Cover 9/27 PG-13
CHAPTER NINE:
Alone with her, Cam looked mutinous. Ryn ignored that.
“Do you know if the rooms are bugged for sound? Or monitored in some way?”
“How should I know? I’m never even been here before. I was in a holding cell in Ziro’s compound until an hour ago.” He glanced at the wall chrono. “Make that two.” His scowl deepened. “I’d rather be there than here. I don’t know what kind of sick mind would think kids our age should be in a place like this, but I --”
“Shut up,” Ryn said tersely, and to her surprise, Cam did. “Have they implanted you with a slave transmitter?”
If possible, the boy’s expression turned even more sullen. “I don’t know. They knocked me out last night.”
“I’ll have to search you,” Ryn said briskly. “Take off your clothes.” She sensed his outrage and forestalled a protest by putting her hands firmly on his shoulders and looking down into his face. “My name is Ryn Orun, and you have nothing to fear from me, all right? I’m a friend, maybe the only friend you’ve got in a place like this. I want to help you.”
“How can you be my friend?” Cam demanded. “I’ve never even met you.”
Ryn dropped her hands and gave him a wry smile. “I’m a friend of a friend. You kind of inherited me.”
Cam’s eyes widened. Evinne? he mouthed, and Ryn nodded, then made a hurry-up gesture. “Take off the shirt. I need to know if you’re wired. I can probably find a mark if they inserted a chip.”
Cam stripped off his tunic and turned around so Ryn could examine his back. “What about the Twi’leks who were captured with me?”
Ryn shook her head, running her fingers lightly over Cam’s brown skin, seeking any sign of disturbance, any sense of wrongness. “I don’t know. I guess I could hire you away and then come back for them.”
“No!” Cam leapt away from her careful fingers and spun to face her. “I won’t just leave them there! I can’t.” He took a deep breath and stepped closer, whispering. “It will be easier with a man on the inside, right? I want to help. I -- I need to.”
Ryn looked down into his worried, earnest brown eyes and bit her lip. I’m going to regret this.
She pulled her commlink out of her utility belt and activated it.
“What now?” Anakin’s voice hissed.
“It’s complicated,” Ryn answered. “And it might be about to get worse. Can you meet me in a couple of hours?”
“Meet you where?” Anakin said.
“You’ll know,” Ryn said. “Orun out.”
She put the deactivated commlink back and looked at Cam. “You sure about this?”
Cam looked more scared than sure, but he nodded fiercely, and Ryn’s sense of him was determined.
“Okay,” she said. “Back to work.”
~*~*~
Anakin followed the tug of Ryn’s presence -- no longer muted with shields so heavy she practically vanished -- to the alley behind Dex’s Diner. He met her guarded eyes and swallowed uncomfortably. Five minutes ago, he’d been anxious to see her and make sure she was all right. Now the relief of seeing her safe was subsumed in the unpleasant memory of just how badly they’d parted.
Ryn stood silent with her arms folded, waiting for him to make the first move.
I’m sorry, Anakin thought. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so sorry. But what he said was, “I’m glad you’re all right.”
Ryn’s tense shoulders hunched a little, as though his words hurt her. “You, too.”
I’m sorry, Anakin thought again, but he still couldn’t say it.
Ryn just looked at him, waiting.
“I was worried about you,” he said this time.
“I appreciate the concern,” Ryn said tonelessly, and Anakin could feel her slipping farther away from him.
Kriff it. I’m doing this all wrong.
“And it was a ... it was really brave of you go after Cam.” Stupid, but brave.
“Someone needed to.”
She stood very still, her arms wrapped tightly around her bare midriff, the lines of her body tight. But in the Force, Anakin could see her trembling, could sense her misery.
“You’re cold,” he said as a chill blast of wind chased down the alley, lifting Ryn’s hair in dark streamers.
“I’m fine.”
“Here.” Anakin stepped closer and opened his cloak so he could pull her flush against his body and wrap the warm woolen folds around them both.
“I’m fine,” Ryn repeated, pushing at him. “I don’t need --”
But Anakin held tight. “Yes, you do. You’re freezing.” Say it, say it.
He opened his mouth but no sound came out.
Saying I’m worry is like admitting I was wrong.
You were wrong, Idiot! You said you didn’t need her friendship, how could that be right?
The morning came rushing back, the awful hollow feeling of watching Ryn walk away, and finally Anakin couldn’t take it any more.
“I didn’t mean it! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
Inside the cloak, Ryn leaned back to look up at him. “Didn’t mean what?”
Anakin couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “What I said. About not ... not needing you around. I. Uh. I like having you around.” He blinked into the wind, not sure whether the tears in his eyes were caused by its frigidity or the conversation they were having.
