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.
Fear. Horror. Pain.
Changing the very beliefs of someone, making them think something. They can't mean it. That is wrong! They're testing me again! It's not happening!
She struggled, thrashed, mewed quietly, bound up in her blanket.
The shocksticks hurt, stung, sent her spine into spasms of agony. They were bellowing at her to force the memories on the man. They kept shouting, telling her that she had to do it. They told her that she would regret it if she didn't.
It can't be real. They can't mean it. They want to see if I'll give in.
Her thrashing grew more extreme, the panic-stricken whimpers faintly louder. He moved, watching her with slight concern, watching her for signs that she would hurt herself, try to hurt him. He had seen the flash of a shiv at her thigh.
Another blow from the shockstick. This one knocked her to her knees. The man in the other room was pleading with the officer to be let go. He wanted to return to his family. He didn't know what they were saying he had done. He had been watching his 4 year old daughter.
Kiran could hear his voice, clear, scared, through the speakers. He sounded as scared as she.
They can't mean for me to actually do it. They're supposed to be the good guys. I can't do something like that! He's innocent!
The officer with her raised his stick again, telling her the pain would stop when she made the man believe he had murdered the girl in the District.
The next blow landed. Kiran couldn't see. Her world was white and spots.
The officer bellowed for her to do it. His voice made the spots spin around her head, made gravity reverse.
Louder. The order, the same order, the insistence. Her feeble headshake. The searing lick of pain. The blow from the shockstick.
The girl arched again, convulsing, crying.
The spots were growing, merging. The edges of the world were already indistinct. Again, his order.
"Do it!"
"NO!" She threw herself out of her blanket, eyes wide, sweat soaking her filthy shirt. She struck his chest, her small fist landing on his shoulder, her open palm on his arm. Her cheek was against his throat. He stiffened. She made a small whimpering noise, her body shaking fitfully. He pushed her back onto her blanket.
The wide eyes then focused, finding his cold, still face, his arm stretched out to her, his hand pushing her back.
"Whatever it was, it was a dream." His brows met over his deep liquid eyes. "Be quiet, rabbit." He was listening to the tunnel, head tilted to the side. He closed his eyes, concentrating. Ignoring her, her fast breathing, her panicked gasps for air. Then he swore. "Good one, rabbit. Now they know we're here."
Her eyes widened, and she reached for the torch, hugging it to her, biting her lip.
"I'm gunna deal with this."
He reached one long arm toward the crate, halted, her fingers lightly touching his arm.
"What about me?" her voice was small, terrified. "If they ghost you, they'll come in for me."
He only shrugged. She let her hand fall, gathered her books.
"Fine then."
A strip of cloth secured the torch to her hip and thigh, secure against her leg. The thin, woolen blankets, folded neatly into a rather flat square, were tucked at her back with yet another cloth strip, the books tied within it. She tied the little pouch around her wrist. Simple. Efficient. Practiced. She clicked off the torch, still staring at him.
He stooped, pulling the crate aside, dropping to his knees, pulling the shiv from its hiding space at the small of his back. Hands and knees silent, body jammed into the tunnel, so tight around his broad form, he inched forward. Ahead, in the dark, he heard shifting, worried muttering. He continued forward. He heard her hand on the floor, silently hissing as she slid it forward, almost to his foot.
The grate was opened, and Riddick could see a pair of legs, pacing one step in either way, nervous. The scent of fear, anxiety, sweat. It reverberated down the tunnel to him, the short distance only amplifying the reactions of the man who swore at the opening.
Riddick tightened his grip on the shiv.
He inched ahead, sniffing, listening.
One voice muttering. One pair of feet shifting.
Closer.
In a flash, like a serpent, the shiv lashed out, ripping clean and sharp. The metallic tooth of steel loosed a spray of coppery mist, a cry of agony, a gathering pool of blood. Muscles and tendons were shorn, just above the knee.
The would-be attacker collapsed. He howled in pain.
Riddick exploded out of the tight passageway, leaping atop the other. The shiv slunk into flesh, a wet sound, rather hollow. Blood pooled at his knee, where the wound, a nice stab to the small of the back, just to the left of the spine, bled, the ichor flowing hot in the dark.
Behind him, he heard the scramble of the girl, slipping briefly in the blood as she took off down the corridor, her thigh hitting his side as she pressed past him, squirming around him in the narrow opening of the tunnel.
That's right. Run, little rabbit.
He yanked the struggling man back into the bowels of the wall. The sharp cry ended suddenly, cut short by a sickening, slurping, wrenching, crunching sound.
He carefully cleaned the blood off his shiv on the man's stained shirt, a shirt becoming more crimson in the dark as each moment passed. Riddick eased himself out of the tunnel, a smile twisting his lip.
Now where has that rabbit gone?
"Bad choice, boy."
The voice behind Riddick was a slow drawl. He slowly turned his head, vertebrae in his solid neck popping as he did so.
"Khyron." His gravely rasp was almost pleasant, conversational. He cast his eyes over the six men at the stocky dark man's back. "What's a girl like you doin' in a place like this?"
"You might just want to drop that shiv. Ya'll are in enough trouble already."