RIDDICK

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐕𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐄 𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓 !

portrayed by k.

nsfw. minors dni.

A shiver ran up her spine, electric with the rush of adrenaline as the weapon was pointed at her, only a few paces away. It was certainly the most eventful day of her life, and as her stomach sank deeper within herself, she peered around, looking for whatever switch might open the doors.

She planned on making good on her threat--

When suddenly, it all went black.

Even in the dark she could feel people start to panic and scurry, the dim, useless emergency lights not bright enough to guide her. Quickly she pushed her way to the nearest wall, back flat against it. Shots scattered, brief flashes of light showing the chaos that unfurled.

❛ Push! We're taking this rock. ❜ She yelled to her pseudo-companions, ❛ You can die working or you can die for your chance at getting out of here! ❜

She couldn't help them all, and as she shimmied along the rough wall she thought of Hyde and how much better he'd deserved. He should have been here with them. Hell, he deserved to be there more than she did by a long shot.

The guards by the door began to fire, their aim wild and reckless. But it was little use. The miners were soon on top of the guards, beating them, venting years of pent up rage and institutionalized abuse. When it was over, the guards’ weapons and equipment were passed around, and the crowd dispersed.

The men and women assembled themselves organically into smaller units of twos and threes as the chaos unfolded around them, moving to take up positions where they could lie in wait to ambush unsuspecting guards as they rushed headlong into the dark, or from where they could return fire on the command platform overlooking the shaft, from which rifles laid down suppressive fire on the rioting prisoners.

Riddick entered the fray unseen, his gaze fixed on the command platform; a panopticon of steel and bullet-proof glass constructed around a large, conical escarpment of rock at the far end of the shaft. He darted fearlessly through the chaos toward it, dodging gunfire and explosions with inhuman agility.

“Leave me. I’m dead weight now.” Burnes instructed the men who had been supporting him. Reluctantly, they complied, setting him down by the door before running off into the dark themselves. He watched helplessly as the guards shot into the dark, the lattice of automatic gunfire preventing their advance.

Just then, Burnes remembered Hyde; remembered how the light had drawn the attention of the monster from him and Aeva.

Marshaling all of the strength that he could, Burnes crawled over to one of the dead guards, took the torch off of their body. Then, in spite of the seering pain in his leg, he rose, quickly limping toward a tall rock only a few meters away. He threw himself against the rock, but then had to stop. Catch his breath.

Burnes had always been a fighter. This was it, he told himself. One last fight.

Screaming through the agony, he mantled weakly up the rock, removing a second torch from his tool belt, and ignited the both of them. Holding the torches above his head, he looked into the flickering light and then shut his eyes, feeling a kind of serenity wash over him that he’d never known.

It all happened so fast ; she could barely fathom what she'd seen.

Her heart sunk down into the abyss of her stomach, horrified that the kind man who had stood beside her only moments ago was now gone. Alone, killed by a monster and drowned in a deathly vapor. She looked over her shoulder in disbelief, the door sealing Hyde in some crude tomb. She felt. . . angry.

Standing in front of Burnes now, almost defensively, she glared at the guard who dared bark orders at them after something so unbelievably horrible happened. She felt eyes on her, and knew this was an opportunity not only for revenge, but a fantastic distraction.

“Don’t you fucking try it.” One of them barked, jerking the muzzle of their rifle toward Aeva threateningly.

Two other miners broke from the crowd to help Burnes onto his feet, slinging his arms over their shoulders for support. The injured man flashed Aeva a knowing look.

The two guards that had approached the group from behind were swiftly beaten unconscious, their weapons and equipment passed out to those of whom could the make the most use out of them.

The nervous guards waved their rifles back and forth, unsure of who to aim at. Just as tension seemed to have reached it's zenith, the cavern shook with a tremendous force that seemed to emanate from somewhere below them. Then a heavy, suffocating blackness fell over the mine...

—

For as long as there had been an installation on asteroid KX-42, there had always been a rat problem.

No one knew how it had started. The generally accepted belief amongst the guards and other staff was that they had stowed away amongst the provisions brought to the asteroid during it’s initial construction. And despite several failed attempts to try and cull the rodent population over the many years since the mine had gone into full operation, the rats endured.

