AN: Yea, a relatively long chapter!


"Soo," Jack said, cocking her head a bit as she stared down at unfolded paper. "That's the new Con-X."

From his seat next to her, Riddick made an affirmative-sounding grunt as he also stared down at the article that was front page news.

They sat in silence for a moment before Jack crossed her arms over her chest, shivering slightly and not at all because she was cold. "Man is he creepy. Sure wouldn't want to run into him in any dark alleyways."

"Or anywhere else, from what it says in here about him," Riddick commented vaguely.

The 'him' in question was a mug shot of the new Con-X, better known as Le Diable Angélique or 'The Angelic Demon,' as he'd been named in the outreaching French colonies where he'd done the larger portion of his identified work. According to the article his real name was unknown and he'd only just been crowned the new reigning Con-X over the past week or two, when neighboring systems had finally pieced together portions of a trail of criminal activity that spread over a vast expanse of the galaxy.

However, the descriptions of his grizzly crimes in print didn't do justice to the black and white photo of him. Stringy, shoulder length blonde hair hung down far enough to partially obscure a face ugly and twisted with murderous rage. Two coal black eyes seemed to look out from the picture and pierce right through to the soul of even the most casual of onlookers. The man looked like some sort of devil. From the moment Jack saw that face she knew that if anyone ever asked her what evil looked like, she'd point them to that photo.

"Must've killed the photographer," Riddick rumbled thoughtfully, almost as if he were talking to himself.

"Who, him?" Jack asked, puzzled. "What makes you say that?"

With one finger, Riddick tapped on the man's face. "They don't let you get away with that shit. Ducking your head so the picture's obscured. When they put this out on wanted posters nobody's going to recognize this guy because they can't get a good image in their head of what he looks like. The points of his face that would make him stand out in a crowd are either in shadow or covered by his hair. After they snapped that shot he probably freaked out, got free, and killed the guy behind the camera. After that happens once, who the hell is getting paid enough to risk their lives for a re-shoot?"

"You know anyone who ever got away with that?" Jack asked.

Riddick shook his head. "No. But then again, I didn't ever meet a guy like that one."

"That one?" Jack repeated slowly, not quite sure what he was getting at.

Crossing his arms over his own chest, Riddick nodded. "Yeah, like him. He's not even close to being human. The eyes give it away. They're so dark you can hardly tell, but when you look close enough, you can see that he doesn't have pupils. If you saw that guy in a dark alley it would look like he didn't have eyes at all, just a couple black holes with no whites. The rims of his irises expand and contract, taking in light in a full circle instead at a single point. He'd never need a shine job in prison. As long as there's some small shred of light, they say that a Rysen can see everything."

Jack blinked dumbly at him, as if she couldn't quite believe what he'd just said. "What's a Rysen?" she asked, feeling stupid for knowing so little. She'd recently become fond of being the criminal expert among her small group of friends at school and she found it difficult to admit that she didn't know half as much as she'd like to think she did.

"No one really knows for sure," he replied, slowly stirring the coffee in front of him even though he had yet to take an evident interest in drinking it. "Some people say the Rysen got split off from humans millennia ago, others think that they're so similar to us because they developed on a planet very much like Earth. Mostly they're ghosts. They were a proud race, an arrogant race, and they were very, very deadly. That's why the Empire wiped them out first, because they were afraid that they would take over. The total population of their home world was exterminated years ago, all of two billion of 'em."

Jack wrinkled her nose, slightly confused by what she was hearing. "What, you're saying that the Empire was afraid that a race that only consisted of two billion people were going to overthrow their power? There are like fifty billion humans and close-subspecies humans accounted for. What was the threat?"

Riddick shifted in his chair, resting more of his weight on the back two legs as he tipped himself into a precarious position. "Let's just say that in places like Slam, where the worst of the worst congregate together, guys like that used to be what went 'bump' in the night. They held no loyalties, killed whoever they wanted because they were immune to the crime guilds and the gangs. The bosses didn't want anything to do with them, mostly just tried to stay clear of them. They say that even the females were downright frightening. Never ran into a Rysen girl myself, but strangely enough I always kept an eye out, just in case," he said, grinning evilly at the recollection.

"So, there were a lot of survivors of the extermination? Some of the kids were kept in the numbered prisons like other species that were wiped out?" Jack asked, remembering back to the conversation she'd had with Dom about the orphans of the Fifty Twenty War.

"That's the story. In reality they probably slaughtered as many as they could find and incinerated the bodies to cover it up. When those kids got to a certain age, walls and chains simply wouldn't hold them. They would escape, and usually they didn't go far. Had a bad habit of sticking around the place where they'd been imprisoned and mind-fucked with the guards. Sometimes they'd pick them off one by one, using scare tactics that make most of the horror movies you've seen look tame. I studied a few of them when I was your age, learned a lot of interesting things about how to put the fear of God into a man."

Jack stretched forward, covering the face of the man staring up at her from the newspaper with her thumb, so she wouldn't have to look at him anymore. "So what do I do if I run into him? You know he may be the person who's been killing those boys in my class, hunting them down and slaughtering them. I think he's probably a professional."

