"Infinite Darkness" - Part Six

 

Part Six

            To have William back just to watch him die again was unacceptable for Boss Johns. Blinded by raging grief, he retaliated against the Mud Demon that claimed his son’s life. He fired round after round on the creature, not realizing that everyone else had been pushed back into the mercenary station while he remained where he was. He would have joined his son’s fate had the elder Riddick not grabbed him and brought him inside the station.

            Not everyone made it inside, regrettably.

            Santana and some of his crew perished along with two men from Boss Johns’ crew: Moss and Lockspur.

            Dahl and Diaz, both the second-in-command to their respective captains, were the only pair to successfully make it inside the station with the other survivors. Diaz was himself enraged by the lost of Santana, his best friend. “I’ll kill every last single one of those things!” he avowed.

            “What good it’ll do you, if you get killed yourself?” Dahl rationalized.

            Elder Riddick gazed in her general direction, relieved to see that she made it in with the rest of them. A Nordic bounty hunter of German descent, Dahl was like a taller, buffer version of Fry, particularly as Riddick saw them standing side-by-side for the first time. Both women had the same bob-style hair that slicked back in their sweat-drenched state. The only real difference between them was Dahl’s short temper.

            As the walls off the station buckled from the creatures demanding to get inside, Jack suddenly confessed to the group, “I’m not a boy.”

            “What?” Fry turned to him, frowning.

            “I’M NOT A BOY!” Jack repeated with more vigor and tears. “I didn’t want you to leave me there...back at the ship...that’s why I didn’t say anything....”

            Fry noticed the elder Riddick smirking over Jack’s tearful confession; another future factoid that he knew about but kept to himself, either to spare them or to amuse himself – or both. It angered Fry to think how he toyed with their fates in such a way. Was Johns even meant to die on Not-Furya to that Mud Demon? Is she meant to die herself?

            She only felt some semblance of agency by confessing herself, “When we were crashing in the Hunter, I was going to blow the passenger cabin…sacrifice everyone while they were in cyro.” She glanced again at the elder Riddick, fuming. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

            The elder Riddick neither confirmed nor denied it.

            He didn’t have to. Even through his stoic demeanor and those welder’s goggles of his, Fry could tell that he knew her secret. She wanted to punch him in the face but held back. In spite of their current predicament, Fry felt somewhat relieved after confessing, presumably as much as Jack did. If they were going to die, they would die free of the guilt that weighed on them.

            Hard, raspy coughing directed attention to the cot where Mandy settled Clarence, whose condition was not improving. His skin was paler than it was before, he was sweating profusely, and his breathing was arduous. “Kid should be getting better – not worse,” the baffled elder Riddick observed.

            “I told you – his immune system is different because he’s not from the same world as you!” Mandy scolded, tears streaming from her crystal blue eyes and running her mascara. She crouched beside her dying friend, devastated at the thought of losing him. In what could be their final moments together, she whispered to him, “I’m sorry, sweetheart…I’m sorry I wasn’t able to protect you…I’m sorry I couldn’t protect your world. You lost everything because of me – your family, your friends…more than a sweet lil’ fella like you should ever have to lose.”

            She gave a gentle kiss on his forehead – the last one she would ever give him.

            The banging over the station walls intensified, the creatures managing to put some massive dents against the steel structure. Suddenly, the battering subsided, just as a sound familiar to the ears of Mandy and Westlake reverberated across the space. “Is that what I think it is?” the latter inquired.

            Mandy looked up with hopeful eyes as her TARDIS materialized right in the middle of the station. The Riddicks and their fellow realm natives looked on it in perplexing awe, whereas Mandy and Westlake did so with overwhelming joy. “Everyone inside now!” Mandy instructed, permitting access into the ship with the appropriate bio-scan from her palm that opened the door.

            Without understanding what her TARDIS was or how it would save them from the league of monsters outside the station, the survivors followed Mandy’s instruction under the reasoning that anywhere was better than where they were. None of them were prepared for the bigger space inside, resembling the cockpit of a ship. Mandy went to work on the central console, while Westlake carried Clarence further inside. “I’ll get to work on a cure right away,” he reassured Mandy, who maintained composure long enough to dematerialize all of them to the Infinite DC and away from Riddick’s realm.

