The Bullet through the Head of the Universe

This gets a little confusing, but you'll have to bear with me. The plot will thicken and clear in the second installment. Enjoy. R&R SVP! :)


He could feel it in him, slowly awakening like a hibernating bear. He had realized it hours after the full-dead necromonger council had raped his mind. Now, he was within the heart of the stronghold, after killing the late Marshall and it was awakening.

Strolling down the hallway, trying to get used to the concept of people staring at him in awe and respect rather than hate and contempt, it hit him hard, making him drop to his knees. He choked on the bile rising in his throat; the heat that roiled out from him was real and felt like razorblades against his skin.

Words echoed in his head, a question that he could not comprehend before laughter filled his brain. It was raspy and full of hatred, drowning out all reason and sanity that he had left, causing him to lash out. His hands found something, he wasn’t quite sure what it was, but his fingers squeezed until he heard something snap.

Looking down at the face his hands framed, he let out a hoarse yell that sounded like a roar from a wounded tiger. The face in his hands was Kyra’s, but then she was already dead? It shifted then, at that thought, to Lajjun, Imam’s wife. She was visiting family on another continent. Then it was Ziza, but the little girl was with Lajjun. Who was this person he had destroyed? Aereon? Dame Vaako? Vaako himself? Carolyn, who he had left on that godforsaken planet?

He woke then, his eyes snapping open but he still couldn’t see a thing. The constant ache that niggled the back of his skull had intensified by a hundred fold. He grimaced as the pain shot down his spine, paralyzing him. He could feel all the muscles in his body tense, his back arched off of the surface he had been laying on so that only his heels and the crown of his head touched. His jaw clenched, his teeth gritting under the spasms and he could feel his eyes rolling into the back of his head.

“Riddick?”

“What?”

“What’s your first name?”

“Richard.”

“D’ye have a second name? A middle name?”

“Yeah, kid. I have a second name.”

“What is it?”

“B.”

“What’s the ‘B’ stand for?”

“Branden.”

“Oh…”

“You look disappointed. What the hell did you think the ‘B’ stood for?”

“I dunno…something cool like Benedicte or something.”

“Benedicte? You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

Jack’s face faded from his mind with the pain. Slowly, he relaxed against the pillows and felt the hands skim over his sweat soaked skin. The black void milked away and slowly Aereon’s concerned face formed in the grayness of his vision. His eyesight wasn’t sharp, it didn’t hurt him to look at her, though the New Mecca sun was pouring into the open bay windows in his room.

“Riddick?” Herveryvery voice shot through his wonder and he glanced at her before scowling, “What the hell happened?”

“Can you see me?”

“Well, I’m fuckin’ lookin’ atcha ain’t I?” He snapped at the stupid question, never one for the frivolities of queries that made no sense.

She gave him a perplexed look, tilting her head and puckering her brow before glancing at the nightstand. “This is very strange, indeed.” She muttered, her cool hands scooping one his of big paws up. He resisted the temptation to tear his hand from her grasp, letting her guide the palm of his hand to his face.

His fingers touched against the raspy cotton material that encircled his head. The fear and trepidation washed through him as he realized that he was not seeing with his eyes. She let go of his hand as soon as she was sure that he was steady enough and stood quietly watching him as he fingered the bandage.

“What the fuck is this?” He growled through clenched teeth.

Pursing her lips in agitation, she shifted her weight from foot to foot before disappearing. On the move, he could see her, unlike before where she would only appear when she stopped moving or wished to be seen. He could see her now, every nuance and every shift in her being, as he saw all the details he had missed before. With his eyes shined, color was almost impossible to discern, since the glare from the sun or any light for that matter, usually drowned it out. Things seemed vibrant. Things seemed alive.

“What the hell happened to me, witch?” he snarled angrily, demanding answers.

“We don’t know. It seemed that whatever happened, it was a long time coming.” Another voice broke the silence that buffered his persistent questions.

His head turned towards the woman who entered, her long, loose garb fluttering in the wind as she moved. She had startling green eyes and brown hair that seemed to be almost the color of honey. “There is nothing in our database about the Furyan race. Usually, a race the Necromongers had converted would be in the encyclopedia so that if anything should happen to them, we would know how to treat them…it’s strange though…there are absolutely no records whatsoever.”

“Did you check the New Mecca libraries for any answers?” Aereon spoke, breaking the woman’s quiet pondering moment.

Her head snapped up, she nodded, following it with a grimace, “But the only things I could find are urban legend types. Old musty tombs that have yet to be cracked—haven’t been cracked in hundreds of years. All of it is in Archaic Arabic text, so we have someone down there, they’re decoding right now.” She turned her back on the duo to grab a tray, gracefully; she whirled about and set it on the nightstand by Riddick’s bed.

“He just had another attack, and then he woke up.”

“I see that. He’s really cranky, isn’t he?”

Before Riddick could retort with something really nasty, Aereon gave him a flat look and responded, “That’s a good sign. He’s always like that.”

The woman chuckled before plucking a syringe off the tray. She glanced at him, the frown not completely gone from her smooth face. “Can you see, Riddick?”

“Yeah.”

