I tried really hard to make this chapter exciting and dramatic (?) and some of the plot begins to reveal itself.
(Also thanks for everyone's kind reviews and interest so far!)

(Cross-posted on AO3)

Prisoner

"Don't move."

Rey froze. Not because the voice told her to do so, but because she could hear the raw threat lurking under the deep metallic rumble, and feel the cold pressure of a gun barrel pressed to the base of her skull. It wasn't a request, it wasn't a statement, it was a simple command - be still or die.

Her knuckles went white with the force of her grip on her staff, as she fought with the instinct to turn and swing, but she was the one without the advantage in this situation and she knew she had to bide her time. Wait for the perfect moment.

The pressure of the gun lessened slightly as the stranger recognised her compliance. But she couldn't help but feel he was also underestimating her, as she remembered the brief sensation of backing into them, and feeling as if she'd backed into a wall; this person was tall, much taller than her, broad and solid, obviously male, and clearly didn't think was much of a threat. The gun moved back just a fraction more from her skin and she seized the opportunity instantly. She lurched violently to the left, heard the deafening explosion of the gun go off where her head had just been, and brought her staff up in an arc as she span towards him. The staff slammed against his hand with force and the gun flew out of his grasp with a surprised grunt, landing somewhere in the dry grass. In his second of hesitation at being caught so off-guard she shook her head to try and clear it of the shrill ringing noise from the gunshot, lancing painfully through her skull, then moved in quickly for another swing. But he was ready this time and dodged swiftly backwards, just out of her reach. She grit her teeth and pushed forward, swinging again by using the momentum from her first attempt to twirl the staff around and pull it in the opposite direction. She felt it connect with something, but it was too unyielding to be flesh, and the clang of metal on metal registered even through the incessant ringing in her ears.

The stranger was holding up a metal rod, with both black gloved hands clamped firmly around its dark handle up by his face; the rod pointed down at the floor to the block the side she was about to crush with her staff. She could only guess it had been concealed under his thick cloak and he had managed to pull it out to deflect her blow just in time. He used her moment of surprised hesitation to put all his weight behind a flick of his wrist to hook the metal rod behind the staff and wrench it from her hands.

Rey didn't watch where it landed. Her intense gaze didn't leave the stranger, and she straightened up as he pointed his weapon at her chest. She struggled to maintain her steady breathing and facade of calm as she seethed with frustration and fear.

So this was what all her survival was for? This was the end that had been awaiting her all along?

There had to be a way out of this - there was always a way out.

Her gaze didn't waver as she attempted to form any kind of plan that would allow her to leave the situation alive. All of them didn't end well for the stranger. He was tall like she thought, and covered from head to toe in heavy black clothing; a large hooded cloak, a scarf and black arm wraps that completely covered his arms. He also wore a mask, like the others, but his was different - it didn't look like a traditional gas mask, as it seemed designed to fit his face specifically, in a design that was black with decorative silver running across it and a completely opaque visor hiding his eyes. His whole get up removed anything remotely human about him... and it was terrifying.

"Hold your fire." Came the deep metallic rumble again, and only then did Rey notice members of the masked group from before, surrounding them in the shadows. All of their guns were pointed at her. "Restrain her."

The group instantly lowered their weapons and surged forward. Two of them grabbed her arms and one held onto her shoulders from behind, so even though she twisted and struggled in their grip, it was futile. Her arms were forcefully pulled in front of her by another, and she felt metal clamp firmly around both wrists.

Not again. She didn't want to be a prisoner again. Rey resisted the urge to scream at them that she'd rather die - she was quite sure they'd take her up on it. She clenched her jaw hard in the effort to keep it shut, feeling the muscles straining. There was always a way out, she told herself over and over. There was no coming back from death, the one thing there was no escaping from, so as long as she was alive she still had a chance. She just had to stick by the mantra that had never failed her; you have to work with what you've got.

All the while her eyes never strayed from the masked stranger, and even though she couldn't see behind his visor she could almost feel the weight of his gaze assessing her. He pushed aside a part of his cloak and placed the metal rod through a loop in his belt, pulling the material back to conceal it once more, confirming what Rey had assumed about the hidden weapon.

"Who are you people?" She hissed.

Nobody replied, but the stranger, who was obviously the leader, took several slow, heavy steps away from her and bent to the ground. He reached out a hand to pick something up but pulled it back sharply, changing hands to pick it up with his left instead. She realised, with a warm burst of satisfaction, that his right hand had been the one holding the gun. The one her staff had slammed into. She hoped it was broken. But the warm feeling instantly bubbled into anger as he turned to walk back to them and she saw that he was now holding that same staff. She struggled again against her captors, but they only increased the pressure on her arms to keep her still.

"Who are you?" She asked again through clenched teeth as he examined her weapon.

He let the question hang for a moment. "Put her with the others." He rumbled, ignoring her.

