Things are about to start heating up for our crew.


The not-so-small group hobbled at an agonizingly slow pace, the dirt walls almost blending with the dirt floors. The only thing to light their path was the dim yellow light falling weakly from flickering, old bulbs hanging from the ceiling. There were sometimes patches of darkness.

"Ri'van was supposed to comm us by now," Salis said irritably. "Kriffing Lizard…"

"Maybe something's happened." Kanari desperately hoped she wasn't the only one who fully trusted Ri'van and his capabilities. She tried the commlink at her wrist again, only receiving static.

A voice bounced off the solid walls from somewhere around a corner, clawed feet scuffling in the dirt.

Kanari swore. "We need to hide!" Pulling open a random door, helped to usher the escapees inside, closing it quickly behind her.

They stood in the darkness.

After a moment, headlamps flooded the room with uneven, spotty light, casting spastic shadows over the walls and corners.

"What's that?" It was the first thing Marik said since being rescued. His voice cracked. "What are those?" He pointed a shaky finger at the raised, circular mounds in the center of the cavernous room.

Mounds with eggs in them.

"This looks like a nursery," Anakin whispered. From what he could tell, the mounds were made of rotting vegetation that provided heat for the eggs when the mothers weren't around. It certainly smelled like it.

Kanari proceeded forward carefully, forgetting that she had Rex with her. The heavy smell of rotting things was beginning to make her sick.

"There's someone over there!" Rex flicked his headlamps on, glad that they were actually working. The pale light fell upon a clone trooper slumped in the corner. He didn't move. On instinct and without better judgment, Rex tried to run towards the man like he would in any other battle.

He fell and almost brought Kanari with him. "Slow down Rex!" Kanari hissed, hoping they weren't making too much noise. She helped Rex to the clone trooper and knelt down before him.

Something was off.

"Wait a second…" Rex examined the armor; obviously old, battered, and worn. The chest piece was different—different shape, texture, and plate design. With slightly shaking hands, he tilted the helmet upward to get a better look at the visor.

Phase I armor.

"Kriff…"

This was a trooper who had arrived at the tunnels long before they did.

He gripped the helmet tighter and pulled. Skull.

He was long dead.

Kanari yelped and lurched backwards, almost pulling Rex with her. The neck of the skeleton snapped, the dry skull tumbling to the going with sickening cracking noises. It rolled to Rex's foot, looking up at him with a disturbing slack jaw and dark, gaping eye sockets. Rex dropped the helmet.

"Whose company is he from?" Bliz shuffled shakily forward, one arm wrapped securely around another man's neck.

The dull red medic's insignia was almost completely gone, as well as much of the paint marking what company the trooper was from.

Kiki gasped, memories from their first visit to the tunnels suddenly filling her mind. "W-We were here with Obi-wan when we first escaped…" she said. "That's T-Tryz. I saw him die."

She was right. It was the same nursery, but larger. A second room had been added off to the left, and she could almost see through the dark window.

Anakin remembered as well. They all did.

"Then we must be close to the exit." Anakin glanced at the room separated from the main one. "What's in there?"

They really didn't have time to check, but he sensed it would be something important. Salis stepped forward, walking across the large nursery to open the less-rusty metal door. As it opened, he pointed his blaster inside, scoping out the area to make sure it was secure. Slowly, he flicked the light on. "Oh kriff! Sirs, I think you might want to see this!"

Kiki instantly had a sinking feeling in her gut. She hoped it wasn't something bad. Dice helped her walk at the group hesitantly made their way to the secondary room.

Bright white light flooded from the door and through the glass, forcing Kiki to squint her eyes and put a hand up.

A lab. A medical lab.

As if summoned by the medicine locked in the cabinets, Cord gazed around with the curiosity of a medic with new medical procedures. He stepped forward, gripping the metal tables and countertops. Everything was pristinely white, clean. It smelled of disinfectant, a stark contrast to the tunnels and dungeons they'd seen. Cord tried the handle to a cabinet, not realizing he was streaking blood and dirt everywhere. That was unlike him, considering how meticulous he could be when it came to orderliness and cleanliness.

They were all spreading dirt and blood on the white floor.

"Grab as much of this stuff as you can!" Salis ordered, taking charge despite his being a sergeant.

Everyone quickly went to work, breaking open cabinets and smashing glass to reach the medical supplies that lay beyond.

"I've found some antibiotic shots," Kanari said triumphantly. She read the label, making sure it was safe for use on humans. One she'd verified that, she began removing Rex's gauntlet. "This should help," she said, rolling his sleeve up. She froze.

"Kanari…" The captain hadn't expected her to react like that to the burn marks on his arms. She had yet to see the rest of his body.

Kanari blinked, shook her head. "I'm fine, sorry…" Getting a rubber med band from another shelf, she tied off Rex's arm and waited for a blue vein to appear.

Rex flinched as the needle was inserted, the blue liquid pushing into his blood stream. The vein she'd found had been right under a vicious burn mark.

From somewhere behind him, Kiki was getting her own injections, extra to help the baby. "Is there any food in here?" she asked, looking around. She sat on a stool, knowing her arm on the table was making it dirty. She didn't care; the floors were already filthy by now.

Dice pulled open a conservator. "I think there's some soup—I dunno. It's yellow and in a jar, but that is definitely a nerf steak." Dice pulled out a small container with brown meat inside. He opened it and gave it to Kiki.

She didn't even accept the container, she just pulled the meat itself out and began devouring it. It was cold, and a bit on the salty side, but she didn't care. She was hungry.

