As the members of the Twisted Star gang rushed into the room, Echo dove forward, grabbing his pistol from the floor. Coming up in a tight roll, he twisted sideways, firing across his body as he straightened. His first two shots hit the Rodian on the left, and his third and fourth shots missed as he was forced to duck the return fire.

"Take 'em!" yelled the leader, yanking out a stun baton. "Get the Kiffar!"

Echo darted behind a large stack of crates next to his prisoner, who had managed to grab his own gun and a knife. "Guess you were telling the truth," Echo said, jabbing his comm button again. "About being chased by the gang."

"Guess I was," said the other man, which wasn't actually reassuring. "Got any ideas on how to escape?"

"No." Echo leaned out to let off a few more shots, just to keep the gang back while he figured out how the heck he was supposed to get out of here. Nobody was picking up his comm call. Again. "Do you?"

Before the tattooed man could answer, the gang leader snapped, "Kiffar! Surrender, now!"

"Ha, no," mumbled the Kiffar, rotating his knife in his left hand. Then he cleared his throat and shouted, "You want me alive, come get me!"

"Who says we want you alive?" the leader demanded.

"Well, if you want me dead, fine," the Kiffar told him.

There was a pause, which Echo took advantage of by boosting the signal on his comm as much as he could and checking his gun's loadout.

"But you'll have to come and get me anyway," the Kiffar went on. "Because if you want me dead, you're gonna have to work for it."

A flurry of stun rounds flew overhead.

"I thought you wanted me dead," taunted Echo's prisoner.

Echo poked his head over the crates, shot a Weequay, and darted back into cover as a stun net was thrown at him. "What are you doing?" he hissed at his prisoner.

"It's called –" The Kiffar ducked the edge of the stun net as it whipped over the crates and past his head. "– strategy."

"How is taunting the enemy strategy?"

"It is sometimes –" The other man leaned out to fling his knife. There was a thud and an infuriated yell, and the Kiffar groaned. "Missed by a mile."

"I'll kill you!" shrieked a Trandoshan. "I'll tear you to pieces! I'll –"

"Oh, shut up," grumbled the tattooed man, loading his gun quickly.

Echo jumped, got an elbow over the top of the largest crate, and hauled himself up, just long enough to throw a small smoke grenade into the center of the small group.

As coughing and swearing sounded from the middle of the cloud, Echo dropped back to the ground. "Any exits nearby?" he demanded.

When there was no answer, he looked over his shoulder in time to see the Kiffar leap forward and punch a Trandoshan in the face with all his strength.

The lizard's whole head jerked to the side. Then, with a shrug of its massive shoulders, it twisted around to face him and raised its claws, ignoring the knife that was still in its upper arm. "That was a missstake," it hissed.

"Actually," said the Kiffar, backing away and shaking his hand out. "It was absolutely intentional."

And he shot the Trandoshan, twice. Echo shot him again for good measure, and then the Kiffar kicked him hard in the chest. The lizard staggered away and flopped heavily onto its back, breath rattling.

"You!" shouted the leader, in a hoarse voice. "Take half the men and bring me the Kiffar, alive! If you let him escape, I'll sell you to the fighting rings, understood? The rest of you, get that blasted droid!"

It took Echo a moment to register that. When he did, he sent another shot in the leader's general direction and yelled, "I am not a droid, blasted or otherwise!"

The leader didn't bother to answer him, and Echo was distracted from the conversation anyway by the Weequay who tried to grab him around the neck.

He shot him, then climbed up the crates again, keeping his head just out of view as he tried to figure a way to take out the leader. Echo couldn't get a clear shot from this angle – as a matter of fact, he couldn't get any kind of a real shot at anyone, which was a problem. How many enemies were there now? Five? Six? Adjusting his visor mode, he stared at the red figures.

"Twelve," he said in disbelief.

"Twelve?!" The Kiffar, who had just ducked behind the crates again, frowned up at him. "Okay, then, new plan."

