For a long, tense moment, Eli's vision narrowed, and although his eyes scanned the room, his brain wasn't truly processing what his eyes saw. His ears were filled with a dull buzzing, throbbing in time to his pulse. His fingers hurt where they held the doorframe in a death-grip.

Where was Thrawn?

Blinking, he looked again, slowly registering the room. His gaze went immediately to the chair and under the desk and beneath the window, but there was no one there. Stepping into the room, he absentmindedly pressed the panel to close the door behind him.

"Thrawn?"

His voice fell flat in the air, and he swallowed. The screens flickered faintly on the other side of the room. His breathing sounded unnaturally loud and uneven. Forcing his feet to move, he made a deliberate search of every inch of the room, to no avail. Thrawn was not there. Staring at the screens, he looked desperately for any sign of him, but there was nothing. The droids in the cavern continued moving about in a methodical search, but that was the only movement he could see.

He had lost Thrawn! What would he do? What could he do? Passing a hand over his eyes, he forced himself to think. With his injury, Thrawn could not have gotten far. But why would he move? He said he would stay here with the door locked. He was obviously in a lot of pain, enough that he had insisted Eli go on without him. He wouldn't leave the room without reason—and a blasted good one at that. This was a relatively defensible space, compared to any other immediate option. And the door was definitely not locked when Eli returned, as Thrawn had promised. But even if the droid had found him, it could not carry him or drag him far, either.

Unless something else found him first.

The thought made his stomach turn over, but he shoved it down determinedly. It would do no good to jump to conclusions based on zero evidence. He glanced at the screens again, but they showed him nothing new. If Thrawn had been taken, then he was somewhere not monitored by the cameras. That could even be as close as any of the rooms down the hall. He straightened, shifting his gaze to the window looking out into the hall. But as he turned his head in that direction, his glance fell across the locked door that they had been unable to access, and with a new thought forming, he immediately turned back to it, narrowing his eyes.

Could he...?

The main door had been unlocked, but there was also no sign of a struggle or a break-in. Thrawn would not go down without a fight, regardless of his condition. So what if he had never actually left the room? Eli wouldn't put it past him to find a way through the locked door.

Moving across the floor, he tapped on the door. "Thrawn? Are you in there?" Pressing his ear to the door, all he could hear was the quiet hum of what was behind it. He waited then tried knocking again, a little louder this time, hoping with bated breath that he was right. His heart leapt when he heard a faint scratching sound, and he stepped back just in time as the door opened, revealing a familiar blue face with faintly glowing eyes.

Eli wilted with relief, and then, without thinking, fell forward to pull Thrawn into a grateful embrace. "I was so worried—"

He stiffened when he heard Thrawn hiss with pain, and he immediately released him, pushing away. "I am so sorry, sir! I forgot! I just—I thought—"

"It is no matter," Thrawn rasped, moving aside and motioning urgently for Eli to enter the room with him. Without another word, Eli obeyed, squeezing himself in beside Thrawn, who promptly closed and locked the door.

Eli looked around, nodding to himself. His guess from earlier had been correct. A generator filled a significant portion of the room, humming with energy. There was lighting, but it was dim and primarily came from some lighted panels and buttons on the generator itself. When he turned back to Thrawn, he found that he was watching Eli silently, his face pinched with weariness. A pang of concern tightened Eli's chest. He reached out to Thrawn and grasped his arm, encouraging him to sit. "Here, sir." They both slid to the floor. Eli continued to hold onto him, delighted beyond words to find that Thrawn was actually safe. And alive.

"I hope you did not wait long, or worry long," Thrawn murmured, and Eli had to lean close to his mouth to hear him over the hum of the generator. "I was having trouble keeping awake."

Eli frowned anxiously. "No, no, it's all right," he insisted, although the worry returned two-fold. "I was...concerned that something had happened to you when I found the room empty, but here you are, and here I am." He bit his lip as he realized he would have to confess his failure in procuring them a way out. And that he would have to tell Thrawn that the droid they had fought upstairs was not as out of commission as they had hoped.

But before he could say anything, Thrawn spoke. "I found the key not long after you left. I could see its hiding place from where I sat on the floor. There was a secret compartment under the desk." He moved his hands as if to demonstrate. "When I stood to test it, I saw on the screen that the droid in the lab was moving. I could not warn you. I could only hide."

"Yes," Eli said with a heavy sigh. "I saw it as well. It was watching me out of the window of the lab." He shuddered again at the memory. "By the way, sir," he added, lowering his gaze, "I'm afraid we can't get out through the cavern. For one, it is very dark, and I do not know what happened to our flashlights. For another, it is now filled with droids searching for me." When he risked a glance upward again, Thrawn's eyes were narrow slits. Exhaustion marred his features.

Suddenly, Eli's eyes widened. "Oh no! I left the door to the room unlocked!" As he moved to stand, Thrawn reached over and placed a hand firmly over Eli's where it still rested on his arm. He shook his head.

