Desperate Times/Part 16

Narasi blinked her way back to consciousness in unfamiliar surroundings, her head pounding and her limbs sluggish. She did not recognize what she could see, and she was confused by blurred memories of stun rings, no two of which seemed to feature the same setting. She tried for curato salva to get her arms and legs working again, but when she finally got some movement, there was more discomfort in scraping them across the ground than she had expected. She was still disoriented enough that it took patting herself with her own hands to realize she was naked.

Startled, Narasi lurched to a sitting position only to pitch back onto her hands, stomach roiling and vision blurring in a wave of vertigo. She tried to let the Force clear her mind, but fear made it hard to focus. Where was she? What in the galaxy had happened? Still leaning on her hands, she looked around and saw a small square of hazy orange light—a window set in a door.

Narasi rocked back onto her knees more slowly this time, heart still pounding. Covering herself with her hands, she reached out into the Force, but doing so made her nauseous again. Suffering was everywhere, all around her, and reaching into it made her skin crawl and brought bile up into her throat. Worse, long-repressed memories clawed at the back of her mind, the sensation horrifyingly familiar; even as she thought of it, she heard, through the door, a faint buzz-crack and a distant scream.

"No," Narasi breathed. "Oh no, no, no…"

Panic pushed her back against the wall into a corner away from the door. In the dim light she could only faintly make out the contours of the room. She tried to think clearly, to work out a plan, but horror of her situation kept intruding on her mind.

The door lock shh-clanked and Narasi let out an involuntary cry; she had drawn her perceptions so close to herself, shying away from what was beyond her cell, that she hadn't even sensed anyone coming. The door opened and she realized belatedly that she was in the worst possible position to fight off whoever was coming through, but she saw a few squat creatures dragging a taller form and pitching it into the cell. Only when the figure's right arm hit the ground with a metallic scrape did Narasi realize it was Aldayr.

For a second shame overwhelmed fear—at no point had she wondered what had become of her partner in Jedi defiance. Then a dark silhouette filled the doorframe and fear took over again.

"That's just a taste, Jedi!" the big man croaked. Narasi could feel the dark side in him. "Next time we'll work over your friend instead…and we can work her in ways we can't work you!"

"Oh, I don't know," a second, higher man's voice crooned from out of sight. "I think we could give him a good working too."

The big man guffawed and the higher voice snickered coldly as they slammed the door. For a few seconds all Narasi could do was shiver and feel her heartbeat pounding against her hand through her bare chest. Then Aldayr groaned and her shame returned in force. Crawling forward slowly, she patted around for him until she felt the durasteel of his cybernetic arm. "Aldayr!"

"Narasi…"

"What'd they do to you?!"

"Oh, nothing too bad…" He coughed roughly. "I think that was…just a warmup act…"

His voice was slurred. "Aldayr, did they drug you?"

"Huh? Yeah…yeah, I think so…tried to Force 'em but I…I couldn't focus…"

"Where are we?" When he didn't respond, Narasi's heart leapt into her throat. "Aldayr…are they Zygerrians?"

"Zygerrians?" She felt him struggling toward a sitting position and reached to help him, then drew her hands back when they touched his bare chest and back; he had been stripped naked too. "No…no, I didn't see any Zygerrians…"

Relief and confusion fought in her head. "It's not…a slave market?"

"No." Aldayr struggled toward a wall; he seemed to be having difficulty moving. Narasi fought down her awkwardness, taking hold of his bare real arm and tugging him back. He slumped against the wall with a groan of relief, then said, "They didn't exactly take me on a tour, but it looked like some kind of torture chamber. Big, though, a whole building—a torture factory, I guess."

Part of Narasi knew this was little better than a Zygerrian slave market, but somehow she was able to think a little more clearly. "What happened to our clothes? Our equipment?"

"Dunno."

Patting his shoulder reassuringly, Narasi rose and walked to the door. The cell floor was covered in a thin layer of sand, grit, and other crud, and her bare feet stung, but eventually she reached the panel of light. Squinting against it, she cautiously reached into the Force and felt beings outside the door, so she patted the door with her palm, careful not to make a sound as she searched for the handle. After sliding her palms all around both sides, however, she was forced to accept that there was no handle on the inside. She limped back to Aldayr.

"There's no handle," she reported. "And the light panel's up too high to reach through and get the outside one, even if we break it. Do you think you can punch through the handle from this side?"

"No."

He sounded annoyed. "What's wrong?"

