"Don't take another step!"
Eli braced his grip on the blaster, pouring into the expression on his face all the heat and fury he felt coursing through his body. He'd never been very intimidating, but there was always a first time for everything.
Unfortunately, intimidation did not generally work well on droids. The one in front of him merely turned silently at his command, its glowing eyes fixing steadily on him as if daring him to try anything. Eli did not look away, but in his peripheral vision he noted that the room appeared empty. Good. Hopefully Thrawn would continue to go unnoticed.
Eli jumped when the droid spoke. However, the words were either garbled or of a language Eli had never encountered before. He swallowed, begging silently that his arms would not begin to shake as he kept the weapon trained on the intruder. The droid was tall, nearly as tall as Thrawn; and unlike the first one they had encountered, this one was definitely more humanoid in shape. Its arms were long and thin, as were its legs, and they were of a design which implied they were built for speed and agility. Eli highly doubted he could outrun this thing, and Thrawn definitely couldn't in his current condition. There were no obvious weapons on the droid, but that didn't mean it was unarmed. Sensors covered its face, its eerie amber eyes sending a shudder through Eli as it stared unwaveringly at him. The body of the droid was thick, and its chest casing was split down the middle. It stirred.
"I said don't move!" Eli snapped, raising the blaster a bit more to aim it at the droid's face. It spoke again, and then its chest piece shifted. Reflexively, Eli's finger moved, and fiery bolts lit up the room in staccato red bursts as he hit the droid practically point blank in the face. Metal flew across the room, and the droid jerked back; but it was undeterred by the attack. It pressed forward, raising its arms as if to reach out and grab Eli. Forcefully swallowing the cry trapped in his throat, Eli twitched the blaster down as he took a step back, pouring the deadly shots into the droid's body. His back hit the door, and he stiffened. There was no chance he could reach down for the handle, just in case that slight distraction would be just enough to give the droid an edge over him. If Eli went down, there was no hope for Thrawn. He couldn't take that risk.
Then, without warning, blaster fire erupted from the other side of the room, slamming into the droid's back. Eli flinched as bits of the droid flew into his face, and he threw his arms up protectively. A heavy silence fell over the room, and Eli peered out in time to watch the dead metallic husk crash to the floor at his feet. Gulping, he looked up to meet Thrawn's own glowing eyes piercing through the haze.
Thrawn leaned heavily against the center table, and Eli stepped hastily around the defeated droid to join him on the other side of the room.
"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously.
"I do not believe it knew I was here," Thrawn answered, his voice low and still strained as before. Eli attempted to help him sit back down, but Thrawn waved him off with a frown. "It would not have been long before that changed, though. Your timing was fortunate."
"It would have been more fortunate had we gotten out here before that thing arrived." Eli pressed his lips together as he looked over Thrawn. "Which reminds me: the droid from upstairs, the one we first saw, is gone."
Thrawn's brow furrowed. "Gone?"
"Yeah," Eli confirmed with a grimace and a shrug. "I think someone came to get it. There's no way it could have moved on its own." He turned his head to glance out the window. "Which means someone knows we're here."
Thrawn raised an eyebrow and shifted his gaze deliberately in the direction of the droid they had just destroyed.
"Yeah, I know," Eli said, feeling his cheeks warming. "This could have been just a normal sentry droid, but you're right. It's likely it was sent to find us. And now it did." He grimaced and shook his head, running a hand nervously through his hair. "We need to get out of here now." Picking his way carefully back toward the fallen droid, Eli stared down at it. "Thankfully, I think I've found just the sort of thing I was looking for." Lifting the blaster once more, Eli lined it up with the shoulder joint and squeezed off three shots. The arm clattered to the ground, and Eli stooped to pick it up. Then, grabbing the spool of wire he had left near the door, he returned to where Thrawn had settled himself again on the floor.
"They are oddly calm out in the cavern for having intruders on their base," Thrawn commented quietly.
"What's that?" Eli asked, tilting his head.
"The men out there," Thrawn said, tipping his head toward the window. "They go about as if everything is normal."
