I do not own Pitch Black. I did not create Pitch Black. I do not own Riddick. I am simply borrowing him for my own amusement. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation.

I am guilty of creating Spook. I did create the supporting members of this story, and all characters not seen in Pitch Black.

He could feel a metal wall against his shoulder. He could faintly feel metal beneath the blankets that were wrapped around him. Air stirred idly about him, flowing past him, from above. There was heat all around him, the blankets heavy on him, but he felt chilled. Sweat dampened his skin, but he shuddered.

A hand laid itself on his cheek. He tried to fend it off but he could barely lift his arm.

"Lay still."

He knew that voice, but it was different.

It was bolder, the words tossed carelessly into the air, without worry of being overheard. It was stronger, too. All the timid tones were gone.

"Spook?" Was that pale croak really his voice? It didn't sound like it, but his chest ached with the words that clawed their way out of his throat. The blurry glow above him hushed him, the fingers moving in a soothing caress on his face.

"Now is the time for you to rest. You need your strength to fight the fever." He felt himself slide backwards, away from consciousness as he struggled against the inexorable force.

Spook leaned over him, frowning until his face relaxed, still cold, expressionless, but without the tightness around his eyes. Her hand remained on his harsh, stubble covered cheek, feeling the heat of his skin. Her eyes glinted in the low light.

Footsteps echoed down the narrow shaft to where she sat beside the huge man. Her face lifted, staring down towards the sound with a cold, curious mask over her face. The steps faltered, then faded into the distance. She turned back to the still form.

A crimson and rust colored rag, damp with water from the bucket beside her lightly ran over his skin, cleaning the patches of drying blood from the tawny skin, revealing deep pools of black under the surface of his skin, tracks of neat, even stitches on fresh wounds, lines of red, puckered stitches that crossed over older, pale lines of healed wounds.

Her fingers lightly pressed at the stitched, red marks, and she nodded to herself. At least they were clean.

Her eyes wandered over the bared skin, flitting from blackened patch to blackened patch, seeing here the actual outline of the fist that had made a certain mark, there a shape that was unmistakably a boot.

He had cried out once when she was moving him, when she had had her arm around his chest and he had come awake. Probably something broken.

She sighed, pulling the blankets back over his torso, nestling them gently around the broad shoulders.

She gazed down at him for a moment longer, then slipped away to the air duct out to the body of Slam.

The grate easily slipped back into place, and swift feet carried her into the darkness. Riddick would easily sleep until long after she returned, but she feared leaving him alone for too long.

Her bare feet bade no sound in the darkness as she ran, and no one looked up as she passed. Even in the mess when she gathered two bowls of food; the inmates ignored her, the guards didn't look at her. The one with the ladle didn't seem to see her being there, even as he filled the two bowls.

And she fled back to the hidey hole, the bowls clutched in her hands, only to lift the metal bucket of water and slip away with it to the showers she considered hers, to watch the red water swirl over the floor before the warm water filled the bucket. She paused, her hand on the door.

"Did you hear?" The voice was muffled by the door. "That plot of Talbot's backfired. His grenades went off. I told him not to take them... Apparently something went wrong. He, those two lackeys of his, and around 30 inmates. All dead."

"Really? I heard they were hunting Riddick. No way in hell they were gunna catch him. He's near untouchable in here. Always knows when there's a trap, and always gets away. I lay my bets on that."

"My odds are that they were going after that mad dog, and he got them instead. But then, you never can trust the bastards in here. Coulda been one of the ones he was working with."

"Yeah, that freak from the med unit. The one Riddick put there, all messed up. What was his name? Chronos? Chiron? Something from mythology...Did you hear if that was true?"

"Did you hear?"

The words came back to echo in her ears from a time long past.

"Did you hear? That girl's the one who put Collins down. She did something to him when they were trying to bend her to the work. He shot himself. Right through his own skull. Only reason he's still alive, they say, is because of how bad he was shaking. Missed all the vital crap in his brain."

She could barely hear the voices through the metal between the cab and herself. The youthful voice of the one guard, the low, noncommittal grunts of the older one. She trembled against the metal wall, pressed tightly into the corner. She didn't want to hear this.

"They said he was beating her pretty hard..."

"Don't you be making the mistake of feeling pity for the bitch. Psi ain't human, Kurt. They're dangerous animals. They should all be put down, I says. But the higher-ups say they're useful to us for solving crimes when they get trained proper and know their place."

"Still. I don't think-"

"Of course you don't! If you thought for a moment you'd realize that that little girl back there pretty much killed one of the best men in the force, a man who's trained Psi for the last 10 years. I miss the days when the only animals we worked with were dogs. Least you always knew what they were going to do, and there wasn't public outcry if you killed one for being vicious, 'cause they didn't look like people.

"Slam'll break her down, or it'll kill her. It always does."

Slam. Kiran had heard that one before. Slam was where the worst of the worst went. Tri-system killing spree committers. Men who did horrible things to innocents after taking over government search ships and using the standard rights of those same ships to stop traders and cruise liners. All the mad dogs ever caught.

"but I am a person," she whispered. "really I am. I swear I am..." But only the darkness heard her.