding forward one knee, then the other. Killers outside her hole, killers inside her hole, maybe she was suddenly acting on some hidden urge to kill herself. That brought her up short, halfway down the tunnel. Not a good thought. Shaking her head, she pressed on, willing her senses and attention to their fullest.

Something wasn't right.

The grate was slightly bent. Not opened, but someone had tried, and tried fairly well.

She crept forward another few inches, willing her breath quiet, her hands silent. Inch by inch she carefully moved ahead. Close to the grate, she inhaled through her nose as quietly as she could.

Dust. Rock. Cement. Metal. The smell of faint blood, the scent of sweat. Boot leather. She closed her eyes in the dark. She listened. The soft sigh of the air through the shaft, through the corridor. The breathing of the Slam. The soft shift of someone too long on their feet.

Hands, feet moved backwards, silent as she could be, she crept back. She held her breath, counting the distance until her foot brushed the crate. Around the crate, what had been safety, now house to one of the men from Slam. He pulled the crate across the opening before she had a chance, his eyes glinting their cold light in the inky night of the hidey-hole. She reached for the torch, turning it on low.

"Well?" In his hands was again her book.

She simply shook her head, staring at the book in his large hands as she settled into her blanket again.

"Dad, what's going on?" Kiran was in shock. Her mother looked like she was about to start sobbing. Her father-

Her father seemed to be about to start haggling with these strangers over her.

But that made no sense. She wasn't old enough yet to negotiate her own contract, but surely this wasn't the way it was supposed to go, like she was some animal being sold off! She was a human being! This wasn't the way things worked. She shook her head, staring in confusion at the man she thought she knew, at the strangers who had brought this delirium into her home, infected the ones she loved with this strange, sudden disregard for their own kin, their own blood.

She looked to her mother again. The poor woman had started to shake, and Kiran rushed over to her. "Mum!"

"Go to your room, Kiran. Please." The poor woman could barely whisper to her daughter, but Kiran saw the look in her eyes.

Without a backward glance, she rushed up the stairs.

Her room, lined with its shelves of stuffed animals and books, was no solace. The windows were shut tight against the warm rays of the early evening, the tapping fingers of the windswept leaves.

She grabbed up a duffle bag, stuffing clothes into it, her hairbrush, her toothbrush. Standing in front of the shelf near her bed, she reached up to the books. Lewis Carroll, Burroughs, Homer. She grabbed for her books, her hands closing on only three before her father came up the stairs, rushing before the strangers. Closing her bag, Kiran turned to face him.

"Is this any way to act, Kiran? These are our guests." Her father was frowning, his hands wringing before him. "They want to give you a job. It's quite an honor!"

He had said something, and now watched her, waiting.

"W-what?"

"I asked what you saw out there." He raised one eyebrow, a dark arch over his cold, ice-shard eyes.

She shook the cobwebs from inside her brain. "I don't know how many. Didn't see them." He snorted in response. "But they are there." His brows lowered, settling on the bridge of his nose, dark vultures, or storm clouds. "Boot leather. Shifting feet. Please believe me."

The eerie eyes regarded her, his head resting back against the cold wall. He sniffed the air. Fear. Sweat. Dust. The soft scent of her. Nothing to suggest she was lying, that she had any reason to lie. He tilted his head slightly, watching her edge back a little more, shifting herself further away from him inside the tiny room. Like there was somewhere else to hide.

"All right rabbit. It's still your game. For now."