Homecoming

Something was wrong about this situation, and Soren could feel it.

"What is this?" Soren hissed. "Some kind of joke?" He reached out with his free hand, like a blind man feeling across an unfamiliar surface, trying to sense what was in the tank. There was fear, anger and despair, but it wasn't directed at him. It was inward, focused, like a blaster pointed at her own head. Whatever hatred Soren had been feeling for her was nothing compared to the self-loathing Soren could sense beyond the glass. Soren looked at her closely - her pale, almost white skin, her impossibly thin body, her bandaged shoulder, the blackened flesh around the wound, the way Terra's face was twisted in pain and abject misery - and concluded that 1) she was the woman he was searching for, and 2) he was not nearly prepared for this.

His grimace split in confusion, causing his weapon to drop slightly. This presented complications. And Mickey was waiting for him. He'd expected to find an assassin, not a crying teenage girl floating in a bacta tank. But if she could deceive Serrin Roma for a whole year, who's to say this isn't a trick?

Soren cursed. He raised his pistol again, pointed directly at Terra's pale form in the bacta tank. "What is going on here? Why are you crying? What the kriff is wrong with your shoulder? Tell me what's going on, and I won't hurt you." Much.

Soren let out an animal sound of annoyance, somewhere between a snarl and a hiss of anger. He didn't have time for this.

"I don't need this, Kiros. Stop crying." Seeing her continue to tremble inside the tank, Soren's face contorted into an animal mask of fury, and his knuckles turned white around the grip of his blaster. Before he knew what he was doing, he raised it and brought it down against the glass surface. "STOP" - crunch - "CRYING.". He brought the butt of the pistol down against the glass again, sending spiderweb cracks across the surface of the tank.

Soren stopped, staring at the slowly widening crack, shocked out of his fury. He was no doctor, but he could tell that the glass of the bacta tank was at least a centimeter and a half thick, and designed to withstand the explosive force of a low-grade thermal detonator. To be able to cause that kind of damage, he'd had to be -

Maybe he wasn't thinking straight.

Soren exhaled softly, then lowered - and holstered - his pistol. "I'm... I'm sorry. I was just... I just lost someone. A friend. Maybe one of my last friends." He pressed his fingers against the glass and felt where the glass was weakening. "I... I think I've broken your tank. And you're injured. If I open it up, will you let me take a look at your wounds?"

For the first time since they'd met on Tython, Soren looked at Terra in the eyes. He was no expert at telepathy, or even the Force-assisted empathy that Ice and Adi seemed to use in order to know what the other was thinking, but he did his best to send his apologies to her.

Soren nodded, a bit shakily. "Okay. Just try to hold still."

He moved forward, touching aurabesh keys on the datapad in front of him. There was a sudden storm of bubbles inside the tank, and Terra felt the red liquid around her begin to recede as the bacta was sucked through some hose back to a reservoir for purification. Before long she was standing in the tank, still attached to the cables and tubing at her wrists and shoulders, but no longer immersed. Another touch of the keypad caused the glass of the tank to split open, exposing Terra to the frigid air of the basement.

And to Soren.

Soren stared at her shoulder, hard in thought. Then, hesitantly, as if he was afraid she'd tear his arm off, he extended a hand, trying to gauge her physical aura. She felt sick, and injured, but somehow there wasn't as much damage as he'd expected. Strange. She should be nearly catatonic right now. "I'd like to take a look at your shoulder wound. Can you take off your bandage to let me see?"

Soren made a move to catch her as she fell, but, with some part of him still thinking this was a trick of some kind, he didn't touch her.

"You're... ah... Here, let me..." Soren looked for words in the same way a fisher searched for fish; he simply reached into the waters of his mind, gathered a number of them at random, and sent them spilling forth in a rush. He finally found a few that suited him, and knelt down to her level, pulling off his jacket. It was heavy enough to ward off the chill of the hospital ward, but light enough not to upset her wound too much. "Here." He offered it to her good hand. "Take this, while I look for something to warm you up."

He began searching the room, never quite letting Terra out of his sight. The hospital ward was full of broken or empty bacta tanks, rusted gurneys and empty boxes, but it was clean and still powered by the geothermal roots far below. After a moment or two of searching across the antiseptic white walls, Soren found a faintly glowing keypad. Here. He raised the temperature of the room to 44 degrees, then returned to the shivering girl.