Echo hadn't known there was a plan in the first place, but he didn't have time to comment on it because at that moment, three men rushed around the corner. While Echo was preoccupied with not getting dragged down, his former prisoner climbed up the pile of crates, lifted the topmost one, and hurled it down into the group of attackers. There was a loud clatter of metal over the sound of alarmed yells.

Then Echo got punched in the forehead, and by the time he recovered and flattened his attacker in return, the Kiffar had vanished from sight.

"Oh, that's just great," mumbled Echo, ducking the Rodian's stun baton. His team wasn't picking up his comms still, so he was on his own, fighting for his life because some idiot Kiffar had angered a gang of thugs. . .

Abruptly giving up on the hand-to-hand battle he'd been involved in, Echo kicked the second Weequay back and shot him. The Rodian ducked out of sight with a high-pitched noise of alarm.

With a couple seconds of breathing room, Echo realized the sounds of fighting were still going on, opposite him. When he poked his head around the pile of crates again, it was just in time to see the Kiffar go down, dragged to the ground by the Trandoshan and four or five others.

"Surrender, droid!" yelled the leader again.

"Can't," Echo snapped, peering between a miniature crack in one of the crates so he could keep an eye on things while he waited for a chance to act.

"You mean you won't!"

"Right," said Echo. "Because for one thing, I've got nothing to do with you. For another thing, I'm not a droid."

"Nothing to do with us?! You're with him, aren't you?" demanded the leader, stalking over to the Kiffar. When he kicked him, the prisoner, to his credit, promptly twisted onto his side, got an ankle between the leader's feet, and tripped him up.

The leader swore, hastily pretending he hadn't lost his balance even though he obviously had.

"Nope, nothing to do with him," said Echo, reloading his pistol as a Trandoshan hauled the Kiffar to his feet and gripped him by both shoulders. "I was actually busy questioning him when you lot showed up."

"Yeah," said Echo's prisoner, pulling against the lizard's hold. "You guys just barged in and interrupted an interrogation that was going nowhere, it was so rude of you."

"Shut up," snarled the Trando.

There was a brief scuffle.

Echo took the opportunity to glance rapidly around the room for some way – any way – out of here. Some part of him felt guilty for possibly leaving the Kiffar to the gang, but he knew better than to let himself get taken captive. Not when there was another option. If they were ever to find out who he was and the kind of intel he possessed . . .

There was no way out, though, not unless he wanted to leave the cover of the crate pile and run thirty meters through the warehouse. "Look," he said, trying the last option he had, short of trying to be a one-man army. "I'm just trying to get back to my ship."

"You are?" said the gang leader, a sneer evident in his voice. "Well, ain't that just too bad. See, we got standing orders to bring in people that look like they could be useful, and guess what? You look like a good fighter. So, you're coming with us."

Echo rolled his eyes, because he had no intention of going with them.

"Actually," said the Kiffar calmly, even though he was now being held off the ground by both arms, his back against the wall. "He's a terrible fighter. You wouldn't want him in your fighting rings. He'd die within a minute."

It occurred to Echo that he should probably be insulted by that, but he was too busy being surprised that his prisoner was, apparently, trying to help him.

It must have been one comment too many, though, because there was a thud and the sound of a stun shot, followed by another thud as the Kiffar collapsed.

"Thank the Force," said a Weequay's voice. "Getting tired of him talking. Hey, boss, what do we do about the droid?"

"I'm not a droid!" yelled Echo, hitting his emergency comm button for the third time.

"You heard him," said the leader, sounding amused. "He's not a droid. But I think he'll react like a droid. . ."

Something clattered on the ground, just on the other side of the pile, a touch of electricity snaking up his spine and into his teeth. The ARC trooper had just enough time to think, very distinctly, Blast this situation to the pits of Coruscant –

– before the EMP exploded.

