#whumplet

Context: Cade POV prior to the Emma/Chris storyline (Part 1, Part 2)

~~~

After you’ve been used as a punching bag for a while, your nerves start to get their wires crossed. Throbbing pressure switches to searing heat or freezing cold; random spots start aching or cramping even if they were fine a minute before. Imagine that happening in about nine different places at once, even when you’re lying perfectly still in a pitch black room, and you’ll get an idea of how I was feeling that night.

It was going to hurt whether I moved or not. Even with my hands tied, I managed to struggle up onto my knees and elbows to crawl over to the door.

My wrists alternated between itching and burning while I ran my hands over the door. This was an ordinary house, from what I’d seen of it – the interrogation crew had actually hung me off the top crossbar of someone’s home gym when they were questioning me – so I wasn’t surprised to find the door had a simple household knob. It was locked, when I tried it, but my fingers found a tiny hole.

Safety pins can come in handy for a lot of things, so I always kept one pinned to the inside of my shirttail. My fingers were slow and clumsy in the dark, but I unbent it into a straight line and pushed it through the hole. Click.

I waited to see if that caught anyone’s attention. When nothing happened, I opened the door slowly, just a crack. Still nothing. Hardly even any light.

I dragged myself out of the room and sat on the floor for a moment to get my bearings. Across from me was a TV room, with one wall painted black – wait, not a wall, a sliding glass door leading out into the night. My heart thumped faster, which made my head pound, but it gave me the energy to stand up and lurch over there. I flipped the latch, slid the door open as quietly as I could, and closed it behind me.

My plan, if you want to call it that, was to stagger down the road until I found another house.  This seemed like a great idea for a while, but I walked and walked and didn’t see anything other than trees and stars.

I must have passed out. There’s a disconnect there, from when I was walking to when I was lying on the gravel, watching tiny shadows dance around as headlights came toward me. I knew, I just knew they’d found me, and I was going to get dragged back to that house and hung from the goddamn bar for another round of questions. When a hand touched me, I couldn’t stifle a miserable croak.

From the Turkish series Son Yaz episode 3

That bridal carry though...

content warning: torture, blood, fingore (ripping of fingernails, jamming pins under nails)

continues under divide

Oliver pushes a cart into the cell. “I know you miss your team, and I’m sure they miss you too.”

Elias lifted his head from the dingy mattress to see a mess of cables dangling down from the cart. Sitting on top of it all was a white box. A camera, Elias realized.

“Up,” Oliver ordered, gesturing for Elias to sit on the chair that he had set in the middle of the cell.

Elias scrambled to his feet despite the throbbing in his side. After the past several months spent in this hellhole, he knew better than to disobey Oliver in any way.

“Good boy,” Oliver patted Elias on the head. Elias barely managed not to recoil in disgust, knowing how much it would anger Oliver.

With great familiarity, Oliver zip-tied Elias’ hands together behind the chair. Same went with the feet, each ankled attached to a leg of the chair. Then, Oliver started setting up the video equipment.

Elias watched, almost detached from reality. For some reason, Oliver hadn’t come in to hurt him that much over the last week or so. Maybe he was preparing for this. Elias shivered at the thought. Who knows what he has in store.

The camera was set up, facing Elias. A red light was blinking, and it made Elias oddly queasy. “And now we wait,” Oliver said. “I’m sure your team will find the link very fast. Rumor has it that they are monitoring all our web communication.”

Oliver was right. In a couple of minutes, the computer beeped, signaling that a new viewer has joined the streaming room. Oliver circled behind the camera to check the screen. “Perfect! It seems like your team is online. Why don’t we check the comments to see what they have to say? Let’s see… ‘What are you doing,’” Oliver read off of the screen. “‘Let him go.’ Let’s start by greeting them first, Elias, what do you have to say to them?”

Elias looked at the camera and opened his mouth to say something, but came up empty on words.

