Desperate Measures/Part 3

"Be strong," Aldayr whispered as the door shh-clanked open.

They each raised a hand as blinding light flooded the room, until a broad figure as tall as the doorframe blocked it out. "Bring the girl."

"No!" Narasi screamed. She propelled herself back into the corner with her heels as she covered herself with her hands. "No, not me! Don't!"

The figure in the door laughed coldly as a handful of meter-tall beings swarmed into the room, grabbing Narasi's hands, pulling them away from her body, wrenching her to her feet and pushing on her legs to make her walk. The cruddy floor scraped her bare feet as she tried to dig in, but they hauled her out the door. The little porcine aliens held her arms wide from her torso and, when she tried to squeeze her thighs together, kicked her legs apart.

The big man was an alien she couldn't identify, eyes set wide on his brutal, tusked face and nostrils at the crest of his skull, snorting at the air. He was a head taller than Aldayr, his arms were thicker than Narasi's thighs, and he had powerful hands with three fingers, though one looked the width of three Human fingers melted together. She felt the dark side in him and saw the lightsaber on his hip, and yet her eyes went to the Zygerrian at his side. Unlike the Dark Jedi, who wore the Sith black to which she had become accustomed, the slaver wore finely embroidered robes. He had no touch of the Force, but just as much darkness, and she shuddered as he molested her with his eyes.

"A nice specimen," the slaver appraised. "How much will you sell her for?"

"The master has plans for her," the Sith said. "But if she proves uncooperative and needs to be…broken, my lord will allow you first honors in return for your many services to him."

"I love an appreciate customer," the slaver smiled.

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" Narasi shrieked as the Zygerrian reached for her, buffeting him back with a weak Force push. The Zygerrian fell back a step and looked uncertain, but the Dark Jedi stepped forward and backhanded Narasi. Only rolling her head and focusing the Force on the here and now kept her from blacking out.

He grabbed her chin and held her face up, only centimeters from his own, blood from her lips dripping onto his fingers. She whimpered, "Don't hurt me…"

His eyes were far enough apart that she could only look at one at a time. "Let's get something straight, girl. The only reason I don't let every man in this facility take you right here on this floor and record the footage to send back to Coruscant is that my master has something special planned for you and your friend, and I don't like to displease him.  But push me too far and I may risk his displeasure."

Narasi searched for Jedi calm, and both of those wide-set eyes narrowed. "Think that'll save you, do you? Resist some pain, maybe?  Even meditate your mind away from what's happening to you?  Oh no, girlie, no no.  You're not the first Jedi we've had here." He looked at the short, porcine guards. "You got the death sticks?"

Narasi tugged feebly, feeling their grips on her wrists. One of them jabbered in some language Narasi didn't recognize, and the Dark Jedi's slits of eyes narrowed farther. "You left them? Worthless little pig." He kicked the alien, who went flying, then turned at the sound of another's jabbering. "No, I don't want you to get them. Hold the bitch here for ninety seconds, think you can manage that?"

He set off down the corridor, and Narasi snatched a quick look at her surroundings as she started counting in her head. Stretches of durasteel wall merged into ferrocrete without warning, only to revert twenty meters later; likewise, just the floor she could see included ferrocrete, starship-style deckplates, and even tile. The lighting came from industrial orange lights strung along the ceiling ten meters up; there was a catwalk there, but it was mercifully empty of jeering, watching Sith.

Narasi smelled blood, looked sideways, and almost vomited. In the middle of the broad corridor, three flayed bodies hung by their ankles from a crossbar, dripping blood onto the floor. All three had electrodes inserted into their muscles, cords trailing to a machine; Narasi wondered why until one of the bodies twitched feebly and uttered a faint whimper.

Horror almost made her lose count. Had it been twenty-five seconds yet? She restarted from there, but the Zygerrian slaver glanced over his shoulder where the Dark Jedi had disappeared down a hall, then stepped up to her.

"Resist," he crooned. "Don't tell them a thing. Give them every reason to give you to me."

Thirty seconds.

"They say Jedi are married to the Force, is that it? I'll be your first then, eh?"

Thirty-five seconds.

