False Dawn

Chapter 16

Jack paced slowly back and forth. The entire wall beside her was mirrored and she'd never been so stupid as to think there weren't little men with cameras and probably guns back there watching her.

Ironically that's why she liked to pace there. She'd been living in the tiny suite of rooms for . . . what seemed like forever. The main room was large, with a small kitchen area, a desk with computer, Vid, and a fluffy big sofa. There was nothing on her side of the apartment's main door to tamper with to even try to escape. So with nothing to do, and nowhere to go she just paced the long wall in front of that mirror.

It had taken months for her to understand why Chem Industries had decided she was of some value. At first she had thought they meant to keep her in the hope that Riddick would come for her. Now she knew better. Slight touches of nausea and a constant uncontrolled weight gain were the first signs. She denied it for several weeks, until her clothes wouldn't fit anymore. Then she'd climbed into the shower, the only place she was free of observation, and cried. It was the only time she allowed any emotion other than anger to show. She cried for Riddick, she cried for this child that she already loved, but didn't know if she would be allowed to keep, and she cried for herself, for the loneliness and the fear she felt. Then she had gotten out and dried off, drying the tears she wouldn't allow herself to shed again.

The mirror in the main room became her companion and her adversary. She hated it. She'd tried to break it, but she hadn't wanted to hurt herself in her 'condition' so wasn't able to move anything heavy enough to do much damage. There had been no reaction. She'd gone to bed hours later and heard the door of her bedroom click, locking her in. When she came out the next morning all was back to normal. She'd wanted to rip something up all over again.

The computer system did some to ease her overwhelming boredom, but everything she did on it was monitored. If she tried to connect to anything that would be seen as unacceptable, the whole damn thing shut down. So she'd broken the big piece of shit. Knocked the monitor onto the floor and threw everything that would come loose against the detested mirror nearby. Again, it was all replaced the next morning.

The inactivity was the worst. She really didn't mind not having anyone to speak to, that wasn't such a deprivation. After years with Riddick she was used to unbroken silence. It was the mind numbing boredom that she hated. What was she expected to do? Sit in front of the Vid and eat until she was too fat to move? That wasn't going to happen, though she did have the most ridiculous cravings to do just that. Not surprisingly, for the first time in her life she hated watching the news. Funnily enough, it was the very reasons why she had once loved it that made her hate it now. Seeing the images of Riddick every hour or so caused a stab in her chest in the vicinity of her heart.

Again, as when she was captured, her mind and heart were delivering different messages. She was thankful that he was safe, still on the run at least, but she couldn't avoid the little seed of hope in the beginning that he would come back for her. Eventually that hope turned to uncertainty. Why had he never come for her? Surely if he could escape Slam he could get her out of this little room. Was he glad to have her gone? Or was he dead? Had he been so badly injured that he'd died and had just never been found?

The questions and doubts and worries circled and repeated with no end, and no answers. All she knew was that she was trapped and alone. She forced her thoughts away from him as much as possible. The pregnancy was making her overly emotional, and she knew her thoughts weren't productive in the least, as sometimes they were barely rational.

Jack stopped her pacing and stared into the mirror. Well, at her reflection anyway. Her hair was longer. She wore it tied back mostly, because anything and everything annoyed her. A single hair tickling her nose would make her curse and want to rip her hair out. Other times she would just break anything that was loose enough or fragile enough to break, it did some to relieve the maddening boredom and the constant anxiety.

Exercising helped, but with each passing day and every gained pound she found that she was becoming winded more and more easily. The pacing was all she had left. The carpet before the mirror was worn down, a lighter colored streak showing where she had walked back and forth. She had brought a chair over from the little kitchen so she could do pushups, which was the only way she could do them now. Anything, so long as she wasn't sitting still, which was unfortunately about the only thing she could do anymore with any amount of comfort.

With a frustrated huff she turned to the side and stared at her profile, her hands smoothing down over the round protruding belly. The taut skin was super-sensitive and very itchy. She had tried wearing loose fitting shirts to disguise the unwieldy thing, but it just made her look bigger. So she wore tight shirts, letting the cloth hug her skin, perfectly defining her breasts and neatly round stomach. Plus, she liked the way it looked. She'd never thought of getting pregnant before, but she liked the way her body looked, all rounded out and full.

By her calculations she couldn't get much bigger without popping. She and Riddick had only been sexually active for the last two months they'd been together. She could estimate, she could guess, but she didn't really know when it had happened. Without seeing her blood work, which was strictly forbidden, there was no way for her to guess the date of conception. She wasn't given any information or updates during her brief checkups either. Even her due date was kept from her, but she was honestly starting to hope to just get it all over with.

