It did it all night again.
With guttural, piercing cries and vibrating with every tone beneath my mattress, the little metal device that was now wedged up my sleeve had beeped, all night long.
The unsympathetic blaring of the morse code device had jarred me out of my sleep every hour; snapping me always sharply into focus and leaving me wide awake until the beeping stopped for another hour to pass—only to then begin to ring beneath the mattress once more.
This device was the reasoning for my subtle insomnia, haunting my night and ruling my tired day—it didn't help that with no light or land outside the windows, my soul was tricked into believing the endless galaxy was the night sky mocking me with eternity in it's constant gleam. I was tired. I was annoyed. After the initial anger left, my frustrations at this piece of junk now tucked in my sleeve—which would never grant me the courtesy of letting me drift into slumber—became only curiosity as to why it didn't let me do so.
In the short hours of darkness from the comfort of my single bed, my brain begged for unconsciousness and the tones to stop, but as soon as those blaring lights of Finalizer turned on to signal day, I had become alert and lucid.
There was a reason Arion had left the device for me to take... for me to hear the message she was trying to send—so terribly rudely and late through the night. There had to be something in those signal formations that was important, and I had to find out why.
I knew Four had a book on morse code translations and I knew I must ask him for it today, even if I'd rather spend the rest of the hours before Kylo returns to our quarters, tucked safely away in his bed and not that single mattress in my own solemn room.
Oh, his bed.
I almost drooled at the idea.
Walking down the crowded halls, I felt the impenetrable tiredness in my chest. It weighted down my lungs as if it was an anchor and dragged my thoughts in slow motion like they were tied to the rope that had helped drop it to the bottom of the ocean.
I could almost feel the silver beneath my eyes, stabbing gently into my skin as if someone was smearing a grey-led upon it, and even the bones beneath it ached with this fatigue.
How I wish I could throw this device against the sturdy hallway floors and kick the heal of my boot upon it... but I never did, for I know that even if the metal up my sleeve didn't keep me up all night long, my heartache would've done so anyway.
I realised now, that the tiredness came in both forms: physical and mental. The heartache I fought within, was once like a heavy jacket but when morning dwelled, it became heavy bones instead. It hurt me to say goodbye so easily, but I knew Five and I were both no longer the people we once were.
I knew that I had changed since those childhood days, drastically; but after seeing Five last night and the chaos he had caused in his own heartbreak and selfishness, I now struggled to even place his name to the man who had so easily played Kylo in front of me to prove something that I would never believe.
But in the end, he had somewhat succeeded what he wished to havoc, for last night: Kylo Ren and I had slept lonesome. Without the usual warmth of our souls laying side-by-side. And even this morning, he hadn't overstepped the fabricated boundary that Five had made him believe was now placed, for he didn't come in to say goodbye—instead, leaving heavily cloaked and ready for another day of duty, only now, he didn't wear the aftertaste of my lips upon his own.
My body needed to rest, yet my mind needed it to move; to burn the anxiety right out. I had to accept and move on, because the Five I once knew and held so closely to my heart, was gone and there was no way to get him back willingly.
The First Order were the only winners in this gruesome game of reality. They won, they got Five, twisting and burning an everlasting darkness into his soul. Let Five go, I must—and I shall eagerly, for I still stole Kylo Ren and held him behind my back as I took one loss but won truly.
Loving Kylo Ren but hating Five is like a snake eating it's own tail—or worse—but call me a fool, for this love is worth the abuse in the end. There was nothing Five could do to extinguish the embers that burned only for Kylo Ren, unless he did the despicable and told the Supreme Leader. For my own sake, I hope there's a little reminiscence of Five still in that machine of a man, for he knows the consequences that will follow of his childhood, best-friend, if he did so.
The bright lights made it harder to keep my drooping eyes open, but I never hesitated my next footing on the way to find Four. I knew I should be somewhat disappointed in him for allowing Five to surprise me so terribly yesterday, but honestly... I didn't have the strength to commute any other emotion, other than burnt out, or think even about anything; because I was saving that for when I have to figure out a damn code.
My heartache worsens.
The distance between Five and I, felt like an eternity of lifetimes in an endless galaxy far away, when he walked by—cradling a bandaged hand by his side and only glaring daggers at the direction behind my head.
Those disregarding eyes were as sharp as the words he spoke yesterday which had been daggers and his actions: venom. All combined, it was a brutal massacre of a once loving heart, which had now turned putrid and cold to the touch.
I didn't look his way, and he didn't look mine. This is how it would forever be.
Lunch had just ended moments ago and around the Dining Hall, a swarm of workers began to linger and make their way back to their stations. The hallways were more crowded than usual and I wrapped a cautious arm around the swell of my stomach just incase somebody bumped into me, leaving me dodging everyone who passed by.
When a swarm of trudging feet ran by, I turned my head to meet a dozen armed StormTroopers who blinkered by in a second. Furrowing my brows at the shiny, masked soldiers, I wondered where they are headed and why in such a hurry? But exactly fifteen steps later and twenty more seconds after, my adrenaline pumps and realisation floods though my veins quickly.
Suddenly, ripping me from my pace and lifting all of the hairs upon my arms and the back of my neck: A piercing alarm began to ring over-and-over. Not like the ringing of the device that I had hid beneath my clothes but instead, this ringing was much more brutal and loud, whilst all too familiar.
I pulled my eyes from the polished, linoleum dark floors to catch a glimpse of the hallway that stretched beyond, only to see people beginning to panic as they walked beneath its wail, confused by its purpose but after the events that had happened the last time this alarm sounded on Finalizer, everyone knew it couldn't be good.
