Chapter 27
"Senator, you hurt me," she turned toward him, "...don't you agree, Kenobi?"
A hand carded through his unkempt beard, by now far longer than he liked to keep it. Obi-Wan barely heard her words. He found it difficult to form a coherent thought.
Again he tried to take a breath, but the tube they had put down his throat and the machine that forced air into his lungs at regular intervals denied him. It hurt - breathing. And his addled mind didn't supply him with any information on how that came to be.
Somewhere deep down he remembered a shrill beeping sound accompanied by a sharp pain from his chest.
Did I die?
There had been tests before that. Not that Obi-Wan had distinct memories of any of them. They had all blended into an unending void of pain and agony. Everything hurt. His head, his chest, his legs.
He would never forget the crunching sound they made as one of the droids had shattered them.
Arbor's hand moved from his beard to somewhere and suddenly he found his air supply cut off. Milky eyes sprung open and he jerked on the table - moving parts of his body he shouldn't move - desperately trying to get the oxygen he needed.
"There you are," purred Arbor finally letting go of the tube she had pinched closed, "You should know better than to ignore me, honey."
He let out a gurgling sound which must have transmitted through the microphone as there suddenly where voices blaring through the speakers.
„Obi-Wan!," a familiar voice he somehow couldn't place yelled angrily , „Don't touch him, you lunatic!"
Padme clenched her hands into fists in anger.
How dare she touch him.
"I will kill her," she hissed, just loud enough for only Dex to hear, "I'll kill her... - with my bare hands if I must."
Dex stepped closer to her, eyeing the droids surrounding them closely. "Remember when we talked about shooting?" he whispered, one set of hands resting close to the blasters strapped to his belt.
Her eyes darted back and forth between the droids surrounding them and her companion. "That's insane, Dex," she whispered back, not quite seeing how they should destroy around thirty droids with barely any cover.
"Get behind me, senator," ordered the Besalisk quietly, stepping forward while using one arm to get her behind him.
"They'll kill you!" she hissed sharply, watching how the droids trained their weapons on Dex now.
"We're built sturdier than humans," was the only thing Dex offered before pulling his blaster with lightning-speed and beginning to shoot in both directions.
As the first shots rang out, Obi-Wan was filled with a sense of dread.
"Your chef is brave," Arbor commented nonchalantly, apparently watching the action via a camera, "...I'll give him that."
She turned her attention to him again, her hair falling in his face. "How many bullets do you think it takes to kill a Besalisk?"
Her words again did not make sense to him. Instead he tried to shift in his restraints, in a futile attempt to ease some of his pain. But her hand on his arm stopped him.
"Stop that," she ordered harshly before proceeding to press down on all the bindings that held him to the table – closing them even tighter, "You know what happened when you moved and you weren't supposed to."
Flashes of the sensation of hands inside his torso made him shiver and he forced himself to lay still.
Suddenly the sound of blaster fire died down and a silence settled over the room that threatened to take Obi-Wan's breath.
Arbor suddenly jumped up from her seat next to him and it sounded like she was frantically typing something. "Nonono..," she punched something angrily, "No!"
Her heels clacking on the tiled floor, she stalked back to him and roughly took hold of his chin. "I was so close," she sneered, digging her nails into his skin, "- But your friends had to destroy everything." Arbor leaned down so that her mouth was next to his ear. "If I can't have you," she whispered, 'Then they won't either."
Her fingers suddenly let go of him and she hurried to the other end of the room, searching for something. When she returned, she didn't waste time and plunged a needle into the crook of his elbow without warning. "You're nothing special, Kenobi," she said, her voice dripping with acid, "You're just an average human… your bones, your organs… nothing of these show any indication that you are a jedi…"
"Only your blood…," she snickered, "I would love to continue to work with you, my dear. But it seems our time has been cut short. So see this -," she tapped his arm, "See this as one last donation to science."
Obi-Wan felt how the blood was slowly leaving his body and his heart began thumping faster in his chest to keep up with the loss.
Padme cursed under her breath as she downed the last droid and sprinted over to Dex where he was kneeling in the middle of the hallway, blood oozing into the fabric of his tunic. "You're hurt…," she muttered, already busying herself with taking a few bacta patches out of their medical bag.
"Don't bother," grunted Dex, trying to pull away, "We don't have time for this."
