Summary: Aftermath of Jack's flight from placement office and a brief sketch of her life story in her own words.

Notes: I played with a POV shift in this from 3rd person to a brief 1st person. I feel it works better and is more readable than just a big block of dialog. Let me know what you think.

Chapter Six

Jack jerked awake at the sound of screaming. She realized that it was her own voice echoing back to her along the length of the pipe. Another dream, only this one had been different. The details of the nightmare came back to her. Instead of the hammerhead that usually haunted her, this time Walter Greeland chased her through the bone-strewn landscape. Once again, she rolled under a large protective bone. Greeland leapt atop it and started yelling invectives at her as he pounded on the brittle covering. As he began to break through, his mouth opened. The knifelike teeth of the hammerheads filled his gaping maw causing her to scream with unbridled terror.

"Freaky," Jack said shaking off the remnants of the dream. She ran her hands over her scalp smoothing the two-inch hair away from her face. She then rolled her head around popping the vertebra at the base of her neck. Finally, she stretched fully along the length of the pipe almost like a cat. Jack winced as her muscles protested. "Okay, so sleeping in a drainage pipe- not as comfortable as it once was, huh, Jack? I think I'm gettin' soft."

At last fully awake, Jack clambered to the exit of the pipe and dropped lightly to the ground. The sky was dark except for Helion Prime's signature energy beacons lancing upward into the darkness. She keyed the light on her chrono and was startled when the display read '01:45'.

"SHIT!" she exclaimed, turning to scramble up the short slope that led to the fence opening. "Imam's gonna have kittens!"

At the fence, she quickly checked to make sure no one was around to see her then slipped over. As soon as her feet hit the ground, Jack took off running. She raced home as quickly as she could, and then tore up the pathway to the front door of the house. Here, she stopped briefly to catch her breath and decide what to say. Her heart pounded in her chest from having run the two kilometers or so from her hiding place… or was it from fear at what Imam might say and do about her extreme tardiness?

Jack steeled herself for the confrontation that was sure to come and then pressed her hand to the lock pad beside the door. The lock clicked open and the door swung silently inward, on well-oiled, old-fashioned hinges. Jack stepped cautiously through the portal and looked around. Her body tensed almost as though she expected an attacker to spring out at her. She quickly spied Imam, sitting in a corner of the main living area in one of a pair of large, wingback chairs. The only light in the large room came from several candelabras holding thick, waxy pillars.

Jack moved carefully forward; in the dim light, she couldn't tell if he was awake or asleep. He hadn't yelled or even spoken yet, so she thought perhaps he had fallen asleep waiting for her. She got to a distance of about 3 meters from him and realized that he was, indeed, awake as he turned his eyes to meet hers. He seemed old, weary, and rather sad- a vague shadow of the pleasant, optimistic man that he normally was. They regarded each other for a long moment, neither moving nor speaking. Imam finally broke the stillness by waving to the other large chair.

"Please, Jack, join me. We need to speak. It is a conversation that, I believe, has been delayed for too long," he requested quietly.

"Imam, I…" she started to explain, but he silenced her with a raised hand.

"Jack, child, please. Listen first," he said his voice a low soft rumble. "I am not angry. Neither about your flight from the placement office this afternoon, nor about you staying out so late. I was worried when you did not return for supper and I must admit that I am a bit hurt that you did not choose to share your pain with me instead of running away. But, I am not angry."

At the mention of supper, Jack's stomach rumbled traitorously in the quiet room and she realized that the last time she had eaten was breakfast that morning before they went to the placement office. She pressed her fist against it and glanced sheepishly at Imam to see if he'd heard. Apparently, he had; he gave her a wan smile then stood.

"Wait here, please," he said then walked to the kitchen. He quickly returned with a large plate of food and a glass of juice. He placed it on the small table between the chairs. "You must be famished. Please, eat. I can speak while you assuage your hunger."

Needing no further enticement, Jack sat and dug into the plate of food with ravenous gusto. Imam smiled at her obvious enthusiasm for the long overdue meal. He then lapsed into silence as though trying to find the words to express what he wanted to say. By the time he spoke, she was already over halfway through the generous plate, and her eating had slowed to a more normal pace.

Imam spoke in a soft, even, concern-laced voice, "First, with regard to the placement office, I wish that you had stayed a bit longer. After you left, I spoke to Mr. Greeland's superior, Mr. Sung. I showed him your test scores and explained how Mr. Greeland had treated you. Mr. Sung agreed with me, there is absolutely no reason to believe that you cheated on those tests. The accusations that Mr. Greeland leveled at you were rooted in Greeland's own prejudices and had no basis in fact. Based on your outstanding test scores, Mr. Sung has offered you your choice of placement at any of several excellent schools. You have but to choose what you wish to study."