Like a million gazelles running from a roaring lion, the multitude of workers who once dawdled, all tried their hardest to disperse, changing that slow pace to a quick sprint to create distance, but it only became more crowded as every hatch that lined the walls, opened and out came more people.
The alarm never stopped as it was now violence to the once calm that had been here before and I felt the unstoppable rise of panic begin in the pit of my expanded stomach, and my mouth went dry. I cannot concentrate on anything else as my feet became glued to the ground when a flood of workers began to crowd.
Sirens wailing electronically along the corridors, leaping out from the corners and echoing everywhere. Above, those glaring lights began to flash red.
I flinched my hands around my stomach and curled into the wall beside me as people started to nudge me in the shoulders harshly as they tried to squeeze by. A mechanical voice could be heard in the speakers above, but it was only muffled to me behind the cries of the swarm.
Whatever they had heard, from their panicked faces and tearful eyes, I knew it was something dangerous and scary that was to come.
Once again, terror found me. Speaking to me in its cackling voice. Demanding my legs to go weak beneath my frame, my stomach to lurch and my heart to pound against the frail cage of the rib above.
My breathing became erratic and my tired eyes changed to a fearful glass so I clenched them tightly closed. Curling down and shoved against the wall towards the floor, I cowered behind a bin as I went into a fetal position to protect my delicate body.
The alarm still rang above like the horn of a juggernaut, no matter how hard I try to block the noise out. Deafening, head-splitting, crippling my thoughts and assaulting my ears. Red lights on the ceiling creating twists of hues as they threaten to blind me entirely, even though my eyes are tightly closed. I'm panicking. And so is everyone else upon Finalizer.
The crowd is a river of people, everyone moving in the same direction and threatening to trample me if it weren't for the outpost protecting me. All at once, it felt as if the walls were closing in on me as I forced myself to open one of my eyes, and then the other...
The crowd is beginning to lose its numbers, only fifteen or so left running down the hall, their shiny boots smacking on the tiles as they do so.
I waited. And waited.
The hallway became empty, but I made no effort to move. I could hear distant cries and only now, noticed the ground vibrating below me.
My heart rate began to speed up and my breathing came loud to my eardrums which was overbearing even with all this mayhem around.
What was going on?
I snapped my eyes in every direction but found nothing. But all at once, that nothing became nothing but...
Destruction.
Somewhere from around the corner, came an enormous explosion, detonating in my bones and igniting survival in my veins. I flinched against the wall, my eyes widening as a small shriek escaped my throat.
A few feet away and down the hall, where it met a conjunction, a bloody, orange flame had decided to punch its way down but not catch the tiles entirely. Every technical hatch shattered. Smoke rushed into my nostrils. Thousands of pieces of glass and steel, becoming a deadly rainfall, which showered down the conjunction.
With the power of the explosion from wherever it came from, the metal panes that were bolted to the walls around me, sprinkled to the ground and I raised a hand in front of my face and snapped my neck away from the debris, but two lonesome, dead-bolts had managed to smack against me, puncturing the skin on the back of my hand and slicing my cheek deeply.
I wailed out as the smoke began to cloud the empty hallway, and choke on it's heaviness. Out of shock, I lifted my fingertips to my flesh and wiped at the spilling crimson. My mind suddenly became hazy and I felt my system failing amid a mass of terrible sensations: the fearful blow of the explosion, the noise of glass, the hoarse howl of people. Feeling faint, I placed my hands on the ground to push my heavy weight up, my palms meeting the shattered glass of a fallen light and nothing could stop the weight of my palms from digging into the sharp edges as I cried.
Finally finding my feet, I felt as if once vertical, all the blood had suddenly rushed down into my boots and my heart had stopped beating. I swayed on swollen feet, hands cradling a swollen stomach.
A series of new flashes broke out, lifting and spreading the incandescent smoke and occasional fire, and then out of an opened hatch to my side, a great gush of flame rose as the wide window in the back of the room, obliterated into the tiny pieces that were also buried into my palms.
In the midst of faintness, I managed to smack my sore hand onto the button of a hatch, closing the door before all of the oxygen inside this level sunk through the new opening to space. Only seconds before the hatch closed completely, did I notice the dozens of distant space-crafts and TIE fighters that had lined up around this side of the Finalizer.
I tried to pull my way towards Kylo's quarters, praying to all the powerful beings in the universe that he would be there to save me or at least hold me close as this whole ship, crashed and burned.
When nausea rises from my gut to my throat, I held onto the sides of the walls, but still managed to lose my balance, tripping on a torn metal sheet and crashing onto my side immediately.
All the chaos around me, rushed by in a blur and I knew the pain is coming. It went by fast, yet slow, almost suspended. All perception of time becomes distorted, whilst everything gets dragged out as I fell down and down—until there was nothing but the painful impact to stop me.
Falling onto my side, I could feel the bones in my arm crack beneath my weight and move in a way they never should. The pain was brutal, scarring... but that wasn't the reason I screamed out in terrible anguish, for I had landed on the curve of my pregnant stomach too.
I wailed there on the ground, my unbroken arm holding onto the swell of cramped agony. My face closed into a tight grimace, tears flooding out of my eyes as my skin became pale and clammy. The pain I was enduring was more intense than anything I had ever felt or even imagined. Nothing could be more brutal, not a smack to the face nor a lightsaber beneath my chin.
My abdomen tