The Archer

Chapter Sixteen: Rescue mission

Where am I?

This had been my first thought when I woke up on the floor of a small chamber what must have been a few hours ago. Judging by the constant vibrations I was likely on board of a ship, that much I'd figured out. Although I couldn't exactly pinpoint what sort of ship it was or who it could possibly belong to - the interior of the tiny room I found myself in was unlike anything I've ever seen.

A room that was probably supposed to be a cell.

It for sure felt like one.

I'd lost track of time a while ago, but I knew I'd been in here for a while now. A while that was starting to feel like forever. At first I tried counting the minutes, but kept messing up and losing track.

It was hard to focus when thoughts of anxiety and pure dread were eating you up from inside.

And the nauseating headache I felt didn't help, too.

The next question on my mind was even harder to resolve.

How did I get here?

The last thing I could remember was waking up with Anakin this morning when we said our goodbyes after spending the night at the Archives. I knew I'd been on my way back to my room, but after that, nothing. Total blackout. Like someone had turned out the light.

Or just gave me something that had successfully knocked me out.

Because after assessing my physical state, I was at least relieved to see that I didn't appear to be severely injured. I saw - and felt - a few bruises on my arms, legs, as well as my upper body. So maybe I did try to fight back.

Or maybe whoever took me didn't really care enough to be careful with my body.

Which brought me to yet another question I couldn't answer.

Who would want to kidnap - because that's what I'd figured had happened - me?

Me, out of all people?

Over the course of the last hours I'd thought of countless possible explainations for this, desperately trying to find an answer to the big "WHY?" ringing in my head, but none of them seemed even slightly reasonable. The one I considered to be most likely was that this was yet another attack on the Jedi Order as a whole, similar to the bombing, in an attempt to further weaken it.

But that didn't really explain why they chose me, an absolute no-one, a person of complete and utter insignificance to them, who just happened to walk into the Jedi Temple five weeks ago.

So this question was yet another dead-end, another puzzle I wasn't able to solve. But maybe these weren't that relevant right now. Maybe the most important question was - how could I escape?

But I had already went through every possible way of getting out of this room I could think of with no success whatsoever.

One thing I noticed though was that I was unable to get up on my feet for whatever reason. My hands were fixated with a pair of metal handcuffs, but I could technically stand up and walk around.

The problem was that I couldn't. Whenever I'd tried to get up, I'd been hit by a wave of vertigo so strong that it immediately pulled me back to the ground. Maybe this had something to do with the weird taste in my mouth. Which made the theory of having been drugged - or poisoned - more likely.

My train of thought got interrupted by a beeping sound coming from the doors, and I quickly raised up my head while pressing my back against the wall.

What is happening?