46. When The Levy Breaks
Zemma headed to prison, Don in Hypatia's clutches, Jack only god knows where. Riddick had started getting used to his little psycho-fuck family, enough to take them for granted; enough to be a little more than annoyed by their loss. He was angry with them for risking themselves, at himself for not taking better care of the situation, and at Hypatia… Mostly he was angry at Hypatia.
A psychotic android was just the sort of fucked up deal the Family would be involved in, Jack was a result of a Family deal gone bad, and as far as he knew they were the ones who cloned him too. His blood boiled, pounding in his temples like a storm tide. He could never get far enough away from the influences of the Family. Theirs was almost always the highest bounty on his head.
He realized his fists were bunched in rage. Old rage. One at a time he released them. He was used to being by himself. He was first a survivor. He was second a dealer of death. He'd survived Hypatia and stood alone, again. From assassin to king, and back to assassin. The fury ebbed out of him. A cold familiarity crept into his soul.
He hadn't realized when, exactly, he'd lost the icy chill that soothed the hot pulse of anger behind his eyes. It was comforting in some ways, to feel more like himself: ready for action with no one at his elbow, no plans to consider but his own. But he felt hollow too. He knew he'd always felt this way, at least until Carolyn had challenged him to come back to humanity. He'd been comfortable with it until Jack had crept into a little corner of his mind and crouched there, forever a child who needed him. He'd been accepting of it, until two Furians had looked him in the eye and seen an equal and a leader rather than a criminal. He'd thought he needed it until Zemma had stood quietly before him, unafraid… and made him laugh.
He pushed them all away, emptying his mind of everything but what he must do now. He couldn't think of any of them. Hypatia was too fast, too dangerous, to risk being encumbered by their presence, even in his mind. Zemma had called it the Now…
He stopped. He breathed. He pushed her away.
Death, up close and personal. That's who he was. That is who he needed to be. If he had any chance of saving them…
He stopped. He breathed in the last dredges of the night. He smelled blood. There was far too much blood to account for the one dead body. Zemma hadn't had a mark on her. Had Hypatia killed two people here? Had one of them been Don?
He stopped.
He breathed. Eyes closed, he pictured the scene as it must have been. Had Hypatia carried Don back here? Slowly he let the scents of the people who had been here flow into him. He couldn't place each scent to a face, but he could not detect Don among them at all, nor Jack. He pushed Zemma's face from his mind.
A year ago he wouldn't have believed that this moment could happen, let alone that it would be so hard. When had he changed so much? He was a killer. 'An amateur around here.' Zemma had once said, a glint of mischief in her eyes. Riddick ground his teeth, disgusted with himself.
Don was probably dead. Jack and Zemma were probably as safe in the MiniMax as any place, after all, it was all female and minimum security. He needed to forget them. He needed to forget the last year.
He was a killer. The bitch must die.
The sun came up behind him, lighting up the small, luxurious ship sitting not far away, just across the dirt tarmac. There was nothing he needed in the frigate, nothing he needed from the last year except the half dozen blades hidden on his body. The cold crept into his brain, soothing away the thoughts that had hampered him for all of the last two minutes. The dust from the last of the garrison trucks to leave was just settling, as was the conflict within him. He took a step towards Hypatia's ship. Adrenaline flowed. Action soothed.
There was nothing left to lose.
Zemma never opened her eyes. Tossed roughly in the back of a truck, her bruised body cried out, but her teeth stayed clenched so that only a grunt escaped her. She couldn't look back, couldn't open her eyes to see Riddick. Her pulse thrummed in her ears. He was still playing Captain Cooper as she felt the truck rumble to life and begin to pull away. His voice sounded unconcerned. She didn't have time to decide if she should take comfort in that.
The first bump tossed her in the air just a little as the truck gained speed over the rough rocky ground. Zemma gasped. She was manacled, hands behind her back. She couldn't reach out and hold onto anything. Her eyes pinched closed tighter. She could feel the cool open air blowing over her whole body. There was no way to hang onto anything. Panic rose in her, choking her more than the dust that swirled around her head and clung to her cheek. When the next bump in the road caused her to whimper, it evoked twin chuckles of amusement from her guards. Zemma curled into a ball. She tried not to think.
