He was young and blind, running after the noise of a crowd ahead of him in a long hallway, one hand on the wall to guide him. Dallas just wanted to catch up. If he could just find the person he searched for, everything would be all right.
Suddenly his orientation changed, and he felt his feet leave the ground. He'd been swooped up, but not by someone he knew. All the adults who handled him were gentle about picking him up. They didn't treat him like a rag doll.
"Look what we've got here," the man who held him said.
Dallas struggled, whimpering. He didn't like this person. They were too rough, and they smelled bad.
He ceased any movement at all when a sharp slap hit him across the face.
"Serves you right, you little bastard," another man growled.
Dally started to cry when the man holding him dropped him, letting him crash to the floor unexpectedly. The men standing around him yelled things he couldn't understand, but Dallas couldn't tell if they were meant for him or not. He was too scared to care. He just sobbed and wished for someone familiar to come and pick him up.
"You said you'd leave my son out of this, Marshal!"
There. He knew that voice. It belonged to someone safe.
Dallas started to crawl toward where he'd heard the familiar male voice, scared to death someone would try to stop him.
"I'm no part of this, Dom. I'm just here for damage control after it's over."
"Then give him back to me. Let me put him in his crib, then you can do whatever the fuck you want with me. I won't give you any trouble."
The next thing he knew, he'd once again been lifted from the floor. This time with care. Strong arms wrapped around him, and he hugged his father around the neck, hiding his face against a broad shoulder.
"Kill him, now," a man ordered from several feet away. Not the one named Marshal, a different one.
"No! Stand down! Stand down! They wanted him alive!"
Dallas tightened his grip on his father's clothing, gasping when they turned sharply away from the voices. Gunfire exploded behind them.
Everything stopped. Time ceased going forward, and for less than a second, Dallas saw everything around him. The sneers on the faces of the mercenaries, the identical patches they wore, the bullets in the air. His father had turned his back to the gunfire. He held Dallas tight against his chest, as if to shield him. Not that it would've mattered. Instinctively, Dally knew they would both die unless he did something.
So he did.
It was beautiful. A full spectrum of color exploded across his vision before the world again sank into blackness. When his perspective returned to normal, he heard the metal hit the floor and bounce, literally falling from the air.
Dallas woke up, dazed and confused, wondering where he was. Then he saw them, a boy and a girl, sleeping on the floor just a few feet away.
Cam and Rachel Riddick. He could actually see them.
When he'd touched Rachel's face, his fingertips told him she was pretty. They hadn't lied. She was beautiful.
He got to his feet. Although his eyes remained stationary, stony, he gazed around.
They were in a holding cell--eight feet by eight feet. The floor was ferocrete with a drain in the middle so the cell could easily be hosed down. The walls were made from ferocrete blocks and grout, and the ceiling appeared to have the same composition as the floor. The cell entrance was made from a not-quite-see-through polymer Dallas didn't recognize, but he guessed would be nearly impossible to drill through. The hinges were on the outside--as were all access to wiring. The ring of Dallas' vision extended about a foot into the hallway, allowing him to view the locking mechanism on their cell. The lock had a key pad, a card slot, and enough anti-theft features to give even his mother a run for her money.
Ferocrete didn't get put in ships, so he determined they were probably still planet-side. The cell construction was too state-of-the art for a jail, and too expensive to be a one-time-use construction. Dallas attempted to stretch his vision a little farther, see if anyone stood out in the hall. If there were cameras watching the door. As far as he could tell, their cell was the only one on the block--unless the ferocrete walls were over five feet thick, and that seemed impossibly excessive. Three inches of ferocrete equalled three feet of solid steel. He gave up, allowing his vision to snap back to its normal range.
Dallas often tried to imagine experiencing sight from a limited perspective, but he couldn't. He saw all 360 degrees around him all the time. He also couldn't imagine shutting his eyes and snapping off his vision. Dallas's abilities allowed him metaphorical eyes in the back of his head, even while he slept, even if there was no light present in the room. He could see everything around him in tones of white, gray, and black—and every surface appeared to flow in some direction, like a constant stream of particles, although his fingers told him that was an illusion. Hard surfaces didn't actually flow—at least not on a level perceivable by touch.
In spite of the advantages of his abilities, he lived in a colorless world of desolate shadow.
Still, it sure beat the hell out of walking around blind.