Apprentice

Ardath Rekha


 

4. Jack: One Fine Freakin' Reunion

"My god, Riddick, I'm so glad to--"

She'd been throwing her arms around him as she was speaking, but the breath was abruptly knocked out of her as Riddick pinned her against the wall. His hands started moving swiftly over her body.

What the fuck? He's frisking me!

"Jeez, I'm not armed or anything! What the fuck is your problem?" She struck out at him only to have him catch her arm in mid-swing.

He turned her around so that she was facing the wall and continued patting her down in silence. His hands on her body were impersonal, the hands of a stranger.

Just when she thought he was finished his hands became more invasive, sliding under her shirt and across her bare skin. She began to struggle.

"Goddamn it, you sick psycho-fuck bastard, what the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"I'm checking you for wires," he growled, relentlessly continuing his search. His hands pushed under the waistband of her leggings.

"Jesus, do you think I'd have let somebody wire me? Dammit, watch where you're putting your hands! If you even think of doing a cavity-search I'll rip your fucking nuts off!"

"Don't tempt me, Jack," he laughed in her ear.

Finally he was done. She managed to take him by surprise as he turned her back around, striking him across the face with her open hand. He blinked, then laughed at her.

"Is that how you say 'hi' to an old friend?"

"Hell no," she seethed. "Was that?"

His face grew serious. "Not really. But I had to be sure that's what you really were."

She stared at him in appalled amazement. "What? Did you think I sold you out or something? You son of a bitch!"

"Easy, Jack." His hands were on her shoulders. "You know what my life is like. You remember."

His words enraged her even more. "You think I could forget?" She knocked his hands away and pulled her shirt up, away from her belly, so he could see the ugly, jagged scar that marred her side. "How could I with this nifty souvenir of our last day together? I was in the hospital for two fucking months!"

He winced. He actually winced! Thinking about how she'd been shot hurt him. He stared down at her midriff for a long moment, then reached out and gently touched the scar with the tips of his fingers.

"I am so sorry, Jack," he whispered hoarsely.

Jack stared up at the ceiling and blinked several times to ease the stinging of her eyes. She had to swallow hard against the sudden knot in her throat. She was not going to cry. She was not going to fucking cry!

He must have seen the look on her face because he brought his hand up to her cheek. She pulled away as if he'd burned her.

"Are we done now?" she demanded.

"No." His voice was composed again. He let her go and walked over to the med-locker. "I need to check one more thing."

He removed a device from the locker and brought it back over to her. Turning it on, he began passing it over her and around her. The scanner chuckled quietly to itself before letting out a sharp squawk as it passed over her upper right arm.

Riddick sighed and finished sweeping the device over her body, then brought it back to her arm. The thing squawked again.

"Yeah, that's it," he told her. "They inserted a beacon into you surgically."

She stared at him again. "The hell they did!"

"It's right here," he replied, touching her arm.

"No. That's my implant."

"Your 'implant?' What implant?" The skepticism on his face and in his voice brought her anger back, stronger than ever.

"It's a hormonal regulator," she snapped. "If I didn't have one, I'd go into premature menopause." She watched him grow confused. "They had to do a complete hysterectomy, Riddick. The bullet tore up a lot of things and my reproductive system was one of them. I'm sterile. Happy?"

He looked anything but. "They wouldn't put it in your arm, Jack. They'd have to implant that kind of regulator deeper inside you, connected into your glandular system. I'm sure they did, but that's not it." He touched her arm again. "Now. We're going to have to get the locator out of you."

The mixture of fear and rage in her skyrocketed as she realized what he was planning to do. "You crazy fuck, you're not cutting me open!" She tried to dive past him, heading for the ramp. She never made it.

He had her on the floor before she'd realized she'd been grabbed, pinned beneath him. She struggled against him fiercely, screaming incoherent obscenities at him. She saw the hypo only a second before she felt the sting on her throat. Everything went black.

 

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