A Thousand Shades Of Black

Chapter Eight – Are We Dead Yet?

Riddick pounded out of the alien craft. The darkness of night was starting to pale towards dawn and he was feeling every one of his thirty years.

“Alia?” he called, his voice soft so as not to alert any of the enemy that might be lingering.

“Here.” She crawled out from under the ship dragging her injured leg behind her, and without pausing in his stride, he reached down, pulled Alia to her feet, swung her up into his arms and headed towards cover. Having busted their security, he no longer had to worry about being shot as they ran.

“Ship’s lifting!” Kyra crowed beside him as the retro rockets fired. He risked a glance at Alia’s face and saw that she was pale but alert. She had wrapped her arms around his neck and it felt surprisingly good. She was looking back over his shoulder in interest as the vehicle began to take off.

“I see that,” she replied dryly. She looked at him and cocked an eyebrow. He reached the hospital quickly. The monkeys seemed to have left the area, which puzzled him, and he darted inside, headed for the ER and some real bandages for Alia’s leg.

“Got it headed for the sun,” he informed her as he trotted down the hallway. She grinned at him weakly.

“Nice.” Her voice was going faint, her eyes drooped closed and he shook her lightly.

“Stay with me now.” She opened her eyes and gave him a wry smile.

“Not going anywhere, Riddick,” she assured him. “I’m just really tired.” She cracked a yawn and to his surprise rested her head against his shoulder sleepily. He felt warmth in the region of his heart when she did that and it scared him a little. He was never sure what to think when he felt that sort of thing. Feeling any tenderness was always a prelude to being hurt.

The ER was surprisingly untouched by the fighting and as he pushed open a door with his foot, he spotted a doctor, two orderlies and a patient diving for cover.

“I have a patient for you!” he called out and the medical personnel crawled out from under the furniture and whisked Alia away from him and onto a table. He felt a momentary loss as she was removed from his arms and berated himself for the weakness. He stepped back, allowing himself to be soothed by the chatter and hum of the people and equipment.

He leaned against the wall and Kyra slumped beside him, sliding to the floor in a controlled crumple. She cocked her head up at him from floor level and eyed him.

“Can we skip any more invasions, Riddick?” she asked, rubbing futilely at the blood and soot that covered her from head to toe.

“The odds of that are rather poor.” Aereon flickered into existence beside Riddick, almost losing her head to his reflexive knife draw. He pulled the shiv back and grumbled at her.

“Stop sneaking up on me, lady.” Which was a piece of very good advice that only served to make her smile at him. He knew that it was a hopeless effort but he was genuinely concerned that one day his reflexes would take her head off.

“You saying there is another chance of invasion?” Kyra asked from her place on the floor.

“I am saying that unless the gates are closed there will be many invasions into this universe.” Aereon replied gravely. Riddick’s eyes flicked to the table where Alia lay patiently allowing the doctor to work on her leg. She had that utterly calm distant look again. It seemed to be close kin to her stone cold look but ten degrees friendlier. Once more he wondered if he would ever be able to get all the way into her head. It was so simple with most people, their minds ticked visibly and he could follow their thoughts easily. If all else failed, he could smell their reactions. Not so with her; she did enigmatic way too fucking well.

“Alia said something about gates earlier.” He muttered and Aereon nodded, her blue eyes bright and inquisitive as she stared at the cot where Alia was lying. There was an avian quality to her. She was like a sparrow, turning her head this way and that to examine a new type of flower. The doctors were trying to figure out Alia’s blood type for a transfusion but not coming up with a match.

“Yes, the Furyans were the gatekeepers and their destruction has left the door open to many dangers.” Aereon continued with a vague tone that indicated her mind wasn’t entirely on what they were discussing. Alia was waving the doctor away and shaking her head.

“Really, and you figured this out when?” Riddick growled and Aereon’s attention snapped back to him in a hurry.