"Yeah, you know, I noticed that as well." Eli glanced quickly into the cavern before dropping out of sight beside Thrawn. "I don't know what to make of it either, but it makes me nervous. Let's get this splint set up so we can move." Eli studied the pieces he had gathered together. Then he took the blaster again, set the droid arm a couple feet away from them, and shattered the elbow joint. He then set the blaster down and proceeded to remove his tunic. "Sorry about this," he muttered as he then also removed his undershirt. The fabric of the tunic would not tear as easily as his undershirt, and time was of the essence. He needed something quick that would serve to tie the metal rod to Thrawn's leg. After pulling the tunic back on, he mercilessly tore his undershirt into strips. Working quickly, he soon had the splint in place. "There. That should—"
A sudden, almost supersonic screech filled the room, and both of them fell forward with their hands clasped over their ears. Pain spread from Eli's ears into his head at the unnatural sound. He forced his head up to demand what was going on when his blood froze in his veins.
Staring at him from over the central table was the droid, inexplicably on its feet once more. At the sight of it, Eli's breath was stolen from him, and his heart pounded against his ribcage as if desperate to get out. The droid's face was gone, blown off in Eli's earlier attack. The circuitry that had been behind the face panel was exposed, wires protruding everywhere, with a hideous jaw jutting out below and blazing red points of light where the eyes had been. The horrific image came straight out of a nightmare. The droid's remaining arm gripped the table as it leaned forward, so intent on reaching them that it did not even bother to go around the table.
"Out! Out! Out!" Eli screamed, not even able to form anything more coherent than that. He pulled Thrawn to his feet, and both of them rained blaster fire on the droid. Its metallic fingers scraped across the surface of the table as the impacts from the blaster bolts pushed it backward onto the floor.
Suddenly, all the lights in the entire facility went out.
Eli swore and nearly failed to hold himself together.
A moment later, emergency lighting kicked in. Visibility was reduced to less than half of what it had been before, and the cavern itself was nearly pitch black with the flood lights out of commission. Even so, out of the corner of his eye Eli caught movement in the cavern. Everyone below was scrambling. Ships were leaving.
The droid hadn't gotten back to its feet. Eli dragged Thrawn across the room toward the door, ignoring the sharp hiss escaping his companion. He kept the table between them and the droid where it had collapsed for a second time. But they would have to enter its line-of-sight in order to reach the door. Eli's stomach was in his throat. Cautiously, he leaned forward. The droid was lying on the floor, unmoving. But that didn't necessarily mean anything anymore, except that now was their best chance.
Grabbing the handle, he forced the door open, and they both tumbled out into the hallway.
The hallway had not been very bright before. Now it was washed in darkness, the pale emergency lights failing to provide any decent visibility. At the far end of the hall, a red light flashed intermittently. Eli half expected a siren to be echoing through the base. The silence that pervaded everything was somehow even more unnerving.
They didn't have time to waste. Everyone was evacuating the cavern. If they were quick enough, maybe they could sneak out on one of the ships themselves, using the mad scramble as cover. It was the only thing Eli could think of right now. They dashed to the door for the stairwell, and Eli ushered Thrawn inside. The hair on his body stood on end as he expected any moment for the droid to come flying out the lab in a rampage. "Come on," Eli muttered as he hastily urged Thrawn forward, unsuccessfully trying to keep images of the decimated droid out of his mind. "Down," he ordered, leading the way as quickly as the sparse lighting would allow. To the bottom.
At least, he hoped the stairs ended on the ground floor.
Behind him, he could hear Thrawn's labored breath, and a shock of guilt shot through him as he only just remembered Thrawn's injury. The unexpected revival of the droid and the power outage had thrown him for a loop, and until now his mind had been solely focused on getting them out of there alive—despite the fact that he had literally just helped Thrawn bind his leg. But even now he couldn't pause for an apology. Not until they were somewhere safe enough to rest a moment. Preferably somewhere with a locking door.
Perhaps Thrawn was now regretting having Eli as his aide.
