51. Detention

Zemma woke when people came in the room again. They didn't talk to her but efficiently transferred her cuffed hands from the bed to walking chains connecting her wrists to her waist to her ankles. She debated resisting. There were five of them, all ready for her to try to escape, and she decided not to be predictable. One was the guard she'd kicked in the solar plexus, the one who hadn't liked her being mistreated by the guard who broke her ribs. She looked him in the eye and he looked back blankly, but she saw the little muscles around his eyes tighten minuscully and his jaw clench subtly. He was wary of her but not afraid. Color rose along the skin of his neck, never quite making it to his face. She'd embarrassed him and he wasn't going to let her do it again. Dangerous combination. He might decide to follow his partner's lead if she gave him reason.

She let them handle her like a doll, not resisting but not helping. They only spoke a few words of direction to each other. When she was shackled hands together, and to her waist, feet together and another set of chains to her waist, they tugged her forward. "Let's go," one of them said, with no more interest in her understanding than you'd give an inanimate object. She didn't have a choice, she shuffled forward. Walking, such as it was in the four point restraints, let her take stock of herself. Nothing pinched or ached terribly but she was stiff and sore all over. They'd kept her long enough for her ribs to heal with the help of nanos. She rolled her shoulders and neck, trying to stretch out the day and a half of forced inactivity and bad dreams. The guard she'd embarrassed, walking on her right, stiffened. She got a little thrill from his tension and restrained a smile. She was hungry and feeling cranky and taking unprecedented delight at the man's wariness of her.

They walked her out of the infirmary and down a nondescript hallway. She would come to know that most of the hallways were nondescript, lacking even the most basic architectural design. The walls were blank, dingy, riveted steel, while the ceiling and floors were natural rock. Overhead lighting and the obvious cameras were laced in heavy wire mesh. Everything was painted a drab puce. To Zemma, used to the architectural extravagance of the Necromongers, it was more than drab it was alien and eerie.

As they turned a corner natural sunlight filled the corridor from heavily barred windows near the ceiling. It was Zemma's turn to flinch, but the five guards never broke step and she was carried along with them, her eyes squeezed shut. Through another door, and the warm light was replaced with cool synthetic light against her eyelids. Zemma sighed softly and opened her eyes and immediately noticed that the guard on her right was watching her. Now it was her turn to be galled by his presence. She didn't like showing her real weakness.

An elevator took them down and Zemma felt fairly safe she wouldn't be faced with a sunlit window again anytime soon. Her heart slowed down and she felt she could breathe normally again. The new hall they walked into was flanked with a row of bare, empty cells. She was taken to the very end cell, where another man waited outside it. He began talking as soon as they escorted her inside and began to unshackle her. He spoke Standard with a vague accent but he might as well have been speaking another language, as he recited from memory a long list of thing that Zemma had the barest understanding of.

"Do you understand these rights as I've told them to you?" He asked in a bored monotone. One of her guards laughed, "She don't speak it," the woman sneered. The man shrugged. "She don't have any representative," said another. "So we can pretty much do what we want, cant we sweetie?" said another male guard, grabbing a handful of Zemma's hair and tipped her head back painfully.

Her reaction was swift. They'd already un-cuffed her hands from her waist and another was taking the chains from her legs. Zemma stomped down hard, her bare foot sliding down the man's shin ineffectively and bouncing off his steel toed boot, but it was only to distract anyway. As he looked down towards his feet with a bemused smile Zemma brought her still cuffed hands up, sharply impacting his face. The cuffs did the most damage, equally to her wrists as to his nose, but the resulting blood was very satisfying to Zemma.

The other guards made the feeling short lived as they slammed her against the wall before she could really enjoy the moment. Zemma went limp again but kept her smile. The guard on her right had her shoulder pinned to the wall, she smiled at him. He snorted but she suspected he was trying not to smile back. Perhaps he didn't like prisoners mistreated or perhaps he just didn't like that guard, either way he seemed stern but not angry.

"Bitch!" The man screamed nasally and she expected to be hit hard in the back with a fist but the guard on her right stepped away and behind her.

"All right, that's enough." She heard him say. "Get to hospital, you dumb fuck."

The woman on Zemma's left growled, "You ain't gonna let her get away with that shit?"

"I said enough!" He bellowed, and Zemma heard a fist hit a uniform, and a short growl.

The woman said snidely, " You da boss man," but her fist clenched, digging painfully into Zemma's elbow.

The last two guards went on, wordlessly removing the shackles while Zemma was kept pinned to the wall. When they turned her to take off the waist chain it wasn't gentle but Zemma didn't protest and didn't stop smiling benignly. Politics was everywhere and politics was something Zemma could use.

Her guard, she thought of him as 'her guard' now, continued to look sternly as the three picked up chains and shackles and left the cell. The fourth had gone to the infirmary, and the off man with the little speech still stood outside the cell, watching with a banal smile. That left Zemma and her guard facing each other in the tiny space. She kept her back against the wall, her paper infirmary clothes now slightly torn, watching every twitch on his face. He stood with his arms crossed at his chest as if reading her right back. She didn't like that part much, but maybe it was a good thing.

"The Warden said you probably understand what we say," he started mildly. "So I want you to pay attention now." His voice dropped coldly, "I want no more shit from you or I might start turning my back on these assholes. You get me?"

Zemma didn't react at all. She searched his face for any extra information, any little thing he might be telling her beyond his words, even subconsciously. He'd gone very still. He was very serious. Zemma froze as well. She couldn't react, couldn't acknowledge him, couldn't even appreciate his attempt to help her. She was on her own now and would have to decide for herself how to handle each situation, no promises just to pay back kindness, even in her heart. Zemma turned her head to look pointedly at the bunk beside them. There was folded up clothing in a hideous orange color, and what looked like a paper book. She glanced back at him, inviting his explanation.

He followed her gaze and now his face spoke to her; he seemed sure that she could understand him. She vowed never to prove it.

"Get dressed in those," he told her. "That book tells you the rules but I'll break it down for you… Obey the screws, or they'll put it to you. They are doing your paperwork now. When they take you down they will give you a number. That's your name from now on."

He turned and walked out without another word to her, verbally or otherwise. Zemma followed his progress with just her eyes, not wanting to instigate the guards still hovering at the door just waiting for her to do something they could react to. The barred door closed and the three followed her guard down the row.

Commanding personality, she liked it. Didn't trust it, but liked it anyway. She hadn't seen any insignia that separated him from them so she couldn't be sure that he was their supervisor. He just had a knack…and he knew it…That was the dangerous part.

Speech-man hadn't left. He stood fidgeting outside the bars, looking in at her expectantly and licking his lips dryly. He was waiting for her to change clothes, that would mean being naked in front of him, if only for a few seconds. She sat on the bunk in her paper clothes and looked over the jumpsuit, ignoring him. It was similar in design to the generic gray one she always wore, meant to adjust several sizes to fit a range of people. Instead of buckles, though, it had Velcro straps that were very worn. She guessed it wouldn't cinch up properly and would therefore be too baggy on her. She debated even putting it on but she was cold. She could feel the slight breeze of forced air, and she was naked under the paper shirt and pants.

She shook out the jumpsuit and stepped into it, infirmary clothes and all, then turning her back on the man, ripped the paper clothes right off her body and pulled them out of the jumpsuit before cinching it up as best she could. She turned her benign smile on the odd little man and tossed the shredded remains of her hospital clothes at him. He frowned, his mouth still working as if he were eating something, then left her alone. The heavy metal door at the end of the row clanging shut more loudly than before. Zemma sat heavily on the bunk and tried not to think.

Riddick drug himself, exhausted, into the cool, dark of the cave, expecting to confront Don's lifeless body, and then to bury it. He was beyond feeling any kind of reaction when Don's voice greeted him.

"Asshole."

Riddick got awfully tired of being called an asshole, but he was too shocked, too tired, to do anything about it now. "We're both alive," he said simply.

"Get me out of this mess," Don gruffed, still flat on his back in a pool of blood. Riddick took it to mean the immediate mess and not on the grander scale, though he would have to do that as well. He walked over and looked down, crouching after a moment to get a better look at Don's arm. Don was pale, his face sunken and looking older than ever. The arm was barely healed over in a web of pink and silvery silicon threaded scar tissue. Riddick picked up the syringe, still harboring a thin white slime of some foreign nanos, suspecting where they probably came from, and looked it over then down at Don again.

"What happened?" Riddick asked as he picked up and discarded shredded pieces of Don's favorite uniform, looking subtly for any other wounds, or any other evidence of the nanos that she'd used to heal him.

"She gets off on torture," Don hissed, eyes closed against the indignity of it all. Riddick had seen how she had planned to get off, and figured Don's skin would have followed his clothes. "Bloody, maniacal vampire."

"Did she poke you with this?" Riddick held the syringe up where Don could see it, not moving to help his friend up yet.

Don's eyes fluttered open but he seemed to be having trouble focusing. He murmured, "I don't know," softly before a seizure hit him. Riddick watched helplessly, watched carefully, as silicone scabs filled open wounds right before his eyes while Don's whole body stiffened and twitched spasmodically. It looked as if the bitch had filled him up with her own hinky blood. Don's body was trying to reject it even as it healed him. Riddick wasn't sure his friend would live through the process. Riddick wasn't entirely sure he should let his friend live through the process. What exactly had she done to him?

When the spasm ended Riddick pulled Don from the congealed mess and used the loose dirt on the floor of the cave to sop up the sticky residue, rubbing it the dirt in then brushing it off. Then he took off his jacket and wrapped Don in it, laying him gently down again just as Don began to fade back in from unconsciousness in a flood of mumbled Furyan, none of which Riddick could quite make out. Did they all dream in Furyan but him? Riddick had never given much thought to what language his dreams were in. His nightmares had few words.

"Bitch, damn vampire bitch…."

"Welcome back," Riddick told him softly as he padded to the mouth of the cave to be sure the damned vampire bitch wasn't coming back to finish the job of killing Don slowly. Hot desert air was all that greeted him. He didn't even notice that his lenses did their trick, dropping for the bright afternoon sun outside and twitching back up as he returned to Don's side.

"What the hell did she do to me?" Don whispered as his body shook lightly all over.

"I don't know," Riddick told him and the sorrow in his voice was not disguised. Don's eyes flew open, searching Riddick's face. There was nothing to find there.

"Get me back to the damn ship," Don whispered the order. "Get me out of this damn hole and back to the ship."

Riddick mentally shrugged and lifted his friend into his arms, lighter by one limb and looking more like an old man than he ever had. "How old are you?" Riddick asked.

"What the fuck do you care?" Don hissed and Riddick smiled at the fire coming back into Don's voice.

"I don't. I just want you awake."

"Oh." Don paused only a moment. "Almost ninety." Riddick glanced down in surprise. "Middle aged, if she hasn't taken a few decades off me." Don closed his eyes to the bright glare outside the cave. Riddick thought his friend looked ninety today.

It was a slow process. Riddick couldn't be sure the crazy cyborg wasn't around any particular rock, though he guessed from her reaction earlier she would head straight to her ship to see what he'd done to it. He had to carry Don from vantage point to vantage point, resting them both but mostly so he could keep their surroundings in constant view. Don had more seizures and Riddick just stopped and held Don's wracked body still, wondering if this time he wouldn't wake up. Each time he did. Each time Riddick wondered if it was a good thing.

The day and half the night went on like that. Don tried to talk when he was awake, but most often he mumbled incoherently, which was more and more often. His physical wounds were healing faster than could be believed with the help of those strange silver threads that were most likely from Hypatia's nano-rich blood. It took the day and half the night to get back to the landing port... only to discover the frigate wasn't there.