A/N: The world has become a dark place in recent days. Anxiety and fear seem to be the new currency of any given moment, and most of us feel powerless to protect ourselves or our loved ones. I hear that we're only at the beginning of a long, awful trek, and that we ought to prepare ourselves for worse yet to come. I'm not sure how to prepare myself for something that future generations will be reading about in their history books. Even so, I hope that in the grip of such times, you and I might take heart and respite in a galaxy far, far away, where light can always chase away the darkness, if only we are willing to carry it with us and act.

"Turn right," Anakin's voice spoke over the comm, "...now."

Padme did not question him. She turned right and leapt through the door even as it began to slide closed. Once through, she stopped to make sure Rex was behind her. The clone had to jump through the door to make it in time, and was picking himself up off the floor with a grunt.

"That was close," he griped, adjusting his hands on his blaster as he stood, "Anyone follow us?" he asked her, immediately moving to cover their flank.

"No," Anakin interrupted, "I locked the door. Just keep going straight."

"How long will that lock last?" Rex asked aloud, pointing his blaster around every open corridor as they passed.

"Long enough," Padme put in. "Let's go."

Rex was built for combat and all the hardships that a battlefield could offer, but even he was beginning to feel the cost of their sprint. He wiped sweat off his brow and tried not to let his vision grow confused by the flashing red lights that drowned the walls all around.

"This place is a damn labyrinth," he exclaimed, frustration fueled by fear. They'd had to take what Anakin had flippantly called 'a shortcut' to lose their pursuers, but Rex could not help but feel it'd taken them wildly off course.

"You're almost there," Anakin encouraged. If Rex didn't need to breathe so heavily, he would've found air to ask how the hell Anakin knew where, exactly, they were.

"Come on," Padme rallied, and began to jog faster ahead. "Stop now and we're bound to get shot."

He couldn't argue with her logic. He followed her, legs numb below him as they charged onward, blind save for the staticy voice of a Jedi apprentice all the way on the other side or—actually, Rex realized quite suddenly, he had no idea where Anakin was. Somewhere defensible, he hoped.

"Take your first right up here," Anakin said.

"Roger that," Rex heaved, following orders without hesitation. Just as they neared the junction, Rex's subconscious cataloged a passing thought that the flashing red lights in the hallway ahead seemed wrong, because they weren't actually flashing anymore.

"Chssk," Anakin exclaimed. They rounded the corner, and there was a Sith.

"You," snapped the Stone Woman, the red light making her hair appear aflame. Her iron gaze bore down on Padme. "You're far more trouble than you're worth." She advanced like a panther ready to pounce. Rex was transfixed by the firey hues of her eyes, and wondered if they were real.

Padme shot at her.

"Run!" Anakin pleaded. "Go back, go back!"

The Stone Woman was flicking her saber at the shots as if they were nothing but insects, her eyes never straying from her quarry. Rex raised his blaster and opened fire, but the hail of shots seemed to have no effect.

"She's got more coming in behind her," Anakin's voice cried through the blasterfire. "You'll be outmatched, you have to run!"

Between one shot and the next, a lightsaber split the air between Padme and Rex, and they both jumped back into a desperate defense, only to pause when they saw its shocking shade of blue.

"You heard Anakin," Obi-Wan was heaving for breath, and looked like he must've run across the entire mountain to get there. He glanced at Rex. The sweaty angles of his face reflected the reds and blues of the scene in dizzying flashes, but Rex managed to catch the look in his eye. It made him remember all the times, years ago, when Cody had told and retold the story of how he'd helped a Jedi apprentice pursue and kill a Sith, the second in a thousand years.

"I'll handle this." Obi-Wan's voice was not a claim, it was a command.

Rex glanced at Padme, came to a silent accord, turned, and ran.

They could hear Obi-Wan as they fled, speaking around heavy breaths in that irritatingly perfect accent of his: "I believe, madam, that your quarrel is with me."

If the Sith said anything in reply, Rex did not hear it, but he did hear the explosive volley of blows that followed. He ran faster.

"Back, back!" Ben shouted, barring his arm into Aola's stomach. A prison this small was no place for a saber fight. The Jedi stumbled back in a graceless tumble, Aola suddenly occupied by the task of not skewering her mentor in their haste. She didn't notice the arm shooting of the cell until it had wrapped around her throat and pulled her slamming back against the bars of the cell.