"It is better to leave the door as it was when we found it," he said quietly. "If the droid is looking for us, it will lower suspicion that we might be here. The door can only be locked from the inside. A locked door would mean someone is inside. As it is, we are locked in here, and I have the key." At this, he held up a thin metal key. "And it was locked before, so again, it is as we found it." He lowered the hand with the key into his lap and leaned his head back against the wall as if the mere act of speaking had sapped his energy.

Eli grimaced. It made sense, but he still did not like being trapped like this.

With a defeated sigh, he settled back on the ground beside Thrawn, hanging his head. "I don't know what else to try," he admitted. The words seemed to solidify the reality of the futility of their situation, and Eli felt a great weight pressing down on him, like all the tons of rock and metal suspended above them as they sat so far beneath the surface. It pressed on his chest, constricting his breathing. He had to focus to bring it back under control.

"Just wait." Thrawn's eyes were closed when Eli glanced over at him. "They will come."

"Who?" Eli retorted. "The Blood Crow? How could they possibly know where we are? We haven't been able to reach them." He turned his head with an irritated snort. "And anyway, I'm sure Captain Rossi won't miss us."

"I placed a beacon in the warehouse," Thrawn said, his voice weaker. Eli turned to him in concern. "When we do not contact, they will come."

"I wish I had your—"

There was a noise in the security room, and Eli immediately snapped his mouth shut, tensing. Rising silently to his feet, he pressed his ear to the door. As he did so, his gaze fell on the ventilation cover beside the door. Moving cautiously, he placed himself in front of it, moving his head to try to see through the slats in the cover. He could just barely make out the floor right on the other side of the wall, but he could definitely hear something moving around in the room. When a dark shape shuffled into what limited view he had, he froze.

Seconds later, the handle for the door rattled. Eli's heart was in his throat, and his hand went to the blaster at his side. In the dim light, he could see that even Thrawn had tensed, despite his earlier comment about the locked door. They exchanged glances, and Eli tiptoed back to Thrawn's side, pulling him carefully to his feet and then pushing him back to the far wall so that Eli was situated between Thrawn and the door. Eli then turned, blaster drawn.

The rattling of the handle stopped. Eli couldn't hear any movement, but they were closer to the generator now, and that could be masking any sound beyond the door. But then—

—through the ventilation covering—

—it could be his eyes playing tricks, but he felt certain he could see the faintest glow of a hostile red gaze, searching, searching—

Eli fell back into Thrawn at the sound of a muffled roar from somewhere not that far away, quickly followed by a shudder through the structure around them. The faint light Eli thought he had seen was gone. He held his breath, his heart beating wildly in his chest. What was that?!

Turning, he caught Thrawn's eye. Thrawn himself seemed more alert than he had been, meeting Eli's glance with a steady one of his own.

"What happened?" Eli mouthed, too afraid yet to speak aloud. Thrawn merely shook his head and shrugged a shoulder. Eli turned his head back toward the door, straining his ears for any sound. After a moment, he motioned for Thrawn to stay where he was as he crept forward, pressed against the wall to stay out of any potential sight from the vent, although he was pretty sure its view was limited to the floor just in front of it as it had been for him looking out from this side. At the door, he listened again, but still there was nothing. He glanced back at Thrawn, who stood unmoved. Taking a deep breath, Eli inched forward until he was beside the vent, not quite in view but in a better position to listen through it. He sat there for several minutes, listening, waiting, trying vainly to avoid thoughts of a mutilated droid hand suddenly bursting through the grate to grab him by the hair and pull him through. He squeezed his eyes shut, sincerely regretting the horror vids he had watched when he was younger.

Nothing happened. He released the breath he had been subconsciously holding and cautiously made his way back to Thrawn.

"It may have gone," Eli whispered, putting his mouth to Thrawn's ear as he spoke. Thrawn tipped his head in acknowledgement, but he said nothing. Eli ran a sleeve across his forehead. It was getting hot and stuffy in the generator room.

He paused, his arm midair, as realization hit him. The roar and the shudder—something had exploded. Something nearby. He remembered from when he had looked in the cavern from up above that he had seen some weapons-related material amongst everything else. Could the droids currently roaming the cavern floor have accidentally—or intentionally—set something off? And if there was a fire in the cavern, there was the potential for further explosions, possibly large enough to bring this whole place down on them. Suddenly, the rogue droid no longer seemed like that big of a deal.

"We have to get out of here," Eli said, his voice tight. He braced his blaster in his hands as he strode toward the door. "Droid or no droid, we need to go." Taking a deep breath, he reached down for the door handle, gulped, turned the lock, and swung the door open, blaster raised in defense.

There was no one in the room. It was empty, although the door had been left open by the droid when it left. Had it been in a rush to get out, or did it leave it open to indicate that it had already checked the room? Approaching the door, Eli leaned out carefully, looking up and down the hall. It was also empty, but something was not right about it. It took him a moment to realize that there was a bright yellowish light spilling into the hall from the main doors into the cavern. He could see the patch of it on the floor even from where he stood.