“Tsk tsk, you’d think that our little prisoner here would have more to say after not seeing his team for months. Hopefully, the team is more talkative.” Oliver grabbed a pair of pliers off the table and brought it near Elias’ hand.

Maria slammed the table next to her as Simon typed frantically on their shared laptop. “Stop it,” he typed, “What do you want?”

On the live stream, they saw Oliver walk over to the display screen in response to a ping from their message. Calmly, he read it out loud for Elias to hear.

“What do I want? All I want is for Elias here to scream in pain, but my superiors… Well, I’m sure you know what they want.” Oliver grabbed Elias’ and again, making him tense in anticipation of the pain to come.

With his teeth gritted, Elias spoke for the first time. “Don’t do it,” he begged his team. “Don’t give it to them. Don’t do it for me, I can take this.”

Oliver smirked and gripped Elias’ pinky nail with the pliers. Looking directly into the camera, he twisted.

Maria turned her face from the screen as she heard Elias scream. It was short and strangled, obvious that Elias was trying to hold it in for the same of his team. Simon's hands were balled into tight fists on the table.

Oliver pulled the nail free of Elias’ finger with a smile of satisfaction and held it up to the camera. “The plutonium, where is it?”

“Maria,” Elias’ voice was rasped from the screams. “Don’t.”

Simon looked up at Maria, both of them shaking from anger. Maria pressed her lips into a thin line and shook her head.

“No reply?” Oliver said after waiting at the screen for a couple of minutes. “Very well then, we will continue.” Again, he latched the pliers firmly onto Elias’ nail. This time, before he started, he looked Elias straight in the eye and faked a pulling motion. This made Elias inhale sharply, while the team watching all flinched at the sharp movement. “So easy to scare,” He chuckled, “Let’s start for real now.”

This time Elias was unable to stay quiet. His shrill screams echoed through the room, made sharper by the audio equipment by the time it reached the team. Maria closed the distance between herself and the laptop in two long strides, pushing Simon aside to type a message herself.

“Ah! We’ve got a response.” Oliver gave Elias’ exposed nail bed a squeeze before checking the screen. “‘How do we know you’ll let him go if we give you what you want?’ Silly question,” Oliver walked back to Elias and picked up the pliers again. “You don’t. And besides, we have no intentions of letting him go. Elias here is quite eager to die after the hell he suffered through. Anything to make the pain end, right Elias? Tell them about it.”

“It’s not worth it, guys,” Elias managed to hold up a strong facade for his team. “Don’t give it to them. You can’t put the lives of millions at risk just for me.”

“Not your decision to make,” Oliver grabbed Elias’ hand again. “Team, what do you say? I can tell you I am enjoying Elias’ screams quite a bit, i don’t know about you.”

Maria closed her eyes and furrowed her brow as Elias’ screams carried over the live-stream. Simon had his hands balled into fist. Gabrielle took a step forward and approached Maria. “We need to do something,” she pleaded. “I know we can’t give them the plutonium, I’m not asking you to, but we can’t just watch Elias get,” She cut off abruptly, not wanting to say the word to acknowledge the cruel reality.

“I know!” Maria snapped. “Sorry, it’s just, we’re all really stressed about this. Simon? Can you trace the signal?”

Simon started tapping away on the keyboard before he even replied. “Yep, on it.”

“Can you still do it if we disconnect?” Maria asked.

“Hm, I’m not sure, let me check,” Simon pulled up the interface for tracing signals. “It’s a public broadcast, which means we can turn off the feed from our end, so that we are not watching it, but we would still be receiving the signals if he doesn’t end the feed. But he really only intends for us to watch it, so if we do disconnect, he might end it on his end.”

Maria paused. “We’ll take the risk. I can’t watch this any longer. Do it.”

“Ah!” Oliver exclaimed. “It seems like your team had disconnected. See? They don’t care about you, all they care about is there stupid little canister of plutonium. Well, if they’ve abandoned you, I’ll end the feed. I don’t intend on sharing your screams with anyone else.”

