OK so maybe the update wasn't quite as soon as I'd hoped, but it's here now!
DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN STAR WARS. I do own Rayn Tarwynn and other OC's.
(Rayn Tarwynn)
"How far away is Lavardina?" Obiwan asked me.
"We'll be there by tomorrow." I replied.
Obiwan sighed before whispering, "What if we don't have another day?"
Silence enveloped the bridge of our ship. What if we didn't have another day? Who knows…Anakin could've died. He could've died before we even found the mist on Shakuvy. We had no way of knowing. For all we knew, we could just be going to break into a Separatist base to find a corpse…
The silence was broken by Cody – Obiwan's clone commander – walking into the bridge.
"Yes, Cody?" Obiwan asked.
"My men and I are going to get some sleep before we reach Lavardina." Cody said.
Obiwan nodded. "Go ahead."
Cody nodded and left to join the other four clones we had brought with us.
"Do you think we really have a chance at actually getting Anakin out?" I asked quietly.
"Possibly. Us and four clones, we could stand a chance, but we won't really be able to add up the odds until we see the base." Obiwan explained. "Besides, since when do odds bother you?"
I smiled at that comment, but it fell as I answered. "Since they determine Anakin's fate."
Obiwan sighed, giving me a sympathetic smile. "Look, I don't know what the odds are. Really, I doubt we'll even know the odds until we're in the middle of that base and something probably goes wrong. But the one thing I do know is that we will get Anakin out of there. Whether it be dead or alive, he will arrive at Coruscant."
(Bodarti Romney)
I was looking over the data of the most recent tests on the liquid version of the life-toxin.
Time of procedure: 08:40:27
Dosage: 2.5 cc injected into water source
Specimen: Rat
Time of ingestion: 08:50:52
Time of death: 08:55:10
Five minutes. It took the rat five minutes to die after it drank the contaminated water. If it takes a rat five minutes to die, how long would it take a human to die?
"Shakira!" I called for the witch.
"Not here, sir." A nearby soldier told me.
"Where is she?" I asked him.
"With the Jedi." He responded.
I walked over to him. "When she's done, I want her to oversee another test of the liquid form."
"A-Another, sir?" The guard stuttered.
I'll admit, we had run quite a few tests, but this one was different.
"Yes. Another. Only this time, I want you to use a guard." I explained to him. I wanted to know just how long it took the life to work on a human.
The guard's eyes got slightly larger, but he remained silent.
"Problem, soldier?" I asked him curtly with a raised eyebrow.
He shook his head. "N-No sir."
"Good." I stated before starting to walk away. As I grabbed my clipboard to leave for my quarters, I turned back to the guard. "Oh, and soldier-" The guard looked back at me for orders. "- I want you to be the test subject."
(Anakin Skywalker)
Hell. The only word that could possibly describe my life. A living, breathing, deadly hell.
Shakira had just started another experiment. The pain hadn't come yet, but I was still bracing myself for it.
The blood had started to trickle out of Shakira's closed fists as she continued to chant. Most people would be horrified if they saw blood continuing to flow from the fists of an old lady, but to me it had become a familiar sight. My nose had almost become accustomed to the smell of my own blood and I no longer was in a state of shock if I saw it covering Shakira's hands and my chest. It was my life now. But how long would that last?
Shakira opened up her hands and raised one to my chest, right over my heart, just like she'd done many times before.
There was a slight tugging feeling in my chest as Shakira brought her hand back to her lap and continued to chant. The tugging soon became sharp, jabbing pains to my heart. Then the real pain started.
The golden mist – my life – started to flow out of my chest and it felt like someone had started to slowly slide a dagger into my heart. I cried out and gritted my teeth. When I first came to this hellhole, I never wanted to let Shakira hear my pain. But now…I didn't care. Trying to hold it in hurt worse, and if I could do anything to relieve some pain, any pain at all, I would do it.