He stopped speaking momentarily, gathering his thoughts. A look of wonderment stole across Jack's face. She could go to a flight school; she could study piloting and navigation. She started to speak, but Imam delayed her once again with a raised hand.

"I know that you are used to being on your own," he continued, leaning forward for emphasis. "That fact was self-evident, even when we first met. I realize that you can make-do without another's help. But child, you no longer have to make your own way. I am here to help you with your burdens.

"Please, you haven't chosen to share your tale with me, but I would genuinely like to hear it. Perhaps, if I can understand from whence you come, we will be better able to plot a course for your life that will allow you to make the greatest use of your talents."

Imam was quiet once more. He leaned back in his chair and regarded her levelly. Jack stared down at her plate, idly pushing a few stray bits of fat from the meat around with her fork, then set the plate back on the table between them. She slipped off her shoes, glad for once, that Imam had talked her into wearing a pair of simple loafers instead of her boots; the loafers were a lot easier to take off. She pulled her legs up in front of her and rested her chin on her knees with her arms wrapped protectively around her shins.

Jack glanced at Imam, who sat patiently waiting in the chair across from her. She wasn't comfortable talking about herself and her past, but she figured she owed him, considering how kind he'd been. Haltingly, Jack began speaking…


I was born on one of the border worlds. A little backwards, nowhere, mining colony called Galatea. I don't really remember my parents; they died when I was too young. I got the story of what happened from my records before I left.

Both my parents were miners. On Galatea, the primary product is cerelite; you've probably heard of it, since it's used in a lot of ships' systems. Unfortunately, the stuff has a tendency to decompose into a rather volatile gas. According to my file, it was a blowout. The mine had filled with the gas and then there was a spark. Next thing you know, I'm an orphan.

It's a pretty common story. Life's just tough on the border worlds. You'll find lots of kids out there with about the same tale- there sure were a lot of us in the system on Galatea. Because there are so many kids, they use a group, foster-care system. Basically, folks get paid by Galatean Mining Incorporated to look after all the orphans. Foster parent is a bona fide profession there. The foster system is even advertised as part of the 'benefits' package when a miner signs on; it's the company's way of 'looking out for the families of the workers'. Whatever.

The truth is that the system tends to shuffle kids around a lot. I once played a game where you moved small weights around on a board to try to get the board to balance. That's pretty much what the GMI foster care system felt like; only, I was one of the weights.

All total, I spent time in thirty-six different foster homes. Most of them weren't too bad. Some were pretty awful, but fortunately, the awful ones were all relatively short stays. I had it better than a lot of kids, especially after I started school, and the teachers realized that I was smart. GMI generally makes sure the smart kids get put into the better homes. I think it's kind of a return on investment thing; they figure that if they help the smart kids along, they can pull them into the workforce. Once again, whatever—like you need to be a fucking genius to scrabble for ore.

At any rate, I figured out quickly that I really enjoyed studying. I didn't do it to get extra attention; it was kind of an escape for me. I devoured anything the teachers would give me, which was a lot considering the GMI policy on smart kids. Of course, the other kids in the foster system tended to pick on the smart ones a lot more than on anyone else. Apparently, they didn't get the note about the policy. Or maybe they did and it pissed them off, so they decided to make life a living hell for any 'smart kids' who came their way. Either way, it doesn't matter; the end result is the same.

When I was six, one of the older boys beat me up and locked me in a closet because he caught me reading for fun. Fortunately, the company organizes the foster homes by age, so he was only a couple of years older than me and he didn't hurt me too bad. He told me that if he caught me reading again, he'd feed me my reader. I spent about ten hours in the closet before the foster-'mom' realized that I hadn't shown up for dinner. You can do a lot of thinking in ten hours, even if you're only six years old.

While I was trapped, I decided I had to do one of two things: get tough and defend myself or stop studying and play dumb. There was no way I was gonna play dumb, so I got tough. I found books in the database about anatomy. I'd looked for stuff about how to fight, but those books were blocked for my age group- something about 'protecting' us from violence. Yeah, right.

But the anatomy stuff was available. I guess they wanted to encourage the kids with a scientific bent to become doctors or something. Or maybe, they just figured that kids my age wouldn't be interested. I like life science almost as much as math and physics, so they were really interesting reading, even though I had to slog through lots of words I didn't know. Most importantly, I figured out where you could hit someone to hurt them.

The next time the bully caught me reading, I gave him a little surprise. I kicked him in the crotch and then punched him in the neck. I kinda got in trouble for that one, but no one bothered me anymore. At least not until, I was bounced to the next foster home; then, I had to prove myself again.