“Fuck!” Simon swore. “He ended the feed.”

Maria stayed silent, but she was berating herself in her head. It’s her fault. She should’ve been strong. If she wasn’t so soft and stayed on the feed Simon would’ve had time to track it. It was her fault that they had now lost their only clue to finding Elias. It was her fault that Elias was captured in the first place. She should’ve been the one to scout the mountain pass. It was her job, and she did it every time. Every time except that one day, that one day that there had been an ambush.

“Maria, stop blaming yourself,” Gabrielle laid a hand on Maria’s arm. “You were the one that made the decision, but we wouldn’t have let you if we disagreed. None of us could bear to watch him do that to Elias. It's not your fault.”

Simon stood up and walked away from the computer towards Maria. “We’ll find him, I promise.” A promise that he had no idea how to keep. “We won't stop trying.”

“Did you think that your team would try to save you?” Oliver stabbed a pin under his other nails that were still intact. “Did you really think they still cared about you?”

“They do, I know it.” Elias squeezed out through gritted teeth. “But you won’t get the plutonium. They’re trying to figure out where I am at this very moment. They’ll find me and they’ll come rescue me and they will make you pay for what you did.”

“Oh really?” Oliver talked but his hands did not slow. “Then why haven’t they come yet. Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

Elias shook his head. He had spent way too much time unconscious from all the beatings he took, there’s no way of telling how many days had passed in between each time he passed out and woke up. The last time that Oliver had told him about the date was when he was left outside to freeze. He shuddered at the memory. Back then, Oliver had said that he’d been captured for over two months. After that, the days that he had been conscious for counted almost another month.

Oliver stopped the torture and counted on his fingers, no doubt to draw out the process and torment Elias with anticipation. “We are two days short from a full four months. You’d think they’d have rescued you already if they really did care.”

No, they haven’t abandoned me, Elias tried to convince himself, but it was getting harder and harder with all of Oliver’s taunting. If his team didn’t care about him, then why had they watched the live-feed and begged Oliver to spare him? They can’t give up the plutonium, he knew, and he wouldn’t want them to. That’s why they left the feed. They couldn’t bear to watch Elias being tortured and not being able to do anything. Elias repeated the thought over and over in his head and Oliver continued to rip off the next fingernail.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” 

“Yes, I do.” Airis was feeling particularly stubborn. It had been a week since she had moved back to her quarters. She had been sleeping well for the most part, aside from the nightmares, and the medics were happy with her progress. Taran was still her ubiquitous companion, but she didn’t mind. His enthusiasm for life was a welcome ray of light in a universe that suddenly seemed darker than it had. He pestered her to take her meds and was vigilant about her vitals. He made sure she tried to eat and made adjustments when she couldn’t manage it. 

Airis was convinced that she just needed to get back to a regular routine and her appetite would return. Taran didn’t agree and was badgering her to take it slow. Airis was tired of taking it slow. She was determined to have dinner in the pilot’s mess, with or without Taran. 

Taran eventually stopped arguing. He helped her get dressed and waited while she caught her breath before leaving. They walked slowly down the corridors toward the dining area. It was early yet, and so it wasn’t as busy as it could have been. Even so, Airis started to second guess herself before they were halfway to the mess. Maybe Taran had been right. Maybe she should have waited. 

I can do this, she told herself. I can do this. Her heart was pounding, and she wondered if she had misjudged the distance. They walked past lounges, briefing rooms, and flight sims. She caught a glimpse of Taran surreptitiously peeking at his datapad and squared her shoulders. I can do this.

As they neared their destination, Airis noticed that her breath was quick and shallow. Her hands were clammy and trembling as much as they had when she was still in medbay. Suddenly, she felt connected to the world around her by a single thread, and that thread was in imminent danger of snapping. Airis stopped short, Taran half a beat behind. 

“Are you okay?”