"Ben!" She shrieked a warning, and the arm yanked her tighter. She choked.

"Jedi," the arm's owner hissed into her ear. She tried to reach her sabers around to the creature, but there was no way to reach her attacker without hurting herself, too. The arm heaved her up higher, and she panicked, dropping one of her sabers to grasp at the arm, desperate to breathe. "You're the reason I'm here, you filthy Jedi," the voice told her, spittle tickling her cheek. "Your order, your council, they made me as much as they made you. And for that, you all will die,"

She tensed up her neck and fought to bring up her shoulders, fully expecting to fight against someone trying to snap her neck, but she was suddenly on the ground, and next to her, a severed arm. Above her, someone was screaming, and when she went to feel the wet spot on her shoulder to see if she'd been wounded, she realized the newly one-armed assailant had bled on her. She jumped back up to her feet, disgust and fear fueling her.

The prisoner with the red lightsaber had cut his way out of his cell and now stalked toward them with shivering, furious intent. Without looking, he used the saber to cut open the locks on each cell as he passed. One door fell open. Two. Three. Four.

"Run!" shouted the first prisoner, the one who'd begged for kyber. The armed prisoner had left him behind, alone left locked behind bars. "Run, now!"

"Go," Ben prodded Aola past the bloody arm and his wailing victim. Five. Six. "We'll have more space out there," he whispered.

"But my saber-" Aola couldn't even see where it'd fallen. Seven. The last lock fell open, and the prisoner came to a halt, physically simmering with madness as he glared at the Jedi. Suddenly, he let out a yell and flew toward them.

"Now, Ahsoka!" Ben gave her a Force-shove, and turned to face the madman.

Aola looked up from the dojo floor, dazed by Ben's shove, to see the blue and red sabers clashing in the darkness. She was suddenly reminded of the visions she'd had as a young girl, of the Sith who'd Ben killed. The saberstaffs had haunted her nightmares for months, then, but she hadn't seen these darksiders in her dreams or visions. She had no idea what they were capable of.

As Ben tussled with the one who was armed, other prisoners crept out of their cave, some looking lost, others starving. One of them looked at Aola, saw her violet blade, and his eyes lit with concentrated fury. He looked to her, to Ben, and then to the cabinets full of sabers within the dojo.

"No," Aola scrambled to get off the ground. "No, no-" Just as she was upright, she threw out her hand, drawing on all the strength she had, on her kyber, her saber, on herself, but there was no Force in this place to help her pull the cabinet off its moorings. The bolts in the feet held fast, and her new assailant took two sabers off the wall with no trouble at all. He ignited them both, and crossed them in an experimental 'X' as he advanced toward her. Another prisoner had already followed him to the cabinet of sabers, and leisurely picked on off the rack and gave an experimental swing.

"Force help me," Aola breathed, bouncing nervously into a defensive stance. She hadn't fought with one saber in years, and she'd never fought against a Sith at all.

Darkness and hatred wafted from the holocron that still hid in Ben's pocket, beckoning her to draw on its power. There was nothing else here. It wasn't her fault; she was a child of the Force, and the Force was not light alone, was it? She could not live without the Force, and it was no one's fault, really, that the only Force she had was from this holocron, was it? Surely the council would understand. Surely Ben would understand.

Keep them close, Ben had said of her sabers. She gripped the one remaining tight in her hand, clinging to the sliver of light for all it was worth. Her attacker charged, and Aola Tarkona became the third Jedi in a generation to engage with a darksider.

Most Jedi Ben knew had a visceral reaction upon seeing red lightsabers for the first time. There was something deeply upsetting about them, some inaudible frequency that made the hue seem less like light and more like blood. Ben himself had fought more than enough Sith to overcome this fear, but here, trapped in the thanatosine, he felt as though the color was bleeding into the air itself, choking all of them. These prisoners seemed used to it, some of them even seemed to thrive on it, but Ben felt as though he were suffocating slowly.

He blocked his opponent's blade and threw the man back hard, giving him just enough time to glance over his shoulder at Aola.

The knight was holding her own against two opponents, but she was absolutely terrified, Ben didn't need the Force to feel that. They could feel it, too, all of these prisoners, or Sith, or darksiders, or whatever the hell they were.

