Acme: Depths of Fear
Posted on Mon Apr 13th, 2026 @ 10:13pm by Mentis & Kelderesh jai Nektus & Reave & Mange & Kalen "Rex" Vickers
Edited on on Mon Apr 13th, 2026 @ 11:59pm
5,870 words; about a 29 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Undervos Holdings Factory, Wastes, Sleheyron
Timeline: After "Acme" - late 1,218 ABY
The door to the factory stairwell closed behind them with a clatter, which echoed down the sparse metallic steps. From the plans, this would be the fastest way down, taking them from the administrative levels, past the factory floor and all the way down to the loading bay. Mentis drooped his head across the railing, the spiral of stairs gaped onwards like a foreboding cavern. Did Axion lie in its depths or just more of his disciples? As soon as he had spied the word 'sovereign' on that manifest, he could no longer deny that this was the work of the cult.
He started to hear something from down below as a heavy feeling came over him: he seemed to hear a cackling laughter building. One voice at first, then many all joining together in a cacophony of jeering.
He felt his head start to swim so he stepped back, heart pounding until he found himself again next to his firm companion, Rex. The cackling abated and they stared at each other a moment, sharing a wordless concern before he needed to put words to his thoughts.
"So, you remember fighting the cult on Korriban?" Mentis began, thinking back to the dusty valley where their fates had intertwined with the former Jedi and their Nautolan companion, "Voq was a nasty piece of work but not indestructible. Bomoor showed us that. But if we encounter more of Axion's inner circle, you've got to be really careful - they will exploit your every weakness and utilise their environment to the fullest to destroy you."
His gaze shot to Reave, "So, pick your weapons carefully: thermal detonators can be cast back at you and clumsy blasting will be easily predicted. But if you can beat them at their own game and use their surroundings against them, you might just get a hit in."
Mentis grasped his hilt up and held it firmly in his hand, "And, obviously, leave any lightsaber combat to me. If they get too close, just run."
Rex stood there a moment longer than he needed to, one hand resting against the rail, eyes angled down into the spiral.
"Yeah," he said at last, dragging his attention back up, glancing between Mentis and the stairwell again. "I remember. And I remember that every time you lot say ‘be careful’, it usually means I’m about to have a very bad day."
He adjusted his grip on his favoured blaster, checking it out of habit, then gave a short nod.
"But noted. No wild shots and no clever tricks - unless I really mean them." He flashed false grin and his his gaze flicked briefly to Reave. "And if it gets close, I run. Reckon I can remember that."
Reave had already started down the steps, but not with his usual aggression. He moved with an uneven, drifting pace, weapon raised but his attention pulled further ahead, down into the depths. The latest cigarra, lazily prepared, hung loose from his mouth, forgotten, trailing a thin thread of smoke.
A low string of almost inaudible Jawaese slipped from him, quieter than before upstairs. Rex watched him for a moment, brow tightening.
"You seeing something?" he called down, testing his friend.
There was no answer.
"Great," Rex muttered, rolling his eyes. He pushed off the railing and followed, falling into step just behind Mentis, but the air seemingly shifted as they descended, becoming heavier. Each step carried a faint resistance, the smell turning sweet and wrong, like something spoiled. The sounds from below began to bleed upward too - machinery and distant movement.
By the time they reached the final landing, Rex’s jaw had tightened. He saw them before Mentis spoke.
A worker stood ahead, half-turned, shoulders slack, head tilted at an unnatural angle. The skin looked wrong. Greyed and tight in places, slack in others. The eyes…
Rex froze for half a second.
"…No," he breathed.
More shapes shifted in the dimness beyond. Slow and uncoordinated. One dragged a foot slightly as it moved. Another’s arm hung loose, fingers twitching. The first one then turned fully toward them and its mouth opened. A wet, broken sound slipped out, not quite speech, not quite breath.
Rex’s grip snapped tighter on the blaster.
"Blackwing," he said under his breath, the word landing heavy and immediate, as he raised his gun. "That’s… that’s Blackwing." His stance changed without thought, body angling, weapon rising just enough to track movement rather than aim cleanly.
Reave stopped two steps below them, but not because of the figures - he was looking past them. His head tilted, this latest cigarra slipping from his mouth and dropping to the metal steps with a faint hiss. Another quiet murmur followed, almost absorbed, as if he were listening to something further down.
