The Force Betrayed: Cal Kestis x OC

10.

Sakana's eyes fluttered open as she breathed in the dirty, mildewy air around her. She was laying on her stomach and her forehead was pressed against the damp ground, cooling her warm skin.

When her eyes finally focused and she realized that she didn't recognize her surroundings, she immediately shot up from the ground in a panic. The last thing she remembered was her body writhing on the floor in the cave, completely unable to move.

As she stood up and looked around, panic began to rise in her throat. She was in some kind of holding cell with metal bars for a door, reminding her that she was trapped. She had no idea where she was or how she got there, and she was completely alone.

"No, no, no," she said quietly as she frantically searched around the room. "Cal? BD!?"

There was no response from either of them and she felt like she might be sick. She knew she never should have left Kashyyyk; this was exactly what she had been afraid of.

As she was looking around for a potential way out, her heart dropped to her stomach. If her lightsaber was gone, where was her journal? It had been hidden in a deep pocket on the side of her inner robes, and to her relief, it was still there. If she somehow needed any more proof that she made the wrong decision by leaving Kashyyyk, that was it.

The walls of her room were covered in metal plates while the floor was sandy and grimy. For a moment she thought she might have still been on Dathomir, but the texture of the ground was completely different and she hadn't seen any metal anywhere else on the planet.

She tried to look behind the metal panels for any kind of circuitry that she could potentially disable, but the panels were securely bolted to the wall. She also attempted to use the Force to pry them off but ran into the same issue. She knew there had to be some way out of the cell, but she was on unfamiliar terrain, and that hadn't worked in her favor so far.

She wasn't ready to give up so easily, however, and she returned her focus to the metal grates covering the dingy walls.

*****

Cal woke up with his head pounding against the floor. His chest hurt and he felt dizzy as he tried to stand up and take in his surroundings.

"BD...?" he asked quietly, looking around to find both the droid and Sakana gone. "BD-1!? Sakana!?"

Neither responded and he sat back down on the floor, trying to make his head stop spinning. He reached for his lightsaber but that was gone too, and he couldn't help but sigh frustratedly at the situation. Every Jedi in the galaxy had a bounty on their head; that was no surprise, but Cal had no way of knowing who had captured him or where he was.

He was trapped in a cell without his droid or lightsaber and he had no idea how he was going to make it out. There were wires that connected to the door, but they were on the ceiling, and Cal couldn't possibly reach them. The wires went across the ceiling and continued down the back wall behind some metal panels.

Cal ran over to inspect the panels, and after only a few seconds of examination, he realized one of them was loose. Using the Force, he pulled the panel away from the wall and saw a small box covered in buttons only a few feet away. If he could pull one more panel off the wall, he could reach it.

Using one of the loose screws from the panel he had removed, he managed to loosen two more screws on the adjacent panel. Just like before, he used the Force to remove the next panel, revealing the control center.

None of the buttons were labelled but Cal didn't have time to care. He pressed a green one first and the door to his cell beeped, turning his attention away from the box. The door groaned and creaked as it lifted up, and a wide smile crossed Cal's face as he realized he might have a chance at getting out of here.