You're Not Afraid Of The Dark, Are You?

The Hunters and the Prey

Riddick and I stood at the edge of the cliff, I took off my goggles since I could see well in the dark.

"They're starting to come out of the ships," I said.

"How many do you see?" Riddick asked.

"One, two, three. Four, five. Six, seven, and eight." I whispered to myself.

"There's about eight but I don't see Johns," I said keeping my focus on the merc station.

It looked as if some of the mercs were talking to someone inside the ship, then two more people came out. It was Johns and a blonde lady.

"Oh, there he is. Scratch that, there's about Ten of them." I corrected myself.

I see that they are setting up base camp and their equipment, they pitched tents outside and brought a bunch of stuff inside the station itself. Tarian stood next to me watching the commotion with us, he ears perking forward as she watched the mercs stepping closer toward our traps. Her job was to be a lookout in case anyone tried to sneak behind us. She had grown again and now she was just a bit smaller than her mother. I learned that her species matures quickly, like rabbits. Even though they mature fast, their lifespans depend on their genetics but most of them live for ten to twenty years. The locals have domesticated versions of her species and they have been serving as their companions for decades. They explained to me that her color variation is a rare mutation. My daydreaming was interrupted by a loud metallic snapping noise followed by screaming, it was a mercenary caught in one of the bear traps. Riddick and I looked at each other and we smirked, Tarian was also in full alert mode now.

"The games have begun," I said.

I grabbed an improvised bow I had made with the supplies gifted to us and I ended the mercenary's suffering. Another scream rang out as yet another trap went off; this time a merc was blinded by scrap metal that shot out from a nearby tree when he stepped on the trip wire.  As the merc was thrashing around, Riddick hit him in the head with a handmade throwing knife.

"Twenty points for team convict." I joked.

The mercenaries scrambled to retreat the area, some of them barely missing traps. The blur of mercenaries was a pleasing sight but it seemed that some of the mercs were standing still. I looked closer and saw it was Johns and the blonde lady trying to pinpoint our location. Suddenly Tarian hissed which drew the attention of Johns.

"Oh shit! Tarian come!" I said quietly.

Riddick and I ducked behind a rock and he glared at me.

"I told you, she would hinder us," he whisper-yelled.

I rolled my eyes and examined Tarian to see what made her hiss. When I couldn't find anything I looked where she was before I called her over and I could see something with a red light emitting from on top of a tree. I tapped Riddick and pointed it out, he pulled out a throwing knife and took it out. It crashed into the brush and I sent Tarian to receive it. When she brought it back, we examined it. The thing that made Tarian hiss was a drone, it's now a broken drone. Riddick smashed it into pieces just in case it still had a tracker on it. 

"She just saved our asses," I said.

"Whatever; They are most likely going to disarm the traps now, that should take them a few hours. In that case, we should move everything to the other base" Riddick stated.

It took most of the night to relocate everything but when we were finished the mercs were still disarming traps, we had set a bunch. Our new base is similar but it has more trees and a little shelter but still has a pretty good view of the mercenary station. We slept the rest of the night and by sunrise, we were ready to go. We offed two, so that leaves us with eight. and we need to kill three more. It shouldn't be that hard to kill them, It's choosing who dies, that's the difficult part. I don't know about Riddick, but I don't particularly appreciate playing God. Yes, I have no problem killing but that's cause I'm used to it. I do feel remorse for the ones who were just in my way but in this reality, it's either you kill or be killed. After breakfast, I told Tarian to guard the base, and Riddick and I found a spot near the merc base. We hid behind a couple of rocks, and I peeked over to see what the mercenaries were up to. Five mercs were setting up motorbikes, probably to search for our hiding area, we can't let them get that chance. Johns walks out with the blonde lady, she doesn't look like she's going with them because went off to a different part of the merc station. Johns shifted towards our location like he felt me watching him. I ducked behind the rocks and Riddick looked at me.