Mentis slowed and looked at the first worker, while others drifted awkwardly behind not quite paying full attention to their surroundings. As he squinted, he heard that cackle again: not from the figures, but from everywhere and nowhere at once. Atop the laughter, a supreme voice bellowed over them.
"See my thralls, Mentis!" It demanded of him, "My will is all consuming and eternal. Did you think you could escape? Fool! I never left your side!
The Rattataki lurched back, igniting his blade reflexively with a stuttering hiss.
"Get out of my head!" he cried, "I am no longer your servant."
The shouting drew some attention from the closest figure and he shuffled closer, but the laughter did not fade. It sharpened, curling through the air with a quiet, invasive certainty that did not belong to the space.
"A gift, Mentis, truly." Axion’s voice curled through him, warm with approval that did not belong to him at the shimmering blade. "Something new to break. Something clean to stain." The blue blade trembled in Mentis' grasp, its light catching along the edges of the stairwell. "You will bleed it," the voice continued, softer now, almost patient. "As you were bled. As you will be again." A pause, then the faintest trace of amusement. "Oh, but how eager you are to hold it. To believe in it." The sound shifted, deepening into something more intimate, more possessive. "But as you already know - there is only one truth to believe in within this wretched galaxy - me."
Behind him, Rex heard only the shouting. His heart lurched as Mentis’s voice broke against the walls, the words distorted by distance, but the tone unmistakable. Not controlled or focused, but wrong. His grip tightened on the blaster until his knuckles blanched.
"Mentis…"
The name came out quieter than he intended, but his stance had already shifted, the weapon rising fully now, no longer tracking but aligning. The shapes ahead barely registered anymore. The dragging feet and the slack limbs, and the wet, broken sounds they made. And, looking to the shouting, beleaguered Rattataki, also in the way way he stood. The way he shouted at nothing and the way the voice cracked... he was also infected. He had been too late; one of the workers must have bitten him when he was looking away, claiming Mentis' life before Rex could even tell him how he-
Rex swallowed hard, something tightening in his chest as the conclusion forced itself into place.
His blaster rose, the sights settling on the pale cranium of his companion. Tears began to well at the corner of his eyes as he sought the courage he knew he could muster, to put Mentis out of his misery - to prevent him from becoming a mindless husk, intent on consuming and destroying all things around him. His finger edged toward the trigger-
-but Reave moved before the moment could settle.
He hit Rex from the side with sudden, brutal force, shoulder driving into his ribs and sending both of them crashing hard against the metal steps, despite the smaller size of the Jawa. The blaster jerked wide, two rapidly-loosed blaster bolt veering off and impacting some unknown objects out of sight, the weapon itself clattering against the railing as Rex lost his grip. It skidded across the grated surface, out of reach.
Rex gasped as the impact drove the air from his lungs, vision snapping white for a split second before resolving into the close, frantic shape of Reave over him.
The smaller figure was shaking, not with fear, but with something sharper, more focused. His gloved hand snapped forward, jabbing hard into Rex’s chest as he began shouting, rapid and furious, the words spilling out in harsh, guttural bursts of Jawaese.
"Chuba! Na waka!"
It wasn’t panicked - it was deliberate.
Reave leaned closer, hat angled down, his finger stabbing forward again, this time toward Rex’s face, then sharply back toward Mentis, then down the stairwell beyond them. When Rex did not focus quickly enough, Reave smacked him hard against the side of the head and continued berating him, insisting whatever he saw was not truth.
Rex stared back at him, breath still catching, heart hammering against his ribs as the meaning forced its way through the chaos. He blinked as the Jawa continued jabbing at him, and almost smacked the old mercenary back as Reave produced a small vial and cracked it beneath Rex's nose. He coughed and snorted, barely managing to scrabble away from beneath the Jawa, his head impacting a nearby barrel and causing him to wheel sideways in pain.
As the blurred vision finally cleared, Reave still stood beside him with narrowed, angry glowing eyes hidden beneath the wide brim of his hat. Rex then looked back up to Mentis and saw he was, for lack of better description, 'himself'. He was disturbed by something, undoubtedly, but he was, at the very least, whole... although that did nothing for the headache hammering within Rex's skull.
