It came to her in a dream, which wasn't uncommon. She woke with her heart pounding.

Riddick was, as usual, already up. She could hear him keying something into the ship's terminal. A glance at the chrono told her that dawn was still an hour away.

She lay still, frowning, going over the images of her dream. She'd been flying their small ship through a dangerous canyon and it had suddenly been a sailboat, still moving through the gap or one much like it. On one side had crouched a terrible creature sitting on a rock, glaring at her with Carolyn Fry's face. Her body, below the face, was comprised of a dozen of the creatures from the planet, all of them reaching out to skewer the vessel. She'd changed course, edging the boat towards the other side of the strait, only to see Shazza rise up, whirling, to pull the boat down below the water...

Twins, Fry had murmured.

Twins, Shazza had replied. We're one and the same.

She'd stared from side to side, into their mirror-like eyes, both sets identical to a pair she knew better than her own.

You understand, Fry had smiled at her, predatory fangs showing.

Across, Shazza had nodded. He's one of us too.

Then they'd dragged her down into the waves, struggling...

Now Jack lay quietly in the bed, trying to fathom what she'd seen, what it meant. The answer, when it came to her, frightened her badly.

Please let me be wrong. Oh god, please let me be wrong... If she was right, the consequences could be horrible beyond imagining.

She knew exactly where the images came from, now. And the more she thought of it the colder her blood seemed to run. It had only been a year since she'd had to read the Odyssey for her English class, after all. Most of the girls in the shelter had concentrated on Circe, of course, a little too taken with the idea of transforming men into pigs. Jack had found the novel especially difficult, emotionally... Ulysses' trickery reminded her entirely too much of Johns. If Circe had gotten her hands on him, she'd told herself, her island would have had a jackal wandering around and the other animals would have begun dying of rabies.

But she remembered the monsters well. Too well. And she remembered their names.

Please let me be wrong, she thought again, all too aware that she probably wasn't. She buried her face in her pillow and closed her eyes, willing herself back to sleep.

She woke, two hours later, to the sounds of Riddick programming the food prep unit. She rose sluggishly, still bogged down by the images of her dream and their likely meaning. She'd have to do a little research later to see if she was right.

Once again she hoped to God she wasn't.

Maybe it's just a sick joke, she told herself as she dressed. After all, both projects were run by Special Forces. Maybe they have a whole mess of projects named after monsters from the Odyssey, or Greek mythology in general.

She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and grimaced into the mirror. Of course, that's not the kind of luck we have, is it? She was going to have to find out, and fast. As soon as they were done with breakfast--

"Oh my god, what did you do?" She stopped in the doorway of their bedroom, staring at the chaos in the cockpit. Riddick had disassembled the comm system. Parts were carefully arranged across the console and both chairs.

Riddick glanced over as he ferried plates from the food prep unit to the table. He grinned. "I'm installing some new hardware. Should make it impossible for anyone to ever download our ship profiles again."

Jack joined him at the table. "Uh... how long is that going to take?"

"Three or four hours," he replied, digging into his eggs. "Why, you need the unit?"

"Well, I wanted to look something up, yeah, but I guess it can wait."

He grinned again. "Doesn't need to if you don't want to. The soldiers from the Messina have been bugging out in droves since midnight. Town's probably clear by now. You want, you can go to the library."

"You don't need me here?"

He chuckled. "Programming is grouchy work, at least the way I do it. It's not as bad as the backlash I had after the battle, but I do turn into an asshole for a while. I was going to suggest you go have some fun in town anyway. Besides..." His gaze traveled over her body for a moment and his lips quirked into a lascivious smile. "You're bound to be a distraction for me."

Jack smiled, remembering the events of the day and night before. In between training sessions -- combat, meditation, and yet more combat -- Riddick had been positively insatiable. She'd completely lost track of how many times and how many ways they'd made love.

"Okay," she said after a long, reminiscent moment. "Anything you need from town while I'm there?"

"Nah. I got everything I could think of the other day." That, of course, was the day they'd both gone into something like withdrawal from being separated for several hours. They smirked at each other, remembering the outcome of that.

Jack stood up, picking up her plate. Before she could carry it over to the prep unit, though, Riddick had moved around the table. He gently lowered the plate back down as he drew her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly. She relaxed in his arms, returning the kiss with matching ardor.

"Now don't you stay away too long," he admonished her as he released her. "Got some plans for you when you get back."

"I'll try not to take too long," she promised, grinning up at him. He gave her one last, gentle squeeze around her waist before letting go altogether.

She cleared her plates, still smiling, and headed back into the bedroom to grab her card and jacket. When she emerged, Riddick was kneeling down in front of the comm unit, an odd device balanced in one hand. She watched him for a second, not wanting to break his concentration, before she quietly spoke.

"I'm heading out now."

"Have fun, Jack. I love you."

Oh wow. She felt a little part of herself go weak at that. "I love you too, Riddick."