            “I don’t know what just happened, but I’m glad it did!” Dahl exhaled a sigh of relief.

            “What just happened is that I saved your life,” Mandy told her.

            “Or did you?!” Fry cried, her attention fixed and gun drawn on one corner of the console room. Suddenly, all guns were pointed in the same direction.

            Mandy wasn’t sure why until she looked past the time rotor of the control console and saw the Anti-Angel. Alarmed, she stepped away from the console and stood in between the angel and the individuals she supposedly saved from it. Before the Anti-Angel could make another move on any of them, Mandy kept her eyes open for as long as she could and deduced, “It was you who brought my TARDIS back, wasn’t it? What do you want?!”

            “You’re trying to communicate with it?” Fry cringed. “It’s a statue!”

            “A sentient statue!” Mandy elaborated, not taking her eyes off the Anti-Angel. “If it can think, it can talk!”

            Her hypothesis was verified as soon as static came over the speakers built around the console room, followed by an ethereal voice that said, “I’ve been searching eons for you, Gladiator…long since your birth. You are like me – a creature not meant to exist in this world or any other.”

            “What is that supposed to mean?!” a deeply offended Mandy barked.

            “We were bred for purpose, Gladiator,” the Anti-Angel continued. “I serve as the Guardian of Lost Souls. It was your guilt that had drawn me to you. It satisfied our hunger – a hunger that we’ve retained for ever so long. Those of the others here with you were even more gratifying.” Mandy’s gaze finally left the Anti-Angel when she glimpsed over to Fry and Jack.

            “I don’t believe this!” Boss Johns roared. “My son’s life was taken because some junkie statue was trying to get a hit?!”

            “Fear savors the guilt like salt to meat,” the Anti-Angel equated.

            “Good people died for your meal!” Fry stormed.

            “Really poetic when you think about it,” said the elder Riddick, amused. “Some of the lives that were lost in all this were predestined. Others were spared in the new turn of events…like yours, Fry.” She gave him a longing look, conflicted as to whether she should feel grateful or guilty.

            “Survivor’s guilt,” the Anti-Angel relished on Fry’s behalf. “That is the tastiest guilt of all!”

            “SHUT UP!!!” In her rage, Fury fired on the statue.

            Just as before, it had little to no effect.

            However, as each shot blasted from Fry’s gun, a Weeping Angel popped into the room. Each one touched the person they were positioned by: Imam, Jack, Dahl, Boss Johns, Diaz, the two Riddicks, and lastly, Captain Fry.

            In one touch, they were all sent away from Mandy’s TARDIS.

            “Where did you send them? When did you send them?” Mandy asked.

            “They have been returned to their realm within their proper places in the timeline,” the Anti-Angel disclosed. “To live how they choose.”

            Mandy felt her eyes burning, trying not to blink with all the Weeping Angels inside her TARDIS. Any one of them could pounce in one blink. After a few more seconds, the urge became too unbearable – she had to shut her eyes.

            To her surprise, the Anti-Angel and its acolytes had disappeared when she did.

            She was still in her TARDIS, alive and well…but also alone.

            Haunted by the events of her latest journey, she was left to ponder whether or not she would see the Anti-Angel again. There was more guilt festering inside her – a mountain’s worth.

            Of course, there was no dwelling on that now.

            She needed to check on Clarence in the lab where Westlake brought him. She arrived there, expecting Clarence to have been dead. But, sure enough, the impressionable ten-year-old was sitting up on the examination table, happily sucking on a lollipop. Westlake stood at his workspace, putting on one of his spare synthetic skin masks (molded after his original face) that enabled him to give a satisfactory smile, having saved Clarence with an antidote cobbled together in minutes. “Hi, Mandy,” Clarence greeted her like none of what he had been through the last few days ever happened.

            “Clarence,” she said in a hushed voice. She was so relieved to see him healthy that she nearly collapsed in tears. She went to him, taking his hands into hers and not caring how sticky they were from the lollipop. “Are you alright, sweetheart?”

            “Sure, I am, Mandy,” Clarence said. “What happened to all the friends we made in our adventure?”

            “They all went home,” she told him.

            “You saved the day again!” Clarence cheered.

            While that couldn’t be further from the truth, she repentantly told Clarence, “Yes, honey…I did.”