Quinlan Vos hated being a prisoner. He hated getting captured, partly because being captured always meant he'd been knocked out, in one way or another. Apart from that, he hated the fact that he was usually chained up, and the fact that he was almost always trapped in a small room. He also hated the long stretches of boredom and uncertainty in between rounds of interrogation, and the way his captors used him as a punching bag when he didn't cooperate – okay, so maybe a little of that was his fault, because he couldn't seem to stop being purposefully annoying. . .

Either way, being captured was a major inconvenience at best, and the worst situations didn't really bear thinking about.

Despite the fact that it didn't bear thinking about, his imagination – for some unknown reason – was painting vivid pictures of something that had never happened to him. He'd never had his arm cut off, so why did he feel like he knew how it felt –

Quinlan shook his head and tried to sit up, but abruptly drifted off into a doze again.

By the time his semi-conscious mind decided to stop spinning, the effects of the stun shot had worn off enough for him to realize that he could move a little, and that it might be good to take stock of his situation while he could.

With that in mind, he opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times to focus everything, and stared at the grey wall that faced him. That was . . . typical enough. There were no manacles or ominous bloodstains on the wall and floor, though, so that was a point in this room's favor. Quinlan tried to sit up, almost lost his balance, and realized his hands were cuffed together behind him. Fun.

He eventually managed to twist to his knees, and from there he stood up. There was a small grate in the doorway, which he promptly went over to. There was a hall outside the door. . . grey walls, grey floor. So unique. At least the grate in the doorway opposite his cell was interesting, because Quinlan had a feeling that the irritated bounty hunter guy with the metal arm had been captured along with him.

From in the cell he was watching, something scraped along the floor. There was the sound of plastoid brushing against metal, followed by a low groan as the other prisoner tried to move.

Then, through the Force, Quinlan felt a flash of awareness and fear right before he heard the prisoner's panicked gasp.

Oh.

"Hey!" the Jedi called. "You're okay – I think. . ."

The heavy breathing stuttered, just a little, and the prisoner answered. "You think?"

"Well . . ." Quinlan shrugged apologetically. "Yeah. I mean, I can't see you, but –"

"I can't see!" snapped the other man, voice rising.

"Stop," said Quinlan sharply, reaching through the Force again. He attempted to send the other prisoner a sense of reassurance before remembering that, whoever this guy was, his mental shields were absolutely impenetrable. It was why Quinlan hadn't noticed him near the Marauder, at first.

He still wanted to find out what the other guy had been doing there in the first place, but now wasn't the time. For one thing, there might be cameras watching them right now and Quinlan didn't want the morons knowing that there were others who might be interested in hunting down crime rings. For another thing, the prisoner sounded like he was on the verge of panicking.

"Calm down," said Quinlan.

"I am calm," snapped the other man, voice still higher than it should have been. "I can't see, would you be calm if you couldn't see?"

"Yes," the Jedi retorted. "I would. At least until I knew why I couldn't see."

There was a long pause, followed by a shaky, half-reluctant laugh from the other prisoner. "Couldn't feel it at first," he said. "They blindfolded me."

It was odd, but for an instant his voice sounded almost familiar.

"There," said Quinlan, then added, "You're fine. See?"

His fellow prisoner let out a bad-tempered sigh. "Hilarious," he said grumpily, and now his voice was back to the low, half-monotone it had been earlier. "No, I don't see. You gonna answer my questions yet?"

"You gonna answer mine?"

". . . no," said the other man. He was obviously tense, still, and Quinlan wondered if he'd been injured.

"Fine, then," he said, wishing he could see the other prisoner's face. "But we've got nothing to do down here but talk and wait for our illustrious captors to show up and tell us what they want. So we can at least get proper introductions. What's your name?"

"None of your business."

". . . That's too long," announced Quinlan. "I don't like addressing people by ridiculously long names."

The world-weary sigh that answered him was more annoyed than pained this time, which was a win of some kind. "You haven't told me your name, yet."

