CHAPTER15

CHAPTER 15

She looked so small and weak lying in the bed.
From her various orifices, tubes snaked to help her breath, take the wastes from her body, deliver medicines that weren’t working. Monitors beeped and pinged, blinking the message that this child was dying.
There were no bandages on her wrists. They weren’t necessary. The wounds would have been easily sewn by the Ravi Knitter. A device, when invented a hundred years ago, had revolutionized the medical field. Any kind of laceration could be healed within minutes of being subjected to the powerful cell regeneration field. They had standard issue for all ships, inhabited areas of the galaxy, even the average home usually had one.
No, if a person didn’t know that the little girl in that bed had mutilated her wrists, they would think she was in for some other reason.
It was the blood loss that was killing her. Carson had hit it right on the nose. Too much shock for the body to recuperate from. The blood had been replaced. But too much strain had been placed on her major organs.
Jack would be dead within the day, maybe two.
Zar stood at the bottom of Jack’s bed. Not bothering to wipe the silent tears that streaked down her face. What did it matter that she looked like hell?! A little girl lay dying. She had sworn to care for her, grown to love her, commiserated with over her the loss of the man in their life. Held her, laughed with her. Felt hope with her. Allowed her to fill the void in her life that Beth’s death had created.
And now she was losing another daughter.
Another child she hadn’t been able to save.
She didn’t wholly blame Richard for what had happened.
He had explained his part in the tragedy on the way to the med-lab. He hadn’t tried to excuse his actions. In fact he sounded like he was having a hard time keeping control of himself. Very un-Riddick like of him, she thought in the back of her mind. She had hated him for all of about a minute when he finished with the recounting. She had even smacked him in the face, a gut reaction.
The only response he had was to lower his head. No slap back in instinctual retaliation or angry glare. He hadn’t even tried to stop the second blow that she was sure he knew was coming. Zar had waited for him to react with violence, anxious for the chance to physically attack him the way he had attacked Jack. But as the seconds passed, her enraged glaring and pugnacious stance had no effect on him.
He just stood there with downcast eyes, waiting for the next blow. Waiting for the retribution he was sure he deserved.
And she realized at that point that he was just a human being trying to deal with the shit that had been heaped on him. Dealing with it stupidly, but dealing with it nonetheless. He had thought, in that lovingly twisted way of his, that he was doing Jack a favor by obliterating her hope. Giving her the gift of a life without the influence of a psychokiller. Not even willing to contemplate that HE was the gift in Jack’s life. The gift of protection, strength, reliability. All the things the child had been so lacking for the previous portion of her life.
No, she knew Richard well enough that she understood why he had treated Jack the way he did.
But she couldn’t understand how he could be so naive concerning Jack’s reaction to his brutalization.
She was realistic enough to acknowledge that Jack was not the most emotionally stable of kids in the first place. Just the fact that she had formed an almost obsessive attachment to an escaped convict with an extremely brutal nature begged the question.
And in the end Zar knew she had some culpability along with Jack and Richard. She had failed to bring Richard into the human race on any sort of permanent basis. And then she had failed to give Jack the strength she needed to cope.
It was all so defeating.
No wonder Riddick cut himself off from the rest of the human race. The pain life gave to some people was such that they either bowed under it’s weight, like Jack, or became waste lands of vast emptiness, like Riddick. It was a kind of death either way.
And Zar would’ve welcomed death right now. Anything to not have to be there when Jack breathed her last.
But she was one of those “other” people. The ones who, whether they wanted to or not, survived each fucking disaster with mind and heart intact. One of the stupid people who kept believing in another day that would bring joy and hope.
Zar knew better now. There would be no joy or hope in her life after this.
Riddick stood outside the glass looking into Jack’s room watching the emotions roll over Zar’s face. He could tell the exact instant she had given up hope. Though the tears had stopped, her eyes became hauntingly empty. She had been broken. Not physically like Jack, but within her soul. She no longer believed.