The Jedi knelt down next to her, and gently reached out to touch her right shoulder. "Kiros. I'm new at this. I'm a Jedi apprentice. I've barely begun my training, so you need to help me." He channeled a bit of positive energy her way, hoping to cut through the black, wet blanket of darkness he felt around her. "I want you to take a deep breath and focus. Don't think about the sewers. Just think about your arm. I have a combat medkit in my ship. It can't reach me down here, but if we make it to the roof we can get an extraction, and we can fix your shoulder. I need to know if you can walk."

Soren approached, then carefully offered his arm to her. He didn't like the idea of touching her, for multiple reasons, but he didn't think she'd be able to make it on her own.

"There's a landing pad on the roof," he told her. "That's the good news. If I get you up there and to Mickey, we'll be able to patch up your arm and fly you the rest of the way back to Coronet. The bad news is that the comms are out, so if she isn't within a line of sight we're kriffed. And the landing pad's seventy stories up, and I have no idea if the turbolift's working."

He glanced down at her, still not sure if she could walk. "Something I'm wondering... If you aren't a Sith, how did you get in that tank by yourself? Someone must have helped you. "

"Yeah," a voice replied. "I did."

At the end of the hall stood Skyle Huma, his armor dented and battered, with blood trickling down his breastplate. The old man's blue eyes were staring, furious, and in his hand he held a blaster, aimed directly at Soren. How he'd managed to sneak up on them was impossible to know - particularly with the bulky bag he had in hand.

"Skyle, what are you -"

"Quiet, boss." Skyle nodded at Terra, still keeping his blaster trained on the Jedi Apprentice. "Step away from him, girl. Nice and easy."

"Skyle -"

Skyle shot him. It wasn't exactly a killing shot - it was a stun bolt that passed under Soren's arm by several centimeters - but the sheer proximity was enough to boil through the skinsuit Soren was wearing and blacken the flesh underneath. Soren collapsed with a scream of pain, clutching the wound in his side. The older man stalked forward, dropped the bag at Terra's feet and knelt down on Soren's neck, pinning him to the floor.

"One word more," Skyle said, "and the next bolt goes through your head. This question is for the girl." After hearing Soren's acknowledging whimper, Skyle looked up at her, concerned. "Terra, you're a Jedi. Is this man someone we can trust?"

Skyle looked back down at Soren, who was gritting his teeth to keep from crying out in pain. Then, slowly, he holstered his blaster and stepped off the younger man's neck. "Sorry, boss."

"You don't sound it," Soren hissed through clenched teeth. He crawled onto his hands and knees, then sat up with a gasp of pain. When he'd finished and was in a kneeling position, he glared up at Skyle, his eyes murderous. "Why the kriff did you shoot me?"

"Because I just saw Sergeant Mirri Darkray. Nice girl. Good Tallusian family. She tried to plant a vibroblade in my chest. It's good to see you too, boss." Skyle bent down and began removing equipment from the bag. One metal box bore a vertical bacta-red bar - the universal symbol for first aid. Huma opened the box and retrieved a small canister, which he rolled over to Soren's feet. "Spray that on the blaster burn."

"Darkray was a part of Sel Waylan's first response squad at Norbet's Nest," Soren said, remembering Marko's words. He reached under his armpit and sprayed the foam into his wound, then let out a wordless scream as every nerve in his body caught on fire. "Rodding... Why would she attack you? Did she say anything?"

"She told us she had dirt on Arnolict, drew us in. It was a stupid trick, but we fell for it. I think Ha-Mil jumped out a window. Darkray nicked me."

"You don't look too bad," Soren offered. At Skyle's raised eyebrow, Soren corrected himself. "Not worse than usual, I mean."

"Vibros cut deep. I sprayed some bacta foam in the wound. Should keep me together until we get to a safe location." Skyle looked back at Terra, then retrieved a tube of some kind of pinkish slime. "Ha-Mil whipped this up in the lab. Put it on your shoulder and you should be able to use it within a few minutes. Not permanently, and if you put too much stress on it the seal will break, but long enough to climb a ladder if you need to." He offered the tube to her.

Soren nodded, still looking pained. He limped over to her and helped her open the tube. It smelled disgusting; Soren had once witnessed a Gamorrean vomiting on a Coronet subway, and the stench emanating from the tube smelled almost as bad.

He retched, then glanced back at Skyle. "What the frell is this stuff, Skyle?"