The one currently bringing a lightsaber down to bear over his head was a trained fighter; he left milliseconds to spare between Ben's block and certain death. The master parried and attacked on pure muscle memory. The Force was not with him here in this mountain hell, but two lifetimes of training pressed up through his muscles, keeping him alive.

Beyond the needs of the moment, Ben had no clue what these people were, where they came from, or why they were here. Not all of them were fighters. Some of them hung back in their cells, watching the frenzied fighting of their fellows from the darkness. Others had come out into the dojo, but had collapsed in paralyzed fear once the fighting began. Ben nearly tripped over one as he retreated under a volley of strikes. She was sitting against the wall, hands over her ears, rocking back and forth and crying. Ben blocked the red blade above him and shoved, his attacker shunted just long enough for Ben to breathe.

He heard Aola shout, and heard multiple sabers disengage. A smack, another.

"Aola!" His saber hummed too-loud in his ears as he kept the red saber at bay. Block, strike, parry. Sounds of a struggle behind him. Sounds of choking. Ben shoved his opponent away and looked back to where Aola ought to have been, but could not see her through the darkness. Another smack, a thud.

"Aola!" He shouted, more desperate.

"Your fight," hissed his opponent, slashing at him in rapid, eye-catching strokes, "is with me, Jedi."

Ben rushed to defend himself, no longer sure if it was his saber he heard buzzing in his ears, or his own frantic heartbeat. He heard a lightsaber ignite and hiss, but he could not see it. "Aola, get up," he shouted without looking. He could still hear someone choking; the lack of response from Aola told him that it was likely her. He parried the blows of the red lightsaber before him and found himself on the brink of hatred. He desperately fought against it. "Get up," he said again.

Like a shot from a blaster, someone sprinted out of the prison, a blinding violet lightsaber in their hand. They ran toward where Ben had heard Aola fall. The master was too caught up in his own fight to watch, but he could hear it: a new clash of sabers. Aola gasping and coughing. Lightsabers disengaging. A punch. Two. A groan, and another punch. Ben turned just in time to see the new attacker ignite one of Aola's sabers just long enough to slice the head off of one of the attackers and stab the second through the heart. The saber fell dark, and with it, the scene. Both bodies fell and landed with echoing thuds.

"Ben!" Aola yelled, voice raw and hoarse. Ben turned back just in time to catch his opponent's lurid red saber on his. It rode up near the hilt, and he nearly lost his hand.

"Enough!" he yelled, and shoved the man back. Parry, block, attack, bock, kick—he had this Sith right where he wanted him. He turned, kicked high, knocking the lightsaber out of the man's grasp. Ben barely caught the look of fear on the man's face before he slashed deep and hard against his neck and chest. He fell to the ground in a sizzling heap.

In the silence, all the breath escaped from Ben's lungs, leaving him alone with the horror he felt toward himself. He was too panicky, too fearful, too angry. This was not the Jedi way; this was not his way. He was not drawing on the dark, not yet, but it was right there, tempting, waiting for his fatigue to catch up with him.

"We have to get out of here," he said to Aola through the dark, voice cracking.

"You'd better hurry, masters," said an exhausted voice. A lightsaber split the dark; one of Aola's. In its light, Ben could make out the features of the first prisoner who'd reached out to him, who'd bypassed the Sith lightsaber to seek out the untarnished kyber within Ben's. Long, unkempt black hair framed a filthy face and a patchy beard, but behind the grime, the man's eyes were sane—afraid, but sane.

"They won't stay quiet for much longer." He used the saber to gesture toward the prisoners who'd remained cowering in their cells. "They want out of here as much as you; they're just willing kill you first to get there. Now that the others've failed, they'll try next. I can try to help you, but we have to hurry."

Anakin had only just realized that his ears were bleeding. He only noticed it at all because it tickled horribly, and he really, really, really wanted to scratch at it, but knew that if he moved his hands, everything would come crashing down.

He had the entire mountain in his grasp. At first, the power had been staggeringly intoxicating, not unlike the Alderaanian rum Obi-Wan had given him just days ago. But this wasn't a toxin that time or the Force could purge. This was raw, and ancient, and intricate, and no matter how addictive this sense of control was, Anakin knew he was slipping. It was like carrying something heavy on top of your head; if you kept your spine stacked under your skull just so, you could manage quite a heavy load, but the second you tipped your neck this way or that, you were bound to break something important. He could feel his mental strength fading. Setting down this load would not be unlike setting down a bomb he'd been holding over his head for an hour; everything was going to go to chssk, and it was going to happen fast.