That was always the way at a new place. I'd have to fight some big tough kid to get the other ones to leave me alone. Naturally, I didn't always win, but if you fight enough you get good at it. You learn things by actually fighting that you can't learn from an anatomy book. Plus, if you don't back down, the other kids learn to respect you. That's worth something too.

When you move around that much, you don't make many friends. I mean, what's the point? You're just gonna have to make new ones two months or three months or five months later. So I turned to my books, they kept me from being as lonely.

When I was eight, I got sick. Real sick. Hospital sick. It was some sort of respiratory thing: the kind of sickness that crops up from time to time on new planets. I was really out of it for about three months. I had to have inhaled antivirals several times each day and I had tubes coming of just about every hole they could put them in. Once they'd killed the disease out of my system, I still needed another five months to recover. It was the longest time I spent in one place, ever. I actually made a couple of friends that time. Then the doctors gave me a clean bill of health and shoved me back into the foster system again.

In the next year, they shuffled me through eight different foster homes. Sometimes, I even lost track of which one I was in. I remember a bunch of times I was scolded for calling a foster parent by the wrong name. It was a really shitty time in my life and I'd been thing about cutting and running for a while.

Then I found out that they were gonna move me again- another new 'home'. This one was way out in the wild section of Galatea. I'd heard rumors about it from some of the other kids- not a nice place. The foster 'dad' had a thing for little girls and his wife liked to watch. Why had no one reported the home to the authorities? They had. The authorities never found 'just cause' to shut them down. Apparently, this particular sick-fuck happened to have a brother on the board of GMI. It didn't matter how many times a kid reported him; no one was gonna take the word of a bunch of orphan kids over that of a guy with his connections. The fucking system, again.

I'd been lucky up to that point. The worst I'd experienced was tendency toward apathy from the 'parents'. I realized that my luck had run out. I'd had enough. I decided to leave.

My home at that time was in Galatea City the capital. Now, compared to New Mecca or some of the other big cities on Helion Prime and the core worlds, it was really small, but it did have a big spaceport because all the cerelite was out-shipped through there. The night before, I was supposed to go to the new home, I broke into my foster father's office and stole all the credits I could find. It wasn't much, just a few hundred UD, but it was enough to buy passage on an outgoing transport—one a lot like the Hunter-Gratzner. I was nine years old.

I didn't really expect anyone to come after me. I'd heard of older kids leaving from time to time. No one ever really did anything, except report the vacancy so that GMI could send another kid to fill the gap. Oh, the company people probably put a notice on the net or something; I think that's standard procedure with runaways. But, word travels pretty slowly from the border worlds and I doubt most people expected a nine-year-old to make it off world.

And then, I traveled—seeing the galaxy. Mostly I pretended to be a boy. People mess with you less when they think you're a guy. I was well aware what could happen to a little girl who got picked up by slavers or other unsavory types. There are still those who go after boys, but it's way more dangerous for girls.

Occasionally, I hooked up with couples kinda like Shazza and Zeke- prospector types who took pity on me- for a ride to the next stop. I actually spent a couple of months with one couple, Lexa and Jan Vladovich. They knew I was a girl—kinda hard to live with folks for that long without them finding out. They were nice and I liked them. But then, I got bored with the planet they were working and I left again.

I guess it's because I spent my early years on a border planet without much civilization, but I've never really liked the outer unsettled areas. I like cities. In cities, you can fade into the background. Plus, when you are a kid living off your wits and guts, cities are a much 'richer' area. Yeah, I'm talking about petty crime. By the time, I was ten; I was a proficient pickpocket. I realize that it's not right to steal from people, but I did what I had to for survival. For what it's worth, I always stole from people who looked like they could afford the loss. I know that doesn't really justify stealing, but it made me feel a little better.

And I kept studying; all during my travels, I would study and read as much as possible. I hoped that if I studied hard enough, I might be able to qualify for a flight school, even though I hadn't had a 'normal' education. I'd brought my reader along so I was able to download books at every stop. Most places have pretty good libraries, even the little backwater planets. And libraries are one of those places where you can just hang out and no one will bother you as long as you don't make trouble.

Some of the big cities on the core planets even had real books in their libraries. I couldn't take them with me, of course, but I'd sit in the library and read. I love the real books, especially novels. There's just something about reading an old story from real paper that makes it special. Mostly, though, I used a reader. As you probably know, the library books expire after a couple of weeks, but I figured out how to crack 'em so that I could keep a book on my reader for as long as I liked.

