"Where are you from?" Iberis asks Amias as he examines the back of her head. His trick with the adhesive seemed to have worked beautifully. His fingers graze her torn skin, but there is no blood caking her head, and that is a good sign.
"Nowhere. It doesn't matter." He responds quietly. She takes note that he has a quiet voice.
She is eyeing the tray of medical supplies sitting next to them while she contemplates an answer. "You're from somewhere, everyone is." she murmurs as she stares at the tools. Amias is shaking his head and reaches for her elbow, checking the bruise. While he leaned over, she jolts her arm, knocking the tray to the floor, which makes him jump, and he quickly scrambles to gather the steel tools. Still, she placed her foot over a small scalpel and slides it over, keeping it concealed under her feet, even as the sharp instrument slices through the ball of her foot. Her throat catches, and she winces but quickly smirks when Amias turns to look at her.
He seemingly has gathered all of his fallen tools and nods to her courtly. Without saying another word, before running out of the room. What a weird man, she thinks. As the door finally slides shut, she quickly kicks the scalpel out from under her feet. It is covered in blood but should help in opening the shaft.
Iberis stands, on her tiptoes, on the restraint chair, reaching for the grate. It has six screws on either side, and she grits her teeth, desperately trying to get the screws out. After thirty minutes, her fingers are rubbed bloody from trying to unscrew the metal vent with the scalpel and her fingernails, but she has managed to extract all of them. She slips the blade into the pocket of her shirt, before reaching up to the vent, and ripping it off. It is incredibly dense, and she nearly tumbles off the chair but manages to drop the vent on to the floor with a loud clatter. She has to jump and reach for the vent, but manages to pull herself into the vent, just as her door slides open.
Iberis looks at the shaft, which is just a small tube of shiny metal, networked through the entire base. She gulps at the claustrophobic sight, but as she hears screaming of stormtroopers and alarm bells beginning to yell, she quickly pushes herself forwards on her hands and knees. She has no idea what she will do to escape but prays something that comes to her as she crawls through the shaft. It feels suffocating, but maybe she can manage to find some way to get off this damn ship.
Joining the alarm bells are now bright red lights, which appear through the cracks in the metal grates adjoining the shaft, sending beams of red across the metal, and they illuminate her face. She comes to a sudden stop, just above a pair of stormtroopers, praying they don't look up and see her. She quietly pushes forwards, knowing she can't stay still for too long.
"Where is she?" A trooper asks from below her, clearly agitated with the lost prisoner.
"She went through the ventilation shafts, but it's hard to say where she is-"
Just as the stormtrooper finishes her sentence, Iberis unknowingly falls down a plummet in the shaft, which she hadn't seen. The sudden feeling of falling is overwhelming, and she lets out a scream as she falls at least one floor, before crashing onto yet another metal grate, hands first, and the impact makes her wrist break. She chokes out as the wind leaves her, and rolls on to her back. Then the metal grate gives way, and she crashes on to the floor. Damn, the First Order needs better grills. She rolls onto her side, choking on air, noticing immediately that the temperature has risen dramatically and sweat beads on her forehead. She barely has time to roll back before a sudden jet of flames flies through the air. The First Order must have an incinerator room, where they send the garbage to burn. Lovely. The place is large and black, with only stouts of flames licking the air from the incinerators, constructed into the floor, that shoot up every two minutes, but remain stationary otherwise. Thick smoke fills the air, and her eyes are watering. She chokes out a gasp before rolling on to her side, crawling onto her knees, looking for the door, but her vision is hazy.
As if it couldn't get any worse, she hears the door open. LF8190 walks forwards, a long electric weapon in his hands. He cocks his head before smiling under his mask.
"Ah. Let's finish what we started, rat."
Kylo Ren had sensed a disturbance as he stood in his chambers and went to her cell immediately. By the time he had gotten there, red alarm lights and sirens were wailing, and stormtroopers ran like wild, confused animals around the corridors. He peers around the hallways, knowing that she didn't take that route, and his eyes drift to the shaft, and he senses her there before the troopers have time to alert him.
A small group had formed around them, waiting for instruction, just as a scream rippled through the shaft, and it is easy to tell she had fallen down the vents.
"Get her; I want her unharmed." He tells the troopers, who clumsily begin running to the elevators, and one even smacks his head off the door. Kylo, again, rolls his eyes. His eyes peer to the floor below him, and he knows that she has fallen into the incinerator room.
He quickly goes to the awaiting elevator, he quickly rolls his eyes, again, so far into the back of his head, he thinks they may fall out. Of course, she escaped, and of course, she was stupid enough to fall into a ball of flames. The bright white elevator moves quickly to the floor below him, and it does not take him long to weave his way through the troopers to the incinerator room, where they had just opened the door. He didn't expect to hear another scream, but when he did, he moved quickly into the warm room. The sight that greets him makes him snarl.
