19 hours, 11 minutes.
The sun had risen, blossoming pink and gold across the morning sky. Rerem lay curled on the roof under his jacket, biting his nails and waiting. He had tried multiple times to contact Nyixa, but she was not answering her comm. Nash, too, was absent. Rerem had a suspicion that something nasty had occurred over the night and he could only cross his fingers and hope that his colleagues had made it out alive. If Vader had somehow managed to track them, too, then Seline's stolen datafiles may already be back in Imperial hands and his partners could be stone dead.
No, he thought vehemently. It hasn't come to that yet.
With his failure to contact his colleagues, Rerem had tried to reach out to the officer in charge of Alliance intel on Coruscant. Once Nyixa and Nash returned from retrieving Seline's stolen datafiles, they would have to transmit them to the Alliance. With their communicators and systems down in the past few days, Dreis would have to be notified. He was the only one who could help them complete their mission. Unfortunately, Rerem couldn't get through to him.
He drifted in and out of sleep, startling himself awake whenever he thought he heard the sounds of an approaching speeder. Vader's bloody name oozed in and out of his thoughts, accompanied by Seline and Koss' mutilated bodies. Well, it was only a matter of time before they all met their end. No one had ever said the life expectancy of a spy was long.
He had been here for a month and a half. Rerem wished that they had lasted longer, but the time was long. Some jobs only took mere weeks. Sometimes it felt like a mighty long time, sometimes it felt like no time at all. Time was a funny thing for a spy. Days flew by at insanely fast rates, but collective weeks took forever to pass.
And now time was slipping by faster than Rerem thought possible.
Someone ought to find the leak and plug it up, he thought sourly. Or just get me a strong drink so I can forget all this.
"Rerem."
His eyes flickered open. His vision was blurry – all he saw was a blur of green and black in front of him.
"Rerem!" The female voice was a bit hysterical.
Rerem rubbed his eyes and suddenly his mind snapped into gear. He leapt to his feet.
Nyixa was standing in front of him, her skin pale green mottled with red, something he had never seen before. Her eyes were wide and wild and she was trembling from head to toe.
She was also covered in dark, red blood.
"Oh, gods, Nyixa!" He placed his hands on her shoulders, but she shrugged him off and teetered to one side. He followed. "Are you all right?"
"Fine." She tugged at her clothes and rubbed her blood-splattered arms. "I'm fine."
"What happened? Where's Nash?" He didn't need her to answer; the ice-cold feeling in his stomach was telling him exactly what had happened.
"I'll tell you," she said. "Just… let's get away from here. We need to go someplace else. Where's Koss?"
He ignored her. "Do you have Seline's datafiles?"
She nodded. "Please, Rerem, can we go?"
"Yeah, yeah, of course." He led her over to his speeder and kicked the machine into gear. They flew up and out into the early morning Coruscanti traffic, sailing down towards more familiar zones that would lead them out of sight and mind of the Imperial friendly upper-worlders.
Nyixa sat in silence, staring at hands. There were deep black lines all over them, where blood had seeped into the cracks between the small scales that covered her skin. She flexed her fingers and snapped her gaze away.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?" Rerem asked.
"Nash is dead. Vader found us right after we got the files. Chased us across the underground until…" Her voice faded away. "Nash is dead," she intoned again.
"Koss is too," Rerem told her. "I found his body, like Seline's. He'd managed to scrawl Vader's name across the fresher mirrors with his own blood. He was warning me what was coming, but I guess he didn't need to." He glanced at her, but she was refusing to look. "Do you know what is in the datafiles?"
"No," she said. "I didn't have time. We got them and we ran. We ran… Kriff, we ran like hell." She tugged at her black-rooted red hair.
"Are you injured? You're covered in—"
"Not mine."
"Oh."
"Where are we going?"
"Someplace safe. Hopefully."
"A hive."
"Maybe."
"Hives aren't safe, you know."
"We don't have much of a choice now."
They flew in silence. It was only now that it began to sink in that three of their team's members were dead. They were the final two standing, the only ones capable of bringing the Alliance some devastatingly important information, though neither of them knew what it was.
Rerem knew that it was chancy going back to a hive – he winced even as he thought the word, it was Koss' word, Koss' label, and Koss was dead – but they needed food, rest, clean clothes. They were exhausted; Nyixa was in no state to keep running. They needed only a few hours of safety to recuperate and then they could run again.
Surely a hive was safe enough for just a few hours.
The problem would be getting there safely.