She was shoved roughly on both sides as they forced her to walk, turning her away from their leader and towards the gas station. Rey tried desperately to dig her heels into the dirt but that only succeeded in them dragging her along, as her feet found no purchase in the dry dust. So she walked. They weren't any gentler for her compliance and she knew there'd be dark bruises on her arms tomorrow.

Tomorrow. At least she had that, she thought, letting the idea sober her. Rey took a deep breath of the fresh night air. As long as she was alive everything was still a possibility. She had no idea who these people were, or what they were planning to do to her, but as long as she kept surviving she was doing what she'd always done best. But a stray though pierced her heart as she was led away, and she willed her legs to stay steady; the last thing she had said to BB-8 was that she would be back.

Rey was led to a small group of people sitting on the floor just outside of the gas station building. She noticed the bodies of the dead raiders were gone, and she peered through the open doorway on her way past to see more of the attackers shoving all the belongings inside into bags by flickering lamplight. She got the impression they'd all done this many times before. She was pushed roughly forwards as her guards finally let go and she stumbled . Her hands were still bound together in metal shackles in front of her and she hated how off balance it made her feel.

It was still the middle of the night, but the sky was clear and the moon shone brightly, so although she couldn't see in detail, Rey took a look at the people sat on the ground as she lowered herself down to sit cross-legged at the edge of the group. There were six of them; four men and two women, but only a couple of them looked up with any kind of interest at her arrival. They were all shackled like herself, though she doubted some of them lacked the strength to attempt an escape even if they weren't wearing any. All of them were very thin and shabby in appearance; their clothes were dirty and torn in places, all of the men had unkempt facial hair (one of them had a beard that reached his chest) and though there had been a little interest in her approach, nobody looked in her direction. Rey had always been small and skinny, but her years of scavenging had built up her muscle and she was clearly better fed than this gaunt group as she looked positively healthy beside them. It had been a long time since she'd been around people who weren't going to attack her on sight, other than the always well off passing traders, and she had forgotten just how much of a toll surviving in the nuclear wastelands could take on a person.

There were two guards standing around them (the same two who had manhandled her earlier, she realised with intense dislike) and she could still hear the sounds of looting going on from inside the gas station. Two more stood by the remains of a large rusty road sign that had once displayed the gas prices, another couple were by one of the only remaining gas pumps and she could make out at least three more patrolling the road. All were armed with guns. But where was the cloaked stranger from before? The thought of him brought back a rush of resentment and fear. It was his fault she was in this mess. He was so intense and strange; the man dressed as a monster. If he'd never spotted her in the first place, or if he hadn't dodged and blocked her blows... She would be back home with BB-8 already. Rey sighed heavily and let out the angry emotions, leaving only a hollow sort of sadness behind. She knew it was silly to feel as if she were breaking her promise to a cat, since he didn't even comprehend anything like that, but even so she knew how it felt to wait for someone who never came back. He had his own secret entrance to the coach, through a cat-sized hole she'd made in the floor of the bottom deck, so he could come and go as he pleased, and she already knew he somehow managed to feed himself when he went out for the day. Cats were very self-sufficient, so she tried not to worry about his well-being too much. She had her own to worry about now, so she could only hope he'd be okay until she found some way to get back to him.

Rey shuffled over to the nearest person, a woman with long curly hair and a grim expression, and spoke quietly. "Who are these people?"

The woman's tired eyes looked up at her as if she'd only just noticed Rey was there.

"The people in the gas masks," she tried again, raising her voice a little, "who are they?"

The woman furrowed her brows in confusion and Rey began to wonder if she even understood English, but then she leaned forward slightly and spoke in a hoarse whisper. "You don't... You don't know?"

Rey shook her head.

"You don't... How could you... You..." She looked as if she might burst into laughter and her tired eyes took on a wild light as she inclined her head towards the guards nearby. "But the gas masks, you seem 'em don't you? This here's The First Order, and we're the lucky bastards they've taken prisoner. I don't know what rock you've been hiding under, girly, but everyone knows that you get caught by The First Order and you don't come back." The woman shuffled closer and Rey flinched back slightly, seeing the dark bags under green eyes more clearly, and noticing the fresh sticky sores running down one side of her face and neck. She was speechless with horror as the woman continued, her whispers growing louder and more frantic.

"How don't you know? It's off to Starkiller City with us all... Say now, girly, you look well-fed, you look like you're doin' well, you a spy for The First Order? Pretend you don't know 'em, ask us what we think and see what we say?" Her gaunt face leaned even closer and Rey prepared herself to shove her away.

"Hey, you there! Quiet down!" The command barked from the nearest guard was muffled strangely by his gas mask, but the woman still sprang back from Rey as if she had been burned. She sat back to where she had been before they'd spoken, picked absentmindedly at the scabs in her hairline, muttered some words under her breath and then finally was still once more - staring blankly ahead like nothing had happened. None of the others so much as twitched at the commotion, all in the same daze as her.

Radiation poisoning.

Rey clenched her fists as hard as she could in her shackles and tried to force back the nausea. She hadn't seen it in a human like that in a very long time.

