Chapter 2
The newly awakened voice was almost a comfort to her in her solitary prison. Yet the prospect of a child terrified her beyond what she had imagined. There had been a time, during her first years of college, that she longed to have a family of her own; to get married, and to have children to love and nurture. It had been a dream that she never anticipated, but always wished for. But these were not the circumstances she had envisioned for the conception of her first child, a child who was not even Human.
This was what they wanted, to use her as a breeding tool. This was what everything had been about. For that reason she hated the creature taking form inside of her, hated it as much as she hated its father, if the demon could be called that.
Through the lethargy of despair came a sudden rush of rage. She threw herself at the wall where the door was hidden, pounding her fists against the immovable metal. She let go a wordless cry as she backed away from the wall, standing in the centre of the small room and looking up towards the juncture of wall and ceiling.
'I won't let you win!' she screamed at the walls. Tears burned in her eyes as she fought to ignore the tiny voice within her. 'I'll die first,' she yelled, her scream choked with sobs she would not let free. She waited for a response, anything, but nothing happened.
She had said those words before, knowing that it was a lie. Yet, as the days passed with no sense of her captors, she refused all forms of nourishment. Days turned to weeks, all of it passing in a blur to the barely conscious woman.
Her mind returned to a time she felt was only a dream. Her family before the accident. Her mother's tender smile. The way her brother would hold her in the nights when she was afraid. She remembered growing up in foster care. All the different schools she attended. The people who she touched and was touched by. And college, going to University. It had been her mother's dream, a dream her mother was never able to see fulfilled. Now she feared she would never complete it. Only a year left. One year and she would have been out in the world doing...something. But had it already been a year? It was impossible. Not more than a few months could have past, could it?
The small voice slowly faded into nothing as her own life-force began to diminish. Her body discharged the child's remains, but she was too weak to notice. Too tired to feel anything but the welcome warmth of slumber.
It was in this state that she was discovered, so close to the edge yet too far to fall. She was not gently revived as mechanical beings tended to her. They forced nourishment into her in whatever ways they could, handling her as callously as they themselves were. In only a few days time the master and his apprentice appeared and she began to wish that she had let the child live.
She was stronger by then, able to stand and move around again, though still lacking her former vitality. Too weak to fight the terror that gripped her by their mere presence. Too weak to push through the walls that confined her. Too weak to glare into the eyes of her captors. They did not speak a word to her or to eachother.
The demon's master stood by silently and watched as she relived her nightmare with no release. No end to the pain. No way to hide her humiliation. She had hoped they would kill her after what she had done. Her conscience demanded justice for her murderous suicide, but vain was any sort of hope. She began to view her circumstance as a punishment. While her body was ravaged from without, her heart and mind dueled for claim of her emotions. And when it was all over, she lay in a bloodied heap in the centre of the stony floor, teetering on the edge of consciousness, hating every part of herself as much as she hated the creature who did this to her.
'You're no better than him,' she whispered to herself, closing her eyes and rolling onto her side.
The cold air normally prevented her sleep. Yet, in the midst of her thoughts, sleep claimed her, and she forgot the sting of her wounds and the burning of her bare skin against the cold stone.
When she woke it was dark again. Black this time, as it was when she had first arrived. She shivered and sat up, her mind amazingly clear for the turmoil in her heart. She was afraid, afraid that she could possibly have conceived again, yes, but more than that was an unexplainable terror that drove her beyond what she was ready to do.
She found the tattered remains of her grandfather's coat were no longer on her, and fumbling around in the dark, she could not find it. Her hands gripped something coarse and heavy near the wall with the door, but when she lifted it to examine it, she found oversized, very thick pants and a simple tunic. Perhaps her captors had determined that they did not want her to freeze.
'That would be kind of them,' she said sardonically to herself, not believing that reasoning.
She did not understand, but right then, she really did not care either. She was cold, she was naked. Here were clothes. Once she was dressed she sat against the far wall and faced the closed door, trying to pierce the dark and find the outlines. The fabric of the clothes irritated her skin, some of it still boasting open wounds and raw patches. She tried not to think of what she looked like, or how she smelled, caked with blood and sweat.
For a time her mind blanked and she thought of nothing. It was a habit she had developed and it passed the time very quickly. She remembered nothing until the door suddenly opened to admit a robot carrying a small cup of gruel.
