Kissed by Fire: Cal Kestis

Chapter 14

A throbbing pain shot through Cal's head as he felt himself return to the world. The bump the Huntsman had given him on Zeffo was almost agonizing, but it was slowly settling down as Cal got more used to opening his eyes back up. He let out a grunt, feeling his senses come back to him. Upon realizing he wasn't on Zeffo anymore, he looked around his new environment, which appeared to some kind of holding cell. The air around him was putrid and dank, and the dripping of water along stone ticked in his ears like a clock.

"Y/n, BD... where are we?" he questioned as he took in the cell. Silence fell over his ears, and he looked around, realizing that the doctor wasn't there. Of course. She'd be stashed in another cell. Or if this was the Empire, she'd be taken immediately to her mother. But... this didn't feel like the Empire. This cell was too rough. Too unorganized. Too unclean. This was something else entirely. "BD-1?" he called out, hoping he would hear the familiar sounds of his droid. "Little buddy? Y/n? Where are you?"

Nothing.

His hand instinctively went to grab his lightsaber, attempting to bring himself back to reality. Empty space took its place, Cal looking down to see his belt was bare of his weapon. Gotta find a way out of here. Wherever here is he thought to himself, and immediately went to the bars of the cell. He looked around the entrance, seeing if there was anything loose he could tug or something he could jam the lock with, but he came up empty. Turning back to his cell, he closely examined the walls. It seemed to be a rushed build, or an extremely old one. Metal sheets were peeling from the rock, or loose grates were sticking out.

Might as well try Cal thought, and ran his fingers over one of the nearby grates. With a swift and easy tug, it came loose. Throwing it aside, he scanned over what he had discovered. Looks like a power terminal. He tried pulling other sheets around the bottom loose, but none of them budged. He decided he needed to look higher, and reached out through the Force to tug the grates away from higher in the cell. Sure enough, a power cable was hiding behind one of the grates. Willing it to him, he grabbed it and wasted no time in plugging it in. He grinned when he watched the cell door rise.

Cal ran out as fast as he could. The air was colder out of the cell, stale, even. He knew he was underground somewhere, and by the state of things, it definitely wasn't the Empire that was holding them. Especially with how easy it was for him to escape that cell. The Empire would never be that stupid.

A sudden burst of fear hit him. He clutched his chest as his heart began to race and his lungs struggled to take in breath. Something flashed before his mind's eye. All he could make out from the vision was red eyes. Glowing red eyes, and a snarl. As soon as it came, it began lingering away from him, and his breathing evened out. He didn't know what he had seen, but he knew the fear in his chest was not his. It was someone else's.

He observed his fellow captives along the way, realizing that none of them were sentient beings. They were all different animals that he had fought from Zeffo, Kashyyyk, even, somehow, Bogano. Many of them laid in open cells, dead. The smell was ghastly, and Cal rushed from room to room trying to find his droid and his doctor.

Connecting a few different cables to a few different ports seemed to be the key to escaping this place. Cal noticed that was really all they had to keep things in order. He found a shortcut through a locked door, and was quick to find himself in a large pit. An opening above him kept dropping dead, or live, animals through it. Gross Cal thought, jumping across to a nearby cell. Looking through it, he saw multiple decommissioned and destroyed droids. Hoping his wasn't a part of the scrap pile, he called in saying, "BD? BD-1, is that you?!"

Bweep!

"I found you! Are you okay?!"

Beepwhoop!