One such rat was making its way along the hood of a flourescent light fixture hanging above the installation’s power-control room when the two unsuspecting humans assigned to monitor the consoles there were killed by another human. This one was taller, leaner, with a shiny head and eyes shielded from the harsh light by goggles.

The man approached the console, carefully examining the complicated board of switches, knobs, and dials. Tell-tales strobed across its surface in hues of green, orange, and red. Turning to a nearby read-out monitor, he flipped down a number of the switches on the board and watched as power gauges on the monitor began to oscillate. He continued to dial the knobs and flip switches until the screen flashed red, warning of an imminent overload. Seconds later, there was a a massive tremor that rocked the entire room, sending shelving and equipment hurtling to the floor.

The rat scurried from its hiding place on the light to somewhere more secure, clambering up the tightly knit cord of wires that led back into the rafters of the room.

When the room finally settled, the lights flickered, then died, enveloping the small space in complete blackness. But the rodent’s ability to see in the dark allowed it to see the large human removing his goggles, revealing a set of eyes which shone in the dark like a cat’s eyes. Like a predator’s eyes.

She awaited his reply, noticing his stare linger on the stone in front of them ; then she saw it in the corner of her eye.

The shock caused her to drop her own pickaxe, stumbling back clumsily with steps that felt like the ground was moving against her. She couldn't scream or say a thing, too frightened and in awe of the sheer size and might of the insect-like creature. Even as she ran back, she couldn't stop looking over her shoulder at it, face taut in shock as it tore Fried in half.

The effort it exhausted was so minimal in comparison to the size of the man. She supposed at a distance she might find its monstrosity beautiful, elegant in the way it camouflaged itself, primitive in its violence. Yet it was hard to romanticize something so immediate a threat, especially when she would hopefully be long gone by tomorrow, if she lived.

The alarms rang in her ears like bells foretelling death's ringing, already catching an undertone of something horribly acrid that she could only trace as being ammonia. She'd seen Burnes fall, she'd seen Parker drag him hopelessly--

She skittered back, yanking on Burnes with the other man as much as she could.

The woman darted passed him back into the tunnel, freeing Parker by grabbing hold of the wounded Burnes and pulling him back toward the entrance.

As Parker rose, the creature lunged forth from the darkness, its jaws finding purchase around his outstretched arm. The man screamed, and with animal force, the creature pulled him back into the darkness.

Burnes and Aeva weren't out of danger, though. Seconds later, the creature reemerged from the darkness and started to bound up the tunnel toward the entrance with speed enough to catch them. They wouldn't make it.

The guards fired their weapons back into the tunnel, the light from tracer rounds flung ineffectually into the dark casting the enormous insect-like nightmare in sharp relief.

Suddenly, he remembered the words he had wanted to say to Aeva earlier.

'We aren’t defined by the things we’ve done, but in how we choose to live our lives in spite of them.'

Hyde darted into the tunnel past the two as they came up the tunnel. Stopping just in front of the animal, waving his torch in front of its face to get its attention, he peeled right to dodge an incoming blow from one of its spiked limbs.

As the creature recoiled momentarily in fear of the open flame, the third siren sounded. Hyde knew what that meant; he'd made peace with it a long time ago. He didn't fear it, wouldn't scream. He wrestled momentarily with the creature, sparring one final glance in the direction of the entrance, smiling to see that Aeva and Burnes had made it safely behind the doors as they started to close.

He pushed the creature back futilely. It loomed menacingly as the light from the entrance began to fade, enveloping the tunnel in primordial darkness as his torch, too, had started to dim. Hyde shut his eyes and felt something sharp punch its way through his sternum. As he felt his consciousness began to dim, he whispered.

"I'm coming, my love."

The doors slammed shut. Burnes shouted defiantly at them, threw his arm out. "Hyde!"

"Doors locked. Pesticide released." A computerized voice intoned from a loudspeaker above the entrance to the mine shaft. Just then, the guards turned on the prisoners, raising the muzzle of their weapons toward the crowd that had formed around the entrance to C-2. Two other guards from elsewhere in the main shaft approached from behind the crowd, drawing their own weapons.

"Alright, scum. Let's do this nice and easy. Everybody drop your tools." One of the guards shouted.