"Okay." He licked his lips and tried to concentrate on Padme and Rex, not on his itchy ears or the immense pressure weighing down on his skull and spine. "Okay, you're nearly there. Keep going straight. There's some droids up ahead; I'll open the door right as you get there."

"Roger that."

Anakin appreciated Rex's military respect for protocol even over comm. It was a steady, reassuring thing in the midst of a mission that seemed to have descended quite quickly into madness.

"Go straight. The landing bay is just a few doors away."

The sound of approaching footsteps echoed down the hall. Not over the comm, but near Anakin.

No. His fingers tensed against the wall, and he scrunched his entire expression inward, trying to shut out the world so that he could focus. Not yet.

"There are bound to be droids in the hangar." His hearing was thick and watery from the blood. His own voice echoed in his bones. "Be careful." He could feel the footsteps coming closer.

Arbee One's computer arm whirred this way and that in a flurry of instructions. A moment later, blast doors slammed down over the two doors leading away from Anakin's position.

"We're through, there doesn't seem to be—chssk!" Rex shouted, and Anakin could hear a blaster shot over the comm. Then, much closer, another blaster shot, two, five.

"Damnit! Get this door open!" shouted someone on the other side of the blast doors. Anakin didn't know how many of them there were; he was too busy helping Padme and Rex escape.

"You're going to have to make a run for it," he told Rex, feeling his own fight or flight instincts bubbling to the surface.

"Go, go, go!" Rex shouted, waving Padme on as they crossed the hangar toward Panche's freighter. Padme was firing into the throng of security droids that had emerged to attack them, but Rex pushed her forward. "Leave them, there's no time—ah!" The soldier stopped short when a blaster bolt caught him square in the shoulder.

"Rex!"

"Go!" he shouted when Padme stopped just short of the ramp. He shot a droid that had begun to take aim. "I'm fine, get inside the-"

"Rex, look out!" Padme shouted, too late. A tall battle-class droid had its blaster aimed right at him, so dead-center that Rex could see all the way down its glowing barrel.

"Oh, for the love of-"

The droid fired, and Rex flinched, but the impact never came. He watched in confusion as the tall droid reared back, it's blaster arm flung wildly to one side. All at once, the droid fell under a barrage of shots coming from right over Rex's left shoulder. The clone looked up and around to see a beat up old astromech shooting electrical charges in rapid fire at the offending battle droid—a function Rex was almost certain was meant for repairing circuits, not assaulting other droids. The astromech screeched and careened down the ramp of the ship from whence it came, firing its makeship ammunition all the while.

Rex struggled to right himself, holding his wounded shoulder as he ran up the ramp while their attackers were distracted. "What in the hell is that thing?" he said only once he was safely in the ship.

"It's Panche's," Padme said, already priming the engines and starting the take off sequence. As the engines hummed to life, they could hear the clink of tons of kyber rattling the hold. "I thought it was for navigation, but…" They watched through the windscreen as the little droid advanced its rampage across the hangar, electrocuting any battle droids it came into contact with in a blitz of arcs. "Maybe he programmed it for defense, too."

"Well let's hope it can buy us some more time," Rex said, falling into the co-pilot's seat.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Padme said, eyeing the hangar's exit, which glittered electric magenta from the ray shield that encapsulated the mountain.

"Skywalker," Rex spoke into his comm, "we're in the ship, but we need this rayshield down."

"I don't care if you have to destroy the thing, get it open now," said the voice outside.

Anakin could feel his outstretched arm shaking.

"Skywalker, we're in the ship, but we need this rayshield lifted." Anakin's breath caught in his lungs. The rayshield, how could he have forgotten about the rayshield?

They're trapped. The apprentice's bones seemed to rattle. A sob broke out of him, taking him completely by surprise. He bit his lip hard to keep from crying.

"Padawan Skywalker?"

"Hang on," he choked, not sure where he would find the strength. "Just… just give me a second."

A sound echoed from behind the door, and Anakin did not have to wonder about what it was. For the briefest of moments, he thought that Obi-Wan had come back to defend his position, but then the lightsaber plunged into the blast door, and he could hear the sparks showering down as the blade sunk deep into the steel.

"Move faster," someone said from behind the door. Anakin begged himself to do the same, tears and blood streaming down his face.