"Don't worry, you'll remember me even if the whole fortress does get you…"

Forty seconds. The Dark Jedi had said ninety, but he might have hurried, and Narasi could not risk his return. Aldayr had laid out the whole floor to the torture chamber, they had planned and planned, but she would never have a better opportunity than now, left alone. She stopped cringing, dropped the façade, and head-butted the slaver, trying to hit his eye with one of her horns. She missed, but she cut a gouge into his orbital ridge and he staggered back with a snarl, covering one eye and squeezing the other shut.

The dwarflike, porcine guards jabbered in alarm, but Narasi was ready for them. With a wrench of her arms and a touch of the Force to complement her natural brute strength, she lifted the two holding her wrists right off the ground and smashed them together; they let go and fell, insensible, to the floor. She turned on one behind her, who was just drawing an instrument that looked like a short static pole, and knocked him out with a punch between the eyes. The fourth creature hadn't gotten up from the Dark Jedi's kick. Two more stood guard outside the cell; both reached for their stun sticks, but Narasi was a second quicker, thrusting out her hands and slamming them into the stone wall with the Force.

As they crumpled, she heard a crackle of electricity. The Force warned her, but either it was not in time or she hadn't been paying enough attention; she heard a buzz-crack, and the next second scorching pain slashed her back from shoulder to bare hip and ripped a shriek from her lips. She fell to her knees, rolled, and saw the slaver still covering one eye but glaring at her with the other. He tried to slash again, but the shock whip clipped the wall and flopped to the floor short of her. Charged with adrenaline, Narasi sprang up, leapt the whip, and caught the slaver's wrist as he swung for her.

She got a hand on the handle and levered it out of his grip. She accidentally hit the power button in the process and the crackle of electricity died; she had never learned to use a whip on principle, but at point blank range she could improvise. The Zygerrian reached for a vibroblade rather than her, and Narasi kicked his knee. He dropped with a cry of pain and she wrapped the whip's cord twice around his throat. As the knife cleared its sheath, Narasi turned the whip back on; it burned through the slaver's throat quickly enough that his scream was simply a cloud of smoke that turned his teeth black as it left his mouth.

Narasi heaved, lurching away, but the feeling of her naked back hitting cold durasteel brought her back to reality. How many seconds had she expended fighting—twenty? Even more? The Dark Jedi could be back at any second now, and she was nearly out of time.

The cell door handle did not move when she tugged it, and she saw a small card reader. She frisked the two guards as quickly as possible—one stirred, and she punched him out again—but neither had the door key. It made sense, in a way; only give the Forceful servant the key to the Forceful prisoners. Taking the time for one deep breath, she placed both her hands on the door above and below the card reader, reaching into the Force. ''Open. Open. OPEN!''

It opened. Narasi turned the handle, wrenched the door open, and hissed, "C'mon!"

Aldayr appeared, squinting against the light. "That was fast. Weren't you supposed—"

"No time, let's go let's go!"

He surveyed the scene, but seemed to realize who was missing. Opening his real hand, he pulled one of the static poles into his grip with the Force, then nodded. "Go!"

Narasi had no idea where to go, so she sprinted the opposite direction from the tunnel the Dark Jedi had taken. Grabbing Aldayr by the elbow of his lifeless cybernetic arm, she pulled him into a different hall, hurrying down a corridor past cells that were little more than cubes cut into the wall and sealed with bars. The gate of one barred cell stood open, and a smear of blood stretched from inside the cell, down the hall, and left down another corridor. Narasi leapt over the bloodstain and pulled Aldayr right instead.

She knew at once when the Dark Jedi had discovered the escape; a spike of rage in the Force cut through even the choking fog of misery. Aldayr said nothing, but he thrust the static pole into Narasi's hand, quickened his pace, and hefted his dead right arm in his left to free Narasi, who now had to lean on the Force to keep up with him. They ran without plan or destination, simply away, until at last they stopped in a hall of more cages, both panting, Narasi clutching a stitch in her side.

"So what…now…?" she wheezed.

Aldayr reached up to wipe his brow; his right arm flopped down against his hip. "We have to get out of here."

Narasi opted not to slap him for the obviousness of that; she wondered if the dark side was clouding her judgment. "But what…first? Clothes?"

She realized suddenly that she was simply leaning against a cage, legs spread for balance, and she covered herself with her hands. Aldayr, who was in the same posture, rolled his eyes. "You don't have to keep doing that. Not really doing anything for me."

