Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity, however I do promise to return him. At some point in the undisclosed future. With no damages sustained in the time I had him, and his charming personality intact. 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.
She woke slowly, the scent of him strong and earthy about her but without even the fading hint of warmth from his body. The room was cool, the air heavy, scented with grease and dirt, tainted with the faint hint of uncirculated air. She held the coarse blanket to her with one shivering arm, pushing her lanky, mousy-hued hair out from in front of her silvery eyes with the other hand.
Again, that nagging feeling pulled at the corner of her mind, taunting her with a hint of familiarity yet reeking of the unknown. It pulled at her attention, pulled her mind inward.
There were not supposed to be strange things within her mind; she had spent far too much time reclused within herself to have left any regions unmapped, any corners of herself unexposed before the scrutiny of her inner self. She strode through herself towards it, striding the familiar trods within as she had many a night in the darkest pits. She had walked in here, amidst memories, far too often; she knew the steps forward and back, and still there was this strangeness here. Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations - always darker, emptier, simpler than these; she narrowed her eyes. This was too bright, too clean. It didn't match. It was new.
And that wasn't right.
There was no "new" in this cluttered place; all the cobwebs came from ages past and all had their familiar reasons. But not this.
This had a particular shininess to it, a sense of crisp newness, yet a antiseptic cleanliness. It shivered in a new light than the rest of her cluttered mind, a light that was familiar but not recognized.
Spook moved towards it, a scowl on her face.
It moved away just as surely, seeming to give a little shake, like a startled fowl might.
Curiouser and curiouser.
It pulled away from her; she lashed out to pin it to the floor of the microcosm within her mind, but it shrieked and twisted as she made contact. It leapt away from her mental grasp, fleeing to the outside of her, darting and twisting among the stars as Spook, baying with anger, fell upon its trail.
It ducked and it rolled. It leapt aside as she rushed, doubling back upon itself. It left no track upon the sky, but she followed it as surely as a hound after a rabbit.
And it dove planetward, spiraling and darting amidst a thousand of thousand voices, amidst a swarming horde of shining lives. They jostled as they moved in their little lives, busying themselves in their routines on the planet so far below her body, their minds bumping hers as they shimmered and shone before her.
But she spared them not a glance; her eyes were fixed on a particular shine, a particular mental itch that she fully intended to scratch.
And that one stared in shock at the mental face of the pale girl, hovering in the darkened room on the planet, silver eyes blazing at this intruder, this stranger, this interloper into her mind.
Spook stared with rage at another Psi.
A Psi in uniform.
I know you, her ghostly projection mouthed.