Anakin could hear the sound of his Master calling his name. It was echoing around inside his skull. His skin was tingling all over and supersensitive to the light touch of his clothes. Everything smelled musty and stale. He risked opening his eyes and his eyeballs burned like they'd been sand-papered. His vision was blurry for a moment before it cleared to reveal a wall of brown rock, visible by a light flickering off to the side somewhere. When Anakin rolled, he saw that the roof was brown rock as well and that he was lying in a tunnel. Old steel beams set into the wall indicated that it was likely a mine.

A face appeared above him, only dimly lit and half familiar.
"Padme?"
The woman frowned, fidgeting with the miner's helmet in her hand. She glanced behind her down the tunnel.
"It's Leia."
"Okay, Leia," said Anakin, struggling to sit up with her help. "Where are we?"
"A mine."
"No, I mean... this isn't Coruscant, right?"

Leia didn't seem to be listening. As she turned to look down the tunnel again, Anakin caught sight of Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan was sprawled on his front but had raised his head to peer blearily at them.
"You need to get up. All of you," warned Leia urgently. "They've backed off but they could come back."
"Who's coming back?" asked Anakin, climbing to stand on unsteady legs.
"The Sith," said Leia. "Of some kind..."
Leia edged down towards the end of the tunnel. Anakin scowled and reached for his lightsaber. He had glimpsed a Sith once, when he was nine. It had ended with a funeral pyre for the first Jedi Anakin had ever met - Qui Gon Jinn. Obi-Wan climbed to his feet as well, wobbling a moment but staying upright.

"The Sith haven't been seen in a thousand years," said a raspy voice.
The sound of that voice did strange things to Anakin's insides, his stomach doing acrobatic flips. He wasn't the only one - Obi-Wan had frozen in place, tension in every muscle and jaw clenched tightly shut. Obi-Wan's hand was white knuckled on the hilt of his unlit lightsaber. Only his eyes, wide and liquid blue, moved. His gaze darted from side to side without any attempt to actually turn his head and see behind him. He looked back to Anakin, a form of wordless plea.

With a deep breath, Anakin looked over Obi-Wan's shoulder to get a closer look at the person who'd spoken. It was Qui-Gon Jinn, looking back with polite confusion.
"Um...," said Anakin eloquently.
Qui-Gon raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Anakin. It was the same warm confidence and compassionate face that Anakin had seen as a child. It seemed far too substantial and detailed to be a mere hologram.
"Well..." Anakin tried again. "Not to be rude, but aren't you dead?"

There was an undignified squeak of protest. At first Anakin thought it might have been his master having some kind of stroke and then Anakin turned around to see steely blue eyes and a padawan braid. Anakin might have let out a squeak of his own. Standing in front of him was a sort of mirror-image of Obi-Wan - albeit ten years younger and clean-shaven. It was how Obi-Wan had looked when he and Anakin had first met. Obi-Wan even had the cleft in his chin that had been hidden beneath the beard for years.

"What do you mean, dead!" demanded the young Obi-Wan.
Anakin knew his mouth was hanging open. He turned around to look at the older Obi-Wan, who hadn't moved but was eyeing his strange double. Anakin looked back at the younger Obi-Wan, who was waiting impatiently.
"Well?" insisted young Obi-Wan, acidly.
Anakin shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the young Obi-Wan was still there.

"Look out!" shouted Leia.
Anakin looked towards Leia, only to realise she was pointing behind him. He ignited his lightsaber as he pivoted. A dark mist had filled the tunnel while they'd been talking and had reached a tendril out to Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon raised a hand, the tendril floating underneath his arm and touching his chest. Qui-Gon sucked in a pained gasp and curled in on himself, his lightsaber falling from shaking fingers. Anakin and the young Obi-Wan hadn't taken their first steps when the older Obi-Wan snapped out of his shocked freeze. His blue weapon blazing, he swung his lightsaber between Qui-Gon and the centre of the mist. There was no impact with anything solid but the mist seemed to catch on the edge of the lightsaber as if it was a net or web. The mist floundered into small, unfocused eddies and Qui-Gon staggered behind Obi-Wan's protection. The younger Obi-Wan stepped in hurriedly to sling Qui-Gon's shaking arm over his shoulder.

"We need to move," said Leia. "There are more of them out there."
She strapped the miners helmet onto her head, casting its intermittent light down the tunnel behind them.
"No argument here," said the older Obi-Wan, holding his lightsaber at the ready and eyeing the mist warily.
The mist had stopped just in front of him, unwilling to advance for the moment.
"Any... direction... you recommend?" panted Qui-Gon.
The younger Obi-Wan called Qui-Gon's dropped lightsaber to his outstretched hand. Anakin caught a brief glimpse of Qui-Gon's grateful smile.

Then Leia was clutching Anakin's sleeve and pointing. From the opposite direction, two mists had seeped into the tunnel. Anakin faced them warily.
"Definitely not this way," said Leia, stepping quickly behind Anakin. "Better odds against just one."
"Well then," said the older Obi-Wan. "Let's not wait around then."
The older Obi-Wan charged at the mist but it didn't wait to meet him. The mist folded back in on itself, twisting and swirling to avoid the oncoming lightsaber. The whole group raced down the tunnel at his back, Anakin carefully watching their rear.

The fleeing mist squeezed through a hole in the ceiling and disappeared. The group didn't slow - the older Obi-Wan leading the way, the younger Obi-Wan following with an arm still around Qui-Gon, Leia and her flickering light, and Anakin watching the mists recede behind them. As they raced along the air started to smell fresher and they could hear dripping water.
"We're getting close to the river," said Leia. "We'll need to be careful. There were bombers racing overhead before."
As if to bolster her warning, there was a dull thud and the tunnel floor shook beneath their feet.
"As long as we don't get separated, we'll be fine," Anakin assured her.