Chapter 10
Quarantine Division, Coruscant Standards Hospital, Coruscant
The men were subdued.
Anakin frowned searching the faces of each clone as they stood in a long line waiting to be checked out by the doctors before being locked away until it was safe to come out. The clones hadn't been told exactly what was going on, but Anakin suspected they probably knew anyway. Clones were intuitive like that.
Ahsoka bounced up and down on her heals in front of Anakin. Anakin put a hand on her shoulder. "Calm down, Snips," he muttered.
"I'm trying," she said. "But I can't."
"It'll be okay," He said.
"You don't know that," Ahsoka muttered under her breath.
She probably hadn't meant for him to hear that so Anakin ignored it. He didn't want to admit that part of him whole-heartily agreed with her.
The members of the 501st and the crew of the Resolute stretched on towards the doctors who checked everyone for signs of disease and confiscated each person's weapons. Anakin wasn't sure if the doctors had found a sick person yet. Everyone who went through the check was led by a nurse through a door on the far side of the room, there was no way to tell who was taken to quarantine and who was taken up to Intensive Care.
The room had the air of a line of prisoners waiting to be checked for proof of their treason. The thought pressed down on Anakin's mind. He tried to push it away. It wasn't like that, the doctors just had to make sure they didn't have any weapons. Sometimes people panicked in quarantine and tried to break out, the doctors had to make sure that couldn't happen.
Slowly, the line inched forward. Anakin's fingers tapped a nervous rhythm on his leg. He wished he'd been able to send a message to Padmé and tell her what was going on. When she heard the 501st was quarantined (and she would, nothing like that escaped her) she'd panic. He'd tried several times during the landing procedures to sneak away to compose a message to her but every time someone had found him. Eventually, he'd had to abandon the endeavor for fear of rousing someone's suspicions.
Hopefully, Padmé would forgive him.
Ahsoka was next in line. Anakin watched as his scrawny apprentice unhook her belt and set in on the table. One doctor ran a medscanner over her and poked her finger to get some blood. Another riffled through the pouches of her belt laying out every one of her little possessions for everyone to see.
That was when Anakin realized that this really was a line of prisoners being searched for proof of treason. At least, that was what it was for him. True, he'd never betrayed the Republic—he'd never dream of it—but in his belt pouches he carried a several small objects, two of which would tie him to Padmé.
And he was a traitor to the Jedi Order.
He'd never really allowed himself to think about it before. He knew that if he did it would make facing Obi-Wan and everyone else he was lying to so much harder. He had betrayed the Order, not in the way that those who joined with Dooku did, but as traitor to the Order's very ideals. He'd sworn to follow the Code, to renounce attachment, and he was married.
The thought was horrifying, but not as horrifying as the realization that if Ahsoka saw the things he carried she might start asking awkward questions. If the wrong person heard, bad things would happen.
He flinched as someone poked him in the back. "General," it was Ryte, "your turn."
He blinked and realized that a doctor farther down the line was motioning for him. He wondered how long he'd been zoned out. Hopefully, no one but Ryte had noticed. He reached out with his powers to check. Ahsoka was still getting checked out by the doctors, but he could feel part of her attention focused on him. She'd noticed his distraction.
As he walked towards the doctor, he braced himself. He couldn't do anything to make Ahsoka more curious about the things in his belt pouches. He unbuckled his belt and tossed it onto the table along with his comlink like it didn't matter.
A doctor ran a medscanner over his body. Anakin didn't even bother paying attention to the sounds the machine made. If he and Padmé got caught, being infected by whatever his troops had would be the least of his problems.
The doctor in charge of searching his belt set his lightsaber and the comm in a small box on the table and opened one of the pouches to remove its contents. Thankfully, it was the one with his Jedi-issue survival gear, micro-binoculars and water flask in it. The next one contained his small med-kit (the one that wasn't useful for battle-field injuries), nutrition tablets. There was also the container of anti-nausea meds he'd been given by the Healers as a child when they learned the hard way that he got violently seasick. The container was supposed to be just anti-nausea meds, but Anakin used it to store fever reducers and painkillers and other meds he'd stolen from Kix. Those meds he used for headaches and battlefield injuries that hurt a little more than he was willing to admit.
The doctor didn't open the container, he just turned it over in his hands reading the label. "Do you need this regularly?" he asked.
"No," Anakin snapped, his nerves focusing on the doctor.
The doctor didn't react Anakin's tone of voice, he just put the container and the med-kit into the box with Anakin's lightsaber.
"Why do you need to do that?" Anakin asked, more to stall than anything else.
The doctor looked up. "We need to know as soon as a patient begins to fall ill. Therefore, all non-essential medications must be confiscated."
"I don't get sick easily," Anakin said. Well, his health had taken a strange nosedive recently—probably from stress—so maybe that wasn't so true anymore, but it was a lot easier to pretend to be invincible when you thought you were invincible.
The doctor shrugged. "We'll be the judge of that, Master Jedi."
Ahsoka's Force presence moved. Anakin turned his head enough to see his padawan walking by escorted by a doctor. She vanished through the doorway on the far side of the room.
He had to suppress a sigh of relief.