Very quietly, Ryn said, “Even if I call you on it when I think you’re making an ass of yourself?”
Anakin finally looked down and met her green eyes, rubbing his thumbs in the hollow of her spine. “All the time.”
Inside the cloak, Ryn melted against him, and Anakin wrapped his arms around her, feeling the awful tension between his ribs dissolve.
For a moment they were silent, enjoying their renewed intimacy, the healing of the rift between them. Finally Ryn sighed softly and shifted against him. “We still have to do something about Cam,” she said reluctantly.
Anakin smiled into her hair. “Just when I was beginning to get warm.”
“Me, too,” Ryn agreed. “But the sooner we take care of Cam and the others, the sooner we can get back to the Temple and get really warm.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of being right?”
“It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”
Anakin pinched the bare skin at her waist and Ryn laughed her sweet, husky laugh, and suddenly Anakin decided he was plenty warm right here.
He cleared his throat. “So. Brief me, Commander Orun.”
Ryn told him what she knew, which wasn’t much. Cam hadn’t been fitted with an Anti-Escape Device, but he’d been separated from the Twi’lek women and didn’t know their status or where they were being kept.
“So aside from finding the Twi’leks, which may prove tricky, we need a contingency plan for either getting hold of the transmitter remote, or disabling a lot of AEDs in a hurry,” Ryn concluded grimly. “I’m thinking the second option is less risky, if we can get our hands on a reliable method. Would a droid popper do it?”
Anakin shook his head. “Probably not sensitive enough. AEDs are pretty small and hard to detect.”
“They have to be big enough to do some damage if activated,” Ryn pointed out.
“Maybe,” Anakin said. “The old kind used to actually detonate. Some of the newer ones just releasee a toxin into the bloodstream. And a few are implanted directly into the brain and send off an electrical charge.”
Ryn didn’t question his knowledge, just nodded slowly. ‘We’d better hope we’re not dealing with the last kind,” she remarked. “They must be a bitch to remove.”
“You just have to deactivate them,” Anakin said. “I don’t think they would be re-activated by remote, so once you’ve shut them down, removal is not a priority.”
“Okay,” Ryn said. “So how do we deactivate them?”
“Without the master remote?” Anakin shook his head. “Before I left Tatooine, I was working on a way to locate the chips. I think if I had the equipment, I could build it now. After that, the easiest thing to do might be to cut them out. They aren’t typically buried deep in the body. Well, except the ones in the brain, of course. We’ll just have to hope they aren’t using those.”
Ryn gave him a look that said she was less than satisfied with that plan. “How long?”
“Once I get the parts I need? A few hours. Maybe not more than two.”
“Evinne can probably get you the parts,” Ryn said. “That just leaves the question of how to deactivate the slave chips once we’ve found them.”
“Well, if we can’t actually remove them, we might be able to short them out,” Anakin said. “Or ... well, if we knew the transmitter frequency, I could probably rig one of our commlinks to send the deactivation signal.”
“Short them out?” Ryn said. “Probably? Maybe it would be easier to get the remote.”
“Any thoughts on how we’d do that?”
Ryn shrugged. “Sneak in and steal it?”
“That might be harder than it sounds,” Anakin said. “And if Ziro’s smart, he has a different remote for each slave, so beings like us can’t come in and do ... well, pretty much what we’re planning to do.”
Ryn rubbed her eyes, and Anakin remembered that she hadn’t slept since she was released from the infirmary twenty-four hours earlier. “Okay,” she said, “let’s comm Evinne and see about getting those supplies.”
“And then we’ll see about getting you some rest,” Anakin said. Ryn looked as though she might protest, so he said reasonably, “Look, I’ll need a place to work on this detector thing. It might as well be a place where you can take a nap, too. You’ll need the energy later.”
“We can’t go back to the Temple,” Ryn said. “We’d never get back out again.” She hesitated, shifting against his arms. “Anakin ... if you don’t want to do this, if you feel you should stay out of it, or report back to Obi-Wan ... it’s okay, really. I’ll understand.”
Anakin gave her a squeeze. “There’s nothing to understand, because I’m not letting you break into Ziro’s compound alone.”
“About that,” Ryn said. “I was thinking of the front door approach. I think I could still get an invitation at the Outlander Club, if we can just avoid Master Vos.”
“Master Vos?” That can’t be good. “Nevermind. You can tell me on the way.”
“On the way where?” Ryn asked, and Anakin shrugged out of his cloak and wrapped it around Ryn’s shoulders.
“Comm Evinne,” he instructed her. “And let’s get moving. I know a place.”