Skyle coughed. "Ha-Mil cooked it up. It's a mix of bacta, numbing agent, synth-flesh and some kind of flash-cook cellular matrix. He calls it human paste."

"It smells like- "

"I know, boss. Just rub it on the wound and she'll be good to go in a few minutes."

Soren exhaled, then took a shallow breath through his mouth and helped Terra shrug off the jacket, exposing her shoulder to the air. As gently as he could, he reached down to her left shoulder and pulled away the bandage, letting her wound show for the first time in three days.

There was surprisingly little damage, at least in the sense that Soren was expecting. Beneath the charred skin Soren could see red and white, where blood vessels, ligaments and strands of muscle connected Terra's arm to her torso. He'd expected to be able to see all the way through, especially if this was a military-grade blaster burn. But it was too neat - almost surgical. Though a combination of Terra's innate abilities, bacta immersion and (unbeknownst to either of them) Sith alchemy had healed her wound, Soren recognized the work.

A lightsaber wound. And from the same hand that killed Ellie.

"This is going to hurt," Soren told her. "A lot."

Soren caught her as she fell, his hands easily grabbing her under the ribs and preventing her from falling to the ground. Under his touch, she felt thin; like a bird with hollow bones, she seemed like she could shatter at any minute.

He'd laid to rest his thoughts that she was Marko's killer, but something nagged at him. There was darkness in her aura, from both the regular inky haze of pain and the graphite sheen of fear for the present situation, but under that lay something darker and closer to the skin. It permeated her, sending a shiver down Soren's spine that he had to struggle to suppress. When she raised her head and Soren saw her large blue eyes again, something in him hardened.

Maybe you didn't kill Marko, or Ellie, or Captain Damora, or all the others. But I know you've killed, and chose to kill. And someday, I'm going to hear those stories, and the truth will come out.

"There's a landing pad on the roof," he told Skyle, his eyes still on Terra. "We should try to reach it, so I can raise Shellen's extraction bird to pick us up. Are you done here, Skyle?"

"I didn't think I was, until the Blood Hounds started moving out." Skyle worked on re-packing the bag, then slung it over his shoulder with a small exhalation of pain. "They're bugging out of the sewers. Either something spooked them, or they're on the prowl."

"Can you track them?"

Skyle shook his head, then glanced back at Terra. "Girl. Did you see anything in the sewers that could explain this?"

Soren and Skyle exchanged meaningful glances.

Soren thought of telling Skyle that there was no way they'd be able to escape the city of Tyrena alive with the Blood Hounds tracking them. They'd been given their name for a reason; they were utterly loyal, predatory, vengeful and worked as a group to bring prey down, and they were utterly ruthless. It might be that they could reach the landing pad, but even then it would be difficult to raise Mickey via line-of-sight alone. Once in the air, the Blood Hounds would have speeders, airships and possibly even a civilian-grade flier or two, and Soren hadn't seen any obvious weaponry on the insectoid Omaka dropship Mickey piloted. And even if Soren could get the girl and his old colleague back to Shellen, it was obvious that there was a Sith on their tail, with an army of some of the most vicious, bloodthirsty psychopaths in the galaxy.

Skyle thought of telling Soren that it might be best if they simply dumped the girl and continued with the original mission, but discarded the idea almost immediately. As much as he hated Arnolict and wanted to see him burned - literally, if possible - he wasn't willing to kill Terra if that was what it took. There was also the issue of finding a safe hiding place. The Academy was well fortified, but Skyle knew that once they informed CorSec that Terra had arrived, they'd immediately arrest her on whatever charges the suits could dream up.

"Hiding place?" Skyle asked.

"Omaka Towers," Soren answered. "Exit?"

"Turbolift. Down the hallway." Skyle indicated the hallway in question with a nod.

Soren hesitated for a split second. "Time?"

Skyle shook his head. "Not enough."

"Then let's go. Terra, stay close. Don't use your arm unless you have to." Soren reached into his belt and pulled out the asp, which he activated. It wasn't a lightsaber, and certainly wouldn't stand up to one, but it could bisect a human all the same on its highest setting. He held it in front of him like a torch, took Terra's hand in his, and followed Skyle down the dark hallway. As they walked, Soren questioned Terra without looking back. "I need you to remember as much as you can about the sewers. Who was down there? How many were there? How were they outfitted?"