“I have known of the potentiality for thirty years, Riddick.” She sighed and he crossed his arms, prepared to glare at her for all eternity if she didn’t start talking. “I could not calculate when the gates would start to destabilize and open though. For all I knew, it could have been yet another thirty years.” There was an apologetic tone in her voice.

“Or it could be now, while everything is already in the crapper,” he snorted, looking around at the ER and she ducked her head in acknowledgement.

“Yes, but until I realized you knew a Void Walker, there was nothing that could be done.” Aereon shrugged. She had drifted more and more towards solidity as she spoke as though concentrating on the conversation brought her into focus. “Now everything has changed.”

Vaako leaned forward to peer out into the hallway again. Beside him Freet was binding up a wound on McCauley’s arm, trying to staunch the bleeding with the last of the wound sealant. Thank God someone thought to bring a first aid kit. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing.

They had withstood two charges from the aliens without suffering more than superficial wounds. The creatures had withdrawn now around the corner and they were waiting … and waiting…

“Where’d they go?” Daikken asked, rubbing a hand through his thick curly brown hair with a look of confusion. He was a big wall of a man, bigger even than Riddick was, though with nowhere near Riddick’s grace and speed. Standing next to McCauley, Daikken looked like the giant-sized version of the other shorter man.

Freet looked like a slender reed between two rocks. Vaako corrected himself: a slender blade was a better analogy, as she was lean and dangerous these days. She had hardly mastered the warrior arts in the few weeks she had been training but she had the do or die attitude down. Even a short time under Sturm’s tutelage seemed to have imparted some fierceness to her, or perhaps it merely brought out what was already there.

“Could we have beaten them off?” Auret asked, limping up to them, his short-cropped blond hair matted and filthy. He was wiping blood from his chin where he had been head-butted by a monkey. Truly a tale to tell your children, Vaako chuckled mirthlessly.

“Damn, I hope so.” It was probably a prayer, in a strange sort of way, and was certainly as heartfelt as anything he had murmured in the Basilica.

Lajjun came up beside him quietly and put a hand on his arm. He looked into her eyes, warm brown and filled with relief.

“Can you hear it?” she asked softly and they paused to listen. It took Vaako long weary moments to realize that what she was referring to was an absence of noise. The sounds of combat in the distance had died away and all was quiet.

“I think it’s over.” Joisa’s trembling soprano declared in relief. Vaako waited a moment and then as the reality crawled through his brain, he let himself fall back against a wall and slide down it slowly. He dropped the sword, holstered the gun and let his head loll as he relaxed at last.

Warm weight in his lap made him look around and he met three sets of childish eyes. Ziza and the two neighbor children crawled up beside him and collapsed into a heap against him. He draped his arms around them protectively and fell almost instantly asleep.

Alia could see the conversation between Riddick, Kyra and Aereon but she couldn’t hear it. Kyra tossed her head with a touch of defiance and Alia wondered what trouble the Elemental was stirring up this time. The doctor finished his work and went to give her a painkiller.

“That won’t be necessary.” Alia gently shifted her leg away from the syringe.

“You must be in a great deal of discomfort. This will ease it.”

“I need to keep my wits about me. That will fuzz my mind,” she explained.

“Look, I’m the doctor, you just do as…” The doctor’s voice trailed away as Alia leaned forward and flicked a blade up under his sternum. “Perhaps it won’t be necessary.” The doctor squeaked and quickly withdrew.

“You really need to consider learning some subtlety, Miss Sturm.” Aereon murmured as the trio approached her. Riddick had a small approving smile and Kyra was grinning so Alia didn’t care what the half-transparent Elemental had to say. She shrugged and tucked the blade away.

“I don’t like being told what to do.”

“So you keep saying.” Riddick’s voice had that low growl to it again and she felt a little shiver go through her. She wished to hell she knew what to do about him and his damn sexy voice.

“You’re right Riddick, she is a lot like you.” Kyra grinned wickedly at Alia who merely raised a brow at the younger girl.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she retorted.

“Furyans.” Aereon muttered darkly, rolling her eyes towards heaven. Riddick just smiled.

