PROLOGUE:
Tahiri Veila – Currently in unknown territory.
I was screwed. Quite literally, in fact. My hands were bound above my head with course steel, the jagged edges cutting deep into my skin and skewering my wrists so that each breath I took was beyond painful; beyond bearable.
Even for a half-Vong freak like me.
Just to make things interesting (and to stop the Jedi half of me getting any bright ideas), my blood-soaked shackles had been threaded through a couple of high voltage energy binders. The electrical current was separate for each cuff, so that even if, by some miracle, I managed to free myself from one of them, the other still very functional binder would fry my brains out.
Wonderful!
My legs were secured in much the same manner, except that they were spread in a wide "V" instead of being strapped together like my hands. Bunch of perverts. It's not exactly practical to keep a prisoner hanging from a stone wall in a dank, dirty underground medical lab with her legs fastened so far apart they could almost be at right angles from each other… unless of course you wanted a good perve, which was obviously what my captors wanted.
Bunch of pervs.
Not to mention, it was a might uncomfortable: having your legs stretched apart to within an inch of their life isn't exactly a walk in the park, but to top it all off, I have to continually hold myself up against the wall, for each time I so much as think about relaxing, I slip a few millimetres down the cold stone, and the damn spikes digging into my skin just bore even deeper.
Like I said before, I'm screwed. Royally screwed, actually.
For this, I blame Jagged Fel… and his clueless space hussey. After all, if it weren't for them, I wouldn't have even been on Yanna! Fel's stupid girlfriend had gotten herself in a real bind, taken hostage after a hit turned sour, and of course I'd been expected to just jump in there and rescue her – as if I didn't already have enough on my plate without worrying about planning a risky salvage mission!
And wouldn't you know it, the rescue attempted turned sour, too! Just my luck. Unfortunately for me, the crazed scientists that had been after my blood for the past year and a half had staged the whole thing; they'd somehow found out whom I'd chosen to mooch off, and had lured me into a trap, of which I succeeded, rather spectacularly, to trip.
So much for Jedi intuition, huh?
Fel's baby is saved and goes running back to her sugar daddy, and I'm left to take her place, shipped off like some common criminal to this Force-awful world on the Outer Rim, with nothing but giant mushrooms for company. And the solid drip, drip of the leaking wall I was currently attached to.
The heavy durasteel door to my right opens suddenly, blinding me for the first few seconds as my stinging eyes adjust to the brilliant golden light shining in at me from the steadily growing crack. Of course, how could I forget – my ever industrious captors are also here, just waiting to save me from myself whenever I get too bored staring at a dark, blank wall.
I'm ecstatic, can't you tell?
"Ready for the next stage in your development, Jedi Veila?"
That's the rasping voice of Vlad Mazak: scientist, torturer, and the bane of my existence. He and I get along famously; like a house on fire. We go way back, Vlad and I… he was the very first person to try and kill me after the Yuuzhan Vong war. Granted, I was still a Jedi Knight back then, and as a keeper of the peace, it was in my job description to get shot at and the like.
But Vlad never actually tried shooting me – I wasn't even on the battlefield or on an assignment for the Order when he made the attempt on my life. In fact, I was in the medbay, having one of my half-yearly routine health checks that Cilghal had insisted upon ever since I'd come back from Yavin shaped into the image of a mutated Yuuzhan Vong warrior. Apparently, she and the rest of the Jedi were afraid that one day I'd turn on my friends and kill them all… or at least try to, anyway. So the bi-annual tests were created, checking everything from my blood work to my brain function and back again. I usually have fun with the black and white blot paintings during the psychological part of the testing (I figured out a couple of years back that when you tell them you see an amphistaff wrapped around the throat of an infidel, they don't like it much), but it was during the neurological session three years ago that Vlad decided to go psycho physician on me.
Cilghal had stepped out to handle an emergency – Valin and Jysella Horn had been involved in a little accident in the training arena with something that was definitely not a training saber – and Vlad had been left in charge of obtaining the remainder of my neural readings. Luckily for me, my keen Jedi eyesight managed to pick up the words "Poison: Do Not Ingest" written on the side of the vial he was pumping into my blood stream before it was too late, and I kicked his double-crossing reptilian ass all the way to Dagobah. Ok, so maybe it wasn't really that far: more like as far as the nearest prison cell, but you get the idea.
It was only after he tried to kill me that the real fun with Homicidal Vlad began. Somewhere along the way (and I'm not really sure where exactly – this is where the story gets a little fuzzy), Vlad decided that it would be of benefit to him, and to the rest of the galaxy, if he got hold of me and turned me into the Jedi-hating killing machine the Yuuzhan Vong had so craved all those years ago.
Now, that may sound slightly crazy to your ears, and that's probably because it is mighty insane… but isn't it just so conscientious of him? To think up such a despicable thing, and then actually go through with it: regardless of the fact that I'm still hanging from a damp wall by my bloody wrists, I do have to give the guy props for flair and overall brilliance. After all, not a lot of people could have pulled something like this off. Taking possession of a Jedi, former or not, is far from an easy task, but to actually succeed and then manage to ship said Force-sensitive to an unknown location far from the reaches of any ally that might try and save her, well, that's a feat on an entirely different pedestal.
Heck, I might even offer some applause… if I wasn't still strapped to this wall awaiting my awful, agonized fate.
I'm snapped out of my small trip down memory lane by my wacky captor tut-tutting me; a small, yet dangerous metallic device waving in front of my face teasingly in the same manner you'd treat a child who's toy you'd stolen.
"It's time for stage two, Jedi Veila," he says again, grinning manically, the miniscule green scales at the corners of his mouth fanning out and almost looking like wings in the process.
Right – stage two. That's the stage that comes directly after stage one, if I'm not mistaken. Fascinating.
My lips pucker up at his words, forming the shape of my usual response for whenever Vlad deems it's ok to be speaking to me when he's torturing me and holding me against my will: a tight, scrunched "O". Directly following the crumpling of my mouth comes the biggest glob of saliva I can muster in such short notice.
It lands right on the crest of the scientist's bulbous, scaly cheek, and rolls ever so gently down the expanse of leathery skin until it reaches the edge of his now upturned lips. Funnily, he's not longer grinning at me as if I were last night's date. My work here is done.
"You'll regret that, Jedi scum!" Vlad growls, the menace behind his words quite real, though I try not to take it too seriously. I figure that even if I'm screwed beyond belief, I won't ever let the guy have the satisfaction of knowing that he got to me.
Even if he has.
The backhand that comes across my left side hurts like Sith, especially since that evil, glistening little tool is still resting in his palm when he hits me, but I don't even utter a sound. See, he's got no hope of breaking me and turning me into a mindless zombie: none whatsoever!
Nothing can break through the cleverly constructed defences of Tahiri Veila: former Jedi Knight of the New Republic, Bounty Hunter, and all around bad-ass mother – Ow! What the kriff was that?
As I gaze down at the source of the pain (delicately, so as to not put any added strain on my shackles), the small bundle of fear in my stomach rapidly turns into the size of a bantha. From somewhere close by, Vlad laughs like a mad man.
Yes, I was definitely screwed! Force, help me now!