They had only been in flight for a quarter of an hour when Rerem noticed they were being tailed. A couple of dark speeders were taking the same route as them, keeping a comfortable distance between themselves and their target. When Rerem began taking more roundabout routes through Coruscant's sectors, he knew for certain that those speeders belonged to Imperial agents. No one in the right mind would take the traffic way he was on.
"Rerem, get us out of here, they're still on to us."
"You don't have to tell me the obvious!" he snapped.
The speeder dove down, plummeting multiple stories by the second, whipping past the angry traffic in the air ways below. Nyixa twisted her head around and saw the Imperial speeders follow.
"That's not going to work."
"Give me a break, would you?" Rerem snapped. "Do you want to fly?" He pulled out of the nosedive, turned one-eighty degrees in the air and zoomed off in a different direction.
They swung around the twisted towers of office buildings as they entered one of the planet's many commercial sectors. The traffic began to thicken. If they could lose their pursuers in the crowd, it would give them a chance to cover their tracks.
A black speeder wove out of the throng ahead of them, zooming towards them on the opposite traffic way. Rerem swore and plunged another level at the last moment; the Imperial speeder went flying by.
"Damn it!"
Rerem pulled on the controls and flipped the vehicle around. Angry shouts and honking buzzers followed them as their speeder whizzed up the wrong direction on the traffic ways, ducking and diving as they steered clear of collisions. Oncoming speeders swerved away just in time to avoid impact. Nyixa clutched at her restraints until her fingertips turned pale green. She looked like she was going to be violently ill.
"You're going to get us killed!" she shouted.
"I'm going to get us lost!" he snapped. "How many people can fly against the traffic without getting killed? It's like being in a –"
The speeder dropped suddenly with a jerk. They heard the deafening screech of metal on metal as a vehicle grazed the top of their cockpit.
"—bloody asteroid field!"
"AND YOU'RE NOT A KRIFFING PILOT!"
Nyixa lashed out, grabbing the controls and pulling them into a nose-dive. They shot down, barely making it through the moving net of traffic, down until the crowd of morning traffic thinned out. Rerem tried to push her out of the way, but she clutched at the controls. They scuffled for a moment, restricted by the small space, until he finally managed to release her grip and levelled their flight path.
"What the hell was that for?" he shouted.
Nyixa refused to look at him. Instead, she pointed upwards, out the cockpit window.
The black speeders were following them, sailing down at a less reckless pace than they had, but catching up nonetheless.
Rerem swore loudly and sped off into the dim light of the Lower Coruscant traffic ways. A red light began to flash on the control board, blinding his peripheral vision as it blinked on and off.
It was the fuel warning.
"Are they still following us?" Rerem said, continuing their downwards serve.
"Yes."
"Damn it."
A shot fired, hitting the back of the speeder, causing it to rock from side to side. Their flight path swerved unintentionally and they almost flew into the lower parts of a skyscraper.
"Oh, and they're armed," Rerem said. "Wonderful."
"Why do I get the feeling you're going to do something incredibly stupid?"
Rerem glanced at the blinking fuel mark. "Because I am going to do something incredibly stupid," he said.
He abruptly changed the angle of their flight path, sending them on a collision course for the ground. At the very last minute, he disabled their restraints, opened the cockpit – and punched the emergency eject button.
Rerem and Nyixa flew up and out as their speeder crashed in a blaze of twisted metal on the underbelly of Coruscant. They landed, hard, on the cold duracrete, several feet from each other. Winded, Rerem pulled himself up. Nyixa struggled to her feet, clutching at the alley wall for support.
Above, they heard the sounds of the approaching Imperial agents.
"Let's go," Rerem said.
Nyixa nodded and followed him into the dim alleyways of Coruscant's underground, looking for a way up and out of Imperial view. Battered, bruised and breathless, they wordlessly made their way around the empty streets, the echoes of Imperial agents continuously following them.
Most of the buildings in this area looked decrepit and were in disarray; however, there were some newer ones sprouting up beside them. Looked like the government was attempting to refurbish this commercial area. Rerem and Nyixa found the lower entrance into one of the buildings. It lead into a maze of corridors and stairwells, most of them with flickering lights that alternatively let them see their own feet and left them in the dark. They took the passages anyway; they needed to lose their pursuers and find a way out as soon as possible.
At least we're alive, Rerem thought. It doesn't stop while you're still breathing.
They ran down the corridors, fleeing into the darkness of badly lit corridors. Nyixa stumbled to a halt, leaning against the wall.
