I do not own Riddick OR Roy Batty, more's the pity. (Kazminski is mine---poor schmuck.) Since I'm making no profit from all this, it's kind of a moot point. This story starts with slashy overtones, and will only get worse. Really, if guys getting nasty with each other is not your trip, the "backspace" key is your friend.

Have a lovely day, and please remember to review!

Beyond Blade Runner

One: A Science Project

"I could get into so much trouble for this," the morgue attendant said nervously. The man standing in front of his desk just shrugged. He stood head and shoulders taller than the lab-coated clerk, and the coarse work clothes he wore hinted at the bulk of muscles beneath. The dark glasses concealing his eyes made him even more intimidating. The attendant jerked his head toward one of the door behind him. "If it ever happened. Drawer 14B."

The clerk was nowhere to be seen as the burly man emerged from the back room, pushing a portable freeze box on a dolly. This was leaving much more heavily laden than when it had entered. "Smart guy," muttered the second man.

No one challenged the big man as he strode away from the building housing the Greater Los Angeles morgue with his questionable cargo. He took a devious route to his destination, but not too devious, because there was a limited window for what needed to be done. Anonymous in coveralls, with a knitted black cap protecting him from the rain that had been falling steadily since mid-afternoon, he could have been a vendor delivering sushi to a party, a bonded medical supplier transporting stem cells, or even one of the most-wanted fugitives in the known worlds smuggling bootlegged human remains.

Kazminski was getting ready at the abandoned gymnasium they'd taken over. Everything was set up and waiting. Spare no expense, was what the morgue raider had told Kaz, and the little gene-geek had followed his instructions to the letter. In contrast to his solidly built patron, Kaz was slender, with a shock of brown hair falling into vivid blue eyes. The fashion of the moment was the 20th century---specifically, the 1930's. Against the trend, Kaz displayed a more fin-du-cicle look with rectangular glasses---not to see with, but for The Look. Likewise, the stubble-goatee on his chin and trim-fitting blue denim trousers beneath the crisp white coat were geared to a certain effect, purely 1990's.

Four Life Support tables in the cavernous space ringed a central table loaded with trays of medical paraphernalia. Wheeling the freezer to a stop beside one of the steri-steel tables, the man who'd just bought a very illegal corpse said, "Are you certain this is going to work?"

"I've never actually done it," admitted Leopold Kasimir Kazminski. "But I've researched it. It should work. Put him on the table."

Inside the freezer was the body of a man, wearing only a pair of tight-fitting grey shorts. The fugitive who'd stolen the body eased it from the ice chest and carefully arranged it on the steri-steel. His expression went from grim to concerned, his forehead wrinkling as he patted the dead man's platinum blonde hair. The table was ringed by six SunRG1250 free-floating lights, making a bright patch in the otherwise darkened space.

Meanwhile, Kaz was examining the man on the table and calibrating monitors. "I think we may have caught a break," he announced. "This is scanning like hypothermia---he's in bad shape, no doubt about that, but the gradual lowering of his body temperature and the freeze at the morgue slowed down the progress of the systemic failure."

"Which means what to me, exactly?" There was a tone of menace in the big man's deep voice.

"If he'd died of the systemic failure, it would be a lot more difficult to revive him, let alone repair the problem. As it is..." The petite genetic technician checked the readout on a scanner and rummaged among the vials on a nearby table. "I think we've got about a forty percent chance." Kaz started the thermal reprocessor, setting it to gradually bring the core temp of the body within viability. This part of the procedure wasn't any different from bringing back any exposure victim--the procedures that came afterward were going to be the tricky part.

"Forty? Is that the best you can do?"

"Look, Mr. Riddick, I know half of the known universe is shit-scared of you, but you're not going to get anybody else crazy enough to try this for any amount of money. And if you could, odds are they'd fuck it up." Looking at the steadily rising body temperature, the medico reached for a heart stimulant. "Hey, if you can find anybody else to take this on, trot 'em on in here, I want to watch." He'd filled a pneumatic hypo spray while they were talking, and now he angled it against the dead man's ribcage. Kaz tapped the button and the medication was delivered directly to the blonde man's heart. The body twitched faintly. Kaz grinned, as he checked the readouts again. "Wahoo, we have vital signs...crappy vital signs, but the pump's going. Move will you? I need to get him ventilated."

The body thief took a step back, dark glasses following every movement Kaz made. The young man worked with quiet competance--his medical career had encompassed Emergency Medicine and NeuroPsych before he'd been seduced away by the promise of the easy money to be made in illicit genetech. In a remarkably short time, a machine was breathing for the figure on the table. The table's defibrilator was online and ready for immediate use.

"He looks as stable as he's gonna be for now," said the medical semi-professional.

Kazminski got an IV line started and started explaining things to Riddick as he worked. "The worst problem is the CNS---central nervous system. That we can compensate for with some of the older neuromuscular nanos. At least, I hope we can. The similarities between this and an old-fashioned case of muscular dystrophy are fairly close, except here, it's really advanced."

"Is that all?"

"No, that's not all," Kaz filled a syringe to inject into the drip. "If it was that easy, they'd be doing it in every back-alley clinic in the Twelve Systems!"

