Chapter III:
There she was again. The girl with grey eyes.
She was on a dark hillside, shrouded by a thick fog that was closing in. The ruins of old marble buildings were scattered everywhere, obstructing her path and vision.
Percy felt himself try to call out to her, but his voice didn't work. The motion of his tongue with the name was eerily familiar, but he couldn't grasp it completely.
The girl looked around frantically, before turning away from him and running back into the suffocating, distorted gloom.
-Ω-
He woke up once again to a massive migraine, which at this point was unfortunately starting to become a normal occurrence. He rubbed his aching temple with his fingers, and groaned as he sat up, leaving behind a decently deep impression of himself in the bed. He blinked twice and tried to remember what happened the day before, but his mind was a bit slower to get moving.
A massive yawn built up and unleashed itself, surely alerting his fellow inmates that he was alive. And as expected, it didn't take too long for one of them to appear.
"I thought you were going to be asleep forever." Rina said after she cracked open the door and poked her head in through the slit. "You've been out for three days."
He figured that he had probably been out for a while, maybe just overslept a couple hours, but three days? Percy balked at her statement. "What?"
"The rest of us woke up to these guys wearing white lab coats wheeling you in, they said that you needed some rest. You didn't look good at all." Rina walked over to his sink and started to fill him a glass of water, that's when Percy saw the multiple scratches and bruises splayed across her body.
Rina noticed his obvious stares and shrugged her shoulders, which incidentally caused her to wince in pain. "I got no clue either, they just appeared on me when I woke up."
They were vile and nasty, with harsh red lines that would eventually leave scars. Definitely done with malicious intent.
"It's literally nothing." Rina chided as she sat down next to him. "Have you seen that bump on your head?"
He took the glass graciously and downed it in two big gulps. His throat definitely felt like it hadn't seen water in three days. Still, he wanted to just lie down and pass out. Another three days didn't sound too bad given how exhausted he was.
"I needed that." Percy moaned as he ran his hand through his god-awful bed hair, which was infested with multiple tight knots, and felt around the throbbing welt she was talking about. There was also a massive sore spot between his neck and left shoulder that he gently began to caress with his other arm.
Rina's mouth moved to the side of her face as she began to postulate. "What's kinda creepy is that parts of my memory from that day are just missing. No idea where they are. I know I should have some, but I don't."
Percy would have to agree with her assessment. His memory was currently like a fill-in-the-blank puzzle, and all the words in the bank were in a different language. He vaguely remembered the conversation they shared on his bed, but trying to recall anything after that was a lost cause.
"What time is it?" He strained his neck trying to see the clock from the awkward angle.
"Erm, it's almost eight at night actually. Not great timing."
Given that there weren't any windows, or anything to do in general, Percy supposed that it wasn't so big of a deal. Screw it, more sleep.
Rina helped him stand up, which was a lot harder than he was willing to admit, and the two of them walked out into the common area. He saw Anoon doing a set of push-ups on the floor of his cell, but there was a notable three-hundred pound furry void in the other one.
"Chewbacca got transferred to Mimban for manual labor yesterday." Rina answered his question before he could even ask it. "He stayed by your side when he could, believe it or not."
Percy had barely gotten to know Chewbacca, but that didn't stop him from feeling sad about him leaving. Though, something innate told him that wouldn't be the last of his encounters with the friendly Wookie.
"He refused to leave when they came for him." Rina tacked on for added emotional effect. "Although I'm not sure if it was you, or the fact that he hates handcuffs with a passion."
The thought of Chewbacca in a tiny pair of handcuffs made him realize that he didn't know why they were locked up with him. "Wait, why are you guys here?"
Anoon, who had just finished his workout, joined them by the table. Sweat droplets were running down the length of his creased forehead and bare chest. "We are slaves." He said in a somber yet serious tone.
"Were slaves." Rina pointedly corrected.
"Right." Anoon countered back, lacing his speech with his own sarcasm. "Because if our master finds us, we'll be Rancor kibble."
"Former master."
