Forgotten Past: Chapter Eighteen-Last Betrayal

“Creed, we’ve got a problem. Someone’s killing our guys!” the voice
continued over the com.

Carolyn continued to stare at Antwone, her eyes pained, but dangerous.
A malicious light lit his dark brown gaze as his finger twitched on the
elecrablaster’s trigger.

Riddick eyed the once human creature before him with disgust. It
flicked out a long tongue, wiping it across its eye. Riddick pulled his lips
back, a low growl coming from his chest. He slowly lowered his shiv
and blaster to the floor and kicked them in the direction of the
frog/man.

“That’s right,” it hissed at him before bending to pick up his weapons,
careful to keep the blaster trained on his chest.

The threat of death wasn’t one Riddick relished, so he kept still, biding
his time.

“Creed?” the voice came again, now sounding worried.

Carolyn didn’t so much as twitch an eyelash and Antwone appeared to
fidget under her deadly glare. “How many have you killed?” she
rasped, her voice grating on her throat.

Antwone fixed an arrogant grin on his face, tightening his fingers
around the blaster. “Ten. And more will die as we leave.”

Carolyn closed her eyes and took a calming breath. Riddick felt the
anger and pain radiating off of her. He also felt the fear rolling off
Antwone. Despite his fancy weapon, the man was terrified of Carolyn.
Or rather, he was terrified of Creed Xander.

And as Carolyn’s eyes opened again, Riddick saw why. The woman
before him was radiating the sort of hate and indifferent murderous
rage that only comes with a complete lack of conscience.

She lifted murderous eyes to Antwone and bared her teeth in a feral
grimace, an inhuman growl emitting from her lips. “Now you will die,”
she growled.

Lightening speed wasn’t the term for it. Riddick didn’t bother to watch,
seeing his chance he rolled low to the floor, hitting the frog/man in the
back of the knees with a well placed sweep. The frog/man lost his grip
on his weapon as he tumbled to the floor and Riddick swept it up. He
turned in time to see Carolyn standing over Antwone, also holding an
elecrablaster.

The elecrablaster was clasped in her hand, looking like an extension of
her arm. She turned cold eyes to Riddick, all expression gone before
looking back down at a trembling Antwone. And then she pulled the
trigger.

A very quiet sound issued forth from the barrel, launching a purple
blast into the man’s chest. He grabbed at the wound before his body
went into convulsions. Steam rose from his eye sockets and he
screamed. It curdled the blood to hear the eerie keel coming from his
lips.

The shocks racked his body until a sickening snap resounded in the
room, and his convulsions stopped, except for the irregular twitch of a
foot or arm.

Riddick looked at Carolyn, who stood over the man silently, blaster
lowered to her side. She hit the safety and tucked the weapon away
before lifting her eyes to Riddick’s.

“I have to find out who he killed,” was all she said before she left the
room.

The hate had evaporated from her eyes the moment Antwone had died,
becoming the eyes of the Carolyn Riddick knew, now. Cool eyes, with a
warmth buried beneath that belied the cold. Riddick looked at the
steaming corpse. The frog/man laid on the floor, terrified. Riddick
grabbed the back of his collar and hauled him towards the door,
passing Antwone’s charred body.

The smell of charred flesh wafted to Riddick’s nose long after he left,
befouling his senses. He shrugged it off, still dragging the terrified
frog/man.

More smells of burnt flesh came to Riddick as he crossed to the middle
of the ship, signaling the painful death of others on board.

A group of people were gathered around Carolyn in a large room. She
answered them each in turn as they asked her questions, before asking
questions of her own.

As Riddick entered the room everyone became silent, parting to open a
path for Riddick to Carolyn. They stared at frog/man with cold
expressions. Many sets of glowing silver eyes watched, each resting his
or her hand on their weapon of choice. Whether it be blade, blaster, or
gun of some sort.

Riddick felt frog/man’s shakes intensify as he realized there would be
no escape for him. “This was the other one,” he stated coolly.

Carolyn stepped over to the frog/man, eyeing him distastefully. Her
eyes flashed and Riddick watched her lips twitch and her hand reach
instinctively for the blaster at her back. She lifted her eyes to him
questioningly and he shook his head. “Can’t stand the smell.”

She smiled grimly and poked the frog/man with the toe of her boot.
Carolyn turned to the crew members in the room. There were about
twenty of them. “This *thing* and Antwone tried to kill me, and killed
at least ten others on this ship. What do we do with him?”

A young woman stepped forward, her eyes glowing in the dark.
“Jettison,” she drawled in a cold tone.

Riddick saw the hate in every eye in the room, and all of it was being
projected at the frog/man. He turned his eyes to Carolyn, who nodded.
“All right. Just get him out of my site.”

Two men stepped forward and grabbed frog/man’s arms, beginning to
drag him out of the room.

Riddick put a hand on Carolyn’s arm and the two men stopped.
“Jettison? What’s that?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “We’ll throw him in a tube and launch him
into space. He’ll die within a second.” She turned as if to leave, but he
stopped her again.