Obi-Wan was breathing heavy, sweat tickling his face in a hundred places, but he watched his opponent with a laser focus that spoke volumes more than his body's fatigue.

Kamino had been over ten years ago. He'd not faced a Sith since then, and had never considered that he might have to face one again. And yet, presented with the opportunity, he found that something inside of him had always been preparing for the possibility. At his center, he felt an eerie calm wash over him, belying the true danger he knew he was in.

The Sith did not speak as they fought. She studied him as a strategist studies a battlemap, ready to find a solution and declare victory. She rained volley after volley down on him, fluttering through a dizzying display of Nimaan that made her saber and the red flashing klaxon lights melt together in a psychedelic haze. Obi-Wan deflected each blow in its turn, and she changed her tactics to match, fluttering between Nimaan, Soresu, Mikashi, and more frightening forms he'd never seen. She was testing him how a locksmith tests out a tumbler, preparing to undo him one breaking point at a time.

There was something about this Sith that seemed terribly familiar, but in the dizzying spectacle of staying alive, he didn't have the mental space to think about it. He dodged and ducked, and allowed her to drive their fight deeper and deeper into the mountain—so long as it meant they were further away from Rex and Padme.

Obi-Wan backed up even more, and found himself stepping from the narrow hallway into a large hall. It was hewn directly into the mountain, walls made of rough granite with veins of minerals and moisture sparkling on the walls. Halo lights high above illuminated the entire room in a disorienting and artificial hue. There were no klaxons or lights here, and when the Sith followed him into the room and the door slid behind, the mayhem of the world outside dimmed to a distant muffle.

"You think you're helping your friends, don't you, Kenobi?" The Sith advanced at an unhurried pace.

The use of his name made him hesitate for a fraction of a second, and it almost cost him his fingers. He said nothing, but the sense of familiarity returned. The light far above caught on the edges of her frizzed white hair. Suddenly, he could see her as clear as day, a decade younger, hands propped on hips, expression dismal as they stood together underground.

"You boys going to tell me what we're facing here?"

"Iris," Obi-Wan said. She'd been injured in the firefight on Eriadu; she'd been with OrbitSec, but she hadn't, either. She'd been a ghost, untraceable. For good reason, apparently.

"You still think that's my name?" she shot back, equal parts amused and angry. It was the first time the Sith had expressed more than a stone's worth of emotion, and the outburst made her more familiar, and more strange. "I'm disappointed; I would have thought your dear grandmaster would be a better tutor."

"You know master Yoda?" Obi-Wan shouldn't be indulging her, he knew that, but he couldn't help it.

"Yan Dooku," she corrected, baring her teeth in what could've been a smile or a threat. "Or has the old man finally died?" She lunged at him, and he met the Mikashi riposte with millimeters to spare, nearly flooring himself when the back of his bootheel caught on an uneven spot of ground.

"You were a Jedi," Obi-Wan realized aloud. "You knew him?"

"Of course I knew him," the Sith spat, eyes boring into Obi-Wan with hatred enough not for one man, but two. "He taught me almost everything I know. But apparently, he never got that far with you." Her next attack shot out from the blind spot of Obi-Wan's right eye. Her saber brushed his wrist, and Obi-Wan bit back a yell of surprise. She grinned.

He hissed through the pain and retreated. He realized quite suddenly that he'd only ever fought a Sith once before, and had only escaped with great loss. He felt his confidence waver.

Force help me, he thought, and fought for his life.

"There's a door, there." The prisoner pointed up. Ben followed his finger but in the limited light of the dojo's halo lamps, it was difficult to see anything.

"Where?"

"It's a hidden door in the rock, lowered by a… a switch, or a lever, or… or something, it has to be somewhere around here." He looked around in a mad whirl, desperate for any clue of escape. "They never let us see how they get it open."

"What?" Ben was perplexed. Who was this man?

"They always open this… this door when they let us out—it's what they use to motivate us into fighting," the man tried to explain, eyes darting up to watch his fellow prisoners still huddled by the cells. Some had gone to investigate their fallen cellmates. Others were eyeing the sabers still waiting in their racks. More than one, Aola could tell, was about ready to test their luck against the Jedi. "This place blocks the Force," the man said.

"So we'd noticed," Aola cut in, holding her saber out in front of her defensively as she surveyed the others.