The sore smuggler prepared himself to make a weak joke at his own expense, when a blur of white fur and claws suddenly shot across his vision, straight into Mentis, and yanked him clear off the ground into the air, suspended by great red cybernetic gauntlet tightening around his throat.
"Mentis!" He called, the brief relief he experienced immediately melting away into a blind panic, as his brain registered a hulking great albino Wookiee was choking Mentis before him.
He scrabbled around quickly, looking for his weapon, but Reave wasted no time, already turning to face the cultist monstrosity. His heavy repeating blaster reappeared in his small gloved hands, bolt after bolt loosing with abandon at the beastly warrior. In forced response, the Wookiee released a low, angry and pained growl, some of the bolts finding their mark in his thick hide, as he flung the half-choked form of Mentis at the two Tatooinians across the way.
Mentis slid along and crashed into Rex and Reave, knocking them down to the base of the stairs where their momentum was halted by a pallet of sealed barrels that wobbled against the impact but remained upright.
"Urgh..." groaned Mentis, managing to wrench his head upright to stare directly into the Jawa's glowing gaze, filled with more concern than he had ever seen under that wide-brimmed hat, "Thanks Reave."
Rex pulled him upright and Mentis once again grasped his blade firmly, igniting it as the albino Wookie turned his great form around upon them.
"Mange!" the Rattataki announced, moving back and beckoning the others to move away with him away from the stairwell and into the loading bay. Behind the Wookie a burst pipe hissed from the stray laser fire's impact, dispensing a heavy smog of cloudy gas that trickled down the steps along with Mange as he moved down towards them.
However, they halted suddenly as the sharp whoosh of another lightsaber ignited behind them. Their heads turned to see a vermilion red blade held aloft in the clawed, wrapped hands of Kelderesh. His amber eyes stared down at them from under his bone faceplate as he perched atop a loading crane.
"We wondered whether we would be gifted the traitor," his raspy basic hissed through the room, mixing with the escaping gas like a ghostly echo, "And here you are, without your Jedi protectors..."
He dropped in a controlled descent down to the floor, landing amidst a group of the shambling workers. He pulled one of them towards him and impaled them with his blade, then casting them down, baring his teeth as he revelled in the brutality.
"This is the end for you Mentis. There is no redemption for you in Axion's grace. You are nothing and you will die today," he grasped his claws together, a tiny tremor could be felt as he spoke, "You will all die today!"
Mange moved first. The hulking Wookiee surged forward down the last stretch of steps with a guttural roar that filled the stairwell, the sound reverberating through the metal structure as both of his weapons ignited in the same violent motion. Twin red blades snapped to life, each hilt extended into a brutal, hooked profile, the far ends shaped into sharpened, crescent edges that caught the light as he brought them up.
The weight of him crashed down the remaining steps in a single, overwhelming push, both blades crossing as he descended, a scissoring strike aimed to cleave straight through the space where Reave stood.
The Jawa reacted on instinct. He dropped and rolled hard to the side, the crossed blades shearing through the air where his head had been a fraction of a second before, heat snapping across the brim of his hat as he hit the lower platform and came up already turning, weapon tracking.
Rex staggered back a step, dragging Mentis with him as the strike passed, his heart still racing from the impact, from the confusion, from everything collapsing at once.
"Move-!"
The word had barely left him when something shifted above. A sharp, rising whine cut through the chaos, buried beneath the echoes of the fight. A second later it became a tearing crack that split the stairwell apart. The upper levels erupted - the bolts Rex had fired moments before had found something volatile.
Flame punched outward through the stairwell above them, a concussive blast ripping through the metal framework and sending a shockwave down the spiral. The steps shuddered violently, fragments of plating and burning debris shearing loose and cascading downward in a rain of sparks and twisted metal.
Rex’s eyes snapped upward, the realisation hitting him clean and immediate.
"Oh no... No, no, no...!"
The structure groaned and heat followed the blast, rolling down toward them in a wave that stole the air from his lungs.
"Down!" he shouted, voice cracking as he threw an arm out instinctively, trying to force the others lower, away from the collapsing upper levels. "I hit something- move, move!"