Time slowed. Zemma couldn't concentrate to count her heartbeats. She had no idea where they were headed. All she could think about was the open air and the coming sun. Images from her subconscious tried to force their way to the surface of her mind; the same ones she always struggled with, but now seemed even more terrifying since she could not escape the pending reality. A fearful sweat broke out on her body, and whisked away by the wind it made her shiver with cold dread. Her stomach flipped over the next bump. She tasted bile in the back of her throat. Every nerve, every muscle in her body was tensed to the point of pain. She prayed for darkness but couldn't bear to open her eyes, face the open sky, and fall into the nightmare she knew it would bring but couldn't quite remember. The joking voices of her guards were a buzz in her ears.
When the first warm orange rays of the morning sun struck her, Zemma finally fell away from reality.
Don shivered in the cold black, only slightly conscious. Pain filled his universe as much as fear overloaded Zemma's, and anger had nearly exploded in Riddick's.
"It's a bad break," a soft voice floated down into the pit of Don's mind. "Sorry about that." But the laughter that followed belied any sense of remorse. "Cryin' wont help you, prayin' wont do you no goooooood," the voice sang softly. Riddick would have recognized the classical lyric, but Don was too far gone to realize it was anything but a taunt.
"Kill me and get it over with, bitch," he wheeze through gritted teeth.
"I only kill for profit," the voice came closer. Hypatia straddled Don's chest and poked at the visible bone showing through torn flesh. His scream elicited a moan of pleasure from the monster; she touched his face gently.
Don opened his eyes. The faint light of pre-dawn illuminated the grim visage hanging over him. The pale face was half covered with blood. Black eyes and luminescent white teeth loomed close.
"How much are you worth to me?" The creature whispered. A demented giggle followed a hardy slap across Don's face. "Will the hero follow his fair, retarded maiden to prison… or search out his loyal manservant in the hands of the beast? And where does our precious Jack fall in his priorities? Where do you fall in Jack's?"
Zemma in prison? What the hell?
Hypatia's rail thin frame was considerably heavier than it looked, pressing all the breath out of him. "Riddick is going to kill you," Don managed to choke out the words.
"Oooh, the dogs of doom howl and moan," Hypatia sing-songed. "Nobody will kill me. Nobody."
Hypatia's hands suddenly tightened around Don's head, her tone serious again. "How much are you worth to me, old man?" With one quick turn of her wrists she could snap his neck.
"Nothing," Don spit. "You'll get nothing for me."
"Should I believe you, just snap off this head of yours?" Her fingers tightened in his hair. "Should I just scoop out your brain and be done with it?" Her other hand tightened against his chin, fingers digging into the flesh of his cheeks. Don refused any sound and closed his eyes to the manic ones only inches from his face. Her breath smelled of blood.
"I only kill for profit," she whispered again, her lips brushing Don's. "But I torture just for me." With that one hand left his face only to squeeze his broken arm, grinding the bones together. Don screamed until the darkness ate him.
A tall, well built Slavic woman stared at Jack. Jack stared back, undaunted by the bars that separated them.
"Audrey Brighton VanVoorste?" The woman asked politely.
Jack ignored her, ignored the name that might have been hers if she hadn't been stolen away from the tyrannical egomaniac that had contracted to buy her and a twin sister. Her real mother had called her Audrey. Hypatia never forgot that. Middle names came and went according to Hypatia's particular mood. But the Van Voorste always got people's attention.
Van Voorste meant money and power and guaranteed cooperation. It almost always meant the tyrant heard of Jack's adventures too. Hypatia loved rubbing his face in the fact that she controlled what he had paid so dearly for.
Jack had named herself when she started running away from Hypatia: Jack B. Badd, sometimes Jack B. Goode. She had warrants under both names, and half a dozen more. She'd added the B after she heard Riddick introduce himself.
"Your guardian is very worried about you, Audrey." The woman went on slowly. "I'm sure your father is too."
That elicited a snort from Jack.
"But we have a problem, young lady."
Jack sneered at the patronizing tone of the Wardeness. She knew it only masked greed. Hypatia always paid a fortune to get her out, and sufficient hush money to keep her just far enough under the radar that Van Voorste couldn't track them both. Jack wondered what the first offer was. She wondered if she could make enough trouble to thwart Hypatia this time.
"You killed some of my people."
Jack shrugged. "Give me a little time, I'll kill you all."
The warden took it as an idle threat. "I wonder if it would be in your best interest to let you serve some time here. You shouldn't consider yourself above the law because you think your father's name carries any weight outside his system."
Jack knew the name carried weight in every system. All she heard was greed.
"Take her to P.C.U." The wardeness directed.
Jack tried to jump out of the way of the shock-stick but it didn't matter in the little cage. All she could do was scream obscenities until her nervous system shut down.