Pushing the thought away with a grim shake of his head, Eli heaved a quiet sigh of relief as they did finally reach the end of the stairs. Such relief was short-lived. The light above the door cast the bottom of the stairwell in the color of blood. Eli tried not to read anything ominous in it. It was simply the tension of their situation playing with his imagination. He checked his blaster before reaching out to lay his hand tentatively on the handle of the door. Taking a deep breath, he opened it slowly, blaster ready.
There was no one on the other side. This hallway was as empty as the one they had left several floors up. Motioning to Thrawn with the blaster, he moved forward, Thrawn at his heel. Several meters down the hallway, there was a doorway on their right. The sign on the door was in an unfamiliar script, but it looked important. They stopped in front of it. Thrawn leaned against the wall, looking like he was ready to collapse.
A noise further down the hall caused both of them to jerk to attention and stare into the darkness filling the spaces between the emergency lights. Eli reached desperately for the handle of the door.
Only, there wasn't one.
"Here," Thrawn rasped, moving to the side to reveal a touchpad beside the door. He pressed it, and to Eli's great relief, the door hissed open. They both slipped inside, and Eli slammed his hand against the door panel on the inside. The door closed once more.
But would it lock?
The room was dark, but there was light enough from the window beside the door to see that there were several buttons beside the door panel. However, Eli could not read what any of the buttons were for, and randomly pressing them could inadvertently call attention to the fact that they were in that room. It was too risky.
He turned around to survey the room. One wall bore several rows of screens above a control board resting on a desk beneath them. Against the adjoining wall were situated several old style computer terminals, flickering with tiny lights. It would seem that the power outage had not affected this room. Perhaps it had its own generator? On the third wall he could barely make the outline of a door, and beside it was some sort of ventilation shaft. A quick test proved that the second door was locked; but based on the low hum coming from behind it, it was likely that there was a generator in there. Turning back to the screens, Eli noticed that each of them showed a different image. Some were of rooms, others of hallways. Several even had shots of the cavern from different angles. Most of the images were too dark to make out much, if anything.
"A security room?" Eli said wonderingly.
"So it would seem," Thrawn murmured, lowering himself to the floor and stretching out his leg. His eyes were closed, his face scrunched up in pain, and again Eli felt horrible.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly, kneeling beside Thrawn. "I wanted to get us out of there. I didn't—"
Thrawn just lifted a hand to stop him and shook his head. Eli shut his mouth. Taking a deep breath, he rose to his feet and looked around the room again. The window beside the door was covered by plastic strips forming a blind that could be shifted open or close. At the moment, they were halfway closed. A sudden panic came over Eli as he thought he saw movement in the hall. He pressed himself against the wall, peering out cautiously as best he could from where he stood. Nothing. Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him. But there had been that noise...
His hand accidentally brushed on of the buttons, and a soft click sounded behind Eli, making him leap back in surprise. His hand flew to his mouth to stifle his startled squeak. The button that had been pressed was now glowing orange. Eli stared at it, his ears straining for any noise on the other side of the door indicating that they had been found out. But still there was nothing. Swallowing, he reached out and tapped the panel to open the door. Nothing happened.
Eli released a heavy sigh. It would seem he had accidentally found the door lock. That was an immense relief. The room was not very big, and there was nowhere to hide if someone or something did show up—except possibly under the desk, but only one of them would be able to fit there. Eli buried his face in his hands, feeling his fingers trembling with the adrenaline rush. "This is the worst day of my life."
"Do not give up hope."
Eli lowered his hands and stared at Thrawn. Thrawn was sitting with his back pressed against the wall beneath the window, and his legs were stretched out in front of him. "There's a chair here, you know," Eli offered, moving across the room and placing a hand on the back of the chair in front of the screen-monitoring desk.
"I know."
When Thrawn made no move to get up, Eli slid the chair out just enough to give him room to slide into it himself. His gaze fell absently onto the shifting screens. There was no more movement in the cavern. The ships were likely all gone by now. But he had the unsettling feeling they were not alone down here. He glanced back at Thrawn.
"So what do we do now?"