❛ Can you be so certain? Have a little imagination. ❜

She considered what he said, half tempted to tell him what she knew, half worried that Riddick may make the situation worse if he called another vessel. He'd seemed rather self assured, so she put it in the back of her mind. Contemplating, and maybe more arrogant than she should be, she shrugged.

Before he could reply, the rock in front of them shifted suddenly; no, it rotated. Then, six thin, spindly appendages crept out from all sides of the creature's camouflaged exoskeleton and anchored themselves against rock.

Hyde tensed, pointed over the woman's shoulder, but it was too late. The creature sprang off of the wall and landed directly in front of Aeva, towering over her as it slowly raised to it's full height of six feet, pointing a long proboscis in her direction as it began to close on her.

Hyde sprinted forward, yelling and hacking at the creature's impossibly hard carapace with his pick-axe in order to try and get it's attention.

As it turned to him, he shouted. "Run!"

The scene was chaos. Other miners nearby dropped their equipment and dashed for the tunnel's entrance. Guards aimed their rifles at the creature to cover their own retreat, pointing the muzzle at the creature and other prisoners that veered too close.

Fried, who'd only been a few meters down from their worksite, approached the creature from behind and it whirled around to face him. The big man yelled something, thwacking its head with his drill as Hyde tore at the distracted creature's plate from behind. The proboscis lifted, revealing the creature's inner jaws, which clamped down around the big man's midsection before he had any time to react. His screams of agony were soon silenced as the creature's powerful jaws cleaved his enormous body in twain, spraying blood and viscera in all directions.

The animal turned back to Hyde, who drew backward slowly, his pick-axe raised raised defensively. Gunshots rang out, screams echoed down the tunnel. Breaking the cacophony, came the sound of the first alarm. Hyde turned sharply on his heel, started toward the entrance of the shaft, looking over his shoulder periodically to see if his other crew-mates were following him. He saw Parker and Burnes behind him, Aeva ahead of him. The creature tore after Burnes, clipping him in the ankle with its proboscis, causing him to crumple to the ground. Parker reached for something cylindrical on his person, lit a torch, its fire blazing bright in the darkness of the tunnel like a star in the void. The creature recoiled in terror as Parker waved the flame wildly through the air in front of it and he reached without looking to grab Burnes by the arm, dragging him toward the entrance.

Hours had bled out from the day, the dark of the cave swallowing each drop of blood that fell from un-calloused hands and sweat that fell from her face. Aeva was tired, but refused to fall behind. Gloves she'd found were too big, and the shaft of the pickaxe was rough. Manual labor was not her forte.

She couldn't shake the thought of one of those awful creatures showing up, and the haughty side of her was certain she could at least maim it a tiny bit before it tore her to pieces. She'd never go quietly, a promise she made to herself a long time ago. And though she was beginning to feel like Riddick had ditched her, she was open to accepting it. The idea of Hyde dying down here was becoming unacceptable in her mind the more she was around him. If she could, she wanted to bring him with her.

But her empty cell could only go unnoticed for so long, even less so on behalf of her celebrity cellmate.

Wiping the sweat from her face, she turned to him.

❛ . . . scusa, my sweet grey friend. ❜ She began, well out of ear shot of any guards, ❛ Have you, or any of our dear friends, thought about. . . ❜

She made a walking gesture with her hand, smile cheeky.

"Run off? And go where?" He chuckled humorlessly, stopping momentarily to wipe sweat off of his brow with the back of his hand.

Even after all of the time he'd spent there, Hyde did not know who ran the mine, but whoever they were, they had seemingly considered the possibility of the miners' escape and decided they didn't much care for the idea.

"Two years ago, there was a riot. The guards were overpowered and withdrew to the control room overlooking the main-shaft. We had control of the mine for eight days. In that time, we discovered that there was no way off of the asteroid. No escape craft, no life-pods. Nothing. When our eight days were up, a ship did arrive. A mercenary vessel. And these weren't just your run-of-the-mill freebooters. They were professionals." He paused, set down his pickaxe, and propped his elbow up on it. "Anyone they didn't shoot outright, they threw out of an airlock and watched die. Only a handful of us were left alive, chosen entirely at random."

