I have a series of stories planned dealing with Riddick's childhood and early "career", probably somewhat AU. (This begins with the story "Pickings".) I'm presenting them as a cycle of one-shot fics which are inter-related. They can also be read individually. Alas, I do not own Riddick, and I claim rights only to the neurons and electrons I composed this with.
Reviews are welcomed. Thanks.
Christening
The rain beat down steadily all morning, a driving rain that made people want to stay home if they could avoid the alternative. The Bamberger Free Clinic was blessedly empty; one patient with a knee scraped from a fall on the slick pavement was the only visitor. The doctor set out a scant dozen of the ration packs on the table, instead of the usual two cartons, and welcomed the chance to catch up on her paperwork. Too often, the clinic was wall-to-wall drama, and sometimes that wore a bit thin.
Shortly before noon, the automatic chime of the door sounded, and Dr. Debra Scott managed not to groan aloud when she got a look at the pair who entered. After three-and-a-half years in charge of the small clinic, she knew most of the immediate neighborhood by sight, even the ones who'd never darkened her doorstep--like these two. Especially these two. She'd caught them going through the dumpster in the alley behind the building more than once, and no amount of scolding or biohazard warnings stopped them.
The old man might have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, wearing layers of filthy cast-off clothes. The ragged child with him was surely less than six years old, with matted dark hair, and dark glasses. Blind? the doctor wondered. Now that she thought about it, she'd never seen the child without the glasses, or far from the old man's side.
"How can I help you?" asked Dr. Scott. The child had made a beeline for the table where the nutrition packs were set out, and the old man shuffled closer to her desk. His hair hung halfway to his waist, a tangled mass of grey and silver, and when he spoke, she could see gaps where he'd lost teeth.
"Boy's got a problem with his eyes," the wild-looking man said. "Light hurts 'im. Bubba! Come here, show the doctor lady your eyes."
The boy wandered over clutching a sandwich and a spare bag of rations, and the doctor was almost certain he'd stuffed another pack under his shirt.
"Show her your eyes, Bub," the derelict repeated.
The hand holding the sandwich raised one side of the frames, eyes squinched against the light. Debra saw a pair of silvery eyes gleam for a few memorable heartbeats, then the shades fell into place again.
"Let me scan the database," she said, clicking on the menu selection "Eyes'...'Sensitivity to Light'. "Are you his father?" The only resemblance she could see was in their mutual lack of hygiene, but genetics played odd tricks at times.
"As much of one as he's gonna get."
"What about his mother?"
"His mama's dead. You gotta deal with me, lady, whether you like it or not."
At the edge to his voice, the doctor looked up from the display. The old man regarded her with an offended expression. He spat on the floor, and she took a deep breath, trying not to show her distaste. "Sir, a lot of eye problems can run in families," she explained politely. "Do you know if that's the case here?"
"No," he answered, looking somewhat mollified. "For all I know, his parents could've been a couple of wall-eyed kangaroos."
"Too bad." One of the headings listed 'Furians'. She clicked on it. Up popped a picture of a man with shining eyes similar to the mercurial set she'd glimpsed on the boy. Reading through the entry discussed the race's ability to see in low-light conditions---and included warnings that Nekro policy labeled Furians highly dangerous individuals. It didn't go into detail, but then, Nekros weren't known for reasonable explainations for their actions.
On a hunch, Debra searched by genotype to see if the clinic had treated any previous Furian patients, and the results chilled her.
There was a single file, five-and-a-half years old, made by the clinic's founder, Dr. Bamberger, for one Tanya Riddick, a maternity patient. Was there an image of the woman? There was; metallic eyes glittered from a face with striking bone structure. Hard to say if the boy looked like her or not. Possibly so. The record detailed prenatal visits; there were notes right up to the early stages of labor, then a terse entry:
DELIVERED: MALE INFANT. STATUS: TERMINATED.
TANYA ELISA RIDDICK. STATUS: TERMINATED.
BY ORDER OF NEKRO DECREE XY357T2.
The date of the entry was the same as the date of death engraved on the memorial plaque for Dr. Bamberger hanging on the wall. For a moment, her stomach rolled over. Debra glanced at the ragged boy, who was chomping on another sandwich. He was the right age to be that child, she surmised. How had he wound up in the care of this scruffy-looking savage?
Returning to the entry on Furian optical structure, she swallowed the concern that she might follow in Bamberger's footsteps. "I'll need to take a closer look at his eyes," she said to the boy's guardian.
"Come over here, Bubba!"
During her preoccupation with the database, the child's attention had shifted from food to toys. He'd gotten into a carton of disposable scalpels, and was playing with one, heedless of the blood that dripped from his fingers. The doctor started from her chair, her medical training protesting the blood-letting.
Abruptly, there was nothing childlike about the boy at all. He was as fierce as any cornered wild thing, and with the small, sharp blade in his young hand, he was equally dangerous.
"I wouldn't go jumpin' like that, Doc," remarked the old man. "Bubba's got some wicked reflexes."
One part of her mind pragmatically thought that she'd have ample blood to compare to the profile for the Riddick woman. Another train of thought wondered how to get a closer look at his eyes. The rest of her worried that he might slash her if he felt too pressured. "Can you get him to put that down?" Debra requested, trying to stay calm.
"Nah, I doubt Bubba's gonna listen to me when he's got himself a new toy."
