A KING & HIS COURT

Outside Club Neutrino

A short-haired blonde in a silver miniskirt entered the fray of expanding street walkers. Shit, do I know everybody? Riddick thought. The eerie sense of déjà vu amplified the sickening feeling building in his roiling belly. What am I looking at? He pushed the thoughts away, dismissing them as artifacts of his unwanted change. Cloaked within the shadows of a nearby corner, he searched the crowd, thinking some of the faces were out of place.

The newcomer removed a folded napkin from a tiny sequined handbag, dabbed the sweat from her glistening face - as to not smudge her porcelain makeup - then turned to the woman next to her and asked, "is she supposed to subtract her cut before answering?" She snickered, and the group turned wide-eyed, offering expressions of shock rather than amusement.

The hooker's impromptu levity made Riddick smile. She wouldn't back down to Rico.

'She has guts.' he thought.

The woman beside the blonde shot her a reproachful look. "You're new here."

"What of it?" the blonde replied, turning to face her glare.

"Let me give you some friendly advice. If you don't want to keep your teeth in a glass, keep quiet. Rico doesn't like smartasses."

"I was serious." she protested, angrily stuffing the napkin back in the tiny handbag hanging at her side before turning back to the show. The glint of devil-may-care in her eyes impressed Riddick.

"So was I." the woman said, glancing down at her feet when she noticed Rico staring at them beneath furrowed brows.

Riddick smirked at the blonde who'd wandered in from the financial district during the commotion. The woman stared back at Rico, refusing to look away.

The lower financial district always filled with off-worlders, staying in garish hotels that catered to shady characters. Most of them came to broker backroom arms deals, corrupt business ventures, or purchase outlawed bio weapons at discount prices. No one cares, that was business as usual in, 'New Detroit.'

That's another reason the city was the perfect place to hide. It harbored the galaxy's most infamous outlaws, and none of them wanted attention; none of them were looking for trouble or would follow Riddick into the zone. Hell, even Dynacorp Security wouldn't go in there and they were all equipped with state-of-the-art OCP cybernetic enhancements. They were the best police force technology could create. He laughed at the thought of cyborgs. He dismissed them as unworthy posers. "Fucking amateurs. Warriors don't need implants."

Riddick looked towards the quarantine zone, knowing that for years lesser gangs had fostered the myth that something sinister still preyed on the unwary. It was a lie. A fallacy perpetrated to keep the authorities at bay. It didn't. It did, however, keep out the common folk.

The real reason Dynacorp Security stayed out of the zone was because city officials ordered it. The zone was off limits; it was a haven for nefarious criminal enterprises. Most sanctioned by city officials.

Decades earlier, a back alley deal had gone wrong and a single xenomorph escaped into the general populous. The resulting disaster led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, destroyed 400 city blocks, and brought about the early retirement of 15,000 Nexus 6 replicants. Those senseless deaths caused a replicant uprising that lasted 2 decades and led to the sanctioning of all replicant creations from that point on.

Nearly 75 years later, the Nexus 6 program had all but faded into obscurity., or so, everyone believed. The originating corporation, Waylen Yutany, outsourced the project to several subsidiary holding companies. As a result, Mega Corp tasked its top scientists and researchers with formulating a biomorphic serum that would duplicate the prowess of the N6 replicants without raising suspicions.

Years later, a series of fruitless experiments using stem cells harvested from frozen N6 cadavers had drained profits and ended in financial disaster. That is, until a promising new research assistant stumbled upon an ingenious solution to the company's gene re-sequencing problems.

Soon thereafter, Mega Corp unveiled its newest fighting force, the N7s. During the recruitment process, all candidates received a routine series of performance enhancing injections. The result was a re-sequencing of the host's DNA with no one being the wiser, including the recipients.

The long-term effects produced super soldiers with Nexus 6+ capabilities. Men and women who could assimilate into normal societies without the mental instability of previous models. Mega Corp paid trillions of credits to city officials to conduct their illegal off world experiments in the quarantine zone. It was a win-win for all.

Because of those illegal experiments, and others like them, the 400 blocks lost during the initial xenomorph outbreak remained abandoned. The forbidden zone became an unregulated, unmonitored bioengineering Mecca hidden from prying eyes.

Decades after the experiments ceased, the zone filled with thugs, criminals and society's most unwanted. Corrupt city officials used it as a base for their clandestine crime operations; operations they fiercely defended.