Mange did not retreat, however. If anything, the chaos fed him, and with a savage twist of his torso, he broke the crossing guard of his blades and hurled one of them without hesitation. The weapon spun end over end through the thickening air, its red beam carving a violent arc as it flew straight toward Mentis.
At the same time, the Wookiee drove forward again, closing the distance in two heavy steps as his remaining weapon came around in a brutal, horizontal sweep aimed directly at Rex’s midsection, and Rex barely moved in time, the strike forcing him back another step as heat tore across his front, his footing slipping on the grated surface.
"Rex!" Mentis shouted, barely finding the space to react as Mange’s spinning blade screamed toward him. He caught it on his own saber with a jarring clash, redirecting the red disc in a tight arc. It whirled back toward its owner, who snatched it out of the air without even looking. Now armed with both weapons again, Mange crossed the twin crimson beams and drove down toward Rex with murderous momentum.
Mentis flung out a hand. A stack of unsecured crates atop a nearby transport lurched, then toppled. They crashed down over the Wookiee in a clattering cascade. Mange sliced one open out of instinct, only for a cloud of fine reddish powder to erupt across his white fur, staining it in a mottled haze. His roar shook the bay, a sound so furious that Rex scrambled back in pure reflex as micro-blasts overhead cracked another fault line across the ceiling.
Mentis moved to pull Rex up, only for a heavy impact to slam into his side. A Gonk droid barrelled into him like a battering ram, knocking him off his feet and sweeping him across the floor toward Kelderesh. He hit the ground hard, the weight of the power-cell-filled droid pinning him.
"Fools," the Kaleesh hissed, and lightning erupted from his claws. It arced through the droid and into Mentis, the metal casing superheating against his skin. His scream tore out of him, raw and involuntary. Thought dissolved. There was only pain.
The lightning cut off. Through the ringing in his skull, Mentis sensed Kelderesh’s blade lowering toward his throat.
"Let us end this so I may escape this death trap," the Kaleesh spat, only to stagger as another tremor rolled through the bay. Above them, girders groaned and bent under the strain of the collapsing structure.
Then Mentis heard it: a strangled cry. Rex’s cry. The sound of someone being lifted by the throat.
A different fear surged through him. It was sharper, deeper, not for himself but for the one person who had given his life meaning after so long believing there was only Axion. He seized it. Drew on it. The Gonk droid blasted away from him in a burst of concussive force as Mentis hurled everything he had at Kelderesh, sending the Kaleesh skidding back.
He swept himself toward Mange in the same motion, reigniting his blade mid-leap. The Wookiee pivoted, but not fast enough. Mentis carved a burning line across his upper arm. Mange roared, dropping Rex, who collapsed to the floor in a heap.
"Come on…" Mentis rasped, lungs raw and shaking. He hauled Rex up, gathered what strength remained, and vaulted them both over the transport to relative cover.
Reave had hit the deck hard in the chaos of falling bodies, spinning once as he came up low and already searching, the heavy repeater gone - lost somewhere in the collision - but his hands never empty for long. The rifle slung across his back was in his grip a heartbeat later, stock snapping into his shoulder as he sighted through the haze without hesitation. He fired at the towering shape of Mange, each shot precise despite the tremor running through the deck beneath him.
The Wookiee answered with impossible reflex, blades moving in tight, efficient arcs that caught the incoming fire, but the air around him had thickened, fouled by gas and powder, and the deflections were no longer clean. Bolts scattered wildly on contact, ricocheting off metal, chewing into the floor, tearing sparks from overhead supports and vanishing into the choking fog in unpredictable streaks as Reave adjusted his stance and kept firing, forcing pressure, forcing movement, forcing the beast to react.
"Oh, I don’t think so!" Kelderesh snarled. His blade carved through a stack of pallets as he advanced, cutting down shambling workers who wandered into his path.
Another tremor hit. Stronger this time. A tortured groan echoed overhead as a massive pipe ruptured, spilling a stream of yellow corrosive fluid that hissed and spat where it struck the floor. Kelderesh leapt back from a sudden spray, his maroon robes snapping behind him.
