{{ urbania's void - chapter 31
...the brink of sanity (day thirty-three / +33)
Shuffling out of the huge durasteel four-poster bed, Jaina glanced behind her, back to the linen sheets. Curled up in them was Lowbacca, who had snuggled up near her for protection and safety when they had got to the room. Even in the midst of this insanity, she smiled.
Lowbacca was like her security blanket, one of her loyal, most trusted and best friends. Still smiling, she reached down across the sheets that were still settling and scratched his neck, causing him to rumble contentedly in his sleep. She was tempted to wake him up, but she knew he needed his rest. Everyone needed some rest.
She hoped they were all getting it.
Jaina Solo let her eyes roam around the room. The walls were covered in consoles, screens of different sizes, some showing views of space, some showing overhead views of the city. Her breath caught in her throat. The views were beautiful. Being surrounded by so many screens gave her the feeling that she was floating in it all. Flying over the city, out into space. Being a pilot, she gained a slight rush from the thought of flying, a burst of energy. One that made her want to explore the room more.
Slowly turning her head, Jaina's eyes caught on the surfaces of the consoles, shelves and nooks randomly dispersed around the room. She saw tools on them. Hydrospanners, datapads full of technical jabber... the consoles were begging to be tinkered with.
She could feel her childhood bubbling it's way into her head. She hadn't had the chance to just sit and tinker with machinery in who knows how long. And she had no idea how long she would be there, stuck in that room. Her first instinct was to take the tools to the door and try to find a way out. But she knew there was no way they would give her the tools if there was a way to use them to make an escape.
Nodding, she stepped to where there was a hydrospanner, her hand hovering over it. Jaina turned to look back at Lowie.
Should she wake Lowbacca up? Should they try to find a way out of there?
No, he needs his rest.
Part of her knew that was true, and she felt it. But for some reason, there were threads of selfishness weaving their way through her mind. This was her toy to play with. It wasn't like Jaina to think that way, and she vaguely wondered why she suddenly felt like that. She tried to fall into the Force to calm herself down and meditate on this situation for a few moments, when she realized that their Force powers were being blocked fully now... by something unknown.
Uncharacteristically, Jaina gave up. Something just prodded her in the direction of not caring.
Grabbing the hydrospanner, Jaina dropped to her knees and began fiddling with the mechanisms inside and below the consoles and screens. It was like they were put here just for them to toy with. Wires crisscrossed in front of her eyes, which danced with that sparkle that always seemed to possess her father when he was tinkering with the Falcon. She took boards apart, connected and reconnected wires and looked at what she was doing above, on the screens, as the images danced with hypnotizing static and changed shades and colors. Each wire moved and each bolt turned caused something to change on the screens.
She was minding her own business, with her head in the middle of a mechanical array, when a noise sounded. One that didn't have anything to do with the things she was playing with. Pulling her head out of the console's underbelly, she turned her head slightly, a tad scared at what she would find.
The door to the room was open. A young woman stood there, staring at Jaina with hollow, lonely eyes.
"Anni..." Jaina whispered, breathlessly.
A grin formed across the woman's face and she turned away from the room and dashed off, leaving Jaina in an altered state. "Anni... that was Anni..."
Her old wingmate. Anni Capstan. She died in during the war with the Yuuzhan Vong, blown up in her ship by coralskippers.
She died... she died... Anni?
She died, right? Jaina didn't know whether to believe it or not. She still didn't know if this whole thing was a dream, or where everyone else was. Her Force powers were virtually blocked, her mind was buzzing with billions of thoughts at once and her heart was hammering in her chest. Throwing down the hydrospanner, Jaina pulled herself out of the crawlspace and stood up, glancing to Lowbacca.
He was still asleep.
She had no time to wake him.
She had seen Anni!
And in her neurotic mood, Jaina followed Anni from the room, out into the sprawling hallways of the Mircas Tower.
"It worked, Lo. She's going." Welk reclined in his chair, placing his arms behind his head.
"Of course it worked." Lomi Plo stopped staring at the screen to Jacen and Tenel Ka's room and turned around to set her gaze on Raynar Thul and Welk, who sat in exceptionally cushy chairs behind her, in front of the massive wall of screens. "I thought of it."
"I thought they would be smart enough to figure it out." Raynar snickered.
"If you were cooped up in a room after a mission to try and rescue your friends and you couldn't feel your Force powers at all... you think you'd be perfectly sane?"
Raynar let his eyes fall back on the holo-screen, where Lowbacca was stirring out of his slumber.
Lowbacca grumbled incoherently as he slid out of the comfortable bed. Glancing around, he finally got a chance to study the room. The first thing he noticed was the fact that Jaina was gone.
He called out her name in a questioning tone. No answer.