"Sorry," she said. "Sorry… I can't… I don't mean to…" Her voice trailed off. The lights went out. Rerem couldn't see her in this darkness, but he could hear her ragged breathing. "Take this," she said, grabbing his hand and pushing the datapad into it. "Leave me, I can't run anymore. I'm slowing you down."
Rerem's fingers closed around the datapad. "Seline encrypted this, didn't she," he said.
"Yeah."
"And you haven't cracked it."
"No. Poison won't be able to slice it if… if they get it.""
"Seline was good at creating ridiculous codes," Rerem said, "and you seem to be the only person who was ever good at cracking them. Father will need you to break it. I'm not leaving you down here."
"Schutta!"
"There's no reason for me to leave you," Rerem said coldly. "You're fine. You just need a moment."
"No, I—"
"Nyixa, you aren't allowed to fall apart right now. That's an order. Now take this thing and get your head back where it belongs." He shoved the datapad back into her hand. She paused, intent on making him change his mind; but then she faltered and took the datapad anyway.
"All right."
Clang.
A blaster bolt fired into the wall opposite them, lighting up the corridor with red.
"Damn it!"
Rerem pelted down the corridor, one hand gripping Nyixa's arm, forcing her to run. The lights flickered back on just as they rounded the corner at the end of the corridor. Rerem saw nothing but a line of blaster barrels before he went tumbling head-over-heels, his nose impacting with the floor, and felt a wave of heat as blaster bolts flew over him. Nyixa had knocked him out of the way.
He pushed himself up and dove back around the corner, seeing Nyixa's fleeing back as she wrenched open a concealed door and disappeared into the passage beyond. All around him, the voices of Imperial agents echoed. Judging from the thundering of boots, there was probably a stormtrooper squadron with them, too. He hadn't been able to catch sight of their numbers when he'd run into their line of fire, but the echoing sounds left very little to the imagination.
Rerem's hands stung from the burns he had received from sliding on the floor; now was not the time to focus on pain. He sprinted after his partner, banging the door closed behind him and locking it. As he ran up the corridor, he could hear Imperials banging and knocking on the door in an attempt to open it.
At the end of the passage, they came to an elevator. They skidded into it. Rerem punched the up button as the doors closed. The elevator was a rickety old thing, badly in need of repairs. It shifted and creaked, the floor vibrating as it slowly brought them up.
It refused to work after it had only gone up a few floors. Rerem pried its doors open. The lift had stopped after it had passed the landing. There was just enough clearing to slip out. Crouching down, Rerem slipped off the elevator base and fell several feet down to land on the landing floor. Nyixa followed a moment later. Rerem caught her as she fell towards him.
With her feet firmly on solid floor, Nyixa pushed him away. "No," she hissed, her voice catching in her throat. Her hair had come loose again and she brushed it away furiously.
"What?"
Rerem stared, confused, as Nyixa stumbled into the darkness of the abandoned halls. After a moment, he followed her into the gloom.
18 hours, 17 minutes.
The lights flickered and cracked like lightning unaccompanied by the roar of thunder. The buzzing of the faulty wiring shot through the entire room, challenging the echo of dripping taps. It was dark and dank, the smell of mould and decay assaulting their sense of smell.
They were in the locker room of an abandoned, crumbling industrial facility whose purpose was long forgotten. It was just another part of the landscape in the lower levels of Coruscant. The connected maze of abandoned buildings had led them here, faltering on exhausted, jellied legs, to escape between the moulding lockers and try to find an exit before their relentless pursuers caught up with them.
Nyixa stumbled and collapsed on the cold, damp floor some ways ahead of him. She was panting heavily, her strength having drained over the long, frantic hours. Rerem followed the sound of her unsteady breath, occasionally catching the a glimpse of her prone, curled form in the hesitant illumination of the sparking lights.
"Hey," he called. "Nyixa."
She lay, face-first in the water, her fingers curled into fists. Rerem knelt beside her and tried to get her attention. But whenever he called her name, she merely shuddered and curled more tightly against herself. In the dim light, he could see that her green skin was flushing red. She was quickly losing the battle to keep her emotions in check.
"Nyixa." Rerem shifted uncomfortably; his pant legs were soaked through where he had rested his knees against the wet floor tiles. "Don't do this now. We need to keep moving."