"They open the door so we can feel the Force outside," their unlikely ally explained. "What would do to a starving man to make him do what you wanted?"

Ben spotted the distant crease in the thanatosine. It was far, far above, too far for Forceless Jedi to reach. "Promise him food," he said, a sinking feeling in his gut.

"Skywalker!" Rex was shouting at him from the other end of the line. "We need that thing down, now!"

I know, I know. Anakin felt like he was crumbling. He was searching desperately for the right crystal, the right signal, the exact corner of this labyrinth that held the key to their actual escape. The rayshield was here, somewhere, and Anakin knew that half an hour ago, even a few minutes ago, he would've been able to find it with no problem. But this was now, and now he felt like a diver who'd been underwater too long. His lungs burned, his face burned, all of him burned and he needed to surface, or he'd drown. He had to find it… he had to find it now.

The door caved in. RB-1 watched as armed guards poured in, led by a man holding a bleeding red saber. The droid was used to lightsabers; lightsabers were, in a sense, its specialty. It'd known what a lightsaber was before it's master had even gotten a hand on its circuits, and it was specially programmed to shoot around lightsabers.

The droid gave a shriek and charged, shooting the highest-power blasters its ion tanks would allow. The element of surprise allowed the droid to land a hit on the shoulder, the calf, the back of the hand.

"The kriff-"

"It's a droid-"

"Shoot it!"

The droid in question realized what was happening mere moments in advance, and had the presence of mind (or as close to a mind as a droid could get) to disengage its own memory banks to protect them. It turned in the air so that it's optical sensor faced its indisposed master, and then fired off every single blaster in its hull simultaneously.

A metallic thud hit the ground beside his leg, and Anakin could smell smoke. He could no longer hear Arbee whirring or chirping. He couldn't sense him, either.

"He's the one," someone said, but Anakin could not hear them.

They killed Arbee. The blood rushing in his ears was like a river, a torrent. There was something in it that pumped strength back into his limbs.

"Skywalker, do you copy?"

"He's the one controlling everything!"

They killed my droid; they just killed him. The pressure built from his head, his neck, flowing down through his right arm like hydraulics, or lightning, or something he'd never known.

"Grab him, we've got to-"

The words cut off in a choke, and Anakin awoke to the physical world with his right arm outstretched, holding his attackers aloft in mid-air. One of them was holding a lightsaber, red and arching toward him, but Anakin clenched his fingers, and even that stopped. The Sith stared at him, immobile, whole expression etched with shock and frustration that Anakin's light-blinded eyes could not comprehend.

His left hand was still on the wall, still connected to the kyber, the mountain. The power surged, and he felt drunk. He felt sick. He felt furious. He was going to cry. He could not have looked away from his attackers if he'd tried, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that Arbie's hull lie on the ground by his knee, cloven in two. He could not sense his master, or Aola. He could feel the fear of Rex, of Padme, of Obi-Wan. He could feel the Sith, and his own inadequacy.

His palm boiled against the wall, and he could smell the flesh burning. His right arm shook with effort, and maybe the horror in the Sith's face was from seeing the blood pouring out of Anakin's nose, his ears, Anakin didn't care.

He screamed louder than the sum of power coursing through his bones, and the whole world stopped.

The rayshield had evaporated.

"That's it! That's it!" Rex shouted, waving urgently at Padme even as droids continued to open fire on their ship. Padme was way ahead of him, and had already plunged the accelerators to full speed. They shot out of the hangar and Rex collapsed into his chair in a sweaty heap, shaking smile borne of sheer relief as the snow-swept mountains of Alderra unscrolled beneath them.

"I don't know how you did it, Skywalker, but kriffing hell." He waited for the kid's sarcastic reply—Skywalker was good at those.

Static was the only response he got.

"Skywalker?" he said again, and waited. More static. Rex glanced at Padme, and Padme looked back, but there was no way they could turn the ship around, not with this much kyber on board, not after all they'd done to escape. Rex felt a stone form in his gut and sink lower toward the ship's floor.

"Anakin?" he gripped the comm hard in his hand.

"Cody, come in," Padme had opened up a different channel on the ship's comms. Her voice was somber and shaken. "We're going to need an extraction crew yesterday."

A/N: You're going to be okay. Go wash your hands, drink some water, and if you stayed up late reading this, set your phone or computer aside, sanitize it, and then get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow is a new day. Stay inside, stay healthy, save lives.