Morph

Chapter 23: Hunted

Carmine’s POV

Carmine inspects the loft that Riddick had been occupying in Tunix. Pictures frames sit on titanium tables and on the walls. Toys lay scattered throughout the floor of the foyer.

A family man? This surprises Carmine very much. For years he’d thought of Riddick as an animal, a pit-bull off its leash. Big Evil as most of the men called him. One picture in particular catches Carmine’s’ attention. While the uniforms collect any useful information they can find, Carmine picks the picture up from a nightstand and studies it as if he saw it somewhere before. The familiarity is that of himself with Riddick when he’d been about the same age as Jason. The boy had a spirit of adventure without question.

When Richard escaped the laboratories, he’d surprised everyone. Even the doctors that supposedly knew the extent of his abilities had been fooled. Carmine can remember being silently proud of his ‘son’. Regardless of how much Carmine cared for Richard he was irreplaceable and extremely important to the Corporation. They had to hunt him down. Somehow Richard had managed to find outside alliances and tracking him down became more perilous than anticipated. It took them 3 years and the lives of 7 crew members, to finally capture Richard. In which time he’d become even more aggressive and bewildered. His body was going through changes; physically his muscular mass was enlarging without much exercise. Oncek ink in the care of the doctors his testing began again and what they found out blew them all away. Richard’s IQ had doubled. His reflexes were compared to that of a predator, lethally fast. Carmine was beginning to question the Corporations interest in this child. Without Carmine’s consent they began to train Richard in every level of combat. The boy only needed to be showed once how to do it and he’d mastered it. By the time Richard hit his teens the Corporation already had plans for him. They transferred him to military intelligence, there he learned all the secrets of the Corporation. They transferred Riddick to the Sigma Galaxy and he’d become an Elite Company Ranger. Not long after he was promoted to the Strikeforce Academy on Sigma 3’s moon. He learned all there is to know about killing. Until the Company made the mistake of turning him loose.

“Sir, you might want to take a look at this” my awareness returns and I follow the soldier thiddhidden panel that leads to a dark room. “There aren’t any lights you you’ll have to wear these” he hands me a set of night vision le. Wh. Whatever is in here must be important to keep in such a secluded area. I place the goggles around my head and hit the tiny button on the side, which turns the lenses on. Once the night vision is engaged I can see the other soldiers inside the room still scanning the area. The room is large, heavy metal walls with lining. Soundproof, I realize. There are metal tables aligned on one side of the wall.

“Over here Chief” the same soldier calls to me. We move up to the tables, covered in a gray slip. He takes one corner of the slip in his hands and looks at me, “Ready?” I nod in anticipation. He yanks the cover off the table and I’m taken aback at what I see. My head jerks to the side trying to escape the foul odor that causes my belly to wrench with nausea.

“Fuck! What the hell is that?” I ask trying not to breathe. A petite female soldier peeks at what where looking at, but her resolve is weak. She quickly turns and vomits on the floor. Another female helps her out of the room.

“I believe they are chunks of flesh Sir. More like trophies” he says, obviously holding the bile that threatens to rise from his stomach.

His words stab at me. Trophies? My God, what had Riddick become? Had his psychosis returned? So many questions that I need answered. No one really ever knew what made Riddick turn the way he had. A twinge of guilt creeps inside me. I had a chance to make things right, but I screwed it up. The only person he trusted had been me and I betrayed him. I shake off my feelings quickly.

As I turn to leave something even more disturbing comes in view. It seems as if I can’t get to it fast enough, my mouth is already moving.

“Are those what I think they are?” I ask to no one in particular. Officer Fitz is studying the charts and pictures on the wall.

“Yes Sir they are.” She answers nonchalant.

Taped on the wall are charts, schematics and security passwords to all our bases. Pictures and records of all the military cadets he’d killed during the time we’d tried to hunt him down. In the center of it all lies two particular ones. William C. Johns, the best of my men. Had been anyway. Riddick and Johns had trained in the same Academy. They’d never been friends, but understood each other’s capabilities and respected their boundaries. At the end, the strongest survived. My picture is also on the wall, accompanied by every single report I’d ever submitted about him. He’d been keeping track of me all this time. Riddick has been hunting me! I can’t help but scoff at the irony of that.

One thing is certainly clear to me right now. This deadly game we’d been playing for all these years is coming to an end.

To be continued...