“That’s why they couldn’t match your blood!” Kyra snapped her fingers and gave Alia a triumphant look. “Because you’re Furyan!”

“My blood type is anomalous as well,” Riddick commented. Alia wondered what the prison authorities had made of his physiological ‘anomalies.’ She knew she had often baffled the doctors.

“It’s not anomalous, it’s perfectly normal – for a Furyan.” Alia crossed her arms on her chest and relaxed against the headboard.

“Are Furyans human?” Kyra asked next, looking back and forth between Riddick and Alia with interest. Alia had a moment of indecision as she thought about how to answer that question. Riddick was watching her closely and there was something in her that didn’t want to lie to him. Still, the truth about them wasn’t something she just wanted to spring on him either. Maybe if she just told the minimum amount of truth she could scrape past the issue lightly.

“We can cross breed with pure-strain humans so we must be extremely close to the phenotype,” Alia shrugged, hoping that would be enough information and then shot Kyra a quelling frown. She really didn’t want to discuss this here and now. Kyra however was oblivious to her disapproval and continued blithely, apparently unaware of Riddick’s sudden stillness. So much for her plan to skirt the issue.

“What do you mean by pure-strain humans? What are Furyans anyway?” Kyra was obviously not going to let the conversation go. Alia shifted uncomfortably. She hurt and was exhausted; not the best time for a biology lesson.

“How much history do you know?” Alia asked the brunette with a frown on her face. She was trying to buy some time to figure out how to say this.

“Educated in the penal system, hello.” Kyra shot back with a dark look at Riddick who ignored it, his liquid mercury eyes gone flat and unreadable. Alia decided to take that answer as an indication that Kyra knew next to nothing.

“Okay, Earth, late twenty-first century – wars, terrorism, bio-weapons and tons of very bad. With me so far?” She challenged the younger girl who nodded in understanding. “Some bright bulbs get the idea of engineering people to survive the coming apocalypse: stronger, faster, more powerful than a locomotive – the usual superman crap.” Riddick was looking more and more unhappy as she spoke and she hated that this was how he was going to find out the truth.

“You’re talking about Project Atlantis,” he rumbled at her with an edge of anger flaring visibly in his eyes. Alia felt a knife wound of grief stab her heart. He knew about the project. She wouldn’t be able to gloss over the nastier aspects then.

“Yes, I am,” she affirmed.

“What’s that?” Kyra asked her head twisting back and forth between them,

“It was a genetic project that was supposed to make the next generation of humans.” His eyes were glued to her face as he spoke and Alia was starting to squirm under the weight of his gaze.

“Supposed to? So what happened?” Kyra’s curiosity was going to get her into a lot of trouble some day, probably from Alia banging her head into a table.

“It succeeded beyond the expectations of the Project leaders.” Aereon broke in. “Project Atlantis created a race of beings that could share energy, walk the Void and cross universes.” Her voice was gentle as she spoke to Riddick and Alia was grateful for that soothing tone. She knew that she wasn’t handling the disclosure well.

“It created the race that nearly destroyed Earth,” Riddick murmured.

“It wasn’t our fault,” Alia broke in. She knew that bleak look all too well, she had seen it in her own mirror often enough. “The first Void Walker was untrained, didn’t know how to handle the power.” Alia shook her head at him as he glared at her.

“Whole fucking planet got trashed,” he retorted abruptly.

“She lived with the guilt all her life, Riddick. She also created the disciplines by which we control the power now. Without Shirah’s Laws, misunderstanding and misuse of the power might have destabilized the whole Multiverse, destroying everything everywhere,” Alia pointed out. Riddick looked shocked and opened his mouth as if to ask a question but Kyra beat him to it.

“You could do that?” she asked awestruck and Alia had to laugh.

“Fomor’s Bane girl, of course not. I am a Void Walker but I am not a Gatekeeper.” She waved away the thought with grim amusement to Kyra’s obvious relief. “I can walk the paths but I can’t manipulate them. Only three Furyans in history have ever borne Shirah’s Curse and they are all long dead.”