"That's not a toy. He's hurting himself!"
The aging scavenger shrugged at her implied reproof. "He doesn't seem to mind. Hey, Bub," he called, "you're making the lady nervous."
His little brows drawn together in a scowl, the boy remained alert. Although his surreal eyes weren't visible behind the cheap sunglasses, she could feel the impact of his stare. His lips were pulled back in a snarl; his teeth were all intact and looked unusually sharp.
Slowly, Debra slid open the top drawer of her desk and withdrew a brightly-wrapped confection. She held up the treat. "Bubba, I'll trade you this for that." She made her voice as cheerful and soothing as she could.
The boy shook his head. He took a step closer, brandishing the knife. "Gimme!" he demanded.
Oh, great. "I'll let you have it after you let me look at your eyes," she said firmly. He growled at her. "If you let me look at your eyes, I might be able to help you," Debra Scott coaxed. He didn't let go of the knife, but came closer to her and took off the glasses, his little face scrunching up like a mole's. He managed to half-open his eyes, with obvious effort, but tears streaked his grimy face as he did so.
A common enough physiological reflex to light sensitivity, she decided, reaching for her penlight. "Now, I'm going to take a look--"
At the flare of the beam, he screamed, a high-pitched feral sound. He lashed out with the scalpel, and only the fact that he'd shied away from the light saved Debra from being cut. She stood riveted by sudden fear. Darting forward, the boy snatched the candy bar from her nerveless fingers. He peeled back the wrapper, still squinting at her, and bit savagely into it.
The miniature thug replaced the glasses on his face. Although he smiled at the taste of the candy, there was a slyness to his expression that Debra found unsettling. She had the distinct sense that he was savoring it as much for its trophy quality as for its taste and texture.
The old man made no attempt to reprimand his charge for the attack or the theft, and he said nothing when the gaudy plastic film drifted to the floor to join the blob of sputum and the spatterings of blood from the boy's cuts.
The stunned doctor didn't move. That swift sweep of his arm replayed itself upon her retinas again and again, complete with the twinkle of reflected light from the scalpel's blade. It was humiliating to be frozen like this, at the mercy of a five-year old--but this was not a normal five-year old. This was a small, knife-wielding predator, and suddenly the Nekro warning made a lot more sense.
When the wild child sauntered toward her, it took every iota of self-control not to flee. Only the knowledge that that would mark her unmistakeably as prey kept her rooted to the spot. He was mere inches away...he began to circle her...and to sniff.
The smile on his baby face held malice and contempt, but he seemed to enjoy Debra's scent. Was it because he'd never known cleanliness in his short life? Or was he aware of her fear and taking pleasure in it? Probably the latter, she thought grimly.
"You might try welding glasses," Debra suggested to the old man, her voice higher than usual. She heard the fear in her own voice and cursed herself for it.
"Bubba's not gonna be welding anything," the old man protesting, looking at the doctor like she'd lost her mind. "Nobody can see through those things!"
With the facts and figures on Furian optical dynamics still fresh in her mind, she surveyed her young tormentor. "He might."
The elderly man shrugged. "Guess we'll see if we can find you some goggles, Bubba."
Debra suspected that "finding" those goggles was not going to entail walking into a store and paying for them. Well, that wasn't her problem--right now, her primary concern was to get them out of the clinic without futher bloodshed on anyone's part--particularly hers.
"We'll give that a try," said the boy's foster father. "Come on, Bubba, we're gonna hunt you up some glasses. Afternoon, Doc."
It wasn't until they'd ambled out the door that Debra noticed it--the table holding the ration packs had been completely denuded. It seemed that while she'd been viewing the database, and later scared witless, the boy and his companion had cleaned her out.
Cheap at twice the price.
On a whim, she couriered two samples to the lab: some of the boy's blood, and the old man's vile expectoration. For a long time after locking the clinic's doors that evening, Debra sat looking at the test results. She wasn't surprised a DNA comparison confirmed 'Bubba' to be the Riddick woman's offspring. What startled her were the revelations about the old man; the medical profile cross-referenced to his sample listed him as Richard Arlington Terwilliger, age fifty-eight. Fourteen years ago, he'd been a respected professor of anthropology at the local university. The stress of trying to attain tenure drove him over the edge; he'd lost his position after attending a faculty dinner with a crowbar in hand, wearing only a loincloth and a pair of fishnet stockings. Intermittent sightings in recent years were reports for vagrancy and acts of public nuisance.
A professor of anthropology? That bizarre-looking old man? Remarkable. With a mentor like that, it would be interesting to see what became of the boy.
There was nothing to add to the file on Terwilliger, but it might be helpful to have one on the boy. She'd sent the blood to the lab labeled "Bubba Smith, transient minor, genotype unknown", but reflecting on it, she filed it in the clinic database as "Riddick, Richard B." Riddick as his rightful family name, Richard in honor of his self-appointed guardian and B--well, it could be for Bubba, but in Debra's heart it would be for Dr. Bamberger, who had somehow saved Tanya Riddick's infant son from the Nekros.
After that, when Doctor Scott saw them digging in the clinic dumpster, she didn't confront them, just smiled and gave them a wide berth. Professor Terwilliger hailed her with laconic courtesy, and sometimes she even got an acknowledgement from young Richard, who was thriving. Apparently, the goggles worked.
The End.