Narasi was surprised to feel a bizarre mix of offense and hurt through her anxiety. "Why?" She remembered Aldayr correcting himself when he had said 'aliens'… "Because I'm not Human?"

He stared at her, and not in a way that made her cover herself more. "Because we're naked so they could keep us prisoner and torture us better! Does this scream 'sexy' to you?!"

He stood up, and she looked at him; his feet were dirty and bloody from running through the halls, there were bruises on his ribs and thighs and an injection spot in his left elbow where they had drugged him, one of his eyes was bruised and puffy, and a shadow had started along his jawline to complement the stubble starting toward a beard and mustache. His right arm hung there, lifeless; Narasi had never seen him without a shirt, and he was right—her eyes looked past the muscle of his chest and his real arm to the cybernetic device connected just below the shoulder. He had blood in the sclera of one blue eye, though he didn't seem to have noticed.

Narasi realized how long she had spent looking over his body and blushed. "Um…"

"Exactly."

Feeling awkward, Narasi slowly pulled her hands away from herself and stood up straight. Trying not to look at him to see if he was looking at her, she asked, "So, clothes? We gotta get boots, at least."

She looked down; one of her toes was bleeding. She didn't remember scuffing it, though it hurt when she flexed it.

"Machine shop first."

Narasi blinked, completely diverted. "Machine shop?"

Aldayr tugged at the restraining bolt on his arm. "I need to get this off, I can't fight left-handed."

"Without our lightsabers, we're not gonna be fighting at all," Narasi pointed out, walking across the corridor. "They've probably got them with our clothes."

"If they didn't just junk them."

Narasi hadn't considered that prospect, and she made a face; she didn't want to lose another lightsaber. "Assuming they didn't, when we've got lightsabers we can just cut the bolt off."

"We still—" Aldayr's eyes widened and he grabbed for Narasi's arm. "Narasi…"

"Hey, just because you can look at me—"

"Narasi!" he hissed. Grabbing her arm, he jerked her toward him and spun her around.

There was a cage cell on the opposite side of the hall too, and a small figure was tucked in a corner, sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest and his head on them. He rocked his head slowly back and forth, as if listening with one ear after the other, then called, "…hello?"

If he was Human he could not have been more than six or seven, though his voice was deeper than Narasi had expected, deeper than her own; he had to be a hybrid, at least. He spoke in a dull, sad monotone, and Narasi felt a swell of pity, though it was marred by revulsion she couldn't understand. The little boy's skin was almost pure white against his dirty gray shirt and pants, and his black hair was lank, drooping down into his face.

"Are…are you okay?" Narasi asked; she took a step forward, and hated herself for her hesitation.

"Narasi, we can't stay here," Aldayr whispered. "They'll be after us."

"We can't just leave him!" she protested; her voice had died to a whisper too.

The little boy turned his head again. "Will you help me?"

The same sad tone. Narasi shifted uncomfortably. "I…if we can…what's your name?"

The boy was standing. Narasi had a confused impression of how he got there, a rapid jerk of limbs like a time-lapse holo. She recoiled, feeling her back against Aldayr's chest; he steadied her with his real hand, and neither of them felt any awkwardness.

"I need help."

The Force whispered to Narasi in warning; were the Dark Jedi closing on them? She could feel the dark side… "How can we help?"

The boy was at the cage bars. He had crossed the cell in what seemed like no time at all; Narasi had only ever seen Jedi move that quickly. "Let me out."

Narasi leaned a little forward. "Aldayr, do you think he's—"

The boy looked up, and Narasi stifled a scream. His eyes were black—sclera, iris, and pupil, black voids into nothingness. Windows onto starless galaxies. Aldayr jerked back. "Narasi, get away from it!"

She had been reaching forward with her empty hand; she realized it only when she ripped her hand back. The boy swiped for her hand and missed; when she and Aldayr both lurched away, the child bared his black teeth, then screamed. It was like no sound Narasi had ever heard from beast or being—so low it sounded like a bass speaker and rattled her teeth in her head. It went on and on, the child screaming without drawing breath, the creature tearing at her mind and turning her vision to a blur with the sound of a star's last scream before it collapsed into the inevitable black hole…

Her vision cleared, and she saw the boy fly back against the cell wall and crumple to the floor; Aldayr had blasted him with a Force push. Narasi lurched sideways, staggering until the cell was out of view, her empty stomach heaving. She tasted blood and realized her nose was bleeding; she looked at Aldayr and saw he had a nosebleed too, and the blood in his left eye had spread.