Aeva, for a moment, was stunned.

Like anyone with her past or inclinations, she knew how to navigate to sneers and the comments, the verbal lashings and even physical retaliation. But to have someone just listen, then treat you completely normally--

She knew he'd likely heard it all, that she wasn't the worst person he'd met, based on what she let him know, and it surprised her still how his demeanor didn't change. Maybe, just maybe, she'd just needed someone more like him in her life to turn to. Maybe then she wouldn't be here.

The woman gave him a small smile and a subtle nod from her grease smudged face, taking his hand and getting up. Despite the plan she'd made with Riddick meaning having to leave him and the others behind, she'd still do what she could to work hard enough to hopefully ease Hyde's burden down here.

But maybe she could get clever.

“Missing us.” He corrected her, giving the woman a reassuring pat on the shoulder. He could intuit that the thought of being a part of a group made her uncomfortable, that she was probably used to not having to rely on others. But he knew all too well that those of similar dispositions didn’t tend to last very long in C-2, as they were often the first to be left behind in a crisis. And Hyde wasn’t about to let that happen to her. Whether she liked it or not, Aeva was part of his motley little crew now, and to the best of his ability, he would make certain she was safe.

He started down the corridor once more, looking back every so often to make sure she was following. When they’d caught up to each other, he continued explaining to her how things worked in C-2. “If there’s an animal attack, you’ll hear a siren go off. It’ll sound exactly three times over a period of one hundred and eighty seconds. If you aren’t out of the shaft by the third siren, you’re already dead.”

“When the doors are sealed, the guards will pump a ‘pesticide’ through those vents.” He explained further, pointing instructively to a series of ventilated aluminum pipes that ran the length of the tunnel.

A lethal, homebrew mixture of concentrated ammonia, mercury, and hydrogen sulfide, the ‘pesticide’ the guards used did little to hurt the creatures that had made the asteroid their home, only persuade them back into hiding for a time. The only thing he’d known the gaseous mixture to kill had been miners unlucky enough to have been caught behind the doors before they were sealed. When the shaft was reopened, a clean-up crew would be sent ahead of the miners to clean the liquified remains of their fellow inmates from the walls and floors. A grizzly, inhumane death, even for convicted criminals.

Hyde said none of this. He didn’t want to unnerve her more than she already might have been. Or soon would be.

Returning to the trio of men around the burn barrel, each of them pitched their smokes into the roaring flame, and retrieved the tools they’d set against the escarpment. One of them, the one that had earlier introduced himself as Parker, handed Aeva a pickaxe. He was an excitable man, twitchy. He beamed from ear to ear, seemingly eager to return to the task at hand. Howling down the tunnel, he threw a fist into the air as he trundled down the tunnel.

She shifted, uncomfortable in her own right.

❛ The only part that matters is what got me here. I. . . ❜ Words began, her hesitance difficult to hide. But, she could rip off a band-aid without disturbing another. ❛ Murder. I'm a murderer. ❜

It felt strange to say it out loud and stranger still to feel guilty. Here she sat beside a teacher who wanted to take care of his wife, and she was nothing more than a cold blooded killer. She chose that.

He'd once had purpose, made something of himself.

She'd wandered aimlessly after a tumultuous early adulthood after running away from some rundown orphanage in New Mecca, trying to find her footing as a young person ; she'd lied, she'd stolen, she'd killed. She'd tell him what he asked. Not all of it was bad ; she'd even found something like a daughter. Some lost little girl she'd let come and go in her apartment, like the lost little cat that followed her.

It felt like confession.

She laughed humorlessly, wondering how pretty Anne must have been. If she got butterflies when he proposed to her.

❛ I danced at a place I waitressed at. I loved it. ❜ She felt the ember of her cigarette nearing her knuckle, ❛ You don't meet good matches in places like that, ones that are loyal or really even want you for you. ❜

She finally flicked her cigarette, taking a last, small drag before finishing.

❛ He didn't deserve a knife in his throat, neither did the one before him, or the one before him, but I can't take it back. Not sure if I have it in me to even want to if I could. ❜

A moment of contemplative silence passed between them as he digested her tale, punctuated by the ambient symphony of the heavy machinery at work all around them. He didn’t get up, didn’t move, his gaze remaining fixed to her. He wanted her to have all the time she needed in order to compose herself before getting back to work. It wasn’t an easy thing, he knew, to dredge the waters of the past.