"Oh shut up Rina, you know we are good as dead no matter what happens."
Percy sensed like he was intruding on a private matter and began to step away, but Rina stopped him with a hand that sent blood rushing down his system for no reason. Why did being a guy have to be so hard?
Rina gave one more sharp glare at Anoon before addressing him. "You asked why we are here," she paused mid-sentence and took a weighted breath before finishing. "We used to be slaves to the Hutts."
The Twi'lek looked at him expectantly, like he was supposed to know who the Hutts were. He decided that he was better off just telling the truth. At this moment, they were coming off as people that could easily identify lies, and he wasn't willing to roll the dice. "Uhh, I don't know who they are."
"Didn't you tell Rina that you're from the Outer Rim?" Anoon crossed his arms and squinted his eyes.
Percy thought for sure his cover was blown, Rina was giving him a sideways glance as well. "He told me that he lived on ships for most of his life." She said, recalling their first conversation.
If there was ever a time to him to pull something out of his ass, this was it. Based on the fact that they were slaves, he took an extremely educated guess. "Oh wait, the crime lords?"
The built-up tension, that may have just been his imagination, immediately deflated. His brain began doing mental gymnastics as a form of celebration.
"Yeah, those big ugly sacks of lard." Anoon spat out with undeniable disgust.
"We bounced around their different palaces over the years." Rina continued. "But to make a long story short, we ran away and eventually got caught by the Empire."
Anoon put on a grim face and sat down in the closest chair, letting out a deep sigh. "Only reason why the Empire hasn't killed us is because we have useful information that they can use to infiltrate the Hutts network, which allows them to strike more favorable agreements. We know every secret there is to know about their backdoor dealings."
Rina joined Anoon by sitting in the chair on the opposite side. "We know their delivery schedules like the back of our hands. We are the ones that brought their cargo back and forth from the loading docks."
Percy, still not entirely recovered from the scare earlier, tried to act casual by nodding his head and asking a follow up question. "What about Chewbacca?"
"Chewbacca?" Rina asked. " No clue. Wookies are proud people, I'm sure he's hurting, just like us."
Percy slid into one of the last two unoccupied seats, and mindlessly twiddled his thumbs underneath the table. He spent most of the remaining five minutes trying to manifest his missing memories. It went about as well as one would have expected. Nothing.
"Well, this has been all fine and dandy." Anoon got up to stretch and leave with a minute left. "See you all tomorrow."
Percy and Rina quickly followed suit, and made their way back to their cells. For a prison, they had quite a lot of free range.
"Goodnight."
-Ω-
As soon as Percy's head touched the pillowcase, an entire platoon of stormtroopers barged through the door with a loud slam. The sheets flew off his body as he leapt out of his bed and ran to the window.
The shiny white suits of armor dragged his sluggish memory out of the gutter, and Percy realized what was about to happen. The cuts and slashes on Rina's body suddenly made sense. The stormtroopers were back for more.
He remembered the whip, the brutal beating... and the water.
They were making a beeline straight towards Anoon's cell, and Percy didn't have any time to react before they opened it up and unleashed a barrage of red blaster fire that surely killed him.
The combination of Rina's blistering cries and the image of Anoon's lifeless body riddled with smoking holes was enough to make his entire body go senseless.
Without hesitation, the stormtroopers began to move towards Rina's cell, and the view of her petrified face through the square window snapped Percy out of his temporary stupor. He wasn't going to let her die.
In one natural motion, he thrust out his hands. An intense tugging sensation filled the inner linings of his stomach, and he felt the water flowing beneath him obey his will. Sharp streams burst out of the sink and toilet, and formed two rapidly rotating spheres of destruction.
Everything was moving fast and slow at the same time, like he had entered a hyperactive-state of existence. The stormtroopers hadn't noticed him, or didn't care, and were beginning to unlock Rina's cell. Blood roared against the wall of his ears as Percy shaped his hands into fists, and let his instincts handle the rest.
