Not Who You Thought I Was

Not Who You Thought I Was

“I was always with you.”

The words had haunted him for months. The sister of his heart, torn from his grasp. Kyra. Jack. The one person who had accepted him exactly as he was… or had been until then, anyway.

Richard B. Riddick, Lord Marshal of the Necromonger army, heard those words in his head far too often, and they tore at him.

“Sir?” One of his soldiers was before him, saluting.

He shook his head, clearing away the thoughts that kept tormenting him. “Yes?”

“We have brought on board the prisoners from Antares V. Are you ready to make your demonstration?”

Riddick nodded, rising. He often didn’t understand what had happened to him in the last few months, how the spiraling darkness had consumed him like the other Lord Marshals before him. He had stepped into the role with an ease that baffled him, and his powers were continuing to grow, to swell, to pull him deeper into the dark.

But that haunting voice would tear at him, those last words. Was he betraying her?

He followed his soldier to the reviewing chamber, where the new prisoners awaited. They were officers of the Interplanetary Navy, captured in the latest skirmishes. Forcing the thoughts from his mind again, he smirked as he entered the room, radiating his power and his confidence as he reviewed each of them.

That one was an Admiral. Control of him would guarantee that whole fleets fell. That one definitely just a career soldier of no value. That one—

What the fuck?

That one was a young woman. Maybe eighteen years old. With her light brown hair pulled back in a severe braid and her face fully bared, she was arresting to look at. Those angles, those huge eyes, that elfin chin…

It was impossible. He’d seen her die. Hadn’t he?

Jack was standing before him. Jack, looking exactly as he remembered her from the planet, but older and wiser. Jack… looking nothing like Kyra.

What the fuck?

His personal quarters had never been entered by another person than him, until now. He had Jack by the elbow, forcing her into the room ahead of him and slamming the door. This room, this room alone, was one he had absolute control over. No one would hear a word spoken here. Whatever the outcome, no one would know, or be able to prevent him from doing his will…

…Whatever it should turn out to be.

Jack stumbled and caught herself on his desk before whirling to face him. Her eyes were enormous.

“You? You’re the Lord Marshal?” She looked horrified. It drove home, all the more, that he was facing Jack. It was the antithesis of the trusting look that she’d once given him, but it was so purely her. It was the look he’d seen on her face when Johns had turned on her.

It left him feeling gutted.

“This isn’t possible,” he muttered, pacing.

“You’re telling me,” she replied, her voice quavering. She sounded nauseated.

“I saw you die.” He didn’t mean to say it, but it came blurting out of him before he could stop it.

“You what?” She looked genuinely baffled.

“You — Kyra — you…”

“Kyra?” That was recognition in her voice and on her face. He lunged forward, his hands capturing her upper arms and pulling her towards him.

“You know who she is? Tell me.” He was shaking her.

“Wait, hey, stop…” She pushed ineffectually against him. “What do you mean you saw me die?”

“WHO WAS KYRA?” He thundered into her face as she broke free.

“Jesus, Riddick! Don’t you know?” She staggered back from him, and then moved to put the desk between them.

He was scaring her. He was terrifying the one person he’d longed after ever since that horrible day.

The one? There were two women now… Jack and Kyra, and he didn’t know which was which. This was the face of the Jack he’d known on the planet of endless day and blackest night. But then there was Kyra. The same soul, it had seemed. Until her devotion to him had killed her.

He forced himself not to pursue Jack around the desk, to let her have a little breathing room. The darkness within him whispered that he could take the information from her, take it all…

…leaving her an empty husk. The thought tore at him.

“Tell me…” he forced himself to ask, not take. “Tell me who she was.”

“Who did she say she was, Riddick?” Jack had put her arms around herself.

“She said she was you. She knew everything. Everything from the planet, and afterwards. She knew things only you and I knew.” He stared at her accusingly.

Jack sighed. “Well, that figures. We shoulda seen that coming.”

