AN: Happy Monday and welcome back. It's been quite a ride so far. With last chapter this series passed the quarter million word mark, and Wednesday marks the 1-year anniversary since I posted the Prologue. Thank you for sticking around for that long, whether you just read through what all was posted or if you've been here since the beginning. More importantly, sorry for the cliff hanger & here's the story
.***.***.***.***.
For a long and terrible second, Lori couldn't move.
Of all the things she expected to return to, Armitage's unmoving body sprawled across the floor of the bridge wasn't one. The details of the room escaped her completely, as her sight was locked in place. The bridge could have been howling with commotion, and she never would have heard it over the blood rushing in her ears and her own thundering pulse.
She had asked him not to do anything dangerous. She'd begged for the first time in her life that he would be careful, that he would stop it with his near brushes with death. And here he was, a fresh wound at the center of his chest.
Lori didn't know when she had taken a step, but she was suddenly looking straight down at Armitage. He had a bandage on is leg, slightly stained by some wound that he must not have had treated. Lori only distantly noticed it because of how much the white cloth stood out against his black uniform. She would have disregarded the inconsequential thing completely if she hadn't noticed the small red stain on the cloth slowly growing.
He's still bleeding. Her thoughts were made sluggish by the shocking scene.
Lori's mind was slowly coming to terms with what she saw. She'd seen enough corpses in her time to know that they bleed slowly. And when they did, the blood flowed down, not up and through a bandage.
Biting a shuddering breath, she made herself look down at Armitage. The wound on his chest had been cauterized by the plasma he'd been shot with. She hoped that the burns might help more than hurt as she took a deep breath.
"Trooper," she called to one of the guards in the room, desperately trying not to let her voice crack, "Pick him up. You, get that cane. Follow me."
She directed a handful of stormtroopers as she forced down waves of nausea and fear and dread.
Keep it together. Keep it together! She all but yelled at herself as two white armored soldiers roughly pulled at Armitage.
Lori knew that she had been a professional liar for most of her life. If all those years had been for anything, then they had been practice for this moment. Crushing down panic. Holding back a confused and shocked reaction, Lori tried to pull her focus away from the careless troopers and came up with a plan.
If Armitage wasn't dead already, then he was seconds away it. Taking the troopers to the freighter was a non-option that led to far more problems that it created.
What do I do? What do I do!? Lori turned to the hall, the troopers following behind with Armitage awkwardly cradled between them. A third trotted along, having scooped the dropped cane off the floor.
Three armed guards. Can't fight them. Can't run. Lori kept tally of her surroundings, the impossibility of the situation closing in around her like a noose around the neck.
"Follow me," she said to no one in particular, hoping that a walk would buy her time to come up with a plan.
There is no time! A single resounding thought cut the others away.
Her hand had begun to shake, Lori griped it into a fist that she hoped no one notice. As she ventured away from the bridge, they began to slowly encounter other officers in the hall. Most did a surprised double take before backing away, hurrying off, or muttering to any other nearby officer.
Lori could just make out the questions they whispered to each other.
"Is he dead?"
"How?"
Lori tried to shut them out. Tried to ignore their questioning looks, and tried even harder to not see a few looks of satisfaction that came from their thinking Armitage was dead. But they seemed to grow louder, bolder as she ventured further through the ship.
"…injured?
"Looks like it."
"…just come from the medical bay?"
Though she tried to keep their words at bay, one comment stuck out to her.
The med-bay. But the troopers… she tried to think of what to tell them as she finally decided on a destination.
"He should be put in a morgue." She said quietly, not really sure if she were thinking of the lie she would tell or trying to convince the troopers. Only barely realizing that she was speaking out loud, Lori tried to go on with some faked confidence, "the supreme leader might want to see the body. Follow along."
While there were small morgues tucked away in select med-bays, they were rarely used. Stormtroopers weren't given funerals, with their remains usually being lost in whatever battle took their lives. Officers were typically kept out of harm's way, being cloistered away on the bridge, or in interior rooms that were unlikely to be invaded.
The fact that they existed at all had easily slipped Lori's panic laden mind.
The troopers said nothing to the major's explanation. Thinking that nothing was wrong beyond the fact that Hux had been a spy, they were only concerned with returning to their positions before being able to end their work for the day.
To Lori, their journey to the nearest medical bay felt like it took years. When they did finally arrive, the two troopers carrying Armitage unceremoniously plopped him down on a mobile stretcher. The trooper with the cane sheepishly leaning it against a wall.
"You're dismissed." Lori tried not to wince at the heavy thud that came from Armitage's landing on the bed.
"Ma'am, should we fetch the mortician?" The lead trooper asked.
"I'll be handling that." Lori answer quickly. In part to get the conversation over, and in part because of her nerves. Knowing she looked rattled, Lori tried to smooth over the situation, "I'm the one tasked with seeing to the traitors body. I will make the arrangements from here. You're dismissed."