The air was warmer than it had been. "Eli," Thrawn's voice came from behind him. He turned and saw Thrawn closing the door to the generator room, leaning heavily against the wall. He pointed toward the screens. Eli wandered over to the bank of them, his eyes fixed on the cameras from the caverns. Again, his guess had been correct. A significant portion of the cavern was now filled with flames and smoke, and his heart beat anxiously against his ribcage as he saw it spreading.

"We seriously have to get out of here," he said. "I am sorry, sir. You cannot stay here any longer, and I did not find a hoverbed. But there are explosives in that chamber, and if they go off, I don't know that we'll survive the next blast."

Thrawn nodded silently, his expression impassive.

Eli grimaced. This was by far the worst mission he had ever been on. All he wanted was to work in supply. He would never have to do any of this risky sort of business in supply. He could have his numbers and a quiet place to work and be content. But instead—

He glanced over at Thrawn again, who was waiting quietly, making no complaint about his situation. He never complained about his situation, despite the fact that he was clearly more intelligent than practically everyone else they came across or worked with. He was disdained and mocked by those around him, but he never said a word. He always gave his best, even in the menial tasks. Was this a characteristic of the Chiss in general, or Thrawn in particular? Eli frowned to himself, feeling somewhat guilty. Thrawn outshone them all, and what did he get for it?

"I'm going to get you out of here, sir," he said with a firm nod. "We're going to get out of this." Thrawn bowed his head but still said nothing. Glancing out into the hall once more to make sure the coast was clear, Eli beckoned for Thrawn to join him at the door. A moment later he felt something brush against his shoulder and turned to find Thrawn beside him, face set with determination. "Ready then?" Thrawn nodded, and Eli led the way out into the deserted but rapidly warming hall.

They traveled as quickly as Thrawn could move. Eli directed them toward the central hall leading from the doors into the cavern rather than toward the staircase. The stairs would take them up rather than away, and he wanted to put distance between themselves and the cavern before they attempted going higher. He had no doubt that there would be other stairways further into the complex.

Don't go off. Don't go off. Don't go off, he muttered as they crept forward. He hated the idea of going closer to the cavern's entrance, but it was the only way he knew to then lead them further away. He kept glancing over his shoulder to make sure Thrawn was still with him. Thrawn kept close, one hand on the wall for support as he hobbled behind Eli. Eli gripped his blaster tighter, sweeping his gaze through the hall behind them before turning back to look ahead, wary for any sign of the droid.

Where had it gone, anyway? None of the other doors were open as they went down the hall. Had it gone to attempt to put out the fire? Eli wouldn't mind at all if it burned out there—although then the image of being chased down the hall by a droid on fire nearly made him backpedal into Thrawn.

Keep going, he told himself. Don't be distracted.

They were at the cross corridor now. The heat from the fire in the cavern was causing sweat to drip from Eli's hairline down his temple and from the back of his head down his neck. He swiped hastily at it, glancing back at Thrawn again to make sure he was okay. Thrawn's eyes met his, and he nodded to assure Eli that he was ready to continue. Eli could see that Thrawn, too, was glistening in the overheated hallway.

Sucking in a long breath, Eli leaned forward to look at the doors leading into the cavern. The fire was raging near the door, and as Eli stared, captivated, a large dark shape passed between the door and the fire. With a startled gasp, he fell back, bumping into Thrawn, who gritted his teeth as he caught Eli and kept the both of them from falling over. Eli murmured an apology as he righted himself, readjusting his grip on the blaster. Tensing himself in preparation of a possible attack, he looked once more. The shadow was gone. All he could see through the windows in the doors was the mesmerizing dance of flames. Urgency hit him again, and he stepped purposefully around the corner, realizing belatedly that he hadn't looked in the other direction before he moved.

Thankfully, no one was there. The main hallway stretched out ahead of them for as far as Eli could see, intersected at regular intervals by other hallways.

"Let's go," he said over his shoulder, and the two of them pressed forward. Eli picked up his pace, silently begging Thrawn to keep up. They could slow down a bit once they were well away from the cavern. He paused at the next junction, cautiously looking down the side halls before striding forward. It gave Thrawn a chance to catch up. He turned to Thrawn to ask how he was doing—

—when the door from the cavern burst open behind them. Eli snapped up his blaster, grabbing at Thrawn and again placing himself between Thrawn and the new threat.

Only it wasn't a new threat. Eli squinted as the heat from the cavern blew past them, throwing an arm protectively over his face to block the blinding light. But as soon as he could see, he immediately recognized the deformed shape of the droid from the lab, the tiny pinpricks of its red eyes piercing through the glare as it settled on Eli. Eli snarled, aiming his blaster. The droid screeched.

And behind it, the cavern exploded.