‘We aren’t defined by the things we’ve done, but in how we choose to live our lives in spite of them.’

It’s what he’d wanted to say, but he thought better of it. Hyde knew there was nothing he could say to ease the burden of Aeva’s guilt. Hell, he couldn’t even ease his own. The least he could do was try and pull her out of the muck. He thanked her for sharing her story, offered her the customary pleasantries, and then stood and offered her his hand. A symbolic gesture as much as it was a practical one, he smiled at her.

So Mi understood his hesitance, understood that getting a job around these parts was rarely what it said on the label. The Afterlife was full of fixers that would send you to get their mail and forget to tell you their mailbox is armed with a nuke.

While she wasn't withholding anything, as she assumed he knew the inherit danger and ugliness of going up against that particular gang, she wasn't psychic. Anything could happen, things could go tits up.

If experience had taught him anything, it was that a simple job was most often anything but. But he kept his reservation to himself, lips tight with consideration of her words. It would be hard to turn down the money; rent was coming up, and for lack of any better prospects, he was left few options.

Riddick put his cup on the table, finally returning the gesture she'd made earlier in their conversation, and extended his hand. "I'll do it."

"But if you fuck me over, there ain't going to be a hole in this city you can hide in that I won't find you." He was silent a moment, let the threat - no, the promise - set in, and then sat down beside her in the booth.

She followed Hyde, curious as to what he could want other than a cigarette. His very features looked tired, and she caught on that he'd wanted to rest for a while, whilst he could, with some new company. He had a demeanor that was frighteningly welcoming, someone who clearly didn't belong in a place like this, especially in his condition. But, deep down, he could have been as depraved as she was. There was no real reason for her to trust or believe in him.

And so she listened, relieved to have a moment to make something up as she sat there ; there was no way she could tell him the truth. At least not all of it. She nursed the cigarette that was offered, hoping the poison inside would kill the ugliness in her, finding it difficult to maintain eye contact with someone with a much more noble tale than her own. She felt small, like a nasty little cockroach.

❛ Doing what any of us would have done, and being thrown in here to die. ❜ She flicked the ash, crossing her legs, ❛ I'm certain you've heard it, but you did the right thing. You shouldn't have a single regret. The system forces our hands and cuts them off in retaliation. ❜

She couldn't think of what to say without revealing the monster she was just under the paper thin vaneer.

She couldn't think of what it would be like to love someone so much that you'd throw away your life in a heartbeat for them.

‘Pity preserves things that are ripe for decline, it defends things that have been disowned and condemned by life, and it gives a depressive and questionable character to life itself by keeping alive an abundance of failures of every type.’

Jettisoning the last of the smoke in his lungs through the sides of his mouth, he made a subtle gesture with his hand toward the woman..

Aeva went from trying to lay low and mind her own to suddenly finding herself trapped in the company of apparently the kindest men here. Now, covered in grease, she seemed to fit in rather well. Though it made her scalp itch something fierce.

So he knew of and had seen these creatures. It was small comfort knowing that this merry crew had survived so far, and she supposed between the four of them, it gave her four chances to get away.

❛ The brightest smiles seem to be in the dark, sì? ❜ She'd said after introductions and handshakes had been doled out, ❛ The spirits here seem to be higher. ❜

Which was odd, considering when she was in a cell she hadn't even dreamed of being eaten by a monster during her twenty four hour shift at the mines.

She scooped up her axe with both hands, looking the others. She'd have to make the best of this.

So as the three other men continued to chatter idly with one another, he gestured wordlessly for Aeva to follow him, and made his way over to a set of unused crates stacked inside of a small inlet, lit by the soft glow of a flickering clamp light. They wouldn’t be there long, but he needed a moment to rest his aching knees, and was happy to seize the opportunity to get to know his charge better.

As they came to sit, Hyde lit a cigarette, and then held the crumpled packet of menthols out to his companion. “Smoke?”

Everyone smoked in the mines. For one thing, it helped to take the edge off from the constant anxiety of working in an environment that was actively trying to kill them. For another, it helped to mitigate the intense hunger they felt during long shifts with no meals.