He cautiously touched her back; he could feel the bumps of her spinal ridges beneath the loose black shirt she wore. Nyixa shuddered and flinched away, pushing herself into the tiles. She lay there for a long time, her breathing slowly coming back to normal.
Rerem was at a loss at what to do. They couldn't stay here for long; the Imperials would eventually figure out which route they took. That was not the only danger, either – this place was not structurally safe. Looking around it was evident that years of mould and decay from leaking pipes and drains could bring the roof down on their heads at any moment. Yet Nyixa was adamant that she was not moving from her spot, not until she managed to collect herself. She had been falling apart at the seams ever since she had staggered onto the roof that morning.
Rerem swore under his breath. Things were unravelling fast. It was a surprise that they had managed to make it this far. He wondered if this constant feeling of panic was what every spy felt when they knew the enemy was closing in and the likelihood of escape was low, no matter how they put their skills to the test.
"Come on, Nyixa, don't do this to me now."
The lights crackled overhead. Nyixa suddenly sat up and looked him straight in the eye. Through the stringy red-black strands of damp, oily hair, her face was a grotesque mix of blotched green and red, crusted with dried blood on one side. The other half of her face, which had been pressed into the water-covered floor tiles, glowed eerily. What little make-up she had applied yesterday streamed down from her right eye where water had mixed with it.
Rerem froze. It was impossible to say what his colleague was going to do next. She looked like a witch out of a nightmare, her green skin rapidly shifting to red. Rerem faintly recalled how they had frequently joked about Nyixa's inability – or aversion – to turn red. Now that it was actually happening right in front of his eyes, it was one of the most terrifying things he had ever witnessed.
"I need a moment," she hissed. Tearing her boots off her feet, she rose and sloshed her way down aisles of lockers.
"Nyixa!"
Rerem followed, but at a safe distance. He wasn't sure what she was looking for. In this moment, Nyixa was startlingly alien. Rerem had worked with so many non-humans over the years that the lines between species blurred, turning into social obstacles very much like the ones that divided humans who came from different planets. It was a strange thing; his mind always did play tricks on him. Since the team had come together, humans working with Bothans, Twi'leks and Falleen, they had accepted one another and made games out of insulting each others species – usually with good nature, unless they were angry with each other. But in all that time, Rerem had never really considered any of them to be alien. Even though he knew full well that Nyixa was Falleen, his mind almost never really acknowledged her alien qualities, even when he was brooding about her use of pheromones. The pheromones had always seemed like a personal quirk, not a trait of her foreignness.
But now… this was something different. Had Nyixa cracked under pressure? What had she seen when Nash was killed that traumatized her so much?
He could hear her trembling breath coming from the end of the locker room. Rerem splashed through the puddles of water and skidded to a halt. Nyixa's blood-soaked clothes lay in a pile outside the entrance to one of the facilities' showers. Her datapad sat on top of it, along with her two blasters and collection of vibroblades. Rerem stooped and picked up the clothes, stashing the datapad away in his own pocket, listening to the trickling spray of the shower. From the sound of it, the water pressure was horrible.
Rerem looked down at the soggy clothes he held in his hands. They were drenched with water. Rerem squeezed as much of the liquid out as possible and gently hung the clothing on a rusting hook just inside the entrance way. The shower didn't have a curtain and he could see a flash of red skin in his peripheral vision; for Nyixa's sake, he kept his eyes averted and went to lean against the moulding wall in the locker room.
He folded his arms and waited, listening to the trickle of water and Nyixa's faltering sobs as she tried to scour herself clean of the blood that covered her from head to foot. In the flickering light, he saw that the soles of his red boots – a fleeting source of humour only a day ago when Koss and Nash had been alive, brought on by Seline's own sacrifice – had turned dark from the water. They were dark like blood.
The imagery was not lost on Rerem. He laughed; it was a cold, hopeless sort of sound.
How appropriate, he mused. It was as if the galaxy was conspiring against him, filling his hours with death signs. He had never been one for occult symbology, finding the belief in mythical symbols and a greater force beyond the tangible powers of sentient beings to be kriffing drivel. But maybe when life starting tripping you up, you started seeing things that weren't really there. A way to cope, a way to convince yourself that it's not your fault that you can't control what's going to happen to you…
After a while, the sobs from inside the shower faded but the water continued to flow.
"Nyixa?"
"It… it… won't come off," she whispered, her voice echoing strangely from inside the shower alcove. "The blood… it won't come off."
"Nyixa," Rerem said as gently as he could, "you need to stop this, whatever it is you're doing—"
"The blood won't come off!"