She smiled as she left their ship, and the smile stuck with her all the way into town. He'd actually said it now, of his own accord. Sure, he'd answered "yes" when she'd asked him, before, and he'd said it when he was comforting her, but it was the first time it had just popped out on its own like that.

It was getting hard for her to remember what it had been like to be on the outside of his emotional armor, what it had been like, in those first days on the skiff almost five years ago, when she'd spent almost all of her time trying to figure out what he was thinking, with very little success.

She stopped in a small general store for a few things, still caught in her memories. She could still recall the disbelief and burgeoning excitement she'd felt when he'd told her he was taking her with him. His reasons, when expressed -- "How long you really think you'd stay with Imam if I left you here, kid? If we're gonna risk our asses wandering the galaxy, might as well risk 'em together" -- had made sense, if they had disappointed her a little. It had been another month before she'd figured out he genuinely cared about her.

She hadn't figured out how much he'd come to love her until the day she was shot.

The lines in the front of the store were extremely long when she carried her purchases up. She got in the shortest one she could and waited, watching with impatience as the current customer at the head of the line fumbled for her money, adding to the delay.

Might as well be nice and have my card ready, she thought in annoyance. She pulled it out of her pocket and turned it over. Suddenly she stopped, glancing at the name on the card. Shit.

She'd brought the wrong one. This was the Angelica Porter card. Her alias, these days, was Jennifer Owens. "Angelica" was supposedly on her way to Earth with Riddick.

Jack sighed, pocketing the card. She was still several places back from the front of the line. As nonchalantly as she could, she examined her purchases again. After a few seconds she pretended to be searching among them, as if something was missing. Grinning sheepishly, she exited the line.

Moments later she had returned all of the items to their respective shelves and exited the store through a different door. Not that she actually believed anyone had been paying attention, but you never knew, after all. None of the stuff was urgent; she'd get it later when she had the right card.

In the meantime, she still had research to do. She turned and headed for the library.

---

Four hours later, Jack still wasn't sure what she was looking for.

She'd found a lot of information about the Scylla Project; seven months of public fascination had generated mountains of data, a lot of it redundant. But while much of it was absorbing, not to mention horrific, her question had gone unanswered.

She had found and viewed the footage of the Homestead Massacre. That was chilling. A tourist had captured the opening moments of the slaughter on his video recorder. Within an hour it was on every Earth channel's emergency newscast; the military hadn't had a chance to hush it up or deny it.

It had been spooky, really spooky, watching as these children, some of them barely pubescent, took grown soldiers apart, calmly butchering them. She suspected the images would haunt her dreams.

But she still hadn't found her answer.

Maybe I'm going about this wrong, she thought. I'm looking at the things the general public saw. What about...

She programmed in her new search, narrowing the field down to medical journals.

One title grabbed her almost immediately and she hit the link. ILLEGAL USE OF ALTERED EMBRYOS AND THE SCYLLA PROJECT. She began to read.

It gave her a bit of a headache, wading through some of the technical jargon, but she got the gist of it, and it did answer a few other questions she had. The embryos had been genetically altered even before being infected with the Scylla Spore. Then they'd been implanted into the wombs of thirty women, all of them brain-dead from overdoses of Adrenosynth 17, a trendy drug at the time. And yes, all thirty women had eventually died from the Spore, even though the babies survived unharmed.

But there was another link at the bottom of the text, connecting to a follow-up article published two months later. Checking the dates, she determined that the article had been published five months into the Scylla Scandal, a month before Riddick was born.

COULD THE SCYLLA PROJECT HAPPEN AGAIN? the title asked.

It opened with the basic ethical and medical questions. Was it possible to do such a thing? Of course. It had been done; it could be done again. Therefore, what safeguards had been and were being put into place to prevent it, the article asked.

Jack's blood froze when she read the name of the person who was answering that question.

Lieutenant Reginald Jarvis, appointed head of the task force that has taken over the Scylla Project in the wake of the Homestead Massacre, finally agreed to give some brief answers to this important question.

"At this time," he told the J.A.M.A. in a special interview, "all of the biological matter brought from the Scylla System has been destroyed and new Interdiction laws are in place regarding the system itself. No further biological material will ever be collected."

But what of the rumors of other embryos?

"It's true that the Scylla Project doctors were working on a next generation," he confirmed. "They had made modifications that they believed would prevent the deaths of the host mothers. However, we will never know whether or not it would have worked. Those embryos were all destroyed a month ago; I oversaw their destruction personally."

Jack stared at the monitor for a long time, her mind racing. The worst part of all, she realized, was that he hadn't even lied. You just failed to mention that some of them were no longer embryos, you son of a bitch. They'd gone past that stage, way past it. And the ones that weren't embryos any more didn't get destroyed, did they?

She wondered where they'd kept the host mothers while the scandal was in full swing. She wondered how many there had been that time.

Oh Reg, you fucking bastard, she thought. She put her head down on the desk and sobbed quietly. She'd found her answer.

---

Eventually she composed herself and rose, switching off the terminal. She had her answer. Now she needed to tell Riddick what she knew.