Of course, traveling so much, I spent a lot of time in cryo: more than most people spend in a lifetime. As best I can calculate, it's been about eighteen to twenty years of actual time since I left Galatea, although I've only 'lived' about four and a half years of it. Yeah, if I hadn't left, I'd be almost as old as Riddick. Odd, huh?

Then I got on the Hunter-Gratzner. I picked it at random because it was cheap and it was going to the Tangiers system. I'd never been there and it sounded interesting, what with the prison and all. Oh well, I wanted interesting. I just never expected things to get quite as interesting as they did.


"I guess, you know the rest," Jack said looking up at Imam. He had listened attentively, without interruption, throughout her recount of her life.

"That is quite a story, child," Imam said. "I had suspected that you were a runaway from somewhere, but I had no idea of the extent of your travels."

Jack shrugged and grinned, "I don't really like to talk about it much. Most folks don't believe me even if I do. I told Shazza some, but I think she thought I was making it up to seem tougher while we were on the planet."

"Jack, my child, you know there is one thing I have wondered that you have never actually volunteered. What is your given name?"

"Damn, Imam! I haven't told you?" Jack said laughing with a surprised expression. "It's Jacqueline- Jacqueline Audrey Page. But, I've gone by Jack for as long as I can remember, even before I ran away. It made pretending to be a boy easier because I didn't have to remember to answer to a name that wasn't mine, but Jack is who I am."

"Indeed, you are, child," Imam agreed, smiling at her. "Indeed, you are.

"You do realize how fortunate you are that nothing ever happened to you while you traveled; do you not? You have not glossed over the details in an attempt to spare an old man, have you?"

Jack shrugged again, "Naw, not really. I'll admit there were a couple of close calls, but I was never raped or anything if that's what you're hitting at. Like I said, I'd already learned to keep my head down before I left Galatea. Besides, most of the folks, who would hurt a kid, are looking for easy prey and that really ain't me. I'm too damn tough and stubborn for most of them to bother."

"Perhaps you are at that, young one," he agreed with a chuckle, and then asked, "You said that you were nine when you left Galatea, so you are now thirteen?"

"Fourteen, actually," Jack informed him. "In all the fuss, with settling in after we got here and the wedding and everything, I kinda lost track. I just got around to figuring it up a couple weeks ago, I turned fourteen about two weeks after we arrived."

"Jack, why did you not tell me? We should have had a celebration."

"Ah, you don't need to do that, Imam. I never put much stake in birthdays, anyway."

"Well, then, we shall simply have to change that. A birthday is a time to give thanks for one's blessings and to allow others who love you to give thanks that you are part of their lives; it is a celebration of life. Believe me, yours is definitely a life worth celebrating, and I am most certainly thankful to have you as a part of my life. "

Jack blushed at his words and felt tears prickle her eyes. The GMI foster care system had never observed birthdays for its charges, except to shift a kid from one home to another, and that hadn't been an event to celebrate. Then, when she'd been on her own, they had come and gone like her fourteenth birthday without her even noting them until after the fact. Imam's sincere statement warmed her from within. It was similar to what she'd felt when Riddick held her on the shuttle, but there were also significant differences. She did not know how to express the emotions she was feeling. She swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat and tried to let her eyes express everything she wished she could put into words. Then, she said simply, "Thanks, Imam."

Imam leaned toward her with a warm, loving smile. He claimed one of her hands, squeezed it fondly, and then told her, "Jack, my child, you are most welcome: in my life and in my heart. I could not love you more if you were my own daughter."

Until that point, she had kept him at arms length, reluctant to really let him inside her barriers. Now, those barriers came crashing down and Jack truly opened her heart to this gentle man, who had so unselfishly taken her in and attempted to make a home for her. Unable to contain her emotions any longer, Jack uncurled from her chair and hugged Imam tightly. She clung to him for a long moment as joyful tears trickled down her cheeks, trying to pour all the love she felt into the embrace.

When she released him, she curled into her chair emotionally drained and once again wrapped her arms around her legs. They sat in companionable silence for a long while.

Finally, Imam spoke, "You know, Jack, there is still one quandary we have not addressed."

At Jack's questioning look, he smiled again, "On which path do you wish to steer your life? As I said earlier, you have your choice of virtually any school you would like. What is it that you would like to do?"

Jack hugged her legs more tightly and shyly stared at her knees for a moment. She, then, looked at Imam with a broad smile, her green eyes sparkling with bright enthusiasm: "I wanna fly, Imam. I wanna travel and see the rest of the universe. I think I wanna be a navigator, or maybe a pilot like Fry."

To herself she also added, And, I wanna find Riddick. Even if he doesn't want to be found, I need to see him again.