"What was that?!" she gasped.

"I don't know, but we need to get away from here, now."

They ran again, even though Narasi's limbs felt sluggish and she kept shaking her head to clear it. As they ran, they passed things as horrible as what they had left behind. She saw what looked like a Nabooan shaak until it turned around and revealed an Ithorian's curving face grafted to its neck; both of the Ithorian's mouths cried out in anguish. In two adjoining cells there were what Narasi initially took for two Humans, both chained to their walls. One was sobbing and had bloodstained bandages over his eyes. The other had bandaging around his eyes, which were staring wildly as his mind reeled in the Force; Narasi didn't understand what was wrong until she saw, around his neck, a mask like the one Kenza Rowkwani always wore. In one cell a male and female Twi'lek had been fused at the back, their lekku wound around each other; their closeness suggested they had been modified to share a single spine, and their unceasing wails suggested it had not been a pleasant process.

Narasi and Aldayr took a broader staircase down, but changed their minds when they found a three-headed acklay with glowing red eyes, which screeched at them with all three heads and spat acid in their direction. Narasi's thighs burned as they pounded back up the stairs, and when she and Aldayr burst through a barred door into a dark garden she called a halt.

"I dunno…what it is…I just can't get…energized…"

She felt ashamed of herself—she and Tirien had fought for hours on end across the battlefields of Taanab when she was only thirteen, the Force wiping away their exhaustion—but Aldayr was panting too, and he said, "It's this place…the dark side is so strong here…"

There was no denying that; Narasi could feel it clinging to her like dirt, but the rain falling on her could not wash this stain away. She realized belatedly that they had to be outdoors, but the garden was close-walled on all sides with no exterior lights; it was like being at the bottom of a well. Looking up, squinting against the rainfall, Narasi saw only cloud cover with no hint of moonlight.

"So what's this horror?" Aldayr asked, gesturing with his good hand.

Narasi looked at the garden and saw strange, thigh-high plants swaying, though the wind could not follow the rain down to ground. She advanced warily, trying to see in the darkness; the soil was soft beneath her feet, and the give made for a nice change. She activated the static pole, looking at the waving stalks in the faint light of the discharge prongs; they all had different colors and textures. She raised the pole, and it was not Jedi discipline, but simple emotional exhaustion that kept her from screaming.

At the end of each stalk was a palm, and on each palm were fingers.

"They're arms!" she gasped to Aldayr, scrambling back.

He caught her and helped her up one-handed. His eyes were wide, but he too seem so shell-shocked that nothing could really surprise him anymore; after a moment his eyes narrowed again and his lip curled. "Very Sith. Missing the bench made out of bones, though."

A little giggle escaped Narasi; she wondered if she was going mad. "Yeah, and…and they could string up entrails, y'know, like garland…"

Aldayr stared at her for a moment, and then they both laughed at the absurdity of it all. He patted her bare back and she rested her head on his shoulder for a second. Then there was another spike of danger in the Force and they both straightened.

"Back the way we came?" Narasi asked.

"Let's not chance it," Aldayr replied, gesturing to a door across the garden.

Narasi blanched. "Through the arms?"

"Until I can use both of my arms, I can handle arms better than I can Sith."

With only a single static pole between them, Narasi couldn't dispute that. They began threading their way through the garden of arms, trying not to brush any. Her eyes adjusting to the gloom, Narasi saw mammalian arms and reptilian ones, scrawny insectoid arms and muscular ones, a short arm that barely came up to her knee and a hairy arm that must have come from a Wookiee which reached to her navel. The fingers seemed to tickle her thighs as she walked through; she resisted the urge to zap them with the static pole.

A push in the small of her back made her stumble. "Aldayr, I'm going as fast as I…as I…"

She looked at Aldayr, who stood out of reach, and felt a rush of fear mingled with resignation. Their eyes met, and as one they broke into a run as the hands grabbed for them. Putting her Zygerrian strength into it, Narasi ripped out of the grip of the first few, but others grabbed at her knees while those ahead pushed back against her thighs. It was soon like fighting through quicksand; now Narasi did strike the arms with the static pole, but the voltage ran up into her thighs too, and pain slowed her. She saw Aldayr struggling too, but two hands had a grip on his cybernetic arm and he could not pull it free.