She wished she knew how he'd react. She couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to learn such a thing about herself. Yeah, Riddick knew that Special Forces had been fucking with his life since he was a child, but from what he'd said, he had no idea when, how or why it had begun.

He is not going to like this, she thought as she headed down the stairs. Hell, I don't like it. I can't believe they could do something like that...

But they could; they had. These were people who could deliberately take a plane with thirty children on board -- albeit crazed, homicidal children -- and crash it into the side of one of the Appalachian mountains. These were people who could take a bunch of young, brain-dead women and infect them with a deadly virus, letting their bodies die slowly and horribly in service to someone's twisted idea of scientific progress.

These were people who, apparently, were willing to do it all again after it failed spectacularly the first time.

She left the library and headed back towards the spaceport, her distress growing. She could actually imagine one possible response that Riddick might have. He might take off from their landing grid and launch an attack on the Messina. That would be suicide, of course, even with its fighter squadrons already destroyed. Unlikely, though. Riddick just wasn't the suicidal type.

Suddenly Jack came to an abrupt halt, staring ahead in shocked disbelief.

Jarvis was twenty yards in front of her.

He was seated at an outdoor table in one of the small cafes, eating quietly. He hadn't looked her way. She ducked her head and crossed the street as soon as traffic was clear enough.

Okay, she told herself. No reason to panic.

But she wasn't panicking, she realized. Not in the least. What she felt was more along the lines of righteous fury. She wanted to walk up to him and slap him across the face, to demand an explanation of how and why he played with human lives the way he did. And she really wanted to throttle the remaining secrets of the Charybdis Project out of him...

I can, she suddenly realized, a plan blossoming in her mind. Oh my god, I know exactly how I can do this.

She squared her shoulders and glanced about. She was only two blocks from the library, still. Very good. And the shop next to her sold data disks. Perfect.

I can do this, she told herself. Without further hesitation, she entered the shop.

The Angelica Porter card had approximately seven hundred New Francs left on it. Jack moved through the store, searching until she found what she wanted, a multi-pack of high-volume data disks. There should be enough space on them to do what she needed. She carried them to the front of the store.

Game time, she thought, as she handed the cashier the card that identified her as Angelica Porter.

There was a slight pause as the transaction went through, a bit longer than normal.

Shit, don't let them have closed down the card altogether...

Finally the purchase cleared. Jack signed the receipt quickly and took her bag, thanking the cashier and heading for the door. She paused and looked out.

Yes. Jarvis was on the move, crossing the street, his eyes fixed on the shop. They'd notified him of the card's use, exactly as she'd suspected. She undid her ponytail and let her hair fall around her face, obscuring her countenance as much as she could, and then pushed the door open. She was careful to keep her face partially turned away.

Let him get a look. But not a good look. Just enough to pique his curiosity, she reminded herself. Come on, Uncle Reg, fall in line like a good soldier.

She kept her pace brisk but relaxed. She didn't want to lose him, but she didn't want him to be able to catch up with her without drawing attention to himself. And above all, she didn't want him realizing she knew he was there. He'd leaned into the shop she'd exited, she noted, using a window as a mirror to see behind her. After a moment he was following her.

Very good, Uncle Reg. Come on home. She headed for the library.

She was careful not to let him get a good look at her as she retraced the two blocks, but she let him catch small glimpses of her profile from time to time. She wanted him to think he was looking at a double for the Late And Lamented Jack Kowalczyk, but she didn't want him figuring out the truth. She'd need the full shock value of that very soon, now.

Entering the library, she headed for the stairs. She'd gotten very familiar with the place's layout and knew exactly where she needed to go. Back to Russian Literature, fourth floor, east wing, where she'd found her answer in the first place. Always empty. The perfect spot for what she intended.

Jarvis was still following. Alone. Riddick was right; the troops had been sent back up to the Messina. He had no backup. It probably didn't even occur to him that he might need any.

Too bad for you, Reg, but great for me. Thanks. She headed for Russian Literature. She wondered what he made of that; after all, the Late And Lamented Jack Kowalczyk was of Russo-Polish descent on her father's side, wasn't she?

She made sure she didn't turn the corner until Jarvis reached the top of the steps, letting him catch a tantalizing glimpse of her profile. Who you following, Uncle? You even know? Wanna take a guess yet?

Moving to one of the terminals, she set her purchase beside it and booted up. Now she was ready. Just for fun, she sat down in front of the terminal and listened to his quiet footfalls as he approached her.

"Excuse me, miss," he said behind her, so politely. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

She smiled to herself and rose back out of her seat, stepping away from it with her back still turned. Adrenaline was coursing through her veins, she realized, but everything felt focused and clear. This was what Riddick had been talking about, she realized. The pre-combat high. Now she knew.

She turned around in a single, abrupt movement. Four feet away from her, Lieutenant Reginald Jarvis's eyes went wide.

"Hello, Uncle Reg," she replied with a smirk.

Stunned by the sudden revelation before him, Jarvis was completely unprepared for her sudden attack.