Rerem closed his eyes. Nyixa – icy, dependable, cold-blooded Nyixa – was losing it. He took a deep breath.
"Nyixa, can I come in?"
There was the sound of shuffling of feet on wet tiles and the sliding of damp fabric over cold skin. The shower was still on. Rerem waited, but Nyixa did not answer. He edged around the corner of the alcove.
Nyixa sat in the shower stall, dressed in her clothes, her back against the damp, mould-encrusted wall. The fine spray of water rushed over her, turning pink at her feet. Her skin was dark red, not far from the shade of blood, and she scratched at her arms, as if she wished to dig the blood from her skin. Her eyes stared straight ahead even as he approached.
"I like water," she said slowly. "Water is good."
Rerem recalled that the Falleen were semi-aquatic. "Yeah. Sure."
Nyixa leaned her head back. "Why won't it leave me alone?" she said quietly.
"What won't leave you alone?" Rerem stepped into the shower and sat down beside her. He tried to ignore his involuntary flinching; the water was ice cold.
"Nash's blood," she said, holding up her trembling hands in front of her. "Bothan blood. Slaughtered like an animal right above me. Animals… he called us animals. He'll hunt us, kill us like animals."
"How did this happen?" Rerem didn't consider himself an expert at all this psychological stuff, but Nyixa was so distressed that he knew she needed to talk about it. The sooner she did, the sooner they could move on. He needed her in her right mind; she alone could break the codes for those datafiles Seline had stolen.
A low laugh caught deep in her throat. "Down into the sewers, down the drain. That's how I got out. Nash wouldn't come, wouldn't fit down the drain… too big, he said. Liar. I thought he could."
"And?"
Nyixa rolled her head and stared at him. "I was standing under the drain, waiting for him to follow. Vader came. They argued. Nash held him up to give me time to escape, but…" She shuddered. "I didn't leave. Wish I had. Should have. Should have… why is this bothering me?"
"Haven't you always said that Falleen feel emotions just like everyone else?" Rerem offered, trying to sound gentle.
Nyixa pressed her forehead into his shoulder, her fingers tearing at the roots of her hair. "I wish we didn't. We're trained not to. I hated emotions… until I met Seline. She changed my mind, but now she's dead. Why can't I go back?"
Rerem caught hold of her hands before she scratched a wound in her scalp with those long, sharp nails. The last thing she needed was to bleed herself. "The galaxy doesn't work like that. Did Vader kill Nash?"
She shook her head. Her hands went limp in his grasp. "No. He wouldn't give Vader any information. He was standing right over top of the drain when he slashed his own throat."
Rerem froze, feeling only the tiny water droplets hitting his face. Nash had killed himself, just like Seline and Koss, all to prevent them being tortured into giving information. The dead don't speak. But Seline and Koss had managed to send him messages anyway, through their deaths, through their blood. And Nash had sacrificed himself to save Nyixa's life, sending her back to Rerem so they could try to get the datafiles to the Alliance.
"There was so much blood… so much blood."
Nyixa was clinging to him, fighting her memories of Nash's death, soothed by the only thing that gave her comfort – the rush of water, feeble though it was, and the idea that it could wash the horrors away. Rerem held her, unable to think of anything else he could do for her.
Let this pass, he prayed. He normally never prayed. He wasn't religious and didn't much see the point in gods, but if there was one – or several – he hoped that they could hear him. Please, just let this pass. He needed Nyixa to come back to her senses, otherwise he would have to leave her here. As much as he needed her help getting those datafiles to the Alliance, he could always improvise and work around her loss. The Empire's plans were what mattered here, more than either of their lives, but datafiles couldn't walk to Rebel leaders all on their own. If Nyixa caused them to be caught, then it would all be for nothing. Rerem knew that it would be better to abandon her and continue on his own if it heightened his chances of getting through alive. There were always other slicers among the Rebellion; one of them could probably crack the code and retrieve the datafiles.
But from the strange feeling in his stomach, Rerem imagined that part of his concern was because he really didn't want to leave Nyixa behind. He would if he had to, but he didn't. There was a time when he would have gone on by himself, but he had spent too much time working with this team to easily abandon their last player.
Nyixa slowly fell silent. "Why won't it go?" she whispered, holding up an arm to examine it. She had scoured herself clean, but in her mind she still had Nash's lifeblood between the cracks of her small scales and she would tear at her own skin until she thought it was gone.