Aldayr patted at her with his real hand; when he brushed her bare shoulder, Narasi said, "Hey!"

But he caught her arm, slid his fingers down to her hand, and guided them over to his cybernetic arm. Just below the joining of metal and flesh there was an odd lump of metal; it felt different than the smooth durasteel curves of his artificial biceps.

"What is that?"

"A restraining bolt." There was no mistaking the annoyance as Aldayr released her hand. "They just have it permanently on, I can't move my arm."

"Can we get it off with the Force?"

"I don't know." There was a hint of worry under the annoyance now. "If we trigger something wrong, it might send a permanent shutdown command, and then I won't be able to use my arm until we get back to Coruscant."

Narasi blanched. They had sparred often enough in the last couple weeks that she knew he was the better swordsman, and he had confided that he had enough power in his replacement arm to crush a humanoid's skull with a punch; she had never actually seen him demonstrate the ability, but the dark look around his eyes and the ring of certainty in his voice when he had told her had led her to take it on faith. Without his fighting abilities, their chances of escape were looking grimmer by the moment.

"What's the guard situation?"

In the gloom Narasi saw Aldayr turn to face her, but his right arm did not shift with the rest of his body. She felt a spasm of anger in the Force before he reached over with his left, picked up his own right wrist, and deposited his whole arm in his lap. He looked at her, then deliberately looked at the ceiling, clearing his throat; after a second Narasi realized the door's light fell on her, flushed, and crossed her arms over her chest. "The guards?"

"Most of the workers are these little pig aliens. I've never seen them before."

"Aliens?"

"Non-Humans. Sorry," he added, looking at her. "But some of the others are Dark Jedi—or maybe Sith Acolytes, I'm not sure—and they're a whole mix."

"So not the Dark Vanguard, then."

"No, this is the Empire," Aldayr agreed. "I'm not sure who's in charge, but there's definitely at least one Sith Lord here."

"How do you know?"

"Well, they were roughing me up, and I wasn't talking. The skinny one started talking about…about cutting things off." Aldayr squirmed uncomfortably. "But the big one said 'the master wants the Jedi unspoiled'."

Narasi hoped unspoiled covered a host of sins rather than just amputation. "Is…do you think it's Alecto?"

She had only just remembered how they got where they were.

"No, they said 'he' too, and I didn't see any Anzati or that Ubese you fought on Milagro," Aldayr said, but Narasi couldn't be relieved. The moment she had thought of Alecto, it all came back—the tip about Skorrupon, the disastrous ambush, her conversation with Aldayr, her mission, her plan, all her…

"Aldayr, I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"I'm all right," he said, twisting his head toward each shoulder until his neck cracked. "They haven't done anything perm—"

"This is all my fault," Narasi interrupted. "I said we should go to Skorrupon, and I didn't even tell Tirien or Slejux where we were going…if I hadn't—"

Aldayr grabbed her by one arm and shook her; his hand was warm against her cool skin. "Knock it off! I said I'd come with you, didn't I?  I got the tip on Skorrupon, right?  You blaming yourself for things that aren't your fault is part of how we got into this mess!"

Narasi cringed at the truth of that, but nodded. Neither Tirien nor Slejux would approve of her sitting in this cell, wallowing in guilt until the Sith came to torture one of them again. Bracing herself, she reached out into the Force again, feeling the suffering from all sides. She leaned into Aldayr's grip to steady herself.

"What is it?"

"I…there's so much misery, Aldayr. What kind of place is this?  How is it not crushing you?!"

Aldayr was silent a moment, then slid over across the sandy floor and wrapped his real arm around her shoulders, careful not to touch her much more. "I've felt places kind of like this before," he said, quieter now. "When Mali and I liberated Aresh's camps for al—for non-Humans. Hate to say it, but you get used to it."

There was a nauseating thought. Narasi could not imagine this ever not being horrible, nor did she want to…and yet, unbidden, voices stirred in her memory along with another shock whip buzz-crack from outside their cell…

She's only a child, Shaelo.

''That's the point. Harden her up now and she won't pity 'em later.''

Narasi shook her head, forcing the memories away. Don't think about it. "We have to get out of here."

Aldayr jerked his right shoulder to make his cybernetic arm flop uselessly across his legs. "If you have any ideas, I'm all ears."

Keeping one arm over her chest, she turned to face him. "We're Jedi—we can do this. Tell me everything you saw when they took you out."