“But you can ward the gates.” Aereon leaned towards her and Alia gave her a bitter smile.

“A properly trained Void Walker can, sure, but I am almost entirely self-taught.” The pain of that, the crippled feeling that permeated her soul, leached her words of every emotion leaving them flat, hard and toneless.

“You went out into the Void, leaving your body behind and you say you aren’t trained?” Aereon sounded disbelieving. Those blue eyes could mock one with a great deal of scorn.

“Look, my mother was a Walker too. She told me things, when she was sober, that helped me figure it out but I never received any real training.” She said it quickly, hoping to gloss over the reality, but Kyra was too street-smart, too knowing and her eyes flicked to Alia’s and there was no hiding from the sudden understanding in them. A glance at Riddick and she saw the same knowledge dawning in his eyes as well. Only Aereon seemed to miss the implication, but then she could merely be being polite.

“So you don’t know how to ward the gates?” Riddick asked finally, neatly avoiding the festering wound that Alia had tried so hard to hide.

“No, but if we can find others of our kind, they will know.” Alia was grateful to him for not pressing her about her childhood. If she never had to speak of it again, she would be happy.

“Sturm, where are we going to find other Furyans?” Kyra asked, also refusing to pry.

“Why, on Furya, of course.” Aereon answered her with an arch of her brow. “Where else?”

Vaako stepped from the catacombs with his hand shading his eyes against the brightness of the dawn. He had gotten perhaps an hour of sleep before the others had shaken him awake and begun the trek out and up.

“There are no bodies,” Joisa muttered as she looked about. It took Vaako a minute to understand what she was talking about. There were in fact plenty of bodies lying around, but they weren’t monkey corpses. All the bodies were human.

“They’re all gone? Did they take them with them when they left?” Freet asked in bewilderment, her head turning as she looked for evidence of their erstwhile attackers.

“They just vanished,” came a voice from nearby. They all turned and a filthy man in green robes soaked to near black from blood came hobbling from the wreckage nearby. “The ship took off and soon after they just faded away.” The man shrugged helplessly as they stared at him.

“But where did they go?”

“I dunno, they were there one minute then gone the next.” The man reached their side and looked around conspiratorially. “I heard one of the interns at the hospital say that Riddick is the one that saved us again.” The man nodded at Vaako’s look of surprise and then hobbled away.

“That is the only thing he said that I am willing to believe,” Vaako murmured and the little family that had formed around him nodded. “Guess we go to the hospital,” he added and the group began to wend its way towards the man who was their leader and center – Riddick.

Riddick let himself relax in the armchair the orderly had provided and watched as Alia slept. Kyra was curled up on the other bed, clean and still damp and dressed in scrubs. He leaned back in the chair and felt the relief of their survival washing through him. In this room were the two most important people in his life and somehow despite the odds against them they had managed to come out alive and relatively unharmed.

The doctors had marveled at how quickly Alia was healing and Riddick was thinking about his own medical history, all the times he had survived what should have killed him. Watching Alia sleep he thought briefly about his mother.

There had been a time in his life that he had cursed the bitch that had born him. He had thought that she had dumped him to die in the trash. He had thought himself unwanted, unloved, unneeded – in short, a big mistake. Now he finds out his mother was probably murdered and that he was torn from her and nearly killed because of some damn prophecy that wouldn’t have come true if the Lord Marshall had just left well enough alone.

He wondered now, as he watched Alia’s chest rise and fall, about that mother and presumably the father he must have had at one time as well. Did they fight trying to save him? Did they die thinking that they had failed? What would they think of him now? That last thought was uncomfortable.

Kyra mumbled something and turned over in her sleep, damp strands of hair clinging to her face. She adored him; always had, he knew that. He had tried for years to escape the burden of her love and acceptance, feeling that he would only destroy her as he had destroyed so many others. Yet there she was, still glued to him after all these years. What do you do with someone who won’t let you think the worst about yourself?