Rex barely had time to register the hiss of the corrosive stream before the world snapped back into motion around him, his throat still burning as he dragged in a ragged breath and forced himself upright behind the partial cover Mentis had hauled him to. His eyes locked immediately onto Mange, the towering figure already turning back toward them through the drifting haze, red-stained fur steaming faintly where the chemical dust and heat had begun to react.
"He's not slowing!" Rex choked out, scrambling sideways to recover his blaster as his hands finally closed around it, the familiar weight grounding him just enough to act.
He fired without hesitation now, controlled but urgent shots aimed to disrupt rather than kill, joining Reave in forcing the Wookiee to keep those blades moving, to keep him occupied. Mange answered with a furious roar, stepping through the fire instead of away from it, one blade snapping up to catch the incoming bolts while the other carved a violent arc through the air, advancing with relentless, crushing intent despite the chaos tearing the facility apart around them.
The white-furred menace continued to surge forward and suddenly released a thunderous Force bellow that tore through the loading bay, the sound carrying a concussive weight that rippled outward in a visible distortion. Machinery buckled under the pressure, control panels bursting in showers of sparks as stacked barrels toppled and split, their contents spilling and hissing across the floor.
The shockwave hit Reave full on, lifting him clean off his feet and hurling him back across the deck to slam hard against a bank of containers, this latest rifle tearing from his grip as he slumped down unconscious.
"No, no, Mange!" Kelderesh's voice broke slightly as he exclaimed, pausing his pursuit momentarily as great chunks of the ceiling began to topple down, "Do you want to bring this place down any faster?"
As the cultists stalled, Mentis rushed towards the fallen Jawa, staggering as the floor trembled and he desperately clambered over bent durasteel and rugged ferrocrete as he felt his body aching with the strain. When he was close enough, he summoned the small humanoid, hat and all, into his arms and began a delicate, hasty retreat back towards Rex.
"He's okay, I think," Mentis gasped, placing Reave into Rex's arms, "Just unconscious."
Turning around, the Rattataki eyed Mange tearing debris aside while Kelderesh lingered a moment, eyes assessing the room. His furious determination replaced with sudden caution. His gaze then flashed to Mentis and they stared a moment, across the collapsing room.
Then, another blast - this time directly above.
The cloaked cultist's blade retracted at once and he flung a hand in the air dismissively.
"We're done here," he began to turn, taking a few steps towards the loading shutters and wrenching them upwards with a violent force, resisting him as their now-warped frames prevented proper opening. He did, however succeed in creating a wide enough gap that the faint yellow light of Sleheyron's surface eased in through the gap.
He turned once more, "Come now, Mange. Leave them to fiery death."
Mange lingered only a moment longer, broad chest rising and falling as a low, frustrated growl built in his throat, the sound thick with denied violence. His grip tightened around his weapons as if resisting the urge to turn back, to finish it, but Kelderesh's command held. The growl shifted, breaking into a rough, almost mocking huff of dark amusement as he cast one last glance toward them, then turned and began to move, heavy strides carrying him through the fractured bay and deeper into the facility, picking up speed as he went, the red glow of his blades cutting through the haze before vanishing from sight.
Rex barely tracked him. His focus had already snapped down to the small, unmoving weight in his arms.
"Reave- hey- hey, come on…" His voice broke as he adjusted his grip, one hand instinctively checking for any sign of injury he didn’t understand how to treat. The panic was there, plain, unguarded. "Don't do this now, man…"
A faint movement as Reave’s head shifted slightly beneath the brim of his hat, a quiet, irritated sound slipping from him as one gloved hand twitched against Rex’s sleeve and tried to slap Rex, who froze and then let out a breath he had not realised he had been holding, something between a laugh and a gasp.
"Ah, thank the angels of Iego!" Relief washed through him fast, but it did not settle. His eyes lifted almost immediately, scanning the bay as another groan tore through the structure above them, the floor shuddering beneath his boots.
The place was coming apart and the heat was rising even higher. Awful sounds permeated all around them and more explosions occurred further into the facility.
"We need to move," he said, sharper now, urgency cutting through the lingering strain in his voice as he shifted Reave's weight, pulling him closer. "This place is done!" His gaze flicked upward toward the fractured ceiling, then back toward Mentis. "We'll be lucky if we even make the roof," he added, jaw tightening. "Raptor's our only way out. We stay here, we're dead!"