Had Iberis, honestly, thought this plan through, she would have brought more than a scalpel. When LF8190 walked into the room, she immediately knew this might be her last moments alive. He had been trying to kill her ever since Jakku, and now this was his chance. Phasma must have released him from imprisonment when Hux intervened. The trooper had walked closer to her, menacingly, holding the electric weapon and making it glow with electricity. She gulped and crawled back, tears welling in her eyes from the pain in her wrist, and she can feel the heat crawling up her back, and smoke begins to cloud her nose and throat. The room is so dark with smoke that all she can see is that damn trooper inching closer to her. He hits her leg with the instrument, and she feels the pain ripple through her whole body, and she screams and writhes on the floor, tears instantly running down her cheeks. She continues crawling back, but the trooper jabs her in the stomach and Iberis roars, one last time, before crumpling on the floor.
LF8190 laughed at the sight, but then his stomach stopped as he noticed something. The prisoner had moved too close to the open incinerator. As she slumped to the floor, she had crashed into the tube. Shit. Before LF8190 has time to decide what he will do, he is flying back against the wall with so much force; he is unconscious.
With adrenaline coursing through his veins, Kylo sprints through the darkroom, his hand still raised to pin LF8190 to the wall. The sound of his heavy footsteps fills the entirety of the room, before he crashes to his knees, looking at the tube. He sees Iberis, clinging to a slight indentation in the middle of the tunnel. She is writhing against the shaft, burns immediately blistering on her exposed skin for the heat of the incinerator, and she lets out another scream before looking up, her hazy eyes focusing on him.
"Ben… Get out of here! It isn't safe!" She trails off before he notices her fingers beginning to loosen, and her head drops against the tube.
"Don't move," He instructs before he throws himself into the steaming incinerator, against the protests of the troopers who were standing above them. He had precisely thirty seconds before the next jut of flames until then; the internal tube was just hot but not lethal.
He slides down before he manages to get a hold of the same indentation and firmly plants his feet on either side of Iberis legs. She is twitching, and he can see blisters and burns over her entire body. He drops lower, practically pinning her body under his to ensure that she doesn't fall any further down. He grabs her arm, draping it over his neck, and then he reaches down and claps her waist. He can hear the flames brewing, and he knows he doesn't have time to escape before the flames erupt, so he has only one idea left. A force barrier is something he has not used often, but it is their only chance. He drops lower, knowing Her back may burn, but she will be protected.
"Stay close to me and close your eyes," he whispers, his mask pressed against the groove in her shoulder. She nods, squeezing her eyes shut as the hisses of fire become louder. She holds onto his torso tightly, pressing her face into his helmet, just as the flames erupt.
A moment later, the world exploded around them, and an encompassing blaze of red and orange engulfed them. Even though her eyes weren't open, she could feel the impossible heat, and it felt like the air in the room had evaporated.
Kylo's hand was now entangled in her hair, making sure her head didn't move and risking her getting out of the barrier. He felt her try to look up, but Kylo quickly pulled her hair harder, practically shoving her into his chest. Her hand had dropped to the back of his neck, gripping it tightly, and praying this will be over soon.
As quickly as the fire had come, it disappeared, leaving only thick, black smoke in its place. Iberis finally opens her eyes, choking, and coughing loudly. Kylo peers up to the opening of the tube, before grabbing Iberis's leg, heaving it to wrap around his waist. She still has one arm firmly wrapped around his neck, so she is practically wrapped around his body. He knows he can make the jump out of the tube. So, with a deep breath, he propels his body forwards and lands on the balls of his feet on the top floor. He is still holding her leg with one hand, and the back of her neck with the other.
He gulps as he sees several troopers, with a stretcher waiting for them and Amias standing beside it, looking frantic at the sight of his patient, with burns of varying degrees littering her skin.
Kylo is still practically cradling her in his arms, but he quickly peels her off and drops her on the waiting stretcher. She cracks an eyelid open and stares at him. "Thank you," she mumbles, before closing her eyes and letting her body go lax on the stretcher. Amias wheels her out, with Kylo quickly following in suit. Amais glances at him nervously, his hand gripping tighter on the pallet.
"You don't need to follow us," he tells him, but Kylo quickly grabs him by the collar and pushes him out of the way, taking hold of the stretcher, and pushing it into the awaiting elevator.
"Take another one." He instructs as the door slides shut on the medic.
Iberis smirks through gritted teeth, still refusing to open her eyes with the bright lights in the elevator. Kylo is gripping the stretcher so tightly; his knuckles were white under his gloves. Iberis waits for him to speak, but he is silent.
"What are you thinking about?" she mumbles, as she attempts to keep her body still, hoping that will ease the pain of her burns- but to no avail.
"Don't do something stupid like that again." He remarks through equally gritted teeth. She just smirks again as the door slides open, and the medical bay awaits them.