Alone with her, Cam looked mutinous. Ryn ignored that.
“Do you know if the rooms are bugged for sound? Or monitored in some way?”
“How should I know? I’m never even been here before. I was in a holding cell in Ziro’s compound until an hour ago.” He glanced at the wall chrono. “Make that two.” His scowl deepened. “I’d rather be there than here. I don’t know what kind of sick mind would think kids our age should be in a place like this, but I --”
“Shut up,” Ryn said tersely, and to her surprise, Cam did. “Have they implanted you with a slave transmitter?”
If possible, the boy’s expression turned even more sullen. “I don’t know. They knocked me out last night.”
“I’ll have to search you,” Ryn said briskly. “Take off your clothes.” She sensed his outrage and forestalled a protest by putting her hands firmly on his shoulders and looking down into his face. “My name is Ryn Orun, and you have nothing to fear from me, all right? I’m a friend, maybe the only friend you’ve got in a place like this. I want to help you.”
“How can you be my friend?” Cam demanded. “I’ve never even met you.”
Ryn dropped her hands and gave him a wry smile. “I’m a friend of a friend. You kind of inherited me.”
Cam’s eyes widened. Evinne? he mouthed, and Ryn nodded, then made a hurry-up gesture. “Take off the shirt. I need to know if you’re wired. I can probably find a mark if they inserted a chip.”
Cam stripped off his tunic and turned around so Ryn could examine his back. “What about the Twi’leks who were captured with me?”
Ryn shook her head, running her fingers lightly over Cam’s brown skin, seeking any sign of disturbance, any sense of wrongness. “I don’t know. I guess I could hire you away and then come back for them.”
“No!” Cam leapt away from her careful fingers and spun to face her. “I won’t just leave them there! I can’t.” He took a deep breath and stepped closer, whispering. “It will be easier with a man on the inside, right? I want to help. I -- I need to.”
Ryn looked down into his worried, earnest brown eyes and bit her lip. I’m going to regret this.
She pulled her commlink out of her utility belt and activated it.
“What now?” Anakin’s voice hissed.
“It’s complicated,” Ryn answered. “And it might be about to get worse. Can you meet me in a couple of hours?”
“Meet you where?” Anakin said.
“You’ll know,” Ryn said. “Orun out.”
She put the deactivated commlink back and looked at Cam. “You sure about this?”
Cam looked more scared than sure, but he nodded fiercely, and Ryn’s sense of him was determined.
“Okay,” she said. “Back to work.”
~*~*~
Anakin followed the tug of Ryn’s presence -- no longer muted with shields so heavy she practically vanished -- to the alley behind Dex’s Diner. He met her guarded eyes and swallowed uncomfortably. Five minutes ago, he’d been anxious to see her and make sure she was all right. Now the relief of seeing her safe was subsumed in the unpleasant memory of just how badly they’d parted.
Ryn stood silent with her arms folded, waiting for him to make the first move.
I’m sorry, Anakin thought. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so sorry. But what he said was, “I’m glad you’re all right.”
Ryn’s tense shoulders hunched a little, as though his words hurt her. “You, too.”
I’m sorry, Anakin thought again, but he still couldn’t say it.
Ryn just looked at him, waiting.
“I was worried about you,” he said this time.
“I appreciate the concern,” Ryn said tonelessly, and Anakin could feel her slipping farther away from him.
Kriff it. I’m doing this all wrong.
“And it was a ... it was really brave of you go after Cam.” Stupid, but brave.
“Someone needed to.”
She stood very still, her arms wrapped tightly around her bare midriff, the lines of her body tight. But in the Force, Anakin could see her trembling, could sense her misery.
“You’re cold,” he said as a chill blast of wind chased down the alley, lifting Ryn’s hair in dark streamers.
“I’m fine.”
“Here.” Anakin stepped closer and opened his cloak so he could pull her flush against his body and wrap the warm woolen folds around them both.
“I’m fine,” Ryn repeated, pushing at him. “I don’t need --”
But Anakin held tight. “Yes, you do. You’re freezing.” Say it, say it.
He opened his mouth but no sound came out.
Saying I’m worry is like admitting I was wrong.
You were wrong, Idiot! You said you didn’t need her friendship, how could that be right?
The morning came rushing back, the awful hollow feeling of watching Ryn walk away, and finally Anakin couldn’t take it any more.
“I didn’t mean it! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
Inside the cloak, Ryn leaned back to look up at him. “Didn’t mean what?”
Anakin couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “What I said. About not ... not needing you around. I. Uh. I like having you around.” He blinked into the wind, not sure whether the tears in his eyes were caused by its frigidity or the conversation they were having.