Once again, Quinlan thought his voice was familiar, or at least should be, but the accent was nothing he'd heard before. Unless . . . unless the other prisoner was disguising his voice, and why would he be doing that?

Only way to find out was to get him to keep talking. Quinlan leaned against the doorway and said, "If you want me to go first, I will. The name's Vos."

"Nice to meet you," huffed the other man. He paused, as if he was running through a mental list of possible names. "Fine," he muttered, several seconds later. "Call me Domino."

Quinlan didn't have any credits with him – the Twisted Star had swiped them, along with his knives – but he'd have bet all twelve of them that Domino was not the man's real name. "Right," he said, letting his disbelief seep into his voice. "So, Domino, what were you doing spying on me?"

Instead of answering, Domino groaned in irritation. "Not this again," he said.

Somewhere down the hall and on the floor above, a door creaked open, then slammed shut.

"Um," said Quinlan. "I think that'll be our captors. You didn't seem to know anything about the gang, so –"

"No, I didn't," retorted Domino. "Too bad you didn't answer my questions so we could both leave before they showed up."

"Too bad you didn't let me go so I could lose them."

Domino snorted. "Too bad you ran when I tried to talk to you."

"Too bad I thought you were one of the gang –" Quinlan stopped, hearing the clomp of heavy boots as several people approached. "Listen, just so you're not caught off-guard, I'd better let you know. The Twisted Star gang makes its money off selling people – mostly to fighting rings, but sometimes as slaves, or to information brokers."

Quinlan, busy watching for the approach of the gang members, was a little surprised at the faint catch of breath he heard from the other man. Overall, Domino had struck him as a tough, stoic kind of individual, but it was clear that something he'd just said had scared him, and badly.

He didn't have time to give it more thought, though, because the Twisted Star members were approaching the cells. Some of them went over to Domino's cell and jerked open the door. At the same time, a yellow-skinned Trandoshan opened Quinlan's cell, dragged him out, and threw him to his knees in the middle of the floor.

Quinlan heard Domino being forced to the floor just behind him, but when he tried to glance over his shoulder, the Trandoshan kneed him in the back. Once the Jedi regained his balance, he looked up at the person he'd been made to kneel before.

It was a Quarren male, dressed in a black bodysuit and dark blue armor. His pale, milky-blue eyes were focused calculatingly on Domino. "This is the droid-man?" he asked.

"Wrong," snapped Domino. "I'm not a droid."

"You were right. . . he is a fighter." The Quarren stepped closer, and Quinlan heard when Domino tried to shift away, because the guards grabbed him the next second.

"Let me see his prosthetics," said the alien, stepping closer. "It seems to me his arm in particular would be valuable."

"No –!" Domino cut off his own gasp and went still, and Quinlan stared at the floor, conscious of the looming Trandoshan right next to him. He couldn't do anything right now, and yet he kept remembering the searing impressions he'd gotten from touching that prosthetic. There was nothing truly clear – just flash after flash of pain-fear-disgust and pain-cold-loneliness.

And . . . whatever he'd remembered as he was waking up. It hadn't been just his imagination that gave him that mental picture of lying on his back, right arm gone. . .

Behind him, there was the faint click as something metallic turned, and another flash of barely-repressed fear from Domino that was so strong he could almost taste it.

Impulsively, Quinlan jumped to his feet and spun around in one motion, ramming his shoulder into the Trandoshan beside him.

The Quarren leader released Domino's metal arm, shoving the blindfolded prisoner back as Quinlan stepped towards him. "Subdue him!" the Quarren ordered, hastily shifting out of reach.

Clawed hands clamped around his arms, and the Jedi hissed under his breath, having to fight his instincts to use the Force in defense. He could not betray the fact that he was a Force-user. . . and yet.

Domino was breathing quickly, unable to see what was happening around him, so he hadn't been helped much, in the long run.

As the Trandoshan threw him to the ground and knelt on his back, Quinlan decided that he really needed to stop acting without thinking.