Broken Wings

[Kyle Krogen]

There was no concept of time. Not here. It stretched out into an infinity that was all consuming. Likewise there was no way to know how many times they had come into this small square cell and dragged him out, pulling him through the endless connecting corridors. Always a different path. Always the same destinations. First it was the lab, where he was poked and prodded at gunpoint, forced to watch Crestmere observing from behind transparisteel with that knowing smirk on his face. After that it was the rack; the room where they strapped him to a chair, or the wall, or hung him from the ceiling and took turns beating the shit out of him. Then Crestmere would come in and talk to him, while he hung bloody and beaten, incapable of responding. They patched him up and stuffed him in the claustrophobic anechoic chamber. That was the worse of it all. A room designed to rob the sound out of the air, forcing him to sit in perfect silence as the room robbed him of his sanity. The constant hallucinations were the only blessing. Sometimes they gave him pleasant visions, but usually it gifted nightmares.

He had lost count. Days, years. Anything. They gave him no concept of time, no clocks, no dates or even the year. They just tortured him endlessly with only a few estimated hours to sleep. Forever. Never ending. The only deviation was the chosen corridors that he was dragged down, ensuring that he could never figure his way out. The only thing he knew was what Valten and Crestmere had told him when he first arrived here. He was underground, in the depths of an Inquisition citadel. The hope of escape or rescue were below zero. They could not have hammered that point across any harder. He had hope still, of making it out of here. He figured it was just a matter of time. A slip up here, a pattern there. He kept himself in shape best he could, exercising in cell almost too small for the Jedi Knight to move. His strength held for as long as he could, but ultimately his walls fell down.

It was a miserable existence now. Every night discarded like trash in his cell, his mind so numb from the anechoic chamber that he could scarcely remember what had even happened. Every day. Every moment. Ran together in a constant stream of horror. Pain was his bedfellow and anguish his only friend. Ever day he bled all over his cell and every time he returned it was clean again. He didn't even know if it was the same cell he was returned to. For all he knew it was a different cell every time. Not that it mattered anymore. He had given up on the hope and the dream of ever escaping this place. He just let them do what they wanted. Limp in their arms as he was dragged to his torture chamber. He did not speak, they forced him to eat what little they gave him. He was gaunt and hollow. A shattered ghost of a man who had once been a tall, proud youth.

At least he thought he had been. Was that all a lie too?

The door of the cell slid open. Kyle didn't even turn to look. He just raised his arms and let them pull him from the cell. Given up a long time ago was the attempt of memorizing the path of corridors. Now they just slid by, barely registering through half closed eyes. The medical lab came into view again. Hands pulled and pushed him roughly. He gave no resistance. Once upon a time he had killed two guards in this room before being subdued and tranquilized. That seemed like an eternity ago. A needle was pushed into an arm that was dotted from the scars of constant needle injection. However, instead of the usual vitamin cocktail, this one made the world distort around him until it went black.

The low thrum of an engine woke him from his slumber. That was different. There were no engine sounds in his cell. Blue eyes peeled open, blinking through the crud that sealed them shut. He was no longer in his cell. Instead, the inside of a shuttle took it's place. It was no different, though. The people that surrounded him were the same from the prison complex. Pale faced men in black uniforms. Attempts at movement failed him. His arms and legs were bound in something other than traditional stuncuffs, but instead with huge slaps of metal that covered his hands and arms up to his elbow and then linked them together. Movement was impossible. The bindings alone were heavy. Even if he wanted to try to find, or use the force, it would be the most difficult thing he had ever done. He had no used the force in so long. Sometimes he wondered if all that, the time spent with his master underneath Coruscant, if all of that was just a lie his mind had created for him.

There was nothing in this life he could be sure of anymore. The pain was the only thing he could believe in.

Through the haze of the drug aftereffects, Kyle was unloaded from the shuttle and marched slowly through the docking bay of a larger vessel. It was only now that he noticed the other prisoners. Some had come off his shuttle. Most of them had traditional stun cuffs in comparison to what he was bound with. Other shuttles were setting down also, unloading more prisoners. There were soldiers everywhere, and more black uniformed officers. Inquisitors. A long forgotten instinct wanted to analyze the room, to find weaknesses and memorize the path they took, but he ignored it. There was no point. He was never escaping. They told him that every day.