The spheres formed giant watery hands, and mimicked his movements by blowing the door clean off it's frame, instantly flattening an unsuspecting handful of them. With his mind still on autopilot, the giant hands grabbed the remaining stormtroopers, and their guns fell to the ground out of surprise.
"Wooooah!" One of the troopers yelped as he was launched ten feet into the air.
Percy maintained his stranglehold, the loud voice of Rina nothing more than a dull hum in the background, and made a smashing gesture with his fists. The giant hands executed his command and pummeled the stormtroopers into the ground with bone-crushing force.
But he didn't stop there, the tingling sensation in his fingertips was borderline euphoric, and had overtook him like a viral disease. He willed the hands to throw their bodies against the wall, and repeatedly bashed them with concussive blows. If they weren't dead before, surely they were now.
He did it again. And again. And again, not stopping until his eyes caught sight of Rina, cowering in the back corner of her cell, with her hands over her ears. Her dark eyes were shattered and defeated. Percy didn't understand why she still looked scared, he just saved her?
The buzzing flow of energy left his body instantaneously, and the giant hands dissipated, melting back to the floor as a formless source of water.
All of the senses flooded back into his consciousness, and he realized that the screaming wasn't coming from Rina. It was coming from him.
His voice promptly cut off, and a frightening silence rolled in to replace it. The clothes on his back were steaming like they had just taken a dip in the rivers of lava outside. He felt emotional, raw… powerful.
Only then did Percy realize the two new figures that had appeared in front of him. The first one was a different kind of soldier, wearing midnight black armor and was way bulkier than the typical stormtrooper. The other was a stocky man, whose face was badly malformed. A white lab coat shrouded his disfigured limbs, which were responsible for his faltering steps.
"Stun him." The stocky man ordered with a high-pitched tone. "And kill the girl."
The soldier raised the rifle up, and pulled the trigger.
-Ω-
The amount of times that he was finding himself in a state of deliriousness was seriously getting out of pocket. Percy lazily opened his eyes to more bright lights and electronics. Practically every inch of the surrounding walls was covered with either wires, pipes or screens. On his right, about ten fluorescent blue pods sat prettily, their purpose unknown to him.
Way up above was a line of dark, tinted windows that spread across the entire width of the room. Behind the glass stood a batch of frail people dressed in similar white attire, with a circular insignia that he hadn't noticed before on the left sleeve. They all looked like they had never received a drop of sunlight in their life.
Percy looked down at his body, and twitched when he discovered two clear tubes running in and out his forearms. One seemed to be pumping his blood into metal canisters, while the other was sending different blood back into his system.
His heart rate jumped a couple ticks when a hatchway opened itself, and a darkly-clad figure emerged. Vader.
The only sounds from the Sith Lord came from his breathing apparatus, and his heavy steps on the metal grates.
"I see you've proven yourself to be quite the troublemaker…"
Percy closed his eyes and tried to sense for any nearby water, but came back with nothing.
"Your potential is clear..."
Vader was now within arms reach, and as intimidating as ever. The aura he carried emanated a certain ungovernable, destructive power.
As Percy tried again to locate water, the Sith Lord extended his gloved fingers and tapped Percy on the forehead... and Percy completely forgot what he was doing. It was like his mind was being suppressed by an unknown source, dampening his awareness. Vader pulled away, and after a couple seconds the sensation was gone.
His empty mind eventually landed back to the last thing he remembered. Rina. He knew that she was most likely dead, but once again he couldn't recall why. It was a déjà vu of when he had first woken up, he knew of some things for certain, but the rest were unknown.
Vader began to circle the angled table which Percy was strapped into, making him anxious and wary. "Tomorrow, you will begin your training at the Imperial Naval Academy on Carida."
Percy didn't realize that he was holding his breath until Vader finally exited the chamber a few moments later, without saying another word. A pair of the sickly-looking people from the glass room above entered soon after and began to detach him from whatever they were doing to him. His blood, what did they want with his blood?
One of them started to move the now filled metal canisters towards the blue pods, while the other unstrapped him from the table and led him out through the hatchway.
Training. It sounded better than whatever this place was. At least, that was the hope.