The zone had become the interstellar underbelly of corporate greed and political corruption throughout the Galaxy, and it was one of Riddick's favorite places. It was dark and dirty, and to him, it felt like home.

He stood on the corner, hands balled into hammers, fixating on the pimp's false sense of bravado. Rico was a coward and cowards made Riddick angry. He wanted to hurt Rico for the way he tormented the women; for the way he hurt... Shazza. But even if she was Montgomery, why did he care? They never actually met. He didn't really know her.

"Fucking bitches," Rico seethed, glaring at the woman staring at her feet. He reeled on Ginger, gesturing over his shoulder with a scowl. "See! If you get away with this. I'll lose more than face. I'll lose control."

A shrill siren and epilepsy inducing blue strobes descended from high above the neon lights and everyone shielded their eyes. The piercing lights made their vision distort, their stomachs knot and the ground shift beneath their feet. The lights disrupted their senses, leaving them incapacitated. It worked on everyone except Riddick.

A hoarse voice blared over a megaphone. "DynaCorp Security. Is there a problem here?"

Riddick ducked behind a smelly dumpster before the frenetic lights gave away his position. Peeking out, he saw the steaming police car hovering two stories above the street. He rubbed his mirrored eye as if something was wrong. Riddick hadn't been able to look into direct light since he left the sewers at Butcher Bay. But staring into the lights of the hover cruiser, he experienced no ill effects. Te idea that another thing had changed pulled his jaw open. What would change next?

If Riddick had been looking in a mirror, he would have noticed the tinge of blue light emanating from somewhere deep behind his reflective pupils or seen the blue lights coursing through his veins like fireflies racing through fiber optic cables. But he did not; his mind filled with a new epiphany. Light no longer causes pain. I don't have to look away.

A pebble fell from a ledge high above. It hit the dumpster in front of him, bounced onto the sidewalk, and rolled to a stop between his combat boots. It snapped him from his trance and he craned his thick neck, trying to see who or what was on the ledges above. After a few moments, Riddick returned to the unfolding scene. Although he never forgot the eyes, he suspected, were watching from high above.

Rico jammed his hand in his breast pocket, fumbled around until he felt a leather billfold and Yanked it out, holding up an entrepreneur's license for inspection.

"Fine." the annoyed voice said. The light show ended, but the car still hovered above them. "Just take it off street. People are staring."

"I've gotta get one of those." Riddick said to himself. "A get out of jail free card."

Long ago corrupt city officials implemented a policy wherein a not-so-elite clientele could purchase unique small business licenses. Licenses allowing them to skirt several troublesome laws as long as they donated a hefty portion of their yearly profits to the city.

A license cost 25% of all projected yearly profits; the upfront cost could total in the millions of credits. Of course, all the proceeds covertly found their way into several slush funds, making many city officials wealthy beyond compare. In particular, the remaining members of the 4 founding houses.

Most of the city's seedier types jumped at the opportunity to pay. Those who couldn't, disappeared. Some, like Rico, received licenses from wealthy benefactors.

Rico put his wallet away, waving the car off. "Sorry, Honey. We'll have to finish our conversation in private." He grabbed her just above the elbow and laughed when she cried out in pain.

She struggled against his wrenching grasp. "You're hurting me."

"Too bad."

Rico reeled on the others, pointed at a nearby alley and said, "Bitches, move."

Riddick saw him point in his direction and stepped back against the wall.

Shoving Ginger roughly towards the alley, he laughed when she nearly fell off her stilettos. "Move." he said.

Rico motioned for the oversized doorman and his partner at the entrance to follow them. The two men obeyed like submissive guard dogs following their master.

The two doormen wore pressed three-piece suits plucked from a bargain rack at a 1950s dime store. One man stood almost 7 foot tall while the other was almost as wide. The taller man had a cybernetic upgrade covering what used to be his left eye, cheek and ear. The shorter guard had hands made of shining black metal. They had the latest OCP upgrades.

Rico gestured for the doormen to stop about twenty feet inside the alley. "No one comes in." He drew Ginger in so close that the stench of his cologne turned her stomach. "It's just us, baby?"

She hated when he called her baby. It made her long for a hot shower. Tonight, however, it made her wish she could reach down his throat and pull his tongue out by the root. But she had a sick little boy at home and he needed medicine.

The men signaled they understood, glancing over their shoulders to ensure the entrance was clear. They failed to see the dark figure standing against the wall behind the dumpster.