Rerem carefully detached himself from her. Kneeling in front of her, he took out his vibroblade and slashed off a section of his shirt. Balling it up, it held it under the fine spray of water from the shower and then pressed it to Nyixa's skin. She watched through half-closed eyes as he gently cleaned her scaly arms, even though there was nothing left to clean.
"Just let it go," Rerem said softly. "It happened. Nash gave up his life so you could escape with those datafiles. You had no control over what happened to you. Let it go."
"Easier said then done."
Rerem gave her a small smile. He let the ball of cloth drop to the floor and made to stand up. Nyixa grabbed his hand.
"Thank you," she said.
Rerem caught her eye. The skin around it was slowly fading back to green.
"Don't mention it." He stood up and turned off the shower. He offered her his hand. "Shall we go?"
Nyixa clasped her hand around his and allowed him to help her up. "Yes," she said, letting go of his grasp so she could pull her hair back and knot it at the top of her head.
15 hours, 21 minutes.
Nyixa acted as if the incident in the locker room had never happened. With her skin tone returned to green, she had recovered her icy attitude and had locked away her memories of Nash's death, never to think about them again. With that decision, she had found new strength and was the one pushing the pace as they raced through the twisted corridors of the underground. She was fully committed to getting away from their pursuers and finding a way to send the wretched datafiles to the Alliance.
And so they ran, twisting their way through the labyrinth passages of the building, trying to find their way back up to where there was light. They couldn't keep running forever; they needed to find a safe place to rest, get some food and regroup. They weren't invincible and they would not last forever. It was very simple: two people with little remaining stamina could not face down a squad of Imperial agents, no matter how well they strategized. In most circumstances, numbers won the battle, and this would be one of those times if they were caught. They could only hope that if they were caught, Vader wasn't among the troops.
With his promise to hunt them down, that wasn't likely. Even if he wasn't there, the Imperial terror either would be waiting for them, or wouldn't be far behind his agents.
The facility with the lockers led into an underground maze of stairwells and corridors that climbed up. The elevators were all defunct, causing much cursing from both of them. Rerem needed to regain his bearings; he wasn't sure where he was in the district. But this was a commercial sector and if they were lucky, they might be able to highjack a speeder and find somewhere to hide out for a few hours. They were both exhausted to the point where their bodies could drop, but fear and anxiety pushed them on. Rerem was used to chasing people; he hadn't been on the hunted end of the line for a very long time. The adrenaline rush was soured completely by the fact that he would feel a blaster barrel between the eyes or, worse, a lightsaber in the chest if they stopped.
Up they went, flying along the stairwell. As they went higher, windows began to appear along the stairs, letting in the light. In their black clothing, both Rerem and Nyixa became dark shadows on the walls.
Rerem slowed and came to a halt, one hand on the banister. His sides were aching, the muscles in his legs refusing to work. "Do you think there's an elevator somewhere around here?"
Nyixa shrugged. "Maybe, but I don't see any exits from these stairs. It's not like we could get it working even if there was one."
Voices echoed down from somewhere above them. Rerem's head snapped back and he looked up the stairwell.
"Oh, kriff."
"What?"
"They're above us."
Nyixa ran her tongue over her lips as she looked down into the dark pit they had just ascended from. There were the echoes of footsteps marching upwards out of the depths. "I think they're below, too."
"Maybe it's both." Rerem forced himself to control his breathing; he was still panting from the exertion of running. He exchanged looks with Nyixa – if stormtroopers were coming at them from both directions, the probability of them getting out this alive was not good.
"Hell, they're persistent," Nyixa said. "Up we go, then." She moved past him, flinging herself up the stairs. Rerem stayed where he was; he was too tired to follow. "Aren't you coming?"
Rerem pulled out his blaster. "Yeah. One moment." He crossed the landing they were on and peered out the window. If he was lucky – if he was very, very lucky – there might just be a way for them to exit this stairwell without fighting their way past a squad of stormtroopers. He pressed himself against the window to see as far as he could in all directions. There was nothing they could utilize –
"Wait. Nyixa!"
She sped back down the steps and went to his side. "What do you see?"
"It depends on how high you can jump – and how strong your arms are."
She pursed her lips. "I think I can manage anything at this point – anything to get away from the busy sithspawn."
"Do you see the thing that's right above the window?"
"Yeah."
Rerem grinned. "That's our ticket out of here. Stand back."
"Rerem—!"