Everything was tainted with radiation; the food you ate the water you drank, even the air you breathed, and left untreated it would build and build inside until it affected you grip on reality and burned your skin away. At its worst she'd seen someone who's sores were so extensive that their hair had fallen out, their flesh was warped and scarred, and they had been screeching incoherently about the end of the world. Another memory she wished she could forget. Finding anti-radiation medication had always been one of her top priorities whenever she went out scavenging, and she'd always been pretty lucky because she knew the best places to look. At one time the tablets had been worth more to people than food, because the levels of radiation were much higher back then, so people had found secret, safe places to stash such precious items; under loose floorboards, inside pretend hollowed out books or stuck to the back of ruined picture frames. She'd had to get creative with her searches. But seeing it close up like that made her remember why she went to all the trouble.

Rey moved herself as far away from the other prisoners as she could get away with, conscious of the watching guards, and lay down to face the sky. It was completely clear of clouds, like it often was, so the moon and stars shone brightly overhead and the dusty ground was cool against her back. It calmed her frayed nerves, and she noticed that her hands had finally stopped shaking. In the last few hours she'd (potentially) broken someone's hand, lost her staff, broken her word to her best friend and been taken prisoner by some weird cult she knew only as 'The First Order'. What the woman had said before unnerved her more than she'd like to admit, and she remembered hearing snippets of the raiders yelling that they wouldn't join, and had obviously rather died than surrender themselves over. What kind of people were these? And what did they want with such a sorry group of prisoners and her? She didn't even have radiation poisoning. Or maybe it was a coincidence they were all sick? No, they were obviously picking up these poor people on purpose, so why capture her too? She thought back to her fight with the cloaked leader; though that didn't provide much clues. He was extremely enigmatic and seemed to be a person of few words, though he had seemed genuinely surprised when she'd successfully disarmed him.

Rey frowned at the stars. The whole situation was surreal, even in the messed up world she was used to. Worst of all was that escaping seemed like less of a possibility with every passing second.

When the sun finally started to rise Rey watched the stars fade one by one into the morning sky. The sounds of all the looting had stopped after a while and Rey guessed that the gas-masked group had waited out the night in the shabby little building. The guards watching the prisoners were changed periodically and she noticed the ones patrolling the road and site were changed every so often too. None of them seemed to speak much, and then they did it was clipped and to the point, still sounding muffled by the plastic and rubber on their faces. She had been hoping for some kind of lapse in their switching or attention, but each fresh guard was alert and the changeover was performed with practiced precision. Their leader didn't make another appearance through the night either, which she didn't mind.

Rey heard the crunch of boots approach.

"Alright, get up. Come on." A short member of The First Order stood with his gun pointed at the prisoners, his gas mask barely more than a pair of over-sized goggles that took up most of his ratty looking face, with a small breathing cylinder held in place over his mouth by leather straps around his head. Like all of the others he was wearing an eclectic mix of materials and styles of clothing, that looked handmade and new.

"Get a move on." He snapped, shaking his gun at them, which Rey noticed with surprise also looked shiny and new.

The prisoners got to their feet in a slow daze, except the woman with the curly hair from before, who groaned and wailed loudly as Rey also stood up, wincing at the stiffness in her back.

The woman attempted to stand but fell heavily forwards and writhed in the dirt, her wails getting louder. Her ripped and dirty skirt had ridden up during her thrashing about on the floor to reveal a plethora of open and oozing sores on red raw skin, and at another command to get up from the short guard she just shook her head and groaned again.

"I can't, I can't." She twisted and turned on the ground, overcome by her pain and confusion, and Rey retreated from the pitiful sight. "Help me!" She wailed. "Help me! I can't -"

Her initial horror turned to pity as Rey began to move forward to try and help the poor woman to her feet.

There was a gunshot.

The woman ceased her struggling and crumpled, finally silent. Blood pooled beneath her chest, oozing out over the dry cracked earth she lay on, and bloomed a red stain on her old shirt.

Rey's head whipped around to where the gunshot had come from, and found her hatred for the cloaked leader intensifying into an inferno beneath her skin. The members of The First Order had all hastily lined themselves up into a perfect formation at his arrival and he lowered the gun to put it into a holster on his belt, also hidden beneath layers of heavy cloak. The other prisoners looked vaguely scared by the sudden gunshot noise, but none of them spared a glance for their fallen member.

She knew he was looking at her. She couldn't see his eyes, or his expression, but she could feel him looking at her, and she wondered what he could see; a look of pure revulsion and hatred? It lasted only a moment, and then he turned away, throwing his order over his shoulder at the rest of the group in barely more than a growl.

"We move out to Starkiller City immediately."

He stalked ahead along the road and the rest of the group turned in formation to follow him. Rey felt a gun prod her in the back to start walking and she followed the other prisoners with a scowl, blinking back tears that burned in her eyes. Each step took her further away from home. She allowed herself one quick glance at the thin, sad body abandoned on the empty forecourt and then stared straight ahead. She was on her way to Starkiller City - to the base of The First Order.