Jaina was meandering down the dark hallways, not too far from the room she was in with Lowie. She couldn't see much, and her eyes were still adjusting to the level of light, but she kept searching --- her head turning from side-to-side, her eyes flickering up and down the long, non-descript corridors.
"Anni?" Her voice faltered a bit, as her whisper carried itself through the silence.
She didn't know if she had ascended floors, or descended floors... something was just leading her somewhere. She couldn't describe what she was feeling. Her head was getting lighter and her vision would blur once every few seconds. She stopped. She turned her head.
A huge pane of clear glass stood between Jaina and a huge circular room. She seemed to be up near the ceiling of it, level with a bunch of wires and pipes. Below, far below, she saw a circle of chairs and huge contraptions hooked to the walls around them. She had no time to study them before she felt someone rush past, behind her.
"Anni?" Jaina turned away from the chamber below, which made her feel a tad uneasy, and bolted off after the being. Her chase led Jaina back to her and Lowie's room, where she stopped when she saw Lowie.
The door was still wide open. Jaina narrowed her eyes. Why didn't Lowie try to escape? He was seated on the bed, his black eyes wide and frightened, as they stared ahead of him, to something Jaina couldn't see.
"Lowie?" Jaina momentarily forgot about Anni as she entered the room, uneasiness gnawing at her as her eyes locked on Lowie's expression. The door slid shut behind her, causing her to wince. She had the bad feeling it had locked again, shutting up their only way out... but she wasn't worried about that now.
"Low?" Her hand landed on his furry shoulder. He was seated on the foot of the bed, his paws in his lap. His eyes locked on something behind Jaina. She turned, and her own body froze.
All of the screens Jaina had been fiddling with. They showed space and the city when she had left to chase down what she thought was Anni Capstan.
The screens now all showed the same exact thing.
Chewbacca.
He was talking to Lowie, grumbling sentences, words. Asking questions. Asking why Lowbacca wasn't answering them. He greeted Jaina, who just stared back up to him, a look of shock plastered across her face.
They laughed merrily as they watched Jaina and Lowbacca. Lomi Plo had planted herself in Welk's lap as they stared to the multiple screens, amused at everything playing on them.
"Oooo..." Raynar shot his finger up to a different screen. Tekli and Tesar.
"Tesar," Tekli nervously rubbed her small hands together as she seated herself at the wooden table, "I'm worried."
"I am too, Tekli." His large eyes shifted to the door. "We have to wait a bit. We'll figure something out. We'll get out of thiz. If I have to rip through hordez of people, I'll do it. We won't rot in here."
Tekli believed him.
"Invite them all to dinner." Lomi Plo suddenly mumbled.
"What?" Welk shifted a bit under her body, locking his hands up behind his neck.
"I want them all in one room for this. We can't keep introducing them to their pasts one-by-one. It's no fun. I want reactions. I want anger. I want to feel their anger and hatred towards us for putting them and their friends through this."
Raynar Thul drew in a deep breath and nodded. "I know what you mean." He nodded. "We stocked the rooms, remember?"
Each room had numerous sets of clothes in them. Food, drinks, entertainment. No one seemed to be using anything though. They were all too nervous or too angry.
"I want it to be a party. I want everyone dressed up."
Welk giggled, "You want a lot of things, don't you?"
"You know me too well." The nightsister rested her head back on Welk's shoulder and giggled with him.
"They're all awake." Raynar leaned forward on the console and tapped a few of the buttons. "Let's let 'em all know."
Tesar's attention quickly shifted to the holo-screen hooked onto the east wall, as did Tekli's, as the connection kicked in.
Everyone was watching.
"Hey there distinguished guests of the highest honor possible..."
Giggling sounded in the background.
"We want to invite you all to dinner tonight. A chance to see all of your friends... all of them." Lomi Plo tossed her hair behind her shoulder and snickered. "There's clothes in the wardrobes of each room. For all of you. I'm sure you could each find outfits you like... I want none of this ratty jumpsuit action."
Raynar and Welk appeared over Lomi Plo's shoulders and began to make faces to the holo-camera.
Lomi Plo paid them no mind and continued. "We'll be sending people up to get you when everything is ready. We do hope you'll enjoy yourselves tonight. It'll be very delightful to speak to you. We all have old times to catch up on." A laugh dripping with sarcasm seethed from her lips as she wiggled her fingers in an irritating little wave.
Tenel Ka shook her head slowly.
"This is so odd... Dinner?" Jacen whispered. "What do they want from us?"
Licking her cracked lips, the Queen Mother of Hapes stood from her seat on the bed and walked to their stone wardrobe. Her voice was calm. Extremely tired, but calm.
"They want our sanity."
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