He turned his shined eyes back to Alia. She had never questioned him, never faltered, just run along behind like a loyal hound, defending his back and simply, silently been there. It had started as a simple thing: he needed her to get Kyra back for him and then after a while he just needed her. Another uncomfortable thought there.

He was unused to needing anybody. He was uncomfortable even admitting that he did need someone.

Carolyn Fry’s face returned to haunt him again. Rain-soaked and desperate, exhausted and teary-eyed, her misery wrapped around her like a coat – he stared into those haunted tragic eyes and listened again to that conversation, the one that had changed his life.

“Would you die for them?” He had asked her then and now he looked over at the sleeping women and he could almost hear Carolyn’s voice asking him the same question. Would he die for them? Alia had nearly died for him at the Threshold and she had never said a word about it. Kyra had nearly died a dozen times in the five years he had been gone. She had suffered, bled and wept for him as she searched. She had died for him on the Basilica – hurled herself at the Lord Marshall to save him. These two women, both dissimilar and yet very much alike, had in their own ways demonstrated their willingness to die for him.

Would he die for them? He looked at the sleeping faces: Kyra’s smooth and open in sleep, her body gone limp and sprawled untidily; Alia as neat and controlled in sleep as she was awake. Would he die for them? It was a long time that he sat there pondering and wondering why he was even asking himself the question. He had gone back for Kyra on Crematoria, risked his life when he had said he wouldn’t. He had protected Alia, fretted after her, worried that she would come to harm. He was still concerned about Lajjun and Ziza.

“Welcome back to the human race, Riddick,” he muttered to himself as he sat in the shadows. The words sounded grim and bitter to his ears. He wasn’t sure that he was comfortable with the strange vulnerability he felt.

“It’s not as bad as all that.” Shirah’s voice was in his head again and he sighed. He really wondered sometimes if he had gone mad and this was the sign of it.

“I don’t know how to be what they expect me to be.” He wasn’t just talking about Alia and Kyra, he meant all of them: Vaako, Lajjun, Ziza, his Necros, the people of Helion Prime – all of them.

“Have you ever considered that all they expect of you is that you be yourself, that you do the best you can?” Her voice was warm and sweet and full of wisdom. He was never sure how much of her was real.

“I think they expect me to save the universe and damn it, I am not a hero.” He felt a little petulant saying it, sort of childish, but it was true. He had never wanted to be anybody’s savior.

“Never?” Shirah’s voice was so gentle as she asked that it took him a moment to remember. Oh yeah, well, maybe once. There had been once when he was too little to understand what it all meant, too young to know what happened to heroes. He remembered the girl’s face but couldn’t recall her name. It was one of the many foster homes that he had passed through and she had been so sweet, so good, that he had let her in, just a bit.

“Yeah, and look how well that turned out.” He shook his head wishing that Shirah hadn’t dredged up that memory.

“She had a few months of real happiness in her life. You gave her that,” Shirah replied, still talking in that wise and knowing voice that made him feel as though she could see into every nook and cranny of his mind.

“I couldn’t save her.”

“You were eight years old, Riddick.” It was a scolding tone now, like the mother he had never known was speaking to him.

“I’m not eight any more.” He spoke the words with a touch of wonderment. He had saved this world from two invasions now. He hadn’t been able to save Imam, but he had saved Kyra, kept Lajjun and Ziza safe, retrieved Vaako and the others from the Necromonger faith. Maybe, just maybe, even though he wasn’t a hero and never would be, maybe he could at least keep safe the people he cared about.

“You can use the word Riddick, it won’t kill you, you know.” Her voice was now filled with a fond exasperation and he ignored it. He wasn’t anywhere near ready to use a word like that. It was too often degraded and devalued by those who spent its worth casually. He was too new at this being human thing. He wanted to be sure that it was not a temporary aberration that would vanish and leave him the cold heartless killer again.

“Will I see you on Furya?” he asked suddenly, wondering where the thought came from.

“I am always strongest there,” she replied and he felt obscurely comforted by that. He was looking forward to seeing her there. His head tilted back and he was soon asleep.