“Wait. He might know something.”

“About what?”

“Personally, I’d like to know what made him look like that,” Riddick
answered, jerking a thumb in his direction.

More distaste colored Carolyn’s features, but she raised her voice to the
two men, who were waiting for her to give the word. “Put him in
interrogation. Riddick’s right. He could be useful to us.”

~~~

“Who are you?”

The frog/man remained stubbornly silent. Carolyn circled him like a
predator. Riddick noticed a fluid motion to her movements that hadn’t
been there before. The more he saw her, listened to her, watched her
interact, the more he was sure something wasn’t quite right with her. It
made him edgy.

Carolyn slid a long needle into frog/man’s arm and injected a syringe of
liquid into his system. His eyes immediately fogged over and his mouth
became slack.

“Let’s try this again,” she murmured. “Who are you?”

“No name... they don’t give us names. Don’t tell us who we are...” The
frog/man’s voice came across drained and slurred.

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“The Company.”

Riddick’s attention perked up immediately. “They did this to you?” he
demanded.

A sleepy nod from frog/man. “Aluthium and reptile DNA.” A sardonic
smile, directed at himself, twisted his wide, green lips. “This is what you
get.”

Carolyn grimaced. “Then why work for them?”

“They’ll kill me if I don’t.”

“What else do you know? What else can aluthium do?”

“Spray aluthium in the face...” he panted. The truth drug Carolyn had
injected into his system was beginning to do funny things to his head
and his body. She knew.

“C’mon. The pain will be over in a minute, but if I have to inject you
again, you will die.”

Frog/man panted a bit longer before answering, “Spray causes amnesia.
Injected of aluthium and animal DNA causes mutation. Has to be
liquefied at extreme temperature.”

The broken words and sentences rolled over Carolyn and Riddick like a
tidal wave. “That’s what they sprayed me with,” Carolyn whispered.

Riddick clenched his jaw and leaned back against the room’s white
steal wall. The frog/man wasn’t looking so good. A bit green about the
gills, Riddick thought sadistically.

“Is that all?” she demanded now, leaning over frog/man threateningly.
He tried to curl up, but the restraints tying him to the metal slab kept
him spread-eagle.

“All I know,” he hissed in a high, terrified voice.

“How’d you get on The Charmer?” Carolyn asked.

“Knoll...” he tried to continue but shudders began to rack his thin body
and beads of sweat popped out all over his green tinted flesh.

“What’s wrong with him?” Riddick questioned as Carolyn turned away
from the frog/man.

“It’s the drug. It causes extreme cold in the blood system. If
administered to quickly after a previous dosage, the subject will freeze
to death.” She shrugged. “It was necessary. Antwone was probably
going to sell information about me to The Company, or the aluthium to
them or someone else. In any case, he betrayed me. And the first
betrayal is the last betrayal.”

She turned then and opened the door that lay flush with the white wall.
It slid open with a soft whoosh then closed again. Riddick stayed where
he was, staring at the terrified, and now shaking, frog/man.

His eyes rolled back in his head to stare at Riddick weakly. “Going to
die?” he questioned.

Riddick shook his head. “Not from this.” He pushed away from the wall
and left, heading back for the medical deck.

Jack was sitting in the dark room on a bed. Her hair hung around her
face in limp waves and her eyes glowed in the darkness of the room. She
fit right in with Carolyn’s killers, Riddick thought as he entered the
room.

Jack didn’t look up at him. She continued to stare at the boy next to
her, laying across another bed. Monitors read his heart rate and brain
waves. He was being fed intravenously.

“Didn’t the mend-chamber work?” Riddick questioned.

Jack jumped, startled. Riddick had thought she’d known he was there,
but she’d been to absorbed. He noticed how her hand went for where
her shiv should have been and smiled slightly. He’d taught her well.

“Uh, the internal injuries are healed, but it’ll take a few days before
he’s completely well.” She looked up at him, hope shining in her eyes.
“They say he’ll pull through.”

Riddick lowered himself into a chair beside Jack’s bed and she turned
back to the boy.

“His names Eddie,” Jack said after a long silence. “He works for a
resistance group called Nylorac. He got caught contacting his people
after we left the atmosphere, and I tried to help, but there were just to
many.” She touched her temple absently. “Caught a rifle butt to the
temple,” she added.

Jack turned glowing silver eyes to Riddick. He was beginning to get sick
of seeing so many sets of them. “Why’d you come after me?”

He shrugged, trying to play it off. “I wasn’t going after you. Carolyn
needed to find her ship. We found it docked next to the freighter and
just happened to notice you in a tube, all beat up. So, we got you off.”

A pained expression crossed Jack’s face and she turned away from him,
staring dully at the wall. “Oh, I see.” Suddenly, her expression changed
drastically and she whipped her eyes back to Riddick’s. “Carolyn?”

Riddick shifted in his seat. “She’s alive, Jack. This is her ship.”

Jack’s eyes were wide with surprise and hope as she repeated,
“Carolyn.”

***

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