Chapter Sixteen
Because her eyes were covered, Jack's journey through the labyrinthine halls of the complex seemed to take an exceedingly long time, but actually, it probably took only a few moments. Eventually, Jack felt the chair come to a stop and the goon swiveled the chair around.
Her ears tingled as she tried to discern as much about her environment as possible simply by listening. She heard her keeper step from behind her, and then she felt herself moving backward until the chair stopped with an audible click against a solid object.
Jack could hear others moving around her and one of them finally removed the cover from her face. The room in which she found herself had brushed metal plates on the lower part of the walls while the upper walls were stark white tiles. Several technicians moved around, busily working with some sort of medical-looking equipment that was unfamiliar to Jack. Directly in front of her, through a long window, she could see several people illuminated by the glow of computer screens. When she craned her head around to look behind her she caught a glimpse of a table with several large pieces of machinery directed at it. Overall, the entire scene was like something out of a bad horror vid, except that no vid ever conveyed the ominous sense of dread that welled up in her as she surveyed her current surroundings.
The flickering woman, Aereon, had laid the seeds of trepidation when she spoke of a "procedure". Those seeds were now sprouting into outright fear as Jack realized that these people would likely go to whatever lengths were necessary to extract the information they wanted from her. Her mind swam with indecision and not a rising panic.
Should I just tell them what they want to know? How can I sell out Riddick? Oh, God. What would Riddick do?
Jack took a few deep breaths and felt her anger returning. It helped block out the fear so she latched onto it and fed it. As her anger grew, she made a decision. Come on, Jack. You know what he'd do. He'd fight 'em. To the bitter end if necessary. And so will I! These bastards ain't gettin' a voluntary word out of me. She set her jaw and fixed her eyes forward while the technicians continued to scuttle around her.
After a few moments, one of the technicians pressed a button on the chair in which Jack was bound, and she heard motors whir to life inside of it. The chair shifted with her still in it until it formed a stretcher with her on top. Jack tried to slip free as the thing transformed, but her restraints remained snug. When it was complete, a pair of techs unclipped the top from the wheeled base and slid it backwards onto the exam table, which Jack had spotted the array of medical equipment over.
Jack kept her jaw set, determined not to let her fear get the best of her. She focused on breathing, using the meditation techniques she had learned in her martial arts classes. The technicians continued working around her. None of the techs acknowledged her directly, as if she were an inanimate object. Jack felt the irritation rising in her and worked on feeding it. If she got angry enough, she could endure whatever they had in store for her. It was fear that made her weak.
One of the techs glued electrodes to Jack's head and chest. An array of monitors came to life as the sensors fed Jack's vital information to the attached computers. There was a prick of pain in her arm as a second tech inserted an IV and then efficiently taped it to her arm.
Aereon drifted into Jack's field of vision just as Jack had worked up a good steam. She glared at the insubstantial witch but otherwise did not acknowledge her presence. Aereon's face bore an enigmatic neutral expression as she regarded Jack.
"I wanted to give you one last opportunity to cooperate, my dear," she said. "You must realize now that we will find out what we want to know. It would be so much easier if you would just tell us what you know about Riddick and where we can find him. Then we can send you back to your life…"
At Aereon's mention of her life, Rob's face swam to the top of her mind and Jack blinked away tears. She swallowed impulsively around the lump that formed in her throat. She glanced around the room and then gritted her teeth and glared at the woman standing beside her. From deep inside her, she called on all her reserves of strength to help her through this ordeal. She imagined Riddick standing beside her to bolster her resolve. Then she smiled coldly at Aereon: "No fucking way, bitch. You aren't getting shit from me!"
Aereon stepped back and a tech injected something into Jack's IV. She began to feel detached, floating away from the reality of the hard table and medical equipment. Her vision swam and went grey as the substance made its way through her body. Jack's mind wandered unbidden over the events of the past few days, but she felt detached from them as they played out in front of her. With effort, she pushed the thoughts away and once again focused on her breathing.
