Chapter 13
Business
Riddick's POV
Why in god's name does every fuck face in this sector have to use public transit? I can't stand the fucking subway. There's always some ass hole bumping into you or someone that smells like three day old ass standing right beside you. What the fuck is wrong with people? I fucking hate this city. It's a pile of steaming shit and the people here fit right in. Upper class, my ass. Once this job is done, I'm moving out of here. Turning this shit hole to the back end of my ship and never looking back. Fucking upper class pricks. Thinking they can push me around.
I scoffed, which drew the attention of many of the people standing around me. Giving them the 'go straight to hell' glare, I continued to stand with my arms crossed over my chest, leaning against the side of the train. Upper class mother fuckers.
It's bad enough I wasted my time going all the way across town and the ass hole wasn't even around. Now I've had to stay on the fucking train for too long with all kinds of people, I think I'd rather just kill them all while I was there and not have to deal with them. Today is definitely not the day to fuck with me. These people had better just stay the fuck in their own little space and not bump into me; I'll have to get physical if they do. I could really go for a good fight. I haven't had one of those in… well… ever, I guess.
What does a man have to do to get an opponent worthy of his time? Weak ass mother fuckers. The best thing they've got is 'Fuck you.' Fuck me? Ha. No, fuck you. Do these people not realize I hold their lives in my hands? Am I not terrifying enough? There was a time when any ass hole that crossed my path knew not to fuck with me. I have literally seen grown men piss their pants.
What happened?
I've got to do something to get my persona back up, get that boost.
Oh, yeah, I can't. I'm dead.
I chuckled to myself. Yeah, I'm pretty fucking spry for a corpse.
End Riddick's POV
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An hour later Riddick walked quickly down the sidewalk of the grid he and Jack lived. He was in no mood for any of the beggars or the prostitutes; he would rather take his shiv to their jugular than have to look at them, at that moment. If the fact that he'd wasted much of his morning waiting on a man he couldn't find wasn't the one thing that pissed him off, it had to be the heat. Heat did have the capability of pissing him off royally, and it was raging hot outside.
Sweat dripped down his forehead and across the lenses of his goggles, pooling in that dip between the eyepiece and his lower eyelid. Frustrated he closed his eyes and tore his goggles off with one hand. Wiping the sweat away with his other hand he let out a long exasperated sigh. "Fuck." Quickly he replaced his goggles and adjusted the strap around the back of his head. Not too much longer and he would be home, he would take his shower, and possibly spend some time talking with Jack, but that's if he felt like talking after his shower.
His house was still so far down the damned grid and he wasn't sure if he could make the walk without killing at least three people. That grid, he'd been told, was one of the better ones; it was supposed to have less prostitution. But, as it turned out, his source was a pathological liar and only did things for their own benefit, so he was unreliable. Riddick cursed the day he'd decided to make a home on that planet. He hated every planet in that sector, all six of them. Though he'd never been to Healion Three, further down in the Tanger system, he though often about going there. He'd heard the heat wasn't that bad, it was the sand storms you had to look out for. But even with sand storms, any place was better than Tangent Twelve, in the Origanic System, which is where he now was. He even heard, from some ass hole on Tangent Twelve, there'd been another crash on that planet in the New Tangier system, where he and Jack only barely escaped. For a few seconds he actually felt sorry for those people, felt sorry for them because they didn't have him there to save their asses.
Suddenly, for some reason, he was pulled out of his thoughts and stood some five hundred feet or so from his house. The strange thing was the front door. He was positive he'd shut and locked the thing upon his leaving but now it was hanging loosely, half crooked, and open. That was when only one thing entered his mind. Jack.
His mind raced in the few seconds it took him to run from where he stood to the door of his house. Once inside, his thoughts had been correct. The house was a mess and Jack was no where in sight. But he could smell her, her and something else… someone else. Stepping carefully into the house he surveyed his surroundings. Things were all over the floor, dishes, broken dishes, their movies, their whole entertainment system, the couch was thrown upside down; the whole house was a wreck. But he wasn't concerned with that at the moment. No, his focus was on Jack and where she was.
As he stepped further into the house a faint noise caught his attention, one a normal person, with non animalistic characteristics, probably wouldn't have heard. He knew that sound, and he knew exactly where it was coming from.
Running into his bedroom, he saw a large man with dark hair laying face down on his bed, struggling with something beneath him. The man immediately shot up, off the bed, and turned around to face Riddick.
Riddick only glanced up at the man for a second before his eyes returned to the bed. It was Jack, that's what the man had been struggling with. She was lying on top of Riddick's bed with half of her clothes torn off, but she wasn't moving. He knew she wasn't dead, corpses, for some reason, no matter how recently killed, had a distinct smell to him. He thought it was because he'd been around so many of them in his life he just knew that smell, but was glad Jack didn't have it.
Directing his attention back to the man he flexed the muscles in his jaw. He recognized that man; he knew exactly who he was and didn't have to ask but did anyway. "Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing in my house?" His voice held that dangerously low growl, the one that most people feared.
The man laughed. He actually laughed.
Straightening the sleeves of his white dress shirt he replied, "You know who I am just as well as I know who you are."
Riddick's eyes gleamed behind his goggles as he crossed his arms over his heaving chest. He knew if he could just get this man to talk, he wouldn't hurt Jack, and when he was least expecting it, Riddick would pounce. "You didn't answer my question. What the fuck are you doing here?"
"I would think that'd be perfectly clear, Richard Riddick." The man snorted.
"Look," Riddick dropped his hands to his sides, "You've got no business with her, your business is with me. Or should I say my business is with you, Kent J. Rockwood."
"Yes, very smart man, aren't you." Rockwood answered seeming to be very bored with the situation. "You know, your reputation does exceed you. I half expected to be dead already. Guess you aren't such a bad ass after all."
Riddick cracked his neck. "You want to know about my reputation? Let me fucking show you how much you don't know about me."
Having just finished his statement, Riddick lunged forward, hitting Rockwood directly in the throat with his forearm. When Rockwood's back slammed down into the hard floor Riddick shoved his foot down on the man's chest and stared down at him. "Not such a smart ass now are you?"
Rockwood laughed, again, and pointed toward the closed behind Riddick.
Before Riddick knew what happened, his world began spinning around him and everything went black. He didn't even feel it when his head hit the corner of his dresser, nor did he feel the searing pain in his back. All he saw was blackness, blackness and that image of Jack lying half naked on his bed.
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A/N: I do apologize for my tardiness in updating. I've developed a nice case of writers block on this one and it was all I could do to finish this chapter. Hopefully the block will lift soon and I will be able to continue, but for now, I feel obligated to tell you, I'm afraid I will have to abandon this one, only for a little while though. But any and all suggestions are welcome, that's a given, as always. Sway