He shoved her aside, pointed his blaster and fired. The window blasted apart, shattering glass all over the landing. The sound reverberated up and down the stairwell, causing shouting above and below – and a rush of booted feet speeding toward them.
"Go!"
Rerem's grip tightened on his blaster as he backed against the broken window, his boots crunching on the glass. Nyixa flung herself onto its ledge and carefully straightened up so that she was standing outside, balancing on the window. Placing her hands on the outside of the building, she steadied herself just long enough to observe the deep drop to the world below if she should fall.
"If this doesn't work," she said, "promise me that you'll make it out of here, and not go via the window!"
"Nyixa, this is gonna work, trust me! I've done enough window escapes in my time—"
"Rerem!"
He glanced back at her. He was expecting one of her cold-eyed listen-to-me looks, but instead he saw a fleeting smile.
"Promise me," she said, her voice very low, very sensual.
Was he just imagining it? Or was she using her pheromones on him? Why would she bother to do that for such a small thing?
"Rerem!" she said sharply.
His voice caught in his throat. He couldn't speak, so he nodded.
Satisfied, Nyixa turned back to the operation at hand. She stared at her target, took a deep breath – and leapt. She shot off the window ledge and caught hold of the base of the catwalk that was perched above them. Rerem listened to her climb, blaster moving between the stairs leading up and the stairs leading down, waiting for any signs of their pursuers. The racket they were making on the metal stairs meant that they were approaching quickly.
Clang.
"Nyixa?" He dropped his defensive stance and threw himself partially out the window. Looking up, he saw Nyixa dangling from the catwalk above, her knuckles turned white from the effort of keeping herself from falling.
"I'm fine!" she called back, wincing from the pain in her arms. "My boot caught and I fell back."
"Can you make it up?"
"Just give me a second!" she snapped. Clenching her teeth, she redoubled her efforts. It was slow, excruciating work, but she managed to swing one leg over the edge of the catwalk; from there she pulled herself up and collapsed on her front, breathing heavily.
Rerem grinned. "Brilliant."
A blaster bolt flew into the wall by the window, narrowly missing his ear. Sparks from the blast's impact flew in his eyes as Rerem turned around and fired back up the stairs; a stormtrooper fell with a yelp, clattering down the steps in a heap. Stowing his blaster away, Rerem hurriedly balanced himself on the window ledge, preparing himself to do the same feat that Nyixa had just done.
Nyixa's expression was reddening with worry. She peered over the ledge at Rerem, and disappeared. A moment later, she threw something long and thin down to him. He pressed a hand against the outside wall to steady himself and caught it with the other.
"A cable?"
"Oh, shut up and just use it!" Nyixa shouted, securing the cable at her end.
Rerem looped it around himself for support and leapt, catching hold of the base of the catwalk. The muscles in his arms protested fiercely, and he gasped out with pain. Below, blaster bolts shot through the window. Rerem dangled in the air, making sure to keep his feet out of harms way while Nyixa searched for the control mechanisms, cursing loudly.
Rerem tried to swing himself up, but one foot got caught in the wrong place and fell free. He tumbled back, his weight threatening to drag him down. His arms trembled with the effort of hanging on. With his limbs painfully protesting, he knew he would let go any moment, try though he might to hold on.
"Just give me one more kriffing second!" Nyixa yelled. "Don't you go trying anything! Ah!" She found what she was looking for and slammed her hand down on the control mechanism.
Rerem flew upwards and banged into the catwalk. He yelped with pain. Nyixa shut off the controls and rushed to release him from the cable.
"Are you all right?" she asked, helping him up.
"No," he snapped. "Sure. Whatever." He looked down – the cable had sliced through his clothing and cut into his skin. It wasn't a deep or dangerous injury, but it stung badly. Rerem stumbled away, one hand pressed to his side, and made his way across the catwalk. It trembled and swayed in the night wind and from the their combined weight. From the looks of it, it had been constructed in an attempt to renovate the building, but had been abandoned several years ago. They could only hope that it wouldn't collapse on them.
Out of the shattered window behind them, they could hear the shouts of their pursuers discussing where to go.
Rerem glanced at Nyixa. "That was lucky. Thank you."
"Lucky you saw this thing in the first place."
"Lucky you found the cable."
"Lucky this thing hasn't collapsed yet," Nyixa said coolly.
They stared at each other, their lips twitching, daring each other to be the person who laughed first. Rerem looked away.