The troopers didn't need to be told again, being more than a little relieved that they weren't being asked to do even more work. Not in any particular rush, the three of them wandered from the room.
Lori tried not to stare as she watched them disappear around a corner. The door they had entered through was some ten feet out of view, and she listened intently for the characteristic whoosh of it opening and then shutting.
As soon as she did, she fervently twisted to face Armitage.
Planting one hand on his far shoulder, she shook him slightly while desperately feeling at his neck for a pulse.
"Armie, wake up. Please, please don't be-"
She could bring herself to finish the sentence, afraid that saying it might make the moment too real. Abandoning her failed attempt to wake him up, unsure if he was even still alive, Lori jerked her head up, searching the shelves for anything that might be useful.
Med kits were neatly stored away, ready to be grabbed in case of emergency. Yanking one off the shelves and flinging it open, Lori riffled through the thing. Bacta patches, stem packs. Antiseptic and burn kits, she knew there had to be something in there that might save him.
But she also knew she didn't have a clue how to use any of it.
Her hands had begun to shake to the point that she could barely read the label of the bottles she picked up. Though she only spent a second going through the little box, it felt like decades until she found an adrenaline stim.
Again reaching a shaking hand out, Lori couldn't find a pulse. Hoping that she was making the right decision, she didn't hesitate before slamming the stim down. The vial's exposed needle bit through layers of uniform before releasing its contents straight into Armitage's bloodstream.
For a sickeningly long second, nothing happened.
Suddenly, a sharp jerk snapped through Armitage's limp body. Tensing from the sudden influx of adrenaline, the muscles along his arms and legs pulled tight before going slack once again.
Seeing him move at least, Lori hoped that this might be enough to save him until he was truly safe.
Throwing the opened medical kit into the stretcher and then sweeping more off of a shelf and tossing them into the bed as well, Lori planned her next move.
The troopers are gone, we have to leave. She only had a half idea of what to do as she pulled the stretcher from its place. The repulsorlifts on the side of the mobile bed protested, never having been activated before this point.
On her way out of the room, Lori tossed the cane into the bed as well, mostly for fear that someone might discover that she had brought Hux here, only to ransack the medical supplies and flee rather than taking him to the morgue.
Stepping into the hall, her pulse seemed to thunder with adrenaline. Impossibly, it felt as if her heart had stopped from sheer fright at the same time. The hall had been largely abandoned when she's traveled down it with the troopers. Now it was mercifully empty, though she didn't trust it to stay that way for long.
Trying her best to run while dragging the sluggish stretcher behind her, Lori tried to be quiet as she traveled to the nearest turbolift.
It was the same one that she had used to come up from the hangar. It must have been used in the short time she was away, because she had to wait for a torturous half minute before the doors whooshed open in front of her. In that time, she must have looked over her shoulder a thousand times. She must have checked for a pulse a hundred times, each of them to no avail.
Trying desperately to hold onto hope, Lori jumped at the sudden arrival of the lift before rushing inside. It was empty, for now.
Not wanting to take any chances at being discovered, she fished around her pocket for the code cylinder she had taken out of Armitage's coat. Clinging to the hope that no one had revoked his credentials yet, she jammed the thing into the turbolift's command panel before overriding its automated routing computer. In just a few short clicks, she insured that it wouldn't stop anywhere besides her destination.
Having a short moment away from the fear of being discovered, Lori once again turned to look at Armitage.
He seemed less deathly pale. She took it as a sign that he was alive enough for his blood to be flowing.
"Armie," she shook at a shoulder, "Please wake up. Please?" her last word came out choked, and all of the panic that she had just barely been holding back threatened to beat down the walls she had put up around it. "Please!?"
The lift slowed, a small mechanical beep signaling that the door was about to open.
Wiping at a tear that she hadn't even noticed come out, Lori shook herself before wrapping her hand around the side of the stretcher once again.
She was already moving as the door slid open.
The journey seemed longer than she remembered it, warped by her own twisting perceptions. After what could have been seconds or hours, Lori was only a turn away from the hangars entrance. Rounding a corner into a long hall, her turn towards the hangar made a T intersection with the path she was on.
Picking up speed, Lori barely controlled a wild flail to the side that came as an involuntary reaction from hearing the sounds of troopers from the opposite end of the hall. Pulse fluttering and mind not even considering the idea of stopping to explain her actions to the troopers, Lori tried to double her already quickened pace. Just as she came to the intersection, the first white-armored trooper stepped into the far side of the main hall.
Whipping around the corner as fast as the unwieldy stretcher would allow, Lori was just able to make out a startled gesture and more troopers coming around the corner.
Racing across the open hangar, Lori heard a garbled shout come from one of the troopers. Knowing that it must have been a command to stop, she urged herself to run on.
Half way to the freighter, a searing bolt of plasma whizzed past her and out of the magnetic field separating them from the void of space. Spurred on by a fresh wave of terror, Lori forced herself onward.