She gripped his arm to stop him. "… You are of no use to Obi-Wan if you bleed out before reach him," she snapped and efficiently pulled the fabric of his sleeve away to slap a bacta patch on the blaster wound.
Three more wounds got an equal treatment before she finally let go of Dex again. "… now let's find Obi-Wan."
Together they methodically moved through the hallways in search for the lab Arrik had marked on the map. Dex walked slower than before and had become awfully quiet, but the look of determination on his face hadn't changed.
They finally reached a hallway which was bathed in darkness. "Arbor must have cut the power," Padme noted gravely as she stopped and fished two headlamps from her backpack, handing one to Dex.
The lamps filled the corridor ahead of them in a dim light, and the turnoffs cast grotesque shadows ahead.
"The lab should be at the end of the corridor," stated Dex and started moving again, blaster clutched tightly.
As they approached, they indeed spotted a heavy metal door with a small recessed window. Padme tried to peer through it, but despite the flashlight, she could see nothing in the blackness. Next, she tried to open the door using the control panel, but of course this didn't work without power.
"Blast," Padme hissed, "How do we get the door open?"
Dex hummed and inspected the door, holstering the blaster. "Step aside," he finally said, gripping the door with his four arms.
She had just taken a step back when Dex forced the door open. With a creak, the metal bent off its hinges and finally fell fully to the floor.
Padme blinked in surprise, letting her gaze wander between her companion and the demolished door. "Well," she finally looked at Dex, "Unconventional, but effective."
Grumbling, Dex tipped his head and picked up the blaster again. "Let's go."
The first thing they found inside the room were a lot of monitors and machines that looked like they were supposed to be in an operating room. A shiver ran down her spine as the glow of her lamp fell on more and more tools, the purpose of which she didn't even want to know.
"This is a fucking experimental lab," Dex hissed beside her, his eyes fixed on an open file labeled with a black "13."
Padme shook her head in disgust and turned away. "Let's see about finding Obi-Wan."
The room stretched farther than she had thought, and the light from her lamp was not enough to fully illuminate the room.
If she was honest with herself, this dead silence in the complex was getting to her and a certain fear was spreading through her.
I want to get out of here.
Swallowing, she picked up her blaster again and tiptoed forward, carefully peering around the room.
What awaited her made her freeze.
"DEX!," she bellowed, already darting forward, discarding her blaster on the nearest table.
Before her lay Obi-Wan, strapped to a metal slab - unmoving.
Her eyes found first his darkly discolored and awkwardly bent legs, then his torso - covered in long, red lines, held together by what looked like staples, and finally her gaze lingered on his face - and the tube stuck in his throat.
Rushing to his side, she fingered for a pulse or any sign that he was alive. "He's not breathing," she gasped, panic strangling her as Dex rushed to meet her, his expression equally distraught.
"The tube," Dex urged, "We have to remove it."
Padme followed the tube where it ran from Obi-Wan's mouth to a device that should have been pumping air into his lung.
Fingers trembling, she tried to figure out what to do.
"Padme," Dex called her back to reality, already pulling on the metal straps that held Obi-Wan's head firm against the slab, "Come on, I need you here."
Forcing herself to move, she also took hold of the metal restraints and pulled. With a screeching sound the bolt finally came lose and Dex wasted no time with throwing the piece away before tilting Obi-Wan's head back. "Pull the tube out."
"What?", croaked Padme, still trapped in a shock state, blinking at the Besalisk.
"The tube, Padme," repeated Dex, still holding Obi-Wan's head, "My fingers are too thick to do this without hurting him."
As if on autopilot, Padme finally stepped behind Obi-Wan's head and took hold of the tube, unsure of what to do.
"Now pull. Slow and steady," Dex instructed her with a calm that was her only anchor at that moment.
Carefully, she did as instructed, and indeed the tube could be pulled out with relative resistance. Once it was out, Dex listened again for any sign of a breath, but found nothing.
A snarl edging itself into his face, he removed the rest of the restraints holding his friend captive with a roar and placed a set of his hands in the middle of Obi-Wan's chest, starting compressions while quietly counting to himself.
Padme stared blankly at the scene, watching how the light of Dex's lamp flickered as he moved and how small droplets of blood began to cake the man's hands as the stitches on Obi-Wan's chest reopened.
She had been prepared for a lot – just not this.
What a chapter! Let me know what you think!