"He's better than a professional, Jack," Riddick rumbled appreciatively, lacing his fingers behind his head. "He's a predator. Just keep him convinced that you'd be tougher prey than the next guy and you should be fine."

"What if I'm not?" she asked meekly. Jack hated to admit it, but actually putting a face to the murderer running around town had freaked her out, a lot.

Riddick shrugged. "In that case, fight like your life depends on it. Because believe me, it would."

Jack rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'll bet it would. So, if he's such a nasty guy, why do they call him 'The Angelic Demon?' He sure doesn't look like any sort of angel."

Riddick allowed his chair to return to its usual position with all four legs on the floor and picked up the paper, sliding it out from under her thumb and opening it to the sports section, folding it over neatly. "I have no idea. But usually I go by the rule that if the new French colonies had something to do with it, the last thing it's gonna do is make sense."


"...Parent-teacher conferences will take place Friday morning and afternoon, so there will be no school. I repeat, there will be NO school tomorrow..." the voice of one of the secretaries blared over the loudspeakers.

Jack smiled a little as she packed up her books from her last class of the day and filed with the rest of the students out the door and into the hall. Her friends had told her at lunch that the announcement had been broadcast over the intercom a million times that week, and they absolutely couldn't understand what exactly was so important at home that it had kept her from realizing such a monumental event as a three day weekend was fast approaching. As far as she was concerned, it didn't matter how long it had taken her to realize the fact. No school was no school.

She'd have the whole day to herself.

When she opened her locker a note fell out. Jack picked it up, at first assuming that it was just some random piece of scratch paper, then realizing that there was writing on the inside. She opened it, glowing a little while reading it.

Hey baby-doll,
Been missin you lately. Since you don't have school tomorrow maybe you should come over to my place, what'd ya think?
Can't wait to see you,
Dom

PS – What animal turns bright red when it gets really mad? Check out the gym and you'll find out.

Jack looked up and around, wondering when he'd been there, how long it had been since he'd left. It had probably only been a matter of seconds, after the announcement had played on the comm system. There hadn't been a note there when she'd closed her locker before the final period of the day.

Still, even if he was playing hard-to-get that day, she figured she could play along, for a while at least... Her first stop? The gymnasium.


She was tentative in walking into the deserted gym. Where during the day kids ran around playing various sports, shouting and laughing, there was nothing but silence and darkness. Jack flicked the lights as she walked in the door, and slowly the overheads started to warm up, casting low light over the large exercise area.

There was nothing there. The place seemed empty, and eerily quiet. "Hello?" Jack called, knowing how much Dom liked playing games with her. She figured he'd reveal himself at any second and then just maybe they'd take the time to steal away to the broom closet down the hall.

She was snickering to herself as she look under the bleachers, then started toward the side door, as if to leave. "Well, I guess there's no one here. Better be getting home..." she said, speaking at a conversational tone. She was smirking, figuring that it wouldn't be long before he chased her down when she heard muffled groans from somewhere nearby.

Jack paused in the door way, looking around. Slowly, her brows began to knit with concern. It sounded like someone was in trouble, or in pain, but where were they? Why couldn't she see them?

She circled, calling out again before she heard scratching, the sound of something rubbing against wood. Quietly she re-approached the doorway and, almost dreading what she would find, Jack tentatively reached out, kicking up the stand and pulling the door toward her, so it would close. Behind it she found what might've been the most disturbing sight she'd ever seen in her entire life.

But it also just happened to be the funniest one too.

Shane Connell had been stripped down to his underwear and duct taped to the wall, his feet nearly half a meter off the ground. He was squirming and groaning, his face having turned a bright red to match his hair.

After a moment of staring at him, Jack started to snicker. Soon she found herself chuckling. By the time someone else stumbled upon the scene she was rolling on the floor, completely engulfed by side-splitting laughter.


All the way home she'd been bursting into aftershock-giggles, still able to picture perfectly the look on Big Red's face when the janitors had finally found a box for him to stand on as they'd cut him down. The duct tape on his mouth had been the last to go, and once it was off, the cussing fit had begun.

He'd been walking through the gym, the lights had gone dead, and the next thing he'd known someone had grabbed him. That was Shane's story, and as far as Jack could tell, she was the only one who knew who that 'someone' might've been.

As she walked in the front door of Riddick's house she was smiling, hardly able to wait to tell Rick what had happened at school, minus a few details of course... She was even humming to herself just a little bit as she locked the door behind her and dropped her book bag on the stairs, making her way toward the living room.

Just as she turned the corner, wondering if anything good was on the vid that afternoon, she was brought up short by a sharp impact to her midsection. She halted immediately in the doorway between the hall and living room, the air in her lungs having been knocked out by the suddenness, the unexpectedness...

She looked down, touching the light fabric of her favorite shirt. It was a dark green that set off her eyes perfectly. However, even as she watched, a dark red stain was spreading downward, ruining it.

Funny, all she could think about was how she didn't think she'd be able to get that out, no matter how hard she scrubbed.

"I'm sorry..." she whispered softly, even as she brought some of the red liquid on her fingers closer to her face so she could examine it, her eyes crossing slightly with the effort.

"I'm sorry, Riddick..."