Prey, Chapter 2

2.
Bolt

By the time she was thirteen, “Jack” had gone by dozens of names. She sometimes wondered if she would have hundreds more before she died. She hoped she would.

The alternative wouldn’t be that great, after all.

Sometimes she had girl names, other times, boy names. Her mom and uncle went through lots of names, too. She never used any of them, though. The rules were iron clad. Mom was only ever “Mom.” And her uncle, no matter what name he went by and no matter who asked, was “Dad.”

She’d thought he was her dad until she was about nine years old, when her mom had decided she was old enough for some real answers. Why they moved all the time, why they changed names each time, why her birthday kept changing dates.

Her real father was a monster. Her uncle had rescued her and her mother from him when she was a baby. And they had to keep moving, keep hiding in different places and pretending to be different people, because the monster was hunting them, and if he ever found them, they would die.

It was, her mother told her, why she couldn’t have any pets. Couldn’t get attached to places, or things, or people outside of her immediate family. Because at any moment, if Mom or Dad sensed that the monster was drawing close, they might have to leave everything behind and run again.

She’d thought she understood.

But she really hadn’t.

Usually, when it was time to run, she could pack a bag. Bring her bear. Maybe even take a few other things she especially liked. That was normal. She assumed, even if Mom and Dad had warned her otherwise, it would always be like that.

When she turned twelve, they’d given her some new warnings, and taught her some new tricks.

The day might come, they told her, when she would have to go it alone. When the monster would get too close and she would need to run without them. They taught her how to pick locks, how to steal money from cash machines, how to bump into a stranger and walk away with his or her possessions without her target even noticing that anything was gone. She hadn’t liked that part. It made her think about how she would feel if someone took Bear.

Of course, Bear was lost now, anyway.

It got harder and harder to sell her boy act, those times that she pretended to be one. Other boys—bio-boys—were developing Adam’s apples and dealing with cracking voices and hair in new places; she was dealing with inconvenient bulges of her own that she feared would soon be difficult to conceal. She and Mom had talked about retiring the act and just going forward as a girl in each new town, but she was hesitant. People were nicer to her when she was a boy. They complimented her for other things than just being pretty. They respected her opinions instead of arguing against them. They were more likely to let her try new things and assume she’d be competent at them, and fussed less at her about “getting dirty.” A lot of the time, she found she preferred being thought of as a boy.

Otranto Six, however, wouldn’t have let her be one no matter what.

It was a weird world with weird ideas, and somehow everybody on the planet—or, at least, in the city they had moved into—was convinced that the biggest existential danger they could face was someone pretending to be a member of the opposite sex. So she’d been in Girl Mode when everything went to hell.

A group of girls in her class had decided to skip school that day, and had invited her to join them. It was the first such invitation she’d ever received. And it was the first time she’d ever skipped a class… when her family wasn’t skipping out to the next town, or continent, or planet that very day. It seemed innocent and fun. Later, she wondered if she’d been punished for it by the gods.

There were so many rules about the houses they stayed in. Curtains were always kept closed. People in the photos on the walls and shelves had to be fictional relatives; they couldn’t be in any of the pictures. Go-bags always had to be packed and stored where they were hidden but accessible. Telltales needed to be undisturbed at all times.

She’d already known, as a result, that something was wrong as she reached the back porch of the house.

That was another rule: enter through the back porch, side door, or other out-of-the way entry. Never the front door.

The house they were renting on Otranto Six had an elderly, creaky back porch, but she knew exactly where to put her weight to climb its steps silently. She was almost at the door before she noticed that the little bit of tape that was supposed to be on the knob was missing.

She stopped, shivering, and listened to the noises around her.

It felt way too quiet, except for the sound of wind chimes that she was never supposed to hear. And there was a weird smell…

She backed away from the door and down the steps, and circled the house.

The curtains were all closed. That was a good sign. But the front door was open, just a crack. That was never supposed to happen. The wind chimes just inside the door, placed so it couldn’t be opened without making them ring, were singing softly to themselves in the draft.

The rule was that she was supposed to run if she saw that, if she heard those chimes. But run where, and with what? She still hadn’t completely believed in the monster that was chasing them, or the deadly, drop-everything urgency her parents had tried to drill into her.

Carefully, holding her breath, she nudged the front door until it opened inward.

The living room was all wrong. A lamp was knocked over, a “family photo” frame was lying broken on the floor, other things were askew.

There was no noise at all. She stepped inside carefully, not wanting to make any noise of her own. What was that smell…?

Death.

She realized it as soon as she got a glimpse into the dining room, even if she didn’t understand what she was looking at, not at first.

Mom and Dad were both bound to chairs at the table, with duct tape. For a moment she didn’t realize it was them. They were barely recognizable as human. There was blood everywhere. Blood… and other things.

She stumbled back, retching. The go-bag she needed to reach was in the dining room, but there was no way she could possibly enter that room to get it. Instead, she turned and ran, down the front steps and down the street, blind to almost everything. The monster had found them. The monster might find her. She didn’t dare stop for anything. Not even Bear.

Afterward, she didn’t remember much at all of the next few days. When she saw her picture on a newsfeed screen—Family Found Butchered, Teen Daughter Abducted—she cut off her “girly” hair, stole a bottle of dark brown dye, and switched back to being a boy. She didn’t dare let anyone find her. After another week of hiding, stealing, doing all the things Mom and Dad had shown her how to do to put together resources, she paid a local card doctor for a good fake ID, supposedly so she could buy cigarettes and beer. It was good enough to get her up to the space station. Good enough to get her a ticket on one of the ships taking the back routes to the Tangier System.

She’d heard people saying that, even though the brain shut down in cryosleep, the primitive side stayed awake. Reduced to animal cunning, she wondered if she would be awake for the whole flight. Fortunately—or maybe unfortunately—she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Until she woke to find her unit on its side and jammed shut.

Did the monster get me? she thought, even as she heard a woman’s muffled voice telling her she was okay, and they’d get her out very soon.

Five minutes later, she was lying on the door of her cryo unit, staring up at two settler types. Around her, the ship had been torn to pieces, its sealed bulkheads ripped away and the room open to an orange-ish sky.

“So,” she said, trying for calm. “I guess something went wrong?”

It was better than asking if she was being punished. Again.

“Get it out of me!” a man screamed, and she found herself following her rescuers into a more intact part of the ship, passing on the way—

Oh holy fuck, that’s Richard Riddick.

She’d seen pictures of him before, in news feeds mostly. Mom and Dad had shown her his picture, too, once. He was a Bad Man, they told her. The Monster sometimes used Bad Men like him to hurt people. If she ever saw him, she should run.

Run where, exactly? Her lungs, weirdly enough, felt as if she’d already been running. And what if…?

What if Riddick was the one who had done it? Who had killed Mom and Dad?

As the ship’s captain ordered everyone out of the cabin, she retreated and found herself looking at Riddick again. Chained to a bulkhead, blindfolded and gagged. But Riddick.

If he had killed Mom and Dad…

…she needed to find out.

Posted on the 25^th anniversary of the theatrical release of Pitch Black, February 18, 2025.