Very quietly, Ryn said, “Even if I call you on it when I think you’re making an ass of yourself?”
Anakin finally looked down and met her green eyes, rubbing his thumbs in the hollow of her spine. “All the time.”
Inside the cloak, Ryn melted against him, and Anakin wrapped his arms around her, feeling the awful tension between his ribs dissolve.
For a moment they were silent, enjoying their renewed intimacy, the healing of the rift between them. Finally Ryn sighed softly and shifted against him. “We still have to do something about Cam,” she said reluctantly.
Anakin smiled into her hair. “Just when I was beginning to get warm.”
“Me, too,” Ryn agreed. “But the sooner we take care of Cam and the others, the sooner we can get back to the Temple and get really warm.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of being right?”
“It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”
Anakin pinched the bare skin at her waist and Ryn laughed her sweet, husky laugh, and suddenly Anakin decided he was plenty warm right here.
He cleared his throat. “So. Brief me, Commander Orun.”
Ryn told him what she knew, which wasn’t much. Cam hadn’t been fitted with an Anti-Escape Device, but he’d been separated from the Twi’lek women and didn’t know their status or where they were being kept.
“So aside from finding the Twi’leks, which may prove tricky, we need a contingency plan for either getting hold of the transmitter remote, or disabling a lot of AEDs in a hurry,” Ryn concluded grimly. “I’m thinking the second option is less risky, if we can get our hands on a reliable method. Would a droid popper do it?”
Anakin shook his head. “Probably not sensitive enough. AEDs are pretty small and hard to detect.”
“They have to be big enough to do some damage if activated,” Ryn pointed out.
“Maybe,” Anakin said. “The old kind used to actually detonate. Some of the newer ones just releasee a toxin into the bloodstream. And a few are implanted directly into the brain and send off an electrical charge.”
Ryn didn’t question his knowledge, just nodded slowly. ‘We’d better hope we’re not dealing with the last kind,” she remarked. “They must be a bitch to remove.”
“You just have to deactivate them,” Anakin said. “I don’t think they would be re-activated by remote, so once you’ve shut them down, removal is not a priority.”
“Okay,” Ryn said. “So how do we deactivate them?”
“Without the master remote?” Anakin shook his head. “Before I left Tatooine, I was working on a way to locate the chips. I think if I had the equipment, I could build it now. After that, the easiest thing to do might be to cut them out. They aren’t typically buried deep in the body. Well, except the ones in the brain, of course. We’ll just have to hope they aren’t using those.”
Ryn gave him a look that said she was less than satisfied with that plan. “How long?”
“Once I get the parts I need? A few hours. Maybe not more than two.”
“Evinne can probably get you the parts,” Ryn said. “That just leaves the question of how to deactivate the slave chips once we’ve found them.”
“Well, if we can’t actually remove them, we might be able to short them out,” Anakin said. “Or ... well, if we knew the transmitter frequency, I could probably rig one of our commlinks to send the deactivation signal.”
“Short them out?” Ryn said. “Probably? Maybe it would be easier to get the remote.”
“Any thoughts on how we’d do that?”
Ryn shrugged. “Sneak in and steal it?”
“That might be harder than it sounds,” Anakin said. “And if Ziro’s smart, he has a different remote for each slave, so beings like us can’t come in and do ... well, pretty much what we’re planning to do.”
Ryn rubbed her eyes, and Anakin remembered that she hadn’t slept since she was released from the infirmary twenty-four hours earlier. “Okay,” she said, “let’s comm Evinne and see about getting those supplies.”
“And then we’ll see about getting you some rest,” Anakin said. Ryn looked as though she might protest, so he said reasonably, “Look, I’ll need a place to work on this detector thing. It might as well be a place where you can take a nap, too. You’ll need the energy later.”
“We can’t go back to the Temple,” Ryn said. “We’d never get back out again.” She hesitated, shifting against his arms. “Anakin ... if you don’t want to do this, if you feel you should stay out of it, or report back to Obi-Wan ... it’s okay, really. I’ll understand.”
Anakin gave her a squeeze. “There’s nothing to understand, because I’m not letting you break into Ziro’s compound alone.”
“About that,” Ryn said. “I was thinking of the front door approach. I think I could still get an invitation at the Outlander Club, if we can just avoid Master Vos.”
“Master Vos?” That can’t be good. “Nevermind. You can tell me on the way.”
“On the way where?” Ryn asked, and Anakin shrugged out of his cloak and wrapped it around Ryn’s shoulders.
“Comm Evinne,” he instructed her. “And let’s get moving. I know a place.”