"They don't teach that in juvie either," Silas chuffs with dry amusement, tying off the suture at the end of the gash in Riddick's forearm. "At least, not when I was there."
He winds a sterile bandage around Riddick's forearm, pristine white gauze violently bright in the hopeless gloom of his cramped cell. His own discomfort, that knife's edge of dangerous instinct trickling down his neck has subsided in favor of a more prominent curiosity, a gift that Riddick doesn't know he's given. There is so much monotony in the days here, so much empty routine in the plight of mere survival. No excitement, no interest, no stimulation. Only the anxious anticipation of a visceral end.
Silas is not the picture of young genius that Starfleet plasters on its recruitment posters, but there is a clever observation to him. A desire for understanding. A deep enjoyment of the human puzzle. Riddick is a new puzzle, a different breed of creature, and that alone inspires a long-abandoned interest. A spark of human curiosity in the long dark windows of Silas's soul.
"Doesn't surprise me, though," he remarks, turning his attention to the fragment of fractured ceramic in Riddick's side. Below the ribs, he notes, embedded in a layer of abdominal muscle. No direct penetration to any vital organs. Lucky fucker, he thinks.
"Convicts get pretty creative, from what I understand." He cleans around the protruding shard, pale like a piece of ivory, then grips it tightly with the forceps, locking them with a soft click.
"On three," he says lowly, and puts a bracing hand on Riddick's chest to hold him still. "One, two--"
Silas pulls it before the three, before Riddick can brace himself or anticipate too much. In a second it is out, bloody and weeping, and Silas has slipped the shard into one of the man's pockets before he's pressing a thick gauze pad to the seeping wound at his side.