What the hell did they give me? she wondered. She wasn't sure whether she had spoken aloud or if it was simply a thought. Damn, gotta be strong. Gotta focus! Whatever that shit was, they must figure it'll weaken me enough to get me to talk. Can't do that. What would Riddick do? Be strong, that's what. Gotta be strong for Riddick.
Jack breathed deeply trying to focus and clear her brain, but she felt weak. Tears of frustration threatened when the fog refused to clear from her mind. A wash of intense loneliness swept through her. She hadn't felt that particular emotion in a long time. Not since, she had come to terms with Riddick leaving and made a life for herself in New Mecca.
From out of the grey fog, she heard a familiar melodic voice call to her: "Jack."
"What?"
"Jack, I need you to remember. Remember Riddick, my dear. All the details."
Jack searched in the fog for the source of the voice, but she couldn't find it. She knew it had to be Aereon, but she couldn't seem to work up the anger she had felt toward the woman earlier. All she felt was the lost loneliness floating in the grey void.
"Come on, Jack. Think of Riddick. Remember him. Remember the time you were with him. Let those memories come. See them in your mind."
"No, I can't. Gotta be strong," Jack whispered into the mist. She turned and began walking in the fog as it swirled around her. Vague shapes moved in the distance just beyond her range of vision, robbing her of her ability to determine what they were. They served to emphasize the sensation of being misplaced and alone.
"It's okay, Jack. Just relax and remember. Remember Riddick. Let your mind go back to that time. Everything will be fine if you just remember."
Jack didn't answer this time, but she began to run, trying to get away from the voice and its siren song urging her to give in. Jack tripped and fell to her knees as a sob escaped her throat. It would be so easy to just give in to Aereon's urging. Against her will, an image of Riddick came to mind. It was from when they were on the shuttle after escaping Chillingsworth: Riddick leaning back in the pilot's chair grinning at her, goggles pushed up on his forehead with shadows playing over his face.
Jack felt a touch on her shoulder and looked up. Riddick was crouched beside her, looking just as he had in her memory from the shuttle. He ran his hand over her head and then rested it against her cheek as his thumb brushed at the tears that had mutinously leaked from her eyes. "Y'okay, kid?" he asked just as he had then. Jack felt the urge to grab hold of him and not let go, to let him fill the loneliness of the gray void.
"Yes, Jack. That's it. Remember…"
"NO!" she screamed and jerked back, knotting her fists against her temples. "You're NOT real!" Riddick vanished in a puff of dark mist that was quickly absorbed back into unending grayness of the void.
"You will remember, Jack. Sooner or later, you will remember and you will tell us. Come, my dear, let it be sooner. Just relax into it and everything will be all right."
No, everything won't be all right. Robby is gone and there's no changing that.
The memory of Rob in the street after he was shot leapt to her mind. Just as the memory surfaced, Rob appeared out of the mist. His abdomen was covered in sticky red, which also coated his hands. He glanced down at them and then looked back at her. He took a step toward her. An expression of pain distorted his features and he gasped, "Jack…"
"NO!" Jack screamed and shut her eyes against this newest illusion., "Rob's not here either," she forcefully told herself. "It's just your mind, Jack. It's the drugs. You gotta resist. Be strong."
Jack called to mind the drainpipe in which she had spent so much time after her arrival on New Mecca. She imagined herself blocking off the entrance and putting up a wall behind her so that no one could reach her or hurt her. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in the pipe just as she had imagined. She leaned back against the wall and wrapped her arms around her legs.
"Come now, Jack. That is no way to be. There is no reason for you to hide from us. We mean you no harm. We want to be your friends. We want to help you."
From her spot in the pipe, the voice was harder to hear as though it couldn't carry through the barriers she had erected. To occupy her mind, so that her thoughts did not drift to Riddick or Rob, she began going over the preflight checklist for faster-than-light spacecraft. She had memorized the list for one of her classes and it was long and boringly detailed. She forced her mind to focus only on the list.