"Kachi!" Shakira yelled and even more mist flew out of my chest, making the ball of mist in Shakira's hands larger.
I screamed as it felt like someone had pulled out the dagger and plunged a burning rod right into my heart and started to twist it back and forth, slowly taking my life from me.
As Shakira continued to coax the life out of me, I began to lose my strength quickly. My knees began to tremble and could no longer hold up my own weight. They soon buckled underneath me, but the two guards holding my arms – tightly, might I add – kept me mostly upright.
After what seemed like hours, Shakira yelled, "Enough!"
The mist stopped abruptly and the guards let go of me, but the haunting ghost of pain still remained in my chest. I opened my eyes to see Shakira's large, swirling orb of life in both her hands. Since I'd gotten here, she'd started to slowly take more and more of my life during each experiment. It was almost like if someone was building up a tolerance to a poison, but this was the opposite. A much more painful and lethal opposite.
Shakira placed the orb into a black box and stood up. "That will do for today, Skywalker."
The guards then dragged me back to the cursed pole and handcuffed my hands behind my back and around it.
Then I was all alone, left to try to get rid of the lingering pain in my chest and feel the blood on my chest start to slowly dry until it became an uncomfortable, hard, flaky piece of my own skin.
I don't even know how long I had been in this cell, but by now I had lost any faith in anyone finding me. After all, what did they have to go on? My transmission before I disappeared? They didn't even have my coordinates of where I disappeared.
At this point, I had accepted the fact that I was most likely going to die in this cell. Whether it be by the beatings or Shakira's experiments, one way or another, my life was coming to an end. I could feel it. Every day I got weaker, and I hardly ever had time to actually let my body recover.
Even if I did get my strength back, there was no way I could possibly escape on my own. The only way I could get out would be if someone came to rescue me, and the Council wouldn't send any Jedi out for me. It was too risky for them, especially Mace Windu. He would vote to leave me no matter what the circumstances. Most of the other Council members would probably agree this time around. Coming to find me would be too risky.
Let's face it. The Council had left me to die.
(Bodarti Romney)
It had been a day since I'd seen the results for the rat and the liquid life-toxin.
I was back in the experimental room, looking over some new possible designs for bomb structures.
Shakira walked over to stand by my right. "Do you need any help?"
"How are the pumps for the liquid toxin going?" I asked her.
"They're being manufactured as we speak." She responded. "They are mobile and will be able to pump as much life as a bomb can hold into any water source in a maximum of one hour."
I nodded and smiled. "Good. And the human test?"
Shakira's lips twitched into a resemblance of a smile. "The time from consumption to death was ten minutes."
"Excellent. When will the soonest pump be available?" I asked her.
"There's already one ready for use." Shakira told me.
"Good. I want it loaded and ready by tonight."
(Obiwan Kenobi)
We were coming up to Lavardina. I looked down at the rock ground below us and – as much as I hate to say it – I let my hopes get up. If this was really where Anakin was being held, we could save him. I didn't really want to get my hopes up too much, but I couldn't help it. I knew that it was a very good possibility that Anakin was already dead, but I wasn't ready to admit defeat until I saw his lifeless body with my own two eyes.
"Rayn, start running a scan on the planet." I instructed her.
She nodded and began to start a scan over the planet surface, looking for any signs of life. And on this Force-forsaken planet, life meant finding Anakin.
After ten painstakingly slow minutes, the scan finished.
I watched Rayn's face carefully as she looked over the results of the scan.
Her face was emotionless for about two minutes until her eyebrows knit together. "I don't understand." She whispered.
"What?" I asked, getting up to stand over her shoulder and look over the results.
"There's no sign of life on this planet." She told me as I finished looking at the scan.
Nothing. There was no life on this planet. That meant that there was no Anakin on this planet.
"We're not in the right place. Anakin's not being kept here."
I know it's kind of short and pretty uneventful, but I should have the next chapter up fairly soon!
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