He believed it.

He was marched down endless corridors again. The only difference this time was that these were sleek, polished hallways of a starship instead of grated walkways underground. Turbolifts were employed twice before he finally arrived as the chosen destination. Another cell. His bindings were removed and he was tossed inside. The door shut behind, taking the light with it.

[Damien Kantrael]

"All prisoners are accounted for and locked down. We are ready to depart."

The navigation officer called out from his station. The bridge of the Charon was ready to set off. The Strike-Class Medium Cruiser had been specially tasked with transporting many high priority prisoners from Coruscant to a more secure location on Prakith. It was mostly rebels. Enemies of the Empire that had been caught in the act of rebelling against the leaders of the galaxy. There were also a few force adepts. None still considered dangerous. They were all rounded up and shuttled from the surface of the city planet to the Charon. The ship was specially modified into a prison vessel and could hold much more than what they were tasked with transporting. This was an Inquisition operation and they had felt the necessity to have some more important Inquisitors on board to oversee the operation. Damien Kantrael hardly considered himself all that important, but it made the operation look good to have a Nightmare on board. Helghast and the other Nightmare was similarly spread out across the galaxy on other transport ships extracting Inquisition prisoners from other planets in light of many high priority prisoners being freed by the Rebellion of late. Kantrael felt he was serving only to scare the crew into performing at their very best.

Standing off to the side of the bridge, he still wore the full suit of light body armor that covered his the entire body. The armor was as much a part of being a Nightmare as was the physical augments and cerebral implants. It was iconic. It lent to the idea that Nightmares were not human, but some kind of ungodly creation that hid ugly, undead visages behind armor. The armor was designed to foster that idea. From the shapes of the metal plates to the orange glowing eye lenses. A blaster pistol was strapped to his side and a large knife sheathed on a bandoleer. He knew he was frightening to behold, because the rest of the bridge crew could hardly keep their eyes off him.

Turning, his orange lenses focused on the face of High Inquisitor Inkara Liet. She was the one leading this operation. Kantrael was in no way in a commanding position. Just observing. Everyone was a little jumpy, but having a Nightmare on board made everyone feel a little better. At least when they were not afraid of being suddenly snuffed off. Kantrael would hardly be capable of such an action during this operation, but they had made just as many Imperials disappear from the galaxy as enemies of the state. Every society needed monsters to do the horrible things that everyone else could not. The Nightmares are the monsters.

[Mu Satach]

She hadn't moved a muscle since the guards thrusted her body through the hatch into the small cell; her mind barely conscious, her body practically dead, <i>"Sata, you have to move."</i> a soft voice from her past spoke to her.

With great effort only one swollen eyelid opened, the other was pressed to the cold metal floor. Her mind began to shut down, receding from the waking world, wanting to fall into the dark abyss where there was no pain. No more suffering, no more living demons with jackboots indulging their sadistic whims under the guise of "security and safety for all."

The eyelid closed.

A weak sigh escaped her broken and bruised lips.

Peace, sweet sweet peace... screams echoed through her brain. Fire reaching higher, the heat, the choking heat, the stench of burning screaming bodies surrounded her.

The eye shot wide open. <i>"Alright you idiot, sleep when you're dead. Now MOVE!"</i> her "father's" words ricocheted across what was left of her cognitive skills.

She began to breath deeper, watching her warm breath spread out across the cold cold floor. "Get up," she whispered to herself.

"Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up..." one shaky hand stretched across the expanse and reached for the wall. Landing flat on the surface she began to pull her torso forward, her muscles screamed, her body writhed, her face contorted in agony, splitting her lip open again. The fresh pain fueled her anger. The blood dripped to the deck and smeared along ragged cloth that use to be the undershirt of her tunic. <i>"you'll get a beating for making a mess..."</i> she told herself. The absurdity of the thought caused a fit of manic laughter as she continued to heave and pull her broken body to the corner of the cell.

Reaching the corner she managed to prop herself up against the back wall facing the hatch in a sitting position and rested her head agains the side wall. As her breathing subsided she closed her eyes and tried to rest. Maybe, just maybe she'll dream of warm hands and sun filled days. Not likely, but there was always the hope. And since there was little else she could hope for, she clung to that thought. <i>"Please, let me dream of warm sweet peaceful things."</i>.

