Her eyes got a far away look that he couldn't read as she softly said, like she was speaking to herself. "Our very existence depends on it..."

He leaned forward, confused by her riddles. "What are you talking about?'

Mitra opened her mouth to speak but froze in place, the blood running cold within her veins and the look of fear crossing her face didn't go unnoticed by Riddick whose senses went on high alert. Instantly he noticed the air all around them tainted with the vile, pungent, horrid aroma of death. He could smell a foulness build around them and a dark entity pierced the fabric of space encompassing them.

He slowly rose to his feet, shivs ready in hand, seeing as the others noticed the disturbance also. Fear etched their features; stiff stances readying their bodies for an attack.

"They're here..."whispered softly from Mitra's dried, old lips.

Riddick stood with head bowed, arms stretched out in front of him, bracing against the bar in the confined shower.

Mitra's words ringing in his ears. "They're here..."

Water washed down him, body still clothed in shreds and soaked with blood that collected by his booted feet in a swirl of brown and red, down into the drainage system. He pressed his head against the tiled wall, every muscle in his body taut, as it slowly waited for the adrenaline to finish it's course through his system.

The heat from the shower source, building up steam around him. The white curling tentacles reminding him of the underworldly figures that came stepping out from black tendrils of smoke...

He squeezed his eyes shut at the onslaught of images that flashed unwantingly behind his lids. Images of horror still fresh in his mind as the night unraveled into the things of nightmares. Flesh strewn open as liquid-life spilled through the air, the creatures merciless.

White shawls stained blood red while screams echoed its haunting melody through the night.

Riddick tore his black goggles from his face before, grunting with each smash his hand angrily made into the tiles until his knuckles split and bled forth. His silver eyes sprung open, insanity evident as teeth and flesh, razor claws and disembodied pictures were all he could see reeling over and over again.

He swore as his hand raked over his stubbled-bald head, this night would haunt his already dark soul for the rest of his life and beyond.

It was a massacre...he couldn't save them. His merculian-lava eyes growing pained as they fell to the floor, in his minds eye he started to relive the final moment with the person his Jack saw as a mother.

Mitra's whitering body laid in his arms, as she coughed up mouth full of blood. She grabbed his hand fiercely as she could feel her life ebb away. One of the skeletal-dog creatures caught her off guard while she battled another. Taking a chunk of flesh and bone as it tore through her side with a mouth filled with twelve inch long spikes for teeth.

"Shhhh..." His deep voice rumbled, trying what best he could do to comfort the dying woman.

"Listen..." She spoke in a hard rasp, tears flooded down her cheeks. "Kyra, needs you..."

Her free hand raised to touch his face, smearing her blood on his cheek. "The Dark One is coming...Her life ensures survival..."

"Survival, of what?"

The light in her eyes were fading, he could see it leaving. As her mouth slowly moved with her last wisp of breath. "...Everything."

The only family she knew, the only ones important that she could remember. How was he going to tell her? He shook his head, he couldn't, that's how. He was thankful she was still too deep in shock to know what was eatting at him...or what was going on around her.

The room gave a small shift as the skiff they were boarded on hit a rough patch of space. His eyes peered through the droplets of hot water, toward Kyra standing in the arch way of the automatic door. Her blueish-green eyes, blank like no one was home, etched across her face. It was her fifth time in hours that they been aboard that she roamed around, sleep-walking, as her mind was still buried somewhere in her subconscious after the trauma she experienced. And there was more waiting to be known.

She found him again, like before, just to stand there staring at him with an expressionless look that was starting to unnerve him, if just a little. The stare he deemed fit punishment for not being able to save them.

So much pain and death seemed to follow them, no matter where they went. And him being the now Lord Marshall, death was just his calling card. It was why they fit so perfect together. One's wicked tragedy in life was just the other's mirrored hell.

"Water, off." He growled out, grabbing a towel and wiping off the droplets from his face.

He stood in front of her, barely a shell of the person she use to be, but damn if his body still didn't react to the nearness. Ached for her poison. He lift a calloused hand to her waterfall of curls. Pulling one softly, like a spring before it returned to it's normal shape.

"Damn it, Jack. What happened to you?" His strong fingers, tracing the delicate skin of her cheek to subtle jaw and plump lips.

"Shit always seems to follow us? Doesn't it, kid."

There was never any real time to dawn on the fact that she was real, here in the flesh, his body skittering against hers, making one part of him solid. He ducked his head to the nape of her neck to inhale the scent that was fierce woman and sex. He shook his head side to side. So many unanswered questions locked away in that mind of hers where he was afraid that even she couldn't find where it was all stowed away.

He tipped her chin up, until she was staring up into his silver slates. Her eyes blinking, but he knew she couldn't see anything, trapped in her mind the way she was. Like a black hole's gravitational pull on any unfortunate ass thing close to it. Richard B. Riddick found himself in the same pull, being drawn in to her softly parted lips.

Life sprung into green orbs at the last second before his rough lips connected with her own feminine ones. Her hand instantly going for a blade, loyal to her person and slashed at his cheek.

"I told you to never fucking touch me!" She hissed, defiantly.

Riddick fingers came forward with blood on the tips from the gash and squared his eyes at her. "Fucking, Bitch!"

He struck his hand out like a viper, grabbing her wrist and bashing it against the door frame to release her hold on the hidden blade. With speeds just as lighting fast he grabbed her upper arms and pushed her across the corridor to slam her against the nearby wall.

"You may not fucking remember me, but you will show me some fucking respect!" He spat in her face and despite the hard front she tried to keep up, the smudges of fear were creeping in.

"Good..." He smiled wickedly that quickened the thump-thump in her chest a notch higher. "...time to show you the only thing you need to fear in the dark. Is me."

Riddick's hand clamped tightly around the front of the fresh clean tank-top she wore. "Lights off!"

The skiff was immediately doused in pitch blackness, not even the emergency lights shown in the corridors he was dragging her down.

"What are you doing?!" She screamed, her hands clawing at the unmovable object that was his fist.

"Teaching you some manners!" He snapped, shoving her into her small cell of a room, big enough to hold only a bunk, a metal desk forged to the wall and chair with wheels.

Kyra got from her back to feet and tried to lunge out of the room but the door slid quickly in place and was locked from the other side. Riddick disabling the lights or any commands that would come from inside the room.

"Let me out!" He could hear her wail, fits pounding on the metal door. "Let me out, you fucking, Bastard!"

"What is my name!" He roared, his own fist beating a lot louder back from the other side of the door, repeatedly until she couldn't take the sound any longer and covered her ears.

"I don't care..."

Jack came to the forefront, just a weak, scared kid who couldn't take the dark anymore. Kyra was all too willing to let anyone take hold of the reins for awhile. Her head slowly turning side to side. "Please..."

She opened her eyes to pitch darkness, inky and heavy air filled the room, or so her mind imagined. "Lights..." Jack said weakly and a panic rose up inside when nothing happened.

But what she most feared started to come from the shadows again in her head.