"It's supposed to be impossible."

Kaz stopped what he was doing for a moment and looked over at Riddick. "Wrong. It's not going to be easy, but it shouldn't be impossible."

"So why don't they--?"

"M-O-N-E-Y. Planned obsolescense. Means it's built to wear out after a certain length of time so the consumer has to buy a new one. And they're not cheap." Riddick growled at that, but Kaz knew that was directed at Them. The Tyrell Corporation was one of Earth's Big Three mega-conglomerates, and you sure as hell didn't get that way by playing nice. God only knew how many of these things died every four years just to keep their bottom line in the stratosphere. Although that might change soon...while waiting for Riddick to arrive with his ghoul job, Kaz overheard a newscast that Old Man Tyrell had been found dead in his penthouse.

"Do. Not. Call him an 'it' again." Wrong about the growl. Note to self, exercise uncommon tact when referring to the patient. Geez.

"Sorry, I didn't mean it that way!" Kaz said, hastily raising a hand in the universal 'stop' gesture. "No offense!" The uneasy tech quailed beside his employer, a housecat beside a tiger. The best thing to do was shut up and stay that way as much as possible... Riddick's reputation was scary; Kaz knew all the stories. That was part of the thrill. So was the lure of enough money to get him off-world.

"What's that?" Riddick demanded as Kaz introduced a second syringeful of liquid to the drip.

"Amniocortexine. It works on patching brain damage. Used a lot in cases of hypothermia, in fact, and other oxygen-deprivation scenarios. It rebuilds neurological pathways. It won't restore actual memory, but at least your subject won't have swiss cheese instead of grey matter."

"Memory loss? How bad is that going to be?"

Glancing at the monitors, Kaz gave a little side-to-side hand wobble. "Hard to say. Short term looks ferschizzled. He may have a few bits and pieces of the last few months, but I'm not promising anything." He pointed to a display on one of the scans. "Look at that dark blue area--that's his hippocampus. See those pink spots? It should all be pink. He's definitely going to have some gaps."

Riddick glared at the screen as if it was a personal enemy. "He might not remember anything, that's what you're saying? He might not remember me."

"The good news is, his CNS is improving way faster than I thought it would. I told you up front, living and breathing is the best-case scenario," the genetech reminded him. "And it looks like he's breathing on his own. The ventilator is a safety precaution. Heart and lungs, that's excellent..." He tried not to be distracted by his intimidating patron; his job was to get the body on the table into stable condition.

"Uh-oh, I don't like the look of those pancreatic enzymes..." Another hypospray. "Standard rejuv drugs here, double dose. That should give him the organs of a 20-year old. All of them." Kaz remembered himself as a horny 20-year old and smirked. Looking at his handsome patient, what Riddick saw in him was clear. If that was what this was about--his employer had given him only the medical basics. Although if I had to pick one of them---Kaz gave himself a mental headshake. This was not the time for sexual fantasies.

Kazminski swore as two of the sensors went nuts at the same time, and a third chimed in as he was responding. "Get out of my way!" he screamed at Riddick who bolted to the blonde's bedside as if teleported. He smacked his palm down onto the defilibrator panel and the body jolted as the table unit went active. And it was going so well, Kaz thought mournfully. If this guy kicks the bucket, Riddick's probably going to have my guts for sushi.

The heart rate was erratic...time to program the table for pacemaker function. He didn't like doing that--sometimes there was a problem with feedback--but the rejuv drugs had kicked in with a vengence and now the muscle that was this man's heart was trying to beat double-time. Not good.

Failing renal fuction...dialysis support drugs were what he'd give a patient showing signs like that. Kaz did, a more cautious dose than the megahit of rejuv chemicals---Boy, when goes to shit, it all goes to shit. The liver's obviously blowing all kinds of toxins into his system. Okay, treat the symptoms and don't panic. And when the guy is turning yellow before your eyes? Shit, tell me I scored some Jaunderex!

The next hour was harrowing. Kaz responded to a round-robin of crises. The organ failure diminished, only to have feedback from the bed threaten the patient's cardiac rhythm. With the pacemaker turned off, his heart rate plummeted...then leveled out at 44bpm, which made the meditech nervous. Not an unreasonable resting pulse for a healthy, athletic young man, but he didn't trust that, given the guy's overall condition. Biting his lip, Kaz set automatic parameters for the pacemaker...it was going to be a long night.

The Jaunderex was a staple of hospital nurseries and alcohol detox centers everywhere, and it worked its magic on the blonde man. His fair skin had recovered its natural tones, which Kaz pointed out to Riddick with a relieved smile. "Watch his skin--those crow's feet will disappear overnight. In the next day or two, he's going to shed a lot of dead cells as his skin regains elasticity."

Riddick pounced on that comment. "The next day or two? You think he's out of the woods?"

"I think his chances are better than they were an hour ago," Kaz said realistically. "Do I think they're one hundred percent? No, but I think now they're better than fifty-fifty." He turned away from the figure on the steri-steel table and went over to an appliance in the corner.

"What now?" the big man demanded.

"I'm going to have a cup of coffee, Mr. Riddick. For you, I suggest decaf."