He had always relied on his sense of smell to tell him if a woman was beautiful or not. The outline of their bodies was not lost to him, he could see their faces but there were no details. Now that he could see her fully, with this strange new sight, he was beginning to realize how much he had lost out on. How much beauty he had missed. Not that he cared; it was still damn worth it. But it made him wonder about Jack, or rather, Kyra. What did she really look like?

She filled the needle with something clear and before tapping the syringe and bleeding the air out of it, she glanced passed the wicked point to glance at him, “It’s just a muscle relaxant to keep your from g nut nuts on us.” She informed him casually before coming closer.

It seemed his body burst into action before he meant it to. He was up and out of the bed, his hand wrapped around her wrist. Riddick jerked her arm, sending her stumbling against him. “No one is gonna stick me with anything.” He growled.

Her eyes were round and full of fear. She opened her mouth but the only thing she could manage was an inarticulate choking noise before she clamped her lips together con conceded with a nod. The syringe clattered to the floor, resting between their feet. “D-do you realize what you just d-did?”

Since he couldn’t glare at her, he settled with snarling. Pulling his lips back against white, straight teeth, he growled, “I fuckin’ moved. I am capable of it.”

“You didn’t just move, Riddick.” Aereon’s voice was strained, but much calmer than the woman who was standing, staring at him as if he had grown three heads. “You astral walked. Your spirit moved before your body did.”

Raising an eyebrow over the bandages, he pursed his lips and stared at Aereon, feeling the tension roiling off of her. He never realized how expressive the old elemental really was. “Right.” He let go of the woman’s wrist before kicking the syringe underneath the bed. Concentrating on the little weapon, he could actually see it underneath the bed. It had skittered to a stop against the farthest bedpost and had cracked open, spilling the clear liquid onto the marble floor. He glanced at Aereon before stalking across the room to the door.

His forehead slammed into the thick wood door. It seemed that he had approached it quicker than he thought. Recoiling from the hit, he took two steps backwards before reaching out and sliding his fingertips along the gleaming wood. He found the doorknob and slowly turned it, seeing and hearing the mechanics click and the latch slide from its nook. Before the door swung open, he d sed see that there were people on the other side. Lajjun with Ziza and Vaako, who stood tense with worried looks on their faces. Dame Vaako stood off from the crowd, the aura she cast was perplexing and full of turmoil, most of those emotions were evil and contorted in her own ambition. Riddick made a mental note to have a ‘sit down’ with her later.

“What happened? Mr. Riddick, are you alright?” Ziza broke from her mother to grab at the hand that dangled at Riddick’s side.

Riddick gld dod down at the girl; he could feel the genuine concern emanating from her tiny being. “Yeah, kid. I’ll be fine.” He tampered his annoyance with the little girl, remembering Imam’s plea to keep his child and wife safe.

“Why have you got bandages around your eyes?” She asked, her big brown eyes searching his face for an answer.

“Cause I hurt them.” He also made a point not to swear in front of the girl, too. It was the only thing he could think of that he could sacrifice for the better good of the girl without it being a danger to him. When she was gone, his foul language appeared in full bloom.

She tugged on his hand, a hint that she wanted him to lift her up. He stooped and picked her up, settling her on his shoulder, “But if you have bandages on your eyes, how can you see?” She was asking all the questions the group were wondering about but were too cowardly to voice. They knew that Riddick would most likely answer her without getting angry rather than them.

“Magic, kid.”

Lajjun spoke up, reaching out to take the little girl from Riddick. With a deceptive gentleness, he set the girl in her outstretched hands and turned to Vaako, “This changes nothing.” He growled, sparing Dame Vaako a glance before going back into the room and closing the door.

He strolled to the bed. Suddenly, he felt very tired from the exertion. He turned to slump onto the bed hit hit the floor instead, managing to crack his head off of the frame. Jumping to his feet, he snarled and ripped the blindfold off. Opening his eyes, he was blasted with the bright light that pierced through his brain painfully. He groaned and clamped them shut, black slowly ebbed into the gray he was used to before his vision cleared and became sharper.

“He has no depth perception at all.” The doctor said softly to Aereon.

Riddick turned his entire body to the two and sat silently looking at them before growling, “Stop talking about me like I’m not in the same fuckin’ room.” He reached out and found the mattress before settling himself on it.

Aereon sighed; it was a soft sound fraught with worry and fear. Riddick felt odd that he was on the receiving end of this, even a bit uncomfortable, but he settled himself for sleep. He found himself staring at the ceiling as Aereon moved as quietly as a baby’s breathe throughout the room. “Riddick, we don’t know what is going on. If we could find out about the Furyan race, we might be able to fix this. You might never be cured. It might be permanent.”

He swallowed back the fear that bubbled in his brain. This was the first time in a very long time that he felt such intense trepidation wash over him. He let his view fade to black before drifting off to sleep, carelessly letting his body relax on the soft bed.

He thoughat hat he could deal with loosing the two people in the universe he cared for…but it was hard. Hard to know that they were dead and he wasn’t. It wasn’t sadness that pierced his sleep-muddled brain it was jealousy. Why had he lived when other’s who were worthy of life, had not? Why had he even made it off of T2? The universe had a funny fuckin’ way of taking care of the dregs.

TBC