Intuition - Book 1 - Captain Rex

[Chapter 30 - Return]

_____

Lenora was absolutely frozen in shock.

"Stellia? But- how? You- I- you were-" Lenora felt as if her brain was melting and exploding at the same time, water rushed behind her ears- the whole room spun.

Siren- no- Stellia took her helmet from Hunter and made her way cautiously over to Lenora. She went to put her hand out but Lenora flinched away.

"Why- why didn't you tell me? Why would you lie?" 

Everyone in the room was deathly silent. 

Stellia sighed heavily- "Look, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I wish I could explain everything to you now, but we've got about a hundred droids, plus whatever sick creations the Techno Union has up their sleeves hot on our tail, so right now we're gonna need to focus on getting out of here alive."

Lenora stayed silent. Her insides were twisting with some strange combination of rage, guilt, fear, grief, betrayal, and something else she couldn't quite place her finger on... relief? Nonetheless, she shook it off and stood tall.

The boys all looked concernedly between the two, before resuming the panic over their current situation. Suddenly the doors almost flung open, but Hunter and Crosshair jumped in, sealing them shut. 

Crosshair flicked his scope down- "Enemy approaching. Droids- lot's of 'em." 

"How long do you think you can hold them off?" Anakin asked.

"How long do you need?" Hunter asked in response. 

"Tech, how much longer?"

"Not yet. I need more time." 

Lenora shook her head to clear it. She resumed treating Echo. There were actual crystals of ice budding across his body- she knew that using a heat pack would be no good, it would just burn him. She instead opted to use her own hands to slowly warm him up the best she could. Taking her gloves off, she placed a hand on each of his shoulders.

"You doing alright there Echo?" She asked, trying to distract him from the current situation- which wasn't hard considering how delirious he was. 

"Mhm..." he trailed off. 

Lenora frowned. His unresponsiveness suggested that he wasn't processing information well, which was, put shortly, a bad sign. 

The group looked over to see a circle being cut in the first blast door. Hunter, Crosshair, and Wrecker all cleared away before shutting the next one and beginning to weld it shut too.

"I've got it. We can unplug him now." Tech announced.

Echo turned around to let Rex unplug him. He tried his best to be gentle, but Echo fell to the ground nonetheless.

"Rex?"

"What is it?"

Echo coughed- "I got a big headache." he chuckled slightly.

"Better to feel something than nothing, old buddy." 

"It's a touching reunion guys, but we need to get out of here now." Anakin ordered.

Echo coughed once again- "There's an exhaust vent that leads to the cooling systems right there." Echo pointed to a hatch in the ceiling.

"They've breached the front door. It won't be long until they're through the second." Hunter called.

Echo crawled over and stuck his new scomp-arm into a port- "There, that should get it open." 

"Great. Now how do we get up there?" Crosshair asked dryly.