She, of course, assumed that any child of Riddick's was probably going to be big like Daddy, but if the little fucker got much bigger she'd be ripping apart at the seams. The idea of being at the mercy of CI during the birth scared the living hell out of her, but she didn't have much choice. It was pretty difficult to plot an escape when it took ten minutes to go to the bathroom. She resolutely refused to think of what would come after. No baby items had been brought to her little suite of rooms, and that didn't look good to her.

The ache in her lower back was getting worse each day. Her hand rubbed the pain absently as she waddled to the sofa. She turned slowly, feeling extremely off balance lately, and then thankfully remembered to grab the Vid. remote before she sat and became virtually inert. She found an old movie to watch and sat absently rubbing her tummy. There was a hard plane that she could feel just beneath the surface that she had decided was the infants back, ass up, facing outward. When he started kicking a lot she found she could calm him by rubbing his 'back', if that's truly what she was rubbing. It soothed her a bit too, and she found herself getting sleepy.

Small naps through the day were the only thing she could do to not drop dead from fatigue. As she started to doze, still rubbing her tummy, she wasn't aware of the team of men watching from behind the glass. She wasn't aware that they were waiting for something special today, or that the wait was almost over.

Jack woke at the first touch against her skin, but by then it was already too late. A stretcher waited nearby, and she was practically pounced upon, and lifted struggling to the stretcher where she was quickly restrained.

Nearly eight months of loneliness and anxiety had erased the indifferent bravado she had entered the same room with. She was terrified!

Yelling seemed pointless, but was the only thing she had left. "Fucking take your hands off me! Let me go!" The desperate pleas continued, but went unheeded. Finally her arm was held down and a needle slipped into her vein. Her words trailed off as she felt her body slowly relax, felt her brain cloud with coming unconsciousness. Her head rolled to the side, and the last thing she saw before she slipped away was Aurick Ndale smiling at her.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

Consciousness was slow in returning. Jack's eyes fluttered, and with the flashes of light, came the memory of the last several minutes, and she screamed. Gripping the bedrail, feeling the ache of an IV in her arm at her struggles, she tried to sit.

A nurse ran in, the curtain around the bed being yanked back, and Jack settled back against the bed, the fight going out of her. She knew.

The nurse was spouting some drivvle that Jack easily tuned out as she let her mind surround and accept what she knew to be true.

The baby was gone. She didn't need to drop her hand to her stomach, she didn't need to look, but she did both all the same. Flat stomach lay beneath her hand, the blankets hugged her new trim form. The baby was gone.

She was free. This she knew too. The hospital with its bustling sounds and crackling intercom messages, and horrible sick smells, was just a hospital, like any other on any other planet. She was free of CI, but after the first unbearable truth, the second just didn't seem as important.

"Ma'am, are you okay? Are you in any pain?" the nurse was asking, her stream of questions part of some looped soundtrack that obviously wasn't going to quit until Jack responded.

That she wasn't in pain seemed profound to her. Why wasn't she in pain? How much time had gone by? How does an unconscious woman give birth? Did they surgically take it? If so, why didn't she hurt from the incision? All these thoughts were pushed aside in preference of the all-important one. "Where's my baby?" she whispered, though she halfway didn't want the unknowing answers.

The woman frowned at her and Jack finally really looked at her. She seemed pleasant enough, not dead to her job yet, not apathetic to her patients pain yet. The look in her eyes actually showed remorse.

"I'm sorry, miss. The baby didn't make it."

Jack blinked several times, trying to clear both the tears in her eyes and the fog clouding her brain. Had she just heard what she thought she had? "What?"

She held Jack's hand in a gesture of sympathy that Jack actually appreciated. "Your baby was too weak. He didn't make it."

What this woman was saying couldn't be true, could it? She tried to raise her hand to rub her aching head, but was stopped short by the leather restraint.

"Why am I tied?" she whispered.

The nurse quickly started to undo the buckle on the cuff closest to her. "You were thrashing about at first, we had to secure you. It happens with patients who've suffered extreme cold temperatures."

Jack's mind quickly listed another reason that would cause a patient to thrash: cryo recovery. But why?

When she was free she lifted her hands to her face and just held them there for a minute, her mind trying to fix on the truth. Had something gone wrong and Chem Industries had just dumped them so as not to draw attention to themselves? She had no doubt that Ndale would be capable of that. But how much time had passed? And where was she?

"Where am I?" she whispered, finding her throat was too raw for louder speech.

Concerned eyes still watched her. "This is the West Side County Hospital in—"

Jack waved her hand, "No. What planet?"

The woman smiled and frowned at the same time, and Jack had to wonder how soon the psyche personnel would be called on her. "We're on Achelve, orbiting Costhin."

Jack rolled her eyes slightly and dropped her head to think. She'd been taken on Tiborne 1. If her calculations were right she was literally months away from Tiborne 1 now. Why had they brought her so far?

"How did I get here?"