“Who was she?”

Jack looked up at him, her eyes sad. “Is she really dead?”

He nodded, his heart twisting. I was always with you…

If any other being in the galaxy had sat down in his chair, he would have killed them on the spot. But seeing Jack sag into the chair softened a part of him that he thought had gone glacial.

“Riddick… she…” Jack sighed. “She was a Furyan. Like you. A lot like you. She knew about me, about us, because she could see into your mind. She’d been seeing into it for years and years.”

Like me? He coughed, and found himself speaking the words aloud. “Like me?”

Jack nodded and then gave him a rueful smile. “Well, yeah, come on. I’m eighteen. I woulda been seventeen when you met her, right? Do you think I could possibly have learned to fight as good as she could, that fast? Me, a normal human girl?”

He swallowed, remembering the way Kyra had fought beside him, like they were two parts of a single machine. No, that had not been human skills. It had been grace beyond measure… it had been…

Furyan.

“So she was a Furyan like me. Why’d she say she was you?”

Jack sighed, rubbing her face with her hand. “Well, probably because she knew how you felt about me. You always treated me like your little sister.” She looked up, wistfulness and compassion evenly mixed in her eyes. “She wanted that. She’d wanted that for a long time. What better way to get it, and get your help, than to play on your memories of me?”

Now that he thought of it, he was amazed that he hadn’t been able to see the difference in the two women’s faces. It was like something had clouded his memory, making the faces mesh, match…

The powers of a Furyan.

“But why?”

“You still don’t know who she is, do you? You haven’t figured it out.” Jack sighed, and rose stiffly from the chair, walking slowly over towards him. “Before I tell you… you have to tell me something.”

He frowned. “What?”

“Am I talking to Riddick, or to the Lord Marshal?”

The question took him aback. Who was he, anymore? Who lived in this vortex of darkness?

He knew the answer when he looked at her. When she was here, when Kyra had been here… he was…

“Riddick.”

She nodded, satisfied. He wondered how long he would continue to be Riddick, how long before the siren call of his warped destiny would make him Lord Marshal again.

“Okay,” she whispered, and took a deep breath. “After you left New Mecca, I went kind of crazy. Not like psycho crazy… I just went wild. Imam… couldn’t handle me. So he sent me away to a military academy.”

Jack’s eyes seemed to begin to glow and sparkle.

“I loved it there, Riddick. I don’t know why but it was the perfect place for me. I just… blossomed. Ended up on the Officer’s Track in no time… and that gave me clearance to all kinds of things, including your records. And god knows, I’ve never been able to resist anything that involved you…”

Riddick nodded, curbing his impatient desire for her to get to the damn point already.

“That’s how I learned about Kyra. When she was fifteen, she broke out of the orphanage they had her in and hooked up with some mercs so she could go looking for you. It was kind of weird, realizing that she was exactly the same age as me, and was on the quest I kept being tempted to go on—”

“Who was she?”

“It’s staring you right in the face, Riddick. You’ve known her, and she’s known you, all your lives. Maybe she’s why you were so willing to take care of me.” Jack leaned forward, her expression a mixture of joy and regret. “Kyra was your sister, Riddick. Your full-blood biological sister. That’s why she pretended to be me. Because you’d given me the only thing in the universe she’d ever wanted, and it was the only way she knew to get it back.”

I was always with you…

He knew now. He could see it all. And he could see what he’d become…

Where the hell is my God now? Everything he’d thought he’d known had been turned inside out. He didn’t realize he was on his knees until Jack put her hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t know who I am…” he whispered.

Jack knelt down too, in front of him. “Who did she say you were?”

“Her hero,” he whispered. “Her brother.”

Jack leaned close to him, and he caught her in a fierce embrace.

“You can be that again,” she told him, as he rested his forehead against her chest. “For her… you can be that again.”

He held onto her tightly as the darkness tried to consume him… and for the first time in months, it did not swallow him.