Mentis heard Rex’s words, but they seemed to reach him from a great distance. A sudden wave of anguish crashed through him: raw, disorienting, and unmistakably not his own. It wasn’t the clean, sharp clarity of a Force Bond, but even through that fragile thread, he felt something buckle. A flare of terror. A crushing weight. A scream swallowed before it could form.
His breath caught. Thane was in agony... or Bomoor was. The impressions blurred together, indistinct and overlapping, like two voices crying out from behind a sealed door. He couldn’t tell them apart but knew they were alive, but only just, and whatever had happened had torn them violently out of the fight.
Mentis staggered, the echo fading but leaving a hollow ache in its wake. Something was terribly wrong. And they were suddenly, terrifyingly, alone.
"Yeah... I know..." he answered Rex, thoughts racing through his mind, "But we've got more trouble - something's happened to Thane and Bomoor up there. They are going to need our help to get out of here."
Rex did not answer immediately. He just stared at Mentis, eyes narrowing slightly as something colder, older moved behind them, a flicker of calculation cutting through the panic. His gaze dropped briefly to Reave in his arms, taking in the soot, the limpness, the small signs of life returning, then lifted again toward the collapsing bay, the firelight, the falling debris. Mentis could see it in him, plain as anything, the instinct weighing it up. The odds and the exits... who made it out and who did not.
For a moment, he looked exactly like the man Mentis had first met over a year ago. Then, his jaw tightened. His eyes came back to Mentis, and something in them gave way. Rex exhaled sharply through his nose, shaking his head once, almost irritated with himself.
"Yeah, yeah… sure. Sure, we need to," he muttered, the words reluctant but already committed as he shifted Reave's weight - then promptly dropped him onto the deck with a dull thud.
Reave made a rough, offended sound as he hit, one hand immediately lifting in a weak, instinctive protest.
"You're fine," Rex shot down at him, already turning away, though the edge in his voice had softened. "Walk it off." He looked back to Mentis, more focused now, more direct. "You get the big guy," he said, pointing once for emphasis. "I'm not dragging that mountain through this - I ain't got magic. I'll find his worshipfulness."
Another tremor rolled through the bay, closer this time, and both Rex and Reave coughed hard as a fresh wave of heated gas and smoke pushed through the space, thick enough to sting the eyes and catch in the throat.
Rex winced, waving a hand briefly in front of his face before pushing on regardless.
"But listen to me," he added, stepping closer, voice lower but sharp with urgency. "If I see even a sliver of daylight coming through that ceiling, I am gone. Straight up. I'm not dying in this hole. I'll take the Raptor and I'll circle, but I'm not waiting." Another cough broke through him, harsher now, his breath hitching slightly as he forced it back under control. "That's the deal."
Reave staggered back to his feet beside him, smaller frame swaying slightly as he brought a hand up, revealing a small mask he had hidden in his little jacket, coughing once, twice, then giving a sharp, irritated shake of his head as if trying to clear it.
"Right," Rex then snapped, already turning toward the deeper sections of the facility, blaster coming up again as the structure groaned around them. "Let's go."
And with that, he pushed forward into the smoke, Reave close behind, both of them already feeling the weight of the air beginning to take its toll.
Less than a minute later, Mentis was forcing himself through the last mangled stretch of the cooling tunnels, contorting his body between buckled pipes and ruptured conduits that spat steam like twisted serpents. The whole place groaned and shuddered around him; every hiss of escaping gas made his nerves jolt as though the tunnel itself were trying to shake him loose.
He burst through the final tangle of metal and dropped beside Bomoor.
The Ithorian was intact, mostly, but pinned beneath a fallen length of pipe. But that wasn’t what had felled him. His skin had gone a sickly grey, sunken in ways it never should be, and worst of all he was shivering violently, as if all warmth had left torn out of him.
"Bomoor!" Mentis tried to rouse him, already sweeping the debris aside with a sharp, irritated flick of the Force. The pipe clanged away. He grabbed the Ithorian’s broad shoulders, shaking him once, then harder, "Bomoor! Come on! We’ve got to move!"
Nothing. Just more frantic, uncontrollable trembling.
