Eleven
“…Lights? Lights on?” Fry couldn’t say what it was about the room that had caught her attention. She had noticed the pale glint of machinery as they had walked out of the coring room with the remains of Imam’s two boys, to bury them in the courtyard.
The door to the room had been pulled off its hinges, and had been battered on and clawed at. Fry didn’t want to look too closely. She had been about to step back out of the room but had backed into the solid wall of Riddick’s chest instead. Fry couldn’t see him but she knew it was him. She didn’t want to turn around; she knew that if she saw the look on his face that she would scream out loud, instead of the strangled squeak full of terror that she had let out.
She hated that she nearly cried out for Johns; that she had wanted to, that she had needed to. Where was Johns? Riddick terrified her in a way she couldn’t even begin to truly understand. To have him look at her was to be stripped naked without anything to hide herself behind. He saw everything.
He didn’t let her move out of the way; he didn’t let her back up and slither out of the room, but advanced on her instead. He didn’t need to look at her face to know that she was terrified of him, that she hated him, and he didn’t really care. He filled the doorframe behind her and stepped forward until the only thing she could do was to step into the darkened room, into the unknown.
Riddick waited a moment until Fry had slipped behind him and out of the door again before he sighed and stepped forward. It was easy enough for him to see in the empty room, there was no danger to Fry, other than the one she imagined.
He glanced behind him to watch her as she sought out Johns, who had stayed behind the others at the door of the room. He wondered if Fry was angry that he had seemingly abandoned her; if she felt betrayed by that, he wondered what she would feel if she knew the rest. Would she admit to the mistake she had made, even to herself?
Like the main coring room itself, this room also had a system of louvers, where the almost constant sunlight outside could be shut off or redirected. He opened the louvers enough to let the light outside fall on the panels on the wall opposite, and the machinery in this room had come to life.
Whatever the creatures were, they had ransacked this room at some point. He couldn’t see the people that had been here before doing this kind of damage. Equipment was swept off tables, and the machinery in front of them was badly damaged by the creatures; it appeared they had flown into it on at least one occasion, as there were pieces of it scattered around the room. They could only guess where those pieces fit, and as no one knew what it had looked like in the first place there was no way to be sure.
The others slowly filed into the room, and gathered around the main table in the middle of the room. Johns looked around the table and felt unease at the breakdown that was so plain. Fry and himself stood at one end of the table, with Paris just off to the side. The alcohol had either worn off or there was not enough alcohol to deal with the horror of what was left of the two boys, but Paris didn’t look anywhere near as sure of himself as he had earlier. He looked lost, and his indecision showed in his position at the table. Somewhere between himself and Riddick.
Riddick stood with his arms braced on the other side of the table. He didn’t look weak; he didn’t look defeated, beaten or exhausted. Johns knew that he had probably just lost whatever edge he thought he might have had over the convict, and he was afraid, deeply afraid.
His eyes cut to Shazza, who stood just to one side of him, and he glared at her. He tried to tell himself that she had done this, that she was responsible, but he couldn’t quite make himself believe it. Shazza didn’t drop her eyes from his; she wasn’t afraid of him either, even if she did take one tiny step closer to Riddick.
The kid Jack was on Riddick’s other side, holding onto Imam’s arm as though she held the man upright. Imam was ashen, his face drawn, as he held onto Suleiman, who cried openly.
“Were these people some kind of miners or something?” Fry had picked up what was once probably a cylindrical piece of rock. It was broken into shards now, like so many other things in the room. Her voice had nearly echoed in the room, it was so quiet.
“Looks more like geologists. Core samples.” Shazza had flipped the lid off a box that had fallen on the floor. “They date back….twenty two years. Nothing after that.” She dropped the box lid as though it had burned her and had to fight against the impulse to wipe her hand on her pantleg. Whatever had happened to these people had happened twenty two years ago, there was no trace of them after that. Shazza held onto Imam’s arm briefly as she moved out of the way so that he could approach the model that still took up much of the space on the table in front of them.
‘Blue sun, blue water’. He had sounded so sure when he had said it earlier in the day. How could so much time have passed in a few short hours? He closed his eyes and rested into the strong touch of Shazza on one arm and Jack on the other. Jack had not let go since the burial, not since Riddick had insisted Jack sit with him. Imam looked up once, into the eyes of Riddick, and drew what strength he could from the man.
‘Blue sun, blue water.’ The model’s blue sun lay broken on the floor in the corner of the room, so he turned towards what was left of the rest of the model, a replica of the Tangiers system, with its three suns. Slowly he moved the damaged rings and bars, first back in time twenty two years, then forward twenty two years, until the present time. Around and around the rings with their planets and suns moved, until Imam stood back.
The planets were in alignment, and blotted out the suns that lay behind them. An eclipse. The large planets moved so slowly that it would be a lasting darkness, perhaps as long as a month, before the two large suns that were visible were exposed again. “Blue sun, blue water, Mr. Riddick.” Imam had said it quietly, as he took Riddick’s arm for a moment; he had looked into Riddick’s eyes and hoped the man would understand.
He didn’t know why he had kept what he knew from the others, and he hoped that Allah would forgive him, but Riddick had carried the remains of the two boys outside, and had helped him bury them, and that was a debt that had to be repaid in this life, not the next.
Riddick looked directly at Johns, his voice registered so low that it could almost be felt in the suddenly still air all around them. Johns felt his throat grow dry and he wouldn’t look at the model anymore. He tried to still his traitorous heart as it hammered against his chest. How could everyone not hear, and know how terrified he was?
As in the communal room before, he felt that he stood before Riddick alone, and everyone else would watch to see him crack. His hands had started to shake earlier, and Riddick made a point of watching them, before looking up into his eyes again. The ghost of an arrogant smirk flitted across his features and was gone. Riddick knew what he was.
“You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?”