When I awoke, I knew nothing but pain. As the canopy of the stasis tube that had held me captive lifted away, light touched my decayed and nearly lifeless body for the first time in too long. My lungs burned and felt close to bursting as I took a rasping gasp of a breath. I tried to open my eyes, but my left had rotted shut and my right was near sightless.
My back stuck to the stasis bed. Everything felt filmy and sticky, and there wasn't a single part of me that didn't feel like a lightsaber was grazing it. And, my god, the smell...
There was a reason that no one used anything but carbonite for long-term stasis purposes. Organostasis was dangerous. It flooded a chamber with a biomimetic fluid that suspended the aging process and brain functions, but was notorious for gradually rotting away at flesh.
I wracked my hazy mind, trying to remember what had happened. Where was I? How had I gotten here? Most importantly, who would have done this to me? The only thing that came into my mind, at first, was a pair of sickly yellow eyes. Sith eyes. Her eyes.
Memory flooded back to me and my head throbbed. The Sith had won the galaxy and I, the last of the Jedi, a mere Padawan, had been trapped in a stasis pod on Wayland. I had to go. Find her. Fix this.
Every joint that I had left screamed bloody murder at me as I forced myself upright. No easy feat when your back has fused to the metal of the chamber. I felt my skin tear away and fell to the icy floor below. My muscle tissue was almost completely atrophied, and my arms looked like those of a Rylothian child. Starved and sick.
I planted my right hand on the floor and pushed myself up. I'd fought off armies before. Faced off against Sith and Yuuzhan Vong and all manner of pirates and brigands. Still, none of it was as hard as that simple act was. It proved futile, too.
With a sickening, slurping crack, my elbow broke in two and I fell back to the floor.
I was going to die.
Three days short of sixteen years old and I was going to die.
My right eyelid fell away from my face and I was forced to see it. The reflective base of the stasis pod was like a horrible mirror, and in it I saw myself.
What was left of me, anyway.
The visage that I glimpsed through my blurry, warped eye was horrifying. It was ugly and rotten and was a gash dividing it, giving me a clear view of my own skull.
What I saw was the face of Ben Skywalker.
...oOo...
Star Wars:
The Wrath of Time
-o-
Never forget who you are,
Lest time forget as well...