Dice was filling a satchel with bandages, stim shots, sedatives, basically anything he could get his hands on. "There might be more food in the conservator, Generals," he said, amused. He opened it again and pulled out more containers.

Rex eyed the countertop quickly filling with food. He could feel his stomach begin to grumble. Kanari laughed, wiping more blood from his face with the damp cloth. "I'll get you something," she said. She stood and looked through the containers of food on the counter before picking up a bowl of soup and a spoon. "Sorry it's cold." She popped off the lid and pushed the bowl toward Rex.

He would have preferred a nerf steak, but he knew the soup would be easier for him to digest. Even still, he couldn't help but look enviously at Kiki and the steak she was ripping apart. Kanari stood to begin filling her own bag with water and medical supplies, stealing a few containers of drier foods and stuffing it in. It would be heavy, she knew, but they needed as much as they could get.

Rex forced himself to slow down while he drank the soup. It was more of a slightly salty broth with small chunks of meat and a few vegetables. He dropped the spoon and tipped his head back, gulping the rest of it and dropping the bowl. He was starving, and the cold soup was satisfying.

"We need to get ready to leave," Salis said, shouldering a pack. He checked the charge on his DC-15 blaster and nodded to himself.

Kiki sighed and stood. She was hoping to get more food into her—vomiting later on wasn't a problem for Verocians—but she stood and braced herself on the steel table. "The cleaning crew's not going to be too happy about these floors."

Wan chuckles echoed through the room as they packed up as much as they could. Kanari looped Rex's arm over her shoulder again and opened the door, flicking the light off. "Is everybody ready?"

Kiki looped her arm back around Dice's shoulders and nodded. The food sat comfortably in her stomach, and she could almost feel her baby's joy at having something to eat. She smiled inwardly. "Ready."

The group shuffled outward slowly, picking their way around the mounds of rotting plants. Kiki eyed the large yellow eggs that sat atop the piles, completely solid-looking and heavy.

The outline of the door was partly visible in the darkness, just a few black lines to stand out against the deep brown of the wall.

The door swung inward, yellow light illuminating the nursery.

The first Lizard jumped back in surprise, almost tripping over his own tail. The second, a slightly taller male, growled. "The prisoners have— "

Waves of blaster fire pounded into the two Lizards' thick skin, sending acrid smoke up to the low ceiling of the hall. They fell down, dead.

"They know we're here by now; we need to move!" Salis stepped forward into the hall, taking off down one route. The rest of the group followed as quickly as they could with their injuries.

The raced down halls and passages, working their way out from what they remembered when they were first rescued. The entire time, Kanari tried in vain to contact Ri'van.

"He's not answering!" The group rushed around another corner, the path around them slowly starting to get rockier until large boulders were butting into the escape route. There wasn't much space to move.

"These weren't here last time," Marik said almost absently. He was right; this was the exact route to the prisoners' escape years ago, but somehow parts of the layout of the tunnels had been changed. There were new rooms, and sections of walls that had caved into once clear paths.

Salis stopped dead in place, holding a hand up instinctively to halt the group. "Scanners are picking up movement ahead of us." His voice was low, barely moving past the filters in his helmet.

The rest of the group behind him halted, heavy breathing tingeing the warm air with slight fear and anticipation.

Beside Kanari, Rex's entire body stiffened, a hand moving to the blaster at his hip. Despite the constant pain that flowed through him, he straightened, gripping Kanari's shoulder for support.

A scuffling noise, and then pebbles skidding across the ground.

All of the blasters aimed upward in the direction of the noises.

Red laser fire bit and tore into the rock walls by their heads, sending small chunks of debris flying at the group. On pure impulse, they all ducked, lightsabers igniting and batting away the hail of red-and-white lasers.

The large, dark masses of the Kirzmin Lizards raced along the dirt path of the halls, stopping behind the obtrusive boulders and continuing there fire.

"We have to find another way out!" Salis fired his DC-15 blaster into the wall of Lizards. Every time one fell, another rush to take its place. "Try contacting that Lizard again!"

Kanari had a sinking feeling that they wouldn't be able to make it out of the tunnels, at least not this way, but she forced her fears back down and activated the commlink with one hand. She tapped the call button. Static.

Her worries were becoming a little more hectic as she retried the call again and again. She switched to the audio. "Ri'van! Ri'van, we need another route out of here!" More static met Kanari's frantic calls.

"You looking for Ri'van?" One of the Lizards called out. Something about his tone set Kanari on edge, sending racing electricity down her spine. She could see an almost wicked smile splitting the Lizard's dry lips. Even in the dim light of the tunnels, the dark stains on his teeth were visible. Blood.

"Had to kill 'im, the poor lad!" A sort of rasping noise, like the Lizard had had lung problems at some point in his life. He was laughing. "Guess 'e just didn't realize that you don't help the enemy." More rasping laughter until it was abruptly cut short, a smoking blaster hole squarely in the middle of his head.

"He always did talk too much," another Lizard muttered, before he was shot down as well.

All of the fears that had accumulated inside of Kanari's gut roiled and leapt up her throat, leaving the rest of her body feeling cold. Ri'van, their only way out, was dead.

They wouldn't make it out of the tunnels.


Sorry for all of the long update waits, school happened. On the bright side, this story is moving along. But on the not-so-bright side, the chances of Kanari and company escaping are almost non-existent. If you haven't noticed, I'm editing the beginning chapters to make everyone more developed, and also slightly changing how Ridge got into Crusade Squad (it clashed with what I had in my head).

~AAx