[Avdid Asm]

Among the prisoners in the cargo bay of the large ship was a gran dressed in a dull grey tunic. How much time had passed since his arrest, Avdid had no idea. Without the sun or any kind of timepiece, he'd fallen back on counting time in terms of the number of meals that he'd eaten. The meals were always the same - a tasteless beige paste. Some kind of grain, probably. It was awful.

His spirit seemed to be broken, as he sat, docile, his head slumped down. His skin had an odd pallor and his entire body would periodically shake uncontrollably. Not seizure like, but rather like a small shiver that rolled from the tips of his eye stalks to the bottoms of his feet. Like the other lower-priority prisoners, he was waiting here in the landing area as the more dangerous inmates were shuffled past to be placed in the most secure cells. Avdid wasn't sure what kind of ship they were on - they didn't exactly give the prisoners the seats with the most scenic views on the shuttle ride over. No movie or meal service either. Sufficed to say, it was larger than a shuttle or landing craft and smaller than a star destroyer.

He ached. Oh how he ached. The newest source of pain was his mouth, where he'd just been smacked with the butt of a blaster rifle for talking to one of his fellow prisoners. It wasn't the first time it had happened either; the first time, of course, was approximately 3 minutes after he'd been arrested. Time hadn't managed to dull that part of his personality though, nor teach him any particular wisdom about the pitfalls that came along with trying to engage one of the taciturn guards in conversation.

It wasn't as if the bonus beatings really mattered. They'd worked him over well enough that an extra face smash just sort of forgotten among the numerous other injuries. It didn't really do anything, for example, to distract him from the constant pain from his left hand radiating from the two fingers he was pretty sure were broken. Matching the physical pain was the emotional turmoil churning inside him. The Inquisitors were experts at breaking people and they'd done a fine job exposing all the doubts and frailties he kept hidden inside.

But the physical assaults and the interrogations were nothing compared to the worst thing they'd done to him - throw him in a cell by himself. One day, the questions simply stopped. No one came to drag him from his cell. They simply left him there, alone. No one to talk to. No one to listen to. No one to share stories with. No one to befriend. After a time, Avdid had done his best to be creative.

First, he started talking to "Leaky" the unseen water source that was the source of a constant dripping noise he could faintly here. He began to imagine the cadence was a code that he could understand. When the dripping sped up, he'd ask what Leaky was so excited about. When it slowed, he'd inquire what was wrong. When the dripping would stop, he'd feel sad that Leaky didn't want to talk. When it stopped completely, he was devastated. It was like a kick to the gut; worse than any of the actual kicks to the gut he'd endured.

With the loss of Leaky, he'd begun talking to himself more and more. It was difficult, but he felt he was getting better at not anticipating what he was going to say and instead simply reacting. But it was no use. An Avdid/Avdid conversation was simply never very engrossing, so he began to draw further and further into himself. If he wasn't going to hold up his end of the bargain talking to himself, he'd just stop trying altogether.

It had been a long two weeks.

[Damien Kantrael]

The Charon pulled out of Coruscant's orbit and the bridge prepared for the jump into hyperspace. At the command of High Inquisitor Liet, the ship jumped into action in a way that Kantrael's own fear never could. He had heard things about Liet. Dark and dreadful things. Originally he had wondered if he had been put here on this ship to spy on her more than any other reason he had been given. The Intelligence branch had a reputation for breeding power hungry mongrels eager to snatch the power from the hands of their betters. If anything he had heard about Liet was correct, he would never be surprised to see her play for Valten's position.

The jump into hyperspace was smooth and without incident. They could not jump straight into the deep core. That would be suicide. Rather, they were headed for an Imperial controlled planet just within the border of the core where they would wait to receive the updated navigation charts that would allow them to reach their true destination much deeper into the core. The bridge was a silent grave as they traveled. Damien did not move. He did not dare. Instead he stood stoically, with is hands held behind his back and his cruel visage ever watching then viewport.

Eventually the ship reached it's destination. The edge of the Deep Core. They dropped out of warp and headed the rest of the way without it. No sense in risking too much. The trip to the agricultural planet of Jerrilek would take an hour, but that was hardly any time at all considering how valuable the cargo was.