Mentis swore under his breath and glanced down the tunnel. They were not far from an exit: he could feel the space opening out ahead, could almost imagine the Raptor’s engines screaming toward them. If Rex could get close enough to land.
"Right," he growled, rolling his shoulders back, centring himself despite the chaos rattling the walls. “If the mountain will not move itself...”
He planted his feet, teeth gritted, and cast a wide sheet of influence beneath the Ithorian’s massive frame.
"…then I will move the mountain."
And with that, they lurched forward into the collapsing dark.
They almost missed him.
Rex pushed through the smoke ahead of Reave, one arm half-raised against the heat and drifting particulate, eyes watering as the air thickened into something barely breathable. The floor here had buckled inward, warped into a shallow basin where runoff had pooled, the metal slick and uneven beneath his boots. He was about to turn, to call it and move on-
Then he saw movement.
But it was not truly movement - not really.
A crumped shape.
"…No way," he breathed, the words instinctive, disbelieving, as he took two slow steps forward.
What lay in the pooled chemical sheen did not register as a man at first. It was too still, crumpled and broken. The right side of the body was wrong in a way Rex’s mind refused to catalogue, something half-submerged, half-consumed, the fluid around it hissing faintly where it continued to eat. The smell hit him a second later, thick and unmistakable, and he recoiled hard, one hand snapping up over his mouth.
"That’s- no. No, that’s not-"
Reave pushed past him.
The Jawa dropped low without hesitation, skidding the last step on the slick metal and leaning in closer, gloved hands hovering for a fraction of a second before committing. He made a sharp, urgent sound, something strained beneath the mask, and reached in, grabbing at the unburned side of the figure's clothing, hauling with surprising force for his small size and leverage.
The body shifted and a faint, wet sound followed.
Rex froze.
"…Thane?"
The name, one he rarely even uttered, came out uncertain, almost disbelieving, as he forced himself closer again, every instinct screaming at him to step back instead. He crouched, eyes darting over what remained, trying and failing to reconcile it with the man he knew.
"He's-" Rex swallowed hard, his voice dropping. "He's gone. He's- there is no way-"
Reave snapped his head toward him, sharp and immediate.
"No... no, look at him!" Rex insisted, gesturing helplessly, his voice cracking under the strain. "That's not survivable! That... that's done, man, that's-"
The Jawa ignored him and leaned in further, one hand pressing against Thane's chest, the other bracing at his shoulder as if trying to feel something through the ruined form. He stilled for a second, then let out a short, sharp burst of Jawaese.
Alive.
Rex stared.
"No," he said again, weaker now, shaking his head as if that alone might make it true. "No, no, that's... that's not…"
Another tremor rolled through the platform, harder this time, and something above gave way with a screech of tearing metal. Rex flinched, glancing up, then back down, panic rising again in full force. More of the factory was tearing away -neighbouring platforms and walkways had already collapsed, and more explosions were ripping through further along, reaching into the more dangerous recesses of the facility.
"We don’t have time for this!" He snapped, even as his eyes refused to leave Thane. Inwardly, he disbelieved the other Human had any chance at all of survival - and if it was just best to leave him here, regardless of anything. It was a dark thought he pushed aside, trying to justify himself on the grounds of survival and medical probability alone. "We can't fix that, Reave! We need to move!"
Reave was already moving, though. He released Thane only long enough to dart to the side, vanishing briefly into the haze before reappearing, dragging a half-functional hover-loader behind him. The repulsors sputtered unevenly, whining under strain, but it held together enough to carry weight. He shoved it into place beside Thane and dropped to one knee again, already working to manoeuvre the broken body onto it with quick, efficient movements.
Rex stared at it, then at Thane, then back at Reave. Something in him cracked, he relented, ignored his misgivings of the man and his survival, and he crouched down opposite Reave, forcing himself to look without flinching this time, jaw tightening hard as he reached in. The man's whole body was mishapen - there was no way to move his body without causing more injury, he was sure - but anything, he told himself, was something. Even for Thane.
"On three," he said to the Jawa, voice low, controlled by necessity rather than calm. "Quick as we can. Don’t- don’t drag him through that, just lift, yeah?"
Another tremor hit and the platform shifted beneath them, almost making it impossible for them to keep their balance.
Rex did not wait for the next one and did not reach 'Three'.
RSS Feed