Unexpected

chapter forty-three: cover-up

"Senator, I've run those diagnostics on the banking clan and found that—" Elara cuts herself off as she looks up to find the room to be empty.

The sound of hurried footsteps running through the hallway earns her attention and she glances out of Padmé's quarters to find a rush of soldiers.

"What's going on?" She asks nobody in particular as the troops continue to run by. "Hey, you." She singles out a troop across the hallway. "What is all this?"

"You didn't hear?" The soldier in the red armor asks. "An attempt has been made on the Chancellor's life. This entire place is on lockdown."

Elara's eyes widen.

"You shouldn't be out here." The trooper continues, ushering her back into Padmé's quarters.

"Wait, but-"

"It's for your own safety." He continues before closing the door with her inside and standing guard.

Elara's mind spins as she looks around the room. More commotion comes from the hallway and she presses her ear to the door.

"He's fled the vicinity. He is unarmed but is considered to be extremely dangerous." A voice explains. "This particular trooper has a distinctive 5 tattoo on his right temple."

Elara's heart drops at what she overhears. What they're saying about Fives can't possibly be true.

The sound of Padmé arguing with the guard to let her into her own quarters reaches her ears next and Elara scans the room for another way out. If she's going to get out of here and help Fives, it's now or never. Her eyes linger on the large windows and she pushes one open before looking down at the ground about 2 stories below her.

She thinks quickly as the arguing on the other side of the door continues and rips the bottom of her dress to use as a makeshift parachute before jumping out of the window. The fabric, however, fails to catch enough wind to slow her fall.

Thankfully, a speeder zooms by just in time to catch her and Elara grunts as she lands on the cold metal. The driver, an Ishi Tib gentleman, yells at her in Tibranese as he drives, likely telling her to get off of his speeder.

Elara glances down at the rush of traffic below her and the long drop to the planet's surface and swallows her nerves. She manages to take a deep breath but isn't prepared for when the Ishi Tib man slams on his brakes as he approaches traffic, causing her to go flying off of the speeder without warning.

This time, however, she lands on a flat, stationary surface. A groan escapes her lips as she pushes herself off of the ground and looks up to find all air traffic at a halt. As she walks through the lower levels of Coruscant, she notices Fives's face showing on all screens throughout the city along with the word "WANTED" in big letters beneath it.

"If I were Fives, where would I hide?" She asks herself, looking through the diminishing crowd. Her eyes land on a small group of clones laughing outside of 79's and a small smile tugs at her lips. "In plain sight."

*

After hearing the true meaning behind the chips from the Chancellor himself—who had those chips implanted purposefully in order to control the clones, of course Fives wanted to kill him. He should've trusted Elara's gut feeling about that slimey Hutt of a man.

His escape from the Senate building was a chaotic one to say the least, but he eventually makes it to the lower levels of Coruscant. Upon his arrival at 79's, he grabs a hat off of a drunken brother and places it on his own head as a disguise.

The usual chatter and commotion of 79's only feeds the soldier's anxiety. His eyes scan the crowd for any of his squad mates—he doubts they'd ever come here without him but it's his only hope at the moment.