I can do this. I can do this. Airis swallowed hard and focused on breathing, her fists clenched tightly at her sides. “I can do this,” she whispered to herself. 

Taran waited quietly. He was not still by nature, but he could be at need. He seemed to sense her need for it now. 

Time swirled around her, and she was both in and out of it simultaneously. Her world shifted, then shifted back. Her pulse pounded in her neck, a steady beat that drowned out every other sound. Then time settled back into its rightful place, and Airis took a deep, shaky breath. She looked up at Taran and said softly, bleakly, “I can’t do this.”

Taran nodded and offered his arm to her as they turned around. She took it because her legs had turned to water and it was a long way back to her rooms. Her cheeks burned with shame at her failure and having to admit it. 

Pt 5

It was dark. Dark and silent and cold. No, it had passed cold. It was something else now. Something that numbed her fingers and left ice crystals where her breath touched. They had put binders on her wrists this time, and a small corner of her mind passively observed that frostbite was a real possibility.

The questions still came. The same ones again and again. Where she was stationed. Her standing orders for this situation or that one. Strategy conversations she may have been privy to. Response contingencies. Primary targets. Methods of intelligence gathering. These questions were sprinkled among more mundane topics, such as the food served in the pilot’s mess, the colors her X-wing was painted, and what her squad did for leisure.

In moments of clarity, Airis recognized the intent to confuse her and blur the lines between important and meaningless information. Those moments were becoming less and less frequent as pain piled on pain through endless sensory assaults. She found it safest to stop responding altogether. And she paid the price for that.

Since Gil had escaped, her world had narrowed. Her relief at his success sustained her as she focused on nothing more than the next breath. And the next.

Somewhere between those breaths, she became gradually aware of commotion in the distance. That was unusual. Then an alarm started to wail, cutting through her stupor. Airis mustered all her strength and pushed herself up from where she lay on the floor. Standing was not an option, but upright was mandatory.

Pushing her focus beyond the confines of her cell, Airis heard what sounded like blaster fire. The tramp of boots. Voices shouting, overlapping and urgent.

Hope flared. Her numb lips formed a silent plea that Gil had found help.

The door burst open, and Airis flung her hands in front of her eyes as light flooded the room. A form filled the doorframe, weapon in hand.

“Sso closse!” the familiar voice hissed. Airis recoiled, overwhelmed by her body’s fear response. “But we cannot allow the resscue of you!”

It aimed the weapon. Airis flinched and tried to dive out of the way, succeeding only in crumpling to the floor. A blaster fired. She lay still, shivering, trying to identify where she had been hit. Warmth blossomed on her shoulder.

“Lieutenant Eldriss?”

She blinked, then realized the warmth was from a hand that rested on her arm. Squinting, she saw a New Republic insignia on the uniform crouching over her. Airis turned her head, and saw a pool spreading around a motionless pile near the door.

A comm crackled. “We’ve got her,” the new voice said triumphantly. “Send a medic to my position. Her skin is like ice!”

Airis felt the binders fall from her wrists, and she let the soldier slip an arm under her shoulders and help her sit up. The warmth from the contact burned against her frozen skin, bringing tears to her eyes. This pain was different, though. It was welcome. This was pain that proved she was alive.

“It’s going to be okay, ma’am.” The soldier was young, eager. “You’re safe now.”

As boots pounded down the hall, drawing closer and closer, Airis realized she might just believe him.

Part 3

Commander Marek Andarin of Starfighter Command, leader of Stingray Squadron, pressed a button and the holomessage played yet again. He needed to be certain of what he had just heard before he acted. He didn’t always err so far on the side of caution, but these were special circumstances.

The recording had lost some integrity, bouncing so far across space through all kinds of interference, but the core of it was intact. Gil Alston’s face materialized above the holoplayer. Andarin leaned forward, watching and listening intently. There was intermittent static, and the image fuzzed or blinked out several times, but the message was the same: Gil was alive, and Airis might be too.