The doctor opened the last of Anakin's belt pouches, the one that contained his personal items; the one that could reveal his secret. He pulled a small datapad out of the pouch. It was the 'pad Anakin had rigged to be untraceable and used to send messages to Padmé. It only sent text, but it was better than nothing. The doctor barely glanced at it before he set it in the box. Next was Anakin's multi-tool. The doctor turned it over in his hands then set it in the box with the meds and Anakin's lightsaber. Apparently, a multi-tool was considered a weapon.
The next object to he pulled out was a smooth river stone, black with red veins crossing through it when the light hit it. It had been Qui-Gon Jinn's. Qui-Gon had given it to Obi-Wan when Obi-Wan had turned thirteen, and Obi-Wan had given it to Anakin when Anakin turned thirteen. Anakin supposed that meant he needed to give it to Ahsoka when she turned thirteen, but that was a problem for another day. After all, he needed to make sure she lived to turn thirteen first.
The doctor's eyebrows rose when he saw the river stone. Anakin figured that had something to do with the fact that children were normally the ones with rocks in their pockets. The doctor didn't comment however and reached back into the pouch.
The last object was the most incriminating. It was a small bit of white lace, cut from Padmé's wedding veil. Anakin knew it was very dangerous to carry that around with him, but he couldn't bear to leave it safely hidden away in his room in the Temple. The way he saw it, if he was going to die on some far away world, he wanted to have something of Padmé's with him.
Again this got the doctor's eyebrows to raise but no comment. Anakin was thankful for the man's innuendo, even though Ahsoka was gone, it was probably saving Anakin.
Quickly, the doctor put Anakin's possessions back into the belt pouches and handed the belt back. Anakin buckled it on and followed the doctor that had been manning the Med-scanner out of the room. A long, nondescript hallway stretched on to his left and right. The doctor turned right and they walked down it for a while, then the doctor stopped by a door. He swiped a card and the door opened.
Anakin found himself in a large room full of little clear-walled rooms the size of prison cells. Each one had a clone or other member of the 501st in it. Anakin saw Ahsoka in one of the cells. She waved and he waved back, a tension he hadn't even noticed leaving him. She was okay. At least for now.
The doctor led him away from Ahsoka and deeper into the maze of quarantine cells. Finally, they reached an empty cell. The doctor swiped his card and a nearly invisible door opened. "In you go," the doctor said absently, and Anakin stepped inside.
The cell was sparsely furnished. A small bed with a navy blue blanket. A table with a single chair. A small stand with a holoprojector sitting on it. A small 'fresher partitioned off by gray walls just slightly taller than Anakin was.
Cozy. Anakin thought and turned around, only to see that the doctor had already closed the door and walked away. A flat droid voice began to intone rules about quarantine. Anakin ignored the voice and made the round of his cell to see if there was anything more interesting about it. Nope. Just a datapad of boring holozines and games on the table. He turned his attention to the occupants of the surrounding cells. All clones, shinies who he didn't know very well. Probably part of the batch that had come in after Geonosis. Anakin thought he knew all their nicknames but he wasn't sure.
The droid voice was still intoning rules. Anakin couldn't believe there were so many. He settled down on the small bed (hard just like the ones on the Resolute).
After a few minutes he got the distinct feeling that he was waiting for something, but he had no idea what...
Quarantine Cube #4,561, Quarantine Division, Coruscant Standards Hospital, Coruscant
Anakin woke up to a warning in the Force.
Instinctively, his hand went to his belt, groping for his lightsaber. When his side was empty he almost panicked, then remember where he was.
Opening his eyes, he sat up. He pressed his hands into the small of his back, wincing as his body protested the awkward half-sitting up, half-lying down position he'd been sleeping in.
Once the pain faded he looked around, trying to pinpoint the danger that was prickling at his senses. It wasn't as insistent as it had felt to his sleeping mind. He wasn't in danger but someone close by was.
The warning focused on the cell across from his, it was surrounded by doctors in bio-hazard suits.
Anakin stood up and crossed the width of his cell in a couple strides. He frowned trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on in the other cell but he couldn't see around the doctors. He turned his attention to the shiny in the cell next to his. The clone glanced at him and Anakin shouted, "What's going on?" even though the cell walls were soundproof.
The rookie clone, his Force signature feeling like that of a scared child, shrugged.
Anakin turned back to the other cell and the cluster of doctors. They were opening the door now, having activated a shield to keep the air inside the cell and the air outside from mixing. Anakin watched as they pulled the shiny who'd occupied the cell out on a close-topped stretcher.
The shiny in the cell next to Anakin's was shouting. They were probably squad mates, and seen as they were both so new squad mates were probably all they had.
Anakin leaned his head against the side of his cell and heaved out a sigh.
It was going to be a long night.
Yeah, another long wait. Fortunately, school is almost over, and I hope to have more time to write/post then. Summer is coming! Yay! (I'm so excited.)
I'm not quite sure how many pouches a Jedi has on their belt. I think Anakin's Clone Wars costume only has two but the live action movies have more so I took a random number.
When I first posted this chapter on Wattpad, I also posted a short story called Mal de Mer which sort of went along with the whole anti-nausea meds thing (it was an Anakin seasick story). If you want me to repost it here, review and let me know!
Next chapter: I introduce another OC and Obi-Wan will return to Coruscant (and probably get the same treatment as Anakin).
Favorite, follow and review, please!
Emjen