A stubby little arm grabbed Narasi's ankle and pulled her off balance; she wobbled for a second, but the hands pushed her down. Others caught her before she hit the ground, but they tugged on her arms, pulled her hair, slapped and punched and pinched her all over her body. She pulled against their grip, but they were numerous enough to overpower her, and she felt her shoulders strain as they contorted her body. She cried out in pain; they were going to dislocate her limbs if they kept twisting.

There was nothing for it; she turned the static pole up and twisted her wrist enough to zap an arm. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she kept turning her wrist and electrifying arms until the grips slackened enough for her to rip her own arm free. She zapped two arms holding her right leg and lurched up to an awkward, hopping stand, but before she could do anything else Aldayr screamed. Narasi looked and saw hands bludgeoning him while claws scratched at his thighs, reaching for his groin.

Without thinking, Narasi threw the static pole, aiming with the Force. The business end impaled the clawed arm and nailed it to the ground. The discharge end was still on, and Narasi suddenly felt a faint tingle in her skin. Ignoring it, she grabbed a hand holding her left wrist and broke two of its fingers. It reeled in pain, and Narasi turned her hand enough to grab another arm by its wrist, crouched off-balance, and broke the arm at the elbow.

She had electrified or broken enough limbs that she could wrench herself free. She looked for Aldayr and saw him back on his feet, stabbing one arm after another with a crazed look. Kicking an arm that grabbed her thigh, Narasi screamed, "Jump for it!"

She called on the Force and leapt for the door, clearing even the tallest arms. The soft ground absorbed her landing painlessly, but gave more than she expected. Wobbling for balance, she dug her heels in and felt something hot and wet beneath the soil—warmer than the dirt turning to mud. She dug down with her claws and felt them cut through flesh; when she brought them back up she could smell blood.

"Aldayr, it's alive! It's all alive, it's all connected!"

Narasi could feel her eyes bugging out, but Aldayr seemed to draw inspiration. With a savage look, he thumbed the discharge control of the static pole until the business end was spitting sparks, flipped it in a grip like a spear, and threw it into the ground. At once most of the arms began to twitch and writhe and a wave of mindless pain wracked the Force; Narasi felt her feet superheating and leapt onto the stoop of the door. Aldayr staggered in her direction, clearly in pain, lurching away from each electrified hand as it zapped him.

His knees started to buckle. Thrusting out her hands, Narasi grabbed him with the Force. Her arms trembled as she tried to lift him; she had never had to levitate an entire being, and the light side seemed dimmer in this place. She could not quite get Aldayr off the ground, but he managed to plod toward her with some of the weight lifted. Once he was within reach, Narasi grabbed his cybernetic arm with her hands and jerked him onto the stoop. They shouldered the door open and collapsed onto the floor; Narasi kicked the door shut.

Looking up, she was relieved to see that the hallway was just a hallway, though an ominous doorway stood only a few meters away. Aldayr rolled onto his back; his mechanical arm clanked on the ground.

"You didn't fry it, did you?" Narasi asked.

Aldayr looked at it, poking at the durasteel shielding that gave it a more arm-like form. "I don't think so." He wiped at the wounds on his thighs; his hand came away bloody. "Now what?"

"I can't even imagine," Narasi admitted. "But I don't know if we're gonna find a machine shop. I haven't even seen any droids."

Aldayr groaned as he rolled onto his stomach and did a one-armed pushup to his knees. "Well, we can't stay here."

Narasi rose as well. The shock whip slash across her back hurt, along with the bruises and claw marks all over her body from the arm garden, but if the Sith caught up with them they were dead. "People."

"What?"

"They were…were torturing people somewhere. If they're doing that, they probably don't have these…things there."

"Unless they're torturing them with these things."

"No, I heard a shock whip. And there was a Zygerrian slaver—they must be bringing in slaves.  And where there's people, there's clothes, and equipment—"

"—and weapons," Aldayr finished, nodding. "Let's go."

And they set off together toward the sound of distant screams.