There were unanswered questions, to be sure. How had he escaped? Who had captured them? How had he made it back to his X-wing? Where had they been the past three weeks? Andarin shrugged these aside as details. Answers could come later. The matter at hand was getting his people back in one piece, a mission objective he had begun to think was out of reach.

Now they had a planet. Coordinates. Solid intel that he could take to Command and request resources. General Cracken had promised him whatever he needed as soon as he had any hard data to support it, and that’s exactly what they had now. Andarin pulled out his commlink and summoned Lieutenant Bata, his executive officer.

Then, remembering a promise he had made, he lifted his comm again and requested Lieutenant Acker of Nightshade Squadron to report to his office.

***

Despite the pain that rolled through her body in waves, Airis couldn’t help but smile, however faintly. Gil had gotten out. She had managed to keep her eyes on him until he disappeared through the door, and then had put up enough of a fight that no one thought to chase after him until it was too late. Her head bounced limply as she was again carried through the dark corridors, slung across the shoulders of one of the hissing beings.

“He will not be pleassed,” one voice seethed. “We needed five sstinger.”

“He will sstill get what he wantss,” the one who carried her replied. “The ansswerss of her will ssuffice.”

Airis was having difficulty holding on to the words. She knew the conversation was unsettling, but she could not pin down why. The world swirled and spun around her as pain flared first in her head, then her ribs, her spine, and her head again. The voices continued to hiss back and forth, but she could no longer pull any meaning from them.

It wasn’t until after they had deposited her in a new cell, complete with the absolute darkness, that her head ceased to spin and a horrifying realization began to spread.

“Five stinger,” she whispered to herself, trying to push back the silence that hummed in the room. Dread knotted itself into the base of her gut. Stinger Five.

One last thought clawed its way to the surface before a fresh wave of unconsciousness claimed her.

Day 2

Flight Officer Gil Alston watched the relief on Lieutenant Eldriss’s face melt to despair. The expression was foreign and out of place for his Flight Leader. In the presence of danger, he had never seen her look anything other than calm and composed. It took him a moment to connect the data points; oxygen rushed from his lungs as he realized she was worried about him.

“Lieutenant,” Gil said quietly, resting a hand on her arm. “I’ll be fine. I can handle it.”

The despair smoothed from her face so quickly he wondered if he had imagined it. “Of course you‘ll be fine,” she said briskly. “We’re getting out of here.”

It was laughable, the idea of it being as simple as that. After endless days trapped in the freezing dark, caught between dread and agony, the thought that it could just end with those five words was enough to crack the barrier he had set in his mind to protect his sanity.

But the certainty in her voice gave him pause. And hope.

Though the harsh light washed out the coloring on her face as much as their ordeal had, he saw a familiar glint in her eyes. He had first seen it right before his inaugural Stingray mission, when she was briefing Two Flight on their role in the coming assault. It said as plainly as anything that she would only accept her pilots’ best, because failure was not an option. Gil felt his back straighten out of reflex. He almost saluted, and that familiar urge sent a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said eagerly. “What are your orders?”

She gave his shoulder a light shove. “Stow it, Alston. This will have to be a joint effort.” With a grimace, she braced against the wall and pushed herself to her feet. “But we have light now. Let’s make good use of it. There’s got to be something.”

Gil followed suit. Standing next to her, he finally got a look at the cell they occupied. He already knew it was small. One of the first things he had done was pace the length of it until he had memorized the dimensions - two and a half meters by two. A small bucket in the corner had served as their ‘fresher and had been emptied twice daily. Not by the hissing being, but by a human flunky. The door was the only entrance to the room, and food was brought through it at regular intervals, if ration bars could rightly be called food.

“What’s that?” Lieutenant Edlriss pointed to a section of wall next to the door.

Gil peered closer and realized what she saw. There was a rectangular patch a shade lighter than the wall, just over a handspan from the door frame. He knelt and ran his fingers lightly across it, feeling a slightly raised surface. He craned his neck to look up at his Flight Officer. “Do you really think it could be?”