The old Riddick tried to make him not care. Let her know that life was a bitch and it was about fucking time the woman learned it.
The Riddick watching the little girl he loved dying, told him to fuck off and die. Then as he watched the ravished features of the woman he cherished above all others, he kicked him in the mouth to make sure he stayed quiet.
If he continued to listen to the old Riddick, the pain would have been negligible. But he knew that was the only kind of punishment he was going to receive while he still had breath in his body. Zar had slapped him, but soon her understanding nature had taken over. After the ear ringing hits ( a part of him had been proud of her strength), for long minutes he had felt the rage and hate rolling off her towards him. But then it had subtly turned to sympathy. And she had ended up hugging him, whispering words of apology and comfort. To him!
He should’ve been outraged at her pity. Richard B. Riddick had been many things in his life. Feared, hated, fucked-over, used, envied, ignored, dismissed. But never pitied.
But he was too racked with guilt to allow the rage to come out. So he had just kept his eyes closed and soaked up the feel of Zar in his arms. Loving him like he actually deserved it.
Now the grief, self-loathing and frustration continued to build in him until he felt he had to scream with rage. And he would have if a more sensible part of his brain didn’t warn him that he would just be causing Zar more grief in doing so.
There was nothing he could do to help either person in that hospital room.
Or was there?
NO! Don’t go there!
But the unbidden memory, once released from it’s prison, would not go quietly back to it’s cell.
The recollection of being billy clubbed senseless by a group of guards. Then rousing in one of Slam’s dirty surgical rooms. Filled with prison officials who were part of the organized fighting atrocities. He on a gurney, under the harsh lights, restrained across his neck, wrists and ankles.
The horrifying sight of a hack doctor coming toward him with a God awful large hypodermic. Two of the bigger guards turning his face away from the approaching quack with the sticker. His struggling and cursing against the restraints. The terror and frustration at not being able to see what they were doing to him.
Then the prick, followed by the bone deep burning of the needle’s progression as it was inserted into his neck, just below his ear.
The pain had been excruciating! Even for a man like Riddick who had trained his mind and body to ignore even extreme duress. The drug had burned a hellish path along his nerve ending as it did it’s dirty work on his body and brain.
Every muscle in his body jumped as if it had been shot full of electricity. His joints felt as if they were melting under the heat of a thousand suns. The brain, that had been trained to partition pain in order to negate it’s power, writhed in deranged agony.
At that point he felt death coming. And he welcomed it as a release from the torture.
But it wasn’t death that visited him that night. Rather it was unconsciousness. Some hours later he awoke in his cell to a pounding head and a body that felt as if it had been run over.
Curled into a ball, he hadn’t even been able to get into a defensive posture when the warden and his goons had come in.
The warden complimented Riddick on surviving the procedure. Something no other inmate had yet done.
Riddick had been unimpressed. So unimpressed in fact that he told the warden and his little dick puppets to go fuck themselves.
The warden had just laughed and calmly told the angry guards to relax. That Mr. Riddick, the new Mr. Riddick that is, was going to make them a lot of money.
He went on to explain to Riddick that he’d been injected with a black market drug called Profearaben. It was hell on the patient to be exposed to the drug. Ninety-nine percent didn’t survive. But those that did experienced an amazing transformation, a permanent transformation.
They became stronger, faster, stealthier, had better vision, more acute in hearing and smell, had more stamina and could withstand extreme amounts of pain. They healed from better. But more important, they healed seventy-five percent quicker than the average person. In other words, they became the perfect fighting machine.
Later on, the amazing healing power had allowed Riddick to have his eyes mutilated, “shined.” Where the procedure permanently blinded most people, he had come through the operation with little pain and even better night vision than most animals.
The only drawback for the drug’s survivors was an unfortunate side effect. It made those who already exhibited extreme aggression or other violent tendencies even more likely to do so.