"Jack, stop that!" the voice commanded from very far away now. "You must think of Riddick."
Step Five. Initialize the communications system. Verify internal and external communications. Step Six. Run the Grav generator test. The generator should be able to create a field differential running between .5 to 100 delta Gs. Step Seven. Test the atmospheric regulators. The rebreather coils should indicate normal atmospheric pressure levels for oxygen, nitrogen and argon. Other gases should appear in only trace quantities with no generation of CO or other known toxins...
"What the hell is this? Some sort of checklist?" a new voice spoke in obvious irritation. This one was much deeper than the song of Aereon's speech. As the words filtered to her, she realized that they were capturing her thoughts somehow. She quashed the spike of fear that this new insight caused in her and focused more resolutely on the checklist.
"She's resisting us. I expected her to do so. Do not worry. We've only just begun," Aereon replied. To the tech, she commanded: "Up the dosage."
Jack felt a tingle begin in her arm and start to spread through her body and she was suddenly cold. She glanced at the walls of her sanctuary and noticed tiny cracks beginning to spread just as the tingle spread. She had finished the checklist so she started running through the lists of calculus formulas she had memorized, stepping through each proof in minute detail.
"Math, now?" the deep voice rumbled.
"Quiet!" Aereon commanded and then continued, speaking to Jack. "Relax, my dear. You need to remember for us. You need to think of Riddick and the times you were together. Remember the Hunter-Gratzner. Remember what happened."
Jack kept focusing on lesson after lesson from school, forcing her mind onto the activity to avoid giving in to the memories that threatened to bubble up in response to Aereon's urging. Several times, she felt the tingle and wash of cold as she was given ever more of the drug.
The walls of her hole now had large cracks running through them and she could see specks of light peeking through several chinks. The voices were also closer as though they were immediately on the other side of the wall and she was having a much harder time focusing on the random information she called up.
"What is with this kid?" the deep voice asked some time later. "She's had enough to take out someone twice her size."
"I don't know why you're surprised," Aereon said to him. "You've read the dossier and seen her DNA scans. This sort of metabolism is typical of her heritage."
"But she's only one quarter. I expected some extra resistance, but this is incredible. I never anticipated that she would be able to hold out this long."
Jack felt the tingle again, stronger than before and the walls around her began to crumble. No, no, no… Strong... Gotta resist.
"Furyan genes are very dominant, even after several generations. They were designed to be- Wait! Look, I think we are finally making some progress.
"That's it, Jack. Let go. Open your mind and let us see what you know. Show us Riddick."
Tears streamed down Jack's face as her walls collapsed and the memories flooded her mind. The grey void transformed into a rushing replay of the events, starting with the crash of the Hunter-Gratzner. Every moment was conjured in excruciating detail and she wept openly as she watched her thirteen-year-old self go through the terror of the planet and the ordeal with Chillingsworth. She cried for the friends she had lost and the horrors she had seen. Then her heart wrenched as she found herself taken to the shuttle after the escape from the Kubla Khan. She watched as Riddick tucked her into the cryo-tube and eventually stood and closed the lid with a resounding click.
As the lid closed, Jack collapsed and everything went blissfully black.
A/N: Sorry for the delay in getting this posted. You know... life, etc. At any rate, I hope you enjoyed.
Whitelite: Yeah, my view of Aereon isn't exactly sweetness and light. I've always felt that the most evil-y of evils is the evil that can pretend to be good: priests, public officials, etc. I needed a villain and Aereon seemed a good choice from that perspective. She just seemed a bit dodgy to me in CoR. Sorry for the keep reading bit. Mainly I don't wanna reveal anything that will spoil what surprises I have in store in future chaps, but be assured that I will include explanations for all my deviations from canon.
Random comment: The FF.N editor is thoroughly frustrating. It strips out all my asterisks, even when they BELONG there. Grrrr...