:readmore:

“One way to find out.” She started to rummage through the pockets in her flight suit. Gil did the same.

They had been searched, of course, and anything that even resembled a weapon had been confiscated, but not everything had been taken. Gil still had some scraps of flimsi, his code cylinder and identity chip, and a few credit coins. Lieutenant Eldriss had been searched more thoroughly, but was able to contribute a necklace with a delicately etched pendant.

Gil started with the identity chip, choosing it for its thinly pressed edges, and ran it around the edges of the patch, then repeated the motion with a little more force. He was rewarded by a thin sliver of paint curling back from the rectangle.

“I think it is!” He kept tracing the edges, pushing at the paint, until he had carved away enough to reveal the outline of a metal box embedded in the wall. Gil felt Lieutenant Eldriss’ hand squeeze his shoulder, silent excitement buzzing between them.

When the identity chip gave way, he kept working with the credits, scraping paint away until he had found a screw. Gil tried to wedge the credits in, but they were too thick. Then Eldriss pressed the necklace into his hand. With no more than a glance to confirm she was serious, he gripped the flat pendant between his thumb and forefinger and slowly, painstakingly, removed first one screw, and then another. Gil now had some give between the wall and the panel, and he levered the pendant under the lip and twisted. The panel protested, resisted, then gave way, bending up nearly a centimeter.

The pendant snapped, the jagged edge catching at his fingers. The blood was hot against his frozen skin. Horrified, Gil snatched the pieces from the ground and returned them to Lieutenant Eldriss, then returned his attention to what he was now positive was a control panel. He used the coins and then his fingers to pry away the back, revealing the wiring within.

Even half numb, Gil’s fingers knew what they were doing almost before his conscious brain had caught up. Wires and electronics were in his bones, his grandfather always told him, and he had never been more grateful for that then he was right then. He found the right wires, stripped away their protective covering, and then paused.

“We’re doing this?” he confirmed.

“Now or never.”

He set his jaw and brushed the wires together. Sparks, then nothing. He brushed them again, and then a third time. On the fourth attempt, there was a hiss as the hydraulic lock released, and then the door slid open.

Gil Alton and Airis Eldriss stood motionless for a long moment, listening for a guard’s footsteps, for the sound of an alarm, or any other indication they had been detected. Just like there had been for so many days, there was only silence. Gil eased into the hallway, and found himself blinking against the darkness. The harsh light in the cell was the only light to be seen.

The building was unsettlingly empty. As they crept from hall to hall, Gil’s senses were on high alert. He jumped at every rustle and creak, the adrenaline rush urging him forward when his body complained that it was unused to so much activity.

Later, he could not remember how long they searched until they had found it. But they finally did. A set of double doors at the end of a long hallway, with the word “exit” illuminated above in Basic and three other languages. It was all Gil could do not to break into a run, but his lieutenant was struggling to keep up. Each time he started to say something, the lasers in her gaze targeted the words before they formed.

Suddenly, she stopped dead in her tracks, head tilted to the side as if listening intently, then she grabbed his arm. “Gil. You run for that door. You run, and you don’t look back. I’ll be right behind you. Understood?”

“But, lieutenant,” he started to protest.

She gripped his arm tighter. “Understood?”

“No! We go together or--”

Fire blazed in her eyes. She reached up and caught a fistful of his flight suit just under his chin, and yanked him down to meet her gaze straight on. “This is a direct order from your superior officer,” she hissed. “Is. That. Understood?”

He wanted to argue, wanted to scoop her up and carry her with him. Every instinct screamed that if he left her now, he would never see her again. Military discipline silenced those instincts.

“Understood,” he finally managed in a hoarse whisper, forcing it past the knot in his throat.

“Go.” She shoved him away, and he stumbled, then ran.