That was why the AFS had stopped using it in their clandestine experiments. Some of the soldiers, who already had a tendency towards aggressive behavior, they were giving it to started showing psychopathic inclinations and ended up having to be exterminated. But only after they had done some mighty nasty carnage on their fellow servicemen.
The warden had given Profearaben to Riddick, his best fighter in the illegal contests, hoping to make even more money. And if he started to show any signs of getting out of control, well, they would just have to take care of that. Now wouldn’t they? If that happened, it would probably only be after Riddick had more than fulfilled his economic purpose.
Riddick didn’t believe the warden at first. He felt like he was dying for the first day. But by the second morning, he could feel his body react to the drugs healing properties. He could also feel the transformation in his reflexes and mind.
By the time he had returned to the fighting, he had totally changed into the psychokiller that would become recognized throughout the known galaxy. But he hadn’t gone completely crazy. He still had control over his baser instincts. Barely.
Instead he found himself totally without remorse for any maiming, torturing or killing he did. He realized he liked to toy with his intended victims. He wasn’t sure, that when it came to the non-prison population of the galaxy he per chanced to encounter, if he would still feel the same. But he figured he didn’t since every time he escaped he managed to avoid killing anyone who wasn’t aiming to kill him first.
Could the tainted blood that ran through his veins save Jack’s life?
Would she be affected like he was? Even worse?
Was it worth the risk?
As he continued to observe Zar and Jack through the glass, he knew one thing.
He was tired of being an instrument of death. He needed something redeeming in his life. The teenager and the woman were those things. And if he had one chance in a million to keep them, he would do everything in his power to make it so.
His decision made, he slowly made his way into Jack room. The smell of drugs and hopelessness and death, that so pervaded the med-lab, hung like a fog in the room.
“Zar?”
Still too caught up in the despair of watching Jack die, she didn’t respond.
Riddick took her chin gently in his hand, turning her to face him.
Her eyes were pools reflecting a soul deep pain and a lifetime of ruined dreams. He so wanted to wipe the look of disheartenment from her beloved face.
“There might be a way.”
Zar face showed a slight rise of interest. Not willing to completely believe what she heard.
“What do you mean?”
“We could get them to give her a transfusion...”
“She’s already had one Richard! She’s not short of blood anymore. Her body just doesn’t have the wherewithal to heal itself.”
“Let me finish. She could have a transfusion of MY blood. I was given a drug in Slam called Profearaben. It gives the body amazing healing properties, among other improvements. It might give her body the chance it needs to regenerate.”
He saw the light of hope enter Zar’s eyes. But he knew he had to qualify his offer before she got too hopeful.
“Wait a minute, don’t get too excited yet! It was a black market drug tested on soldiers. It’s black market because it can turn people psychopathic, if it doesn’t kill them outright. Usually just those with the tendency towards violence in the first place. And not all the time and in varying degrees.
You see how I am. It warped me to a certain extent. Though how much is from my life and how much is from the drug I’ll never be sure.
But do you want to take the chance with Jack? We have to be really sure that we’ll be doing the right thing for her. Believe me, life as a twisted fuck is a hell of a lot crueler than death!
Hell, I don’t even know if the transfusion will work!”
Zar searched the face of the man she so loved, but who so disappointed her, for long moments.
Could this be the one chance for Jack?
For Richard’s redemption?
Would it destroy what was left of their life?
Did it really matter?
The child she loved was as good as dead. The man she loved a short step from total, permanent alienation from herself and the rest of the human race.
Yeah, this was the only chance the three of them were going to get. Take it, run with it and pray to God that it was enough and that He would, for once, show them His mercy.
“I want to try Richard. If she’s affected the wrong way, we’ll deal with it later. Though I’ll be praying that we won’t have too.”
Taking his hand from her chin and lacing her fingers through his, she led him from the room to go in search of Jack’s doctor. Feeling hope for Jack’s life when before she would’ve sworn there’d be none. And all thanks to the fucked up life of one Richard B. Riddick.