He had no shortage of questions for the woman, but figured he’d start with the most poignant. “What have they got you in for?”

Before she could answer, Hyde raised a finger, deciding that it would be more in the spirit of openess and furthering the burdgeoning trust between them if he divulged the reason for his own internment first.

“I was a professor of anthropology back on Origin, if you can believe it. Then my wife was diagnosed with a rare lung disease. The doctors told us that with regular treatment, the disease could be managed. Trouble was, we couldn’t afford the treatment. So I embezzled funds from the university I worked at in order to make ends meet.” He paused to take a drag off of his cigarette, his gaze fixed to something in the distance.

The death of the other worker took her by surprise, only in that she'd reached the same conclusion he had. There weren't rules, especially at the mine, and as the light was snuffed from his eyes, she looked to the person who was responsible for his death : a wild animal of a person, paid to reach a quota at the expense of others.

She couldn't quite articulate words as he spoke, eyes drifting to the open maw of section C-2, possibly her final stop.

The flare felt heavy in her hand, holding within it some broken form of trust. She didn't have a choice but to go along with it, and it hit her that it would be so easy now to leave her behind to whatever fate would befall her, but if he'd brought her along so far already, why would he suddenly change his mind just because he could?

Ah, because he could.

She hid the flare in her pants pocket, now dragging the axe where she'd been shafted. The descent into the poorly lit area felt as if she were treading ground she was never meant to, as if she was intruding into a world her eyes shouldn't have seen. The glimmer of ore enticed her, a spot where her back wouldn't have to be to the depths, a spot not too close to anyone else. The air was heavy with dust, and she knew if need be, she could run back to the entrance in only a minute if she sprinted like hell.

Quickly setting down his pickaxe, one of them approached her as she entered. A tall rake of a man with a haphazardly shaved pate, sweat and a thick layer of grime had made his ill-fit clothing cling to his thin frame like a second skin. He jut out a trembling hand for her to shake, mouth pulled into an uneasy smile. “I’m Hyde.”

Hyde had dispensed with any of the usual pleasantries, having grown to see them as useless frivolities. No sense in welcoming someone to a place where they would feel anything but welcomed. Instead, he proceeded right to the onboarding, keeping pace with the woman as she strode further into the mineshaft.

“You’ll want to grease up.” Hyde said, gesturing instructively to a nearby machine that’s vents had spilled over with steaming black fluid. A bucket was nearby, half-filled with the thick substance. He helped her apply it before moving on.

“The critters here hunt by smell. Grease seems to throw them off. Or maybe they just don’t like it.” He mused. “Saw a man spat up by one before. Not a pretty sight, but he managed to stay alive for at least another week.”

Hyde spoke casually on the matter. Death had become an all too familiar constant for those in the mines, and especially in C-2, where the crew assigned to the particularly rich vein of deuterium found there had stumbled upon a nest of hostile endemic life. The man explained all of this to her as they walked.

“The guards won’t assign you to a detail until the start of your next shift. Easier for them that way, less paperwork if you meet a grizzly end without being on the books. But you shouldn’t be by yourself.”

He stopped in front of a group of three other men, huddled together in a triad by a sharp escarpment of rock, smoking cigarettes over a burn-barrel and talking amongst themselves. An unauthorized break, but a much needed one. The advanced team had just broken into a new vein earlier that morning and much of the last nine hours the men had spent working had been hauling supplies and fuel down from the upper shaft. A guard lingered nearby, uninformed or indifferent to the miners’ fraternization.

“So you can work our detail. Aeva, this is Fried, Burnes, and Parker.” He said, pointing to each of the men as he introduced them. The one he’d identified as Parker, a burly fellow, stepped forward, shaking her hand using both of his with a cheerful smile.

“Lovely to meet you, madam. Sorry to say, you’ve popped in at the worst time. They’ve just stopped serving continental breakfast.” He said sarcastically, leering at a nearby guard. “I’d lodge a complaint on your behalf, but the wait staff here are a bit on the testy side, I’m afraid.”

Parker went back to talking with the others and Hyde turned to Aeva. “They’re rough around the edges, but they’re decent enough.“