Gil ran. He ran, even when he realized the lights were coming on behind him. Even when he heard the pounding of feet that weren’t his own. Even when he heard Airis Eldress cry out in pain. He burst through the doors and into a freezing rain that helped obscure his tears, and still he ran.

Day 1

Even as a child, Airis had never been afraid of the dark. On the contrary, she had gravitated towards it. It was only at night when she could run out of the house, bare feet slapping against duracrete, and stare up at the stars. The black sky studded with millions of diamonds became a second home to her, and she excelled in astronavigation and piloting. She was never so at ease as when she was surrounded by pinpricks of light pushing through the obsidian backdrop of space.

That comfort, that familiarity, had been wrenched from her. And now, in the moments between pain, Airis was left to wonder if she had betrayed the darkness, or if the darkness had betrayed her.

“Lieutenant Eldriss.” Alston’s voice was hesitant, yet concerned. “Lieutenant, you have to eat something.”

At least she hadn’t betrayed Gil, she reflected, the thought drifting idly through her mind. Her young wingman, fresh out of the brand new flight academy, had mostly been left alone. So far, anyway. She had insisted on his ignorance so long that they might just believe her. It was a thin thread of hope, but it was all she had. If she could continue to keep Gil Alston safe, then she had a purpose.

“Lieutenant Eldriss. You’ve got to eat”

That was Gil again, she supposed. He was sweet to worry about her, however useless it was.

“Airis. Please.”

His hand rested on her shoulder, and she started. It pulled her out of the lethargic spiral she had been caught in, and she tried to sit up. Instantly, Gil was next to her, offering support and warmth. She finally found an upright position that was sustainable and rested against him for a moment. He shifted and didn’t comment when that moment didn’t end.

Gil pressed a flat ration bar into her hand. “Try to eat at least a little,” he urged again. “You need your strength.”

Airis obliged, if half-heartedly. She broke small pieces off and nibbled at them while Gil rambled on about how ration bars were manufactured and how they had determined what nutrients would go into them. It took her long minutes to realize he was trying to distract her, and she smiled when she finally did.

“When we get back,” she said, interrupting him and very carefully avoiding the word if, “I’m putting you in for a medal.”

“A medal?” He sounded surprised.

“A medal,” Airis repeated, aware that her pronunciation wasn’t as precise as normal. “The ‘Wingman I’d most like to be captured with’ medal.”

He laughed. “That’s not real.”

“Then we’ll make it real,” she insisted stubbornly, taking courage from his continued ability to laugh. “After this, they’ll prob’ly give us anything we want.”

As soon as the words had left her mouth, there was a rush of air and a white-hot pain seared straight through her skull. She flung up her arms and cried out, distantly aware of an echo. Tears streamed down her face as the blinding light cut into her like a vibroblade, pouring between the cracks in her fingers and burning red into her eyes.

“We grow weary, humanss.”

The hissing voice evoked a visceral reaction as her body remembered the pain that always followed it. Airis forced an eyelid to twitch open ever so slightly and tried to make out the figure that loomed over them. The harsh light poured around it, blacking out its features and casting a terrifying shadow.

“If you will not tell uss what we wish to know, then perhapss he will.” A long finger stabbed towards Gil, and Airis’ gut twisted in fear.

“He doesn’t know anything!” she screamed desperately at the being. “He doesn’t know!”

“Then we will give to you one more time. If you wish the friend of you to remain whole, tell uss what we wish to know!” For the first time, anger colored its words. “Ssee him for a night, and we will return for the ansswer of you.”

The cell door slammed shut, but the light remained. Slowly, the pain receded as her eyes adjusted. And as the pain faded, she turned to see Gil for the first time since they had been brought to this Force-forsaken place. He was paler and thinner, testament to their current living conditions, but he was alive and well. Her delight at seeing him was quickly replaced with a mounting dread as its words echoed through her mind. If she wished Gil to remain whole, they needed a plan. Now.