Reaching the freighter, she groaned at the effort it took to change the stretche's direction. Nearly taken off her feet by the unwieldy thing's momentum, Lori fought not to fall on her way up the loading ramp.
Another volley of blaster fire streaked through the hanger, one of the bolts hitting the side of the stretcher and destroying the repulsorlift there
"No!" Lori heard herself saying before yanking the machine upward.
Now just barley crawling over the freighter floor, Lori scrambled to her feet, wild eyes just registering the fact that Mitaka stood in the dim ship, Ardis clinging to his leg.
"What in-"
"Get us out of here!" she shouted through the hail of blaster fire; her hand already slammed down on the ramp controls.
The ship groaned as the metal ramp receded far too slowly. The former lieutenant seemed to move just as slowly to Lori, disappearing to the front of the ship just as the freighter's doors closed.
Ardis had been left behind, teetering to the side before softly falling over. Confused and shaken from the screaming and blaster fire, the infant began letting out her own distressed cries.
Torn between Ardis and Armitage, Lori desperately looked into the stretcher. Finding Armitage with no fresh wounds, Lori breathlessly forced her way off of the floor.
Scooping up a now shrieking and sobbing Ardis, Lori didn't have the words to try and comfort the child. Still shaking with fear and adrenaline, Lori nearly toppled over. A second after she had regained her footing, she realized that the ship had pitched to the side.
When the sudden shaking of the ground didn't end in a terrible explosion, Lori let herself assume that Mitaka had gotten them off the Finalizer.
Fearful for Armitage's fate, fearful that they might be blown out of the sky by a TIE, fearful for so many things, Lori scampered back to Armitage.
Ardis cried, gasping for breath between each of the confused shrieks. Lori knew that the infant had no way of understanding what had just happened. She knew that Ardis was only crying because of the confusion around her.
She knew that the little girl would be fine.
She didn't know if she could say the same for Armitage.
Mind racing just as quickly as her pulse, Lori fought to quell her sputtering thoughts into something coherent.
She hadn't succeeded before everything came clattering to a halt.
A tired and confused voice came from behind Lori, barely audible beneath Ardis' slowly dampening cries.
"Lori?" Brixie spoke from the doorway to the rest of the freighter, "Wha… what's that?"
The room was dim. So caught in the commotion of their escape, neither Lori not Mitaka had clicked the lights on. The only light to see by came from behind Brixie, casting her stretched shadow into the room and across the middle of the stretcher.
Lori felt her face grow warm. Whether from tears, fear, or adrenaline, she had no idea. The storage room seemed to twist and distort around her as she heard Brixie walk across the room.
"What…" the medic's voice was more confused than anything. Unsure of anything, most of all unsure about what she was seeing, Brixie stood just behind Lori.
A man in black laid on a broken stretcher that overflowed with medical supplies. One bandaged wound on the leg, one fresh wound to the chest. Seeing the thing set all of Brixie's instincts on edge. The sudden need to move, to help the injured man made her ignore the uniform. Searching for more wounds, she got a good look at his face.
Her need to help was dashed as suddenly as it had appeared.
Lori hadn't turned to look at Brixie.
"Save him," Left empty from the drain of all the adrenaline that had pulled her through the day, Lori was hoarse as she fought to speak above a whisper, "Please. I-I'll explain later. Just…"
The medic looked up from her would-be patient. Lori was in a First Order uniform, just like the one she'd worn during her escape from the Supremacy. Brixie couldn't see her face, and was instead left to look at Ardis.
Clutching at her mother's shoulder, the infant's face was just visible in the crook of Lori's neck. Features just as red as her hair from the crying fit that was only just beginning to pass, Ardis sniffled and grasped for a better hold on Lori. Something heavy grew in the pit of Brixie's stomach as she looked between the infant, the man, and Lori's back.
The moment felt like it lasted forever before Lori shuddered, "Brixie, please."
Choosing to stay confused, Brixie took a step closer. Looking away from Ardis, she was left to stare down at one of the most infamous men in the galaxy.
Brixie's hands shook, her mind abuzz with questions and teetering on a deadly realization. Confused, nearly angry, and desperately trying not to listen to the urgent thoughts at the edge of her mind, the medic knelt at the side of the stretcher.
General Hux. The mad man that tore Hosnian Prime out of the sky. The ruthless tyrant that had chased the Resistance from D'Qar and nearly destroyed it on Crait. He'd firebombed planets, tortured prisoners, and subjugated entire civilizations when they didn't bow to the First Order.
He was a man that deserved nothing but the worst.
He was a man that would certainly die without Brixie's help.
At a loss for words, trying not to gasp for breath, Lori though she might collapse from the stress of the day as she watched Brixie's head dip in resignation.
The man before her was a monster, but Brixie couldn't just sit back and watch him die, "Turn on the light. I can't work in the dark."