So she had been demoted to eating mush along with her new agony. Not any more, she thought as, without a plan, without hesitation, she rushed the robot and slammed it into the stone wall. Once outside the room she found herself in a long corridor, extending equally both ways. Without thinking, without doing anything, she turned left, trusting fate or chance to guide her steps.
She passed no one. No people. No robots. No apprentice, for which she was infinitely grateful. Still trusting an unknown force to guide her, she made it out of where she was being held. Her captors had assumed she would not make it out of her room, much less the maze of twisting corridors, or they would have posted a guard or locked the door. But she did not think of the possibilities as she burst out into more darkness.
The alley was filled with the hum of what sounded like an enormous city. The unrecognizable babbling of thousands of voices. The growl of a feline predator and the cry of its unknown prey. The blaring of wild music and screaming of engines. It was night wherever she was, which was both good and bad.
Cautiously she walked through the alley and into the main street. Or what passed as a street.
A small vehicle flew past her at eye level, too close to her for comfort. Dozens more zoomed on the same plane, or above and below, sometimes vertical. Hundreds of beings crammed into the narrow railed balconies that served as sidewalks. Beings, they were not human. Most of them. Nearly all of them. Several glanced quickly at her, standing wide eyed at the entrance to the dark alley. No one's gaze lingered long.
She shook her head and almost took a step backward into the alley before remembering what she was flying from. She began to panic. Trapped from behind by pure evil. Hedged from the front by an aggregation of alien creatures and flying cars. She looked around quickly, left and right, then took a few steps across the balcony and looked up. Up to the towering buildings which had no top. Then down. Down to a sea of fog and perhaps a bottomless maze. She lost control.
With a choked gasp she turned and fled. She was not thinking. She was not trusting. It was a different flight than the one only moments before. She ran in a straight line, pushing her way through groups of people, causing stumbling and curses to erupt from the creatures. She heard nothing. She saw nothing. Her breathing was fast and shallow as her reflexes tried to keep up with her racing blood and adrenaline rush.
Soon the crowds began to thin until there was almost no one apart from herself. And still she ran until her body began to give out under her. She continued on at a slower, stumbling pace, not looking as she approached the end of the balcony where it turned to a different direction. If she had been looking, she would have turned back.
As it was, she collided with one of two cloaked and hooded figures. The figure held onto her for a moment, just long enough for her to realize that something with a familiar power and familiar cloak had her in its hands.
Too weak to think coherently or quell the panic still pushing into her mind, she struggled and pulled away from the figure.
'I'm not going back!' she screamed as she amazingly broke free of the hold. She quickly backed away from the figure, only to back into the other, whom she had not even realized was there.
'We're not going to hurt you,' a softly accented voice said from beneath the deep hood of the figure she had fought with.
Not believing it, she elbowed the body behind her and turned to flee. She was trapped by the two, who had maneuvered her between them on the narrowing balcony.
Her legs gave out under her, and the figure behind her supported her by grabbing onto her arm. 'Please, let me go,' she begged, tears starting to fill her wide, dilated eyes.
Brushing the hood off his face, a older human revealed himself before her. 'Obi-Wan, let her go,' the man commanded, taking a step toward the terrified woman.
The one who held her released her slowly and she would have collapsed had not the man before her caught her. 'We're not going to harm you,' he reassured as the other figure had before.
She looked up at him for a moment, still to frightened to trust her feelings. The man saw as well as sensed her continued fear and spoke again.
'My name is Qui-Gon Jinn. This is my apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi.'
The woman looked quickly at the other figure who had since removed his hood, but her eyes were blinded by a single word: apprentice. She struggled weakly against Qui-Gon's hold on her, but he did not let go. She moaned an unintelligible plea as the young man called Obi-Wan approached her.
'Be still. We're not going to hurt you,' he repeated, his voice softer than before and soothing.
The young woman's eyes opened and she finally saw clearly that the apprentice was a near opposite of the creature who had taken her. She realized this, yet the memory of her trauma pushed her tighter into the body behind her.
'What's your name?' the apprentice asked, trying to ease more of her terror.
The young woman glanced away quickly. Her eyes flicked to the wall, then back to the young man's face several times before they halted on her bare and bloodied feet.
'Do you have a name?' Qui-Gon's deep voice probed farther when she did not respond.
'Christina,' she whispered.