"Luck's what keeps all of us alive these days," he said and clambered over the old construction support system without further word. It lead far across the building and headed up several flights towards a newer building. If he squinted, Rerem could see launch pads glittering on the sides of the new building. That was their target.
Though they knew the squads couldn't be too far behind, they heard no more from their hunters. By the time Rerem and Nyixa reached the new building, they assumed that the Imperials were still running up and down staircases, trying to find a way to the outside of the building. Sometimes numbers were a disadvantage; it made manoeuvring much more difficult.
There was a small gap between the last catwalk and the side of the new building. Rerem shattered a window with his blaster, setting of alarms in the process, and he and Nyixa made the leap across a two foot gap that plummeted down, down, down into Coruscant's deep pit.
Neither of them looked down as they jumped.
The building appeared to be an office for some small-time corporation Rerem had never heard of. There was a grand total of one worker in the room when he blasted the window – a pale pink-haired human woman drinking copious amounts of stimcaf to stay awake. She shrieked when the window broke and shattered glass all over her office floor. She screamed even louder when two humanoids leapt through and ran for the exit, one of them stealing her stimcaf right out of her hand.
Rerem needed the burst of energy stimcaf temporarily provided. He could feel his eyes fighting to close. As he glanced at the time on the chrono in the corridor outside, he realized that he had more or less been awake for over twenty-four hours straight, and most of that time had been spent being chased.
Alarms wailed in the building, but their security was slow. Rerem and Nyixa charged into the elevator. If this corporation had really been high-class, then their elevator systems would have stopped working.
This one worked.
"Lucky again," Rerem muttered under his breath. He leaned against the elevator wall as they zoomed upwards. They didn't have to take the stairs.
The doors burst open and they tumbled out onto a launch pad. There were several speeders kept there, all of a medium-class, nothing too expensive. They could hear shouts and blaster fire as they clambered into the closest one and sealed themselves inside the cockpit. The shouts seemed very distant to Rerem; he didn't feel like he should worry about some low-class security guys from a kriffed up security system that thankfully didn't have the decency to shut down its elevator system when the alarms went off. He vaguely registered that it was probably strange to be complaining about their lack of effectiveness.
The speeder also had a spare set of keys hidden away in a compartment. They were lucky again.
Nyixa was flying; Rerem was too exhausted now to think straight, or to keep his eyes on the traffic ways. After the disaster of their last flying episode, he didn't really want to fly. Their speeder zoomed off into the night, leaving behind some very exasperated security guards.
"Dumb luck," he murmured, leaning his head against the glass. "A survivor's best friend. I swear we should've died tonight."
"Don't push it," Nyixa warned. "I don't want this luck to end right now. I'm more than happy to let it continue saving our hides."
"Hm." Rerem rubbed his forehead. "Nyixa, where are you flying?"
"In circles – where do you think I'm flying?"
"Kriff, okay, okay." He groaned as he felt the sting of the wound in his side. "We need to get back to the lower levels."
Nyixa stiffened. "Please tell me you're kidding."
"I'm not."
"Okay." She forcibly relaxed her hands on the controls. "Please tell me you want a different sector, at least. Possibly one very far from here."
"I am."
"Good. Where?"
"The Crimson Corridor. I have a favour to pick with an old friend."
Nyixa let out an exasperated sigh. "You don't want to go see Marxes, do you?"
"I do. He's not that bad, he has no love for the poisoners. He could help us—"
"He shot you last time."
"So?"
Nyixa's grip tightened on the controls. "Let me repeat this for you," she said. "He shot you last time. Do you really want to trust him?"
"We've got no choice," Rerem said.
"Why can't we go to Dreis?"
"That's the very last thing we can do. I tried alerting him earlier, but I couldn't. My guess is that he knows what's going on, what with Seline and Koss' murders all over the HoloNet. We are not leading Vader and other noxious poison to one of our most important Intel agents on the planet." He paused. "If we can cut a deal with Marxes, he can get us off planet before the poisoners know where we've gotten to. He's our best shot – pun not intended."
Nyixa glared at him, unimpressed, but she changed their flight path. "I hate the schutta."
"So do I. Well… yeah, I hate him, he's a rotten sithspawn, but like I said, we've got not choice."
"I could slap you right now."
"Won't work." Rerem smiled grimly. "I've had all my sense knocked out of me already."
"I had no idea. By the way, I want my datapad back."
Rerem yawned and tossed the little black object to her. "I'm knackered."
"You can sleep in the speeder, you know."
"Don't think that didn't occur to me."
And sleep he did – but not for long.