The nurse had moved away, checking the IV drip, and checking the hanging chart there. She spoke without turning to face her. "A policeman found you in a park a couple blocks from here. It's cold. You both were very cold. The child was hypothermic. It was too late."

Jack stared hard at the woman's back. "Can I see the baby?"

The nurse turned back and Jack saw the nametag for the first time, Gretta. "Do you really think that's a good idea?" she asked.

She couldn't keep from snapping at the stupid woman, "Obviously so, if I fucking asked!"

The nurse blanched and quickly left.

Jack waited for so long she was contemplating ripping out the IV in order to go in search of the nurse. But wheels squeaking, coming closer, and then something thumping rudely into her door way kept her still. She sat riveted as a tiny clear plastic box on a wheeled cart was pushed toward her. Tears threatened at the first glimpse of fine dark hair. She quickly batted at her eyes, needing to see this.

He was swaddled just like a live baby would be, his little pug face just peeking from the V of cloth wrapped around him. As if the child were alive and fragile, the nurse gently lifted him and then stepped closer to her, holding the baby out.

Jack bent her arm to gently support the baby's head, though she knew she didn't have to. His little head was in no danger of lolling on his little stiff neck. She could feel the coolness coming from the blanket, instead of the healthy warmth that was supposed to be there.

They had cleaned him. His wispy hair was dry and sticking out as if it all was growing from one central spot at the top of his head. Tiny dark eyelashes just peeked from the scrunched closures of his eyes. His little lips looked as if they were ready to kiss, or start sucking, and she so wished he would open that little puckered mouth and scream at her to feed him. She felt an actual ache in her breasts at just the thought of him working there for his meal.

But he would never need a meal, or to be burped, or a clean diapy. He would never blink those little eyes, or give her a big toothless grin. He would never do anything.

Jack found that her arms were instinctively rocking him. She rocked him and knew she would never get to rock him again. He would never keep her awake at night with his incessant demands. He would never fall asleep in her arms or hear a bedtime story. He would never know how much she loved him or know how thankful she had been to carry this little part of Riddick.

Her head dropped until her forehead was resting against the cool forehead of her son. She just sat and rocked him and cried, for all the little treasures that she would miss, feeling her heart wrench with sadness.

An hour or so later the nurse came back, and Jack raised her tear stained face. When the nurse reached for him Jack grudgingly let him go and then watched him wheeled away. She would never see him again, but she knew she'd never be the same for having seen him.

She closed her eyes and let the anger bubble through her. Chem Industries was solely to blame for the death of her son, and she nearly gnashed her teeth in hatred as she thought of that smug bastard Ndale.

A sleepless night passed, and a different nurse bustled in with a stack of clothes just after the breakfast tray had been removed untouched. "Ready to get out of here?" she asked in that too chipper voice that made Jack wish she were armed. She was left alone to dress in the baggy clothes that were obviously not hers. When she finished, feeling like the homeless waif she truly was, she picked up the patient clipboard beside the bed.

'Jane Doe' estimated age: 20. Every other blank was just that, blank. No address, no contact info, no allergies, no closest relatives, no anything. And strangely that's just how she felt, blank.

The nurse returned with a wheelchair. "Your ride has arrived."

Jack glared at her and headed for the door, ignoring the woman's reprimanding words.

At the nurses' desk, she stopped to check the bill. When the irritated woman there had checked her computer she just shrugged, "The bill has been taken care of." She even seemed surprised.

"How? By who?" Jack asked, leaning over to see the computer.

The woman glared at her and turned the monitor away as if she were protecting nuclear secrets. "There's no information on who paid the bill, just that it was."

Jack rolled her eyes. Whatever. She wasn't going to argue with the bitch when it was pretty damn obvious who was responsible. "What about arrangements for the infant?"

She seemed to huff and checked her computer, "He was cremated this morning."

Jack snorted, "Thanks for keeping me fucking posted," she mumbled. To the woman she said, "Can I at least get his remains?"

The bitch actually sneered at her. "If you go down to the mortuary they can give you the package."

Jack turned and walked away without another word.

In the elevator she leaned her head back against the wall, hoping the throbbing there would cease. No such luck.

With a suspiciously ache-free walk she stepped off the elevator on the sub floor that was the mortuary. At least here the employees were civil, or at least didn't speak enough to show their animosity. She accepted the small wrapped box that was her son and couldn't help the tears from silently falling.

Minutes later she stepped out of the front doors of the West Side County Hospital into the bitterly cold winds of Achelve wearing clothes that had probably been taken from a patient unfortunate enough not to be able to leave in them. The only thing in her possession besides the too big clothes that did little to block the cold was a small box that had once been her reason for surviving each day. She had nothing and no one and nowhere to go. The only person in the universe she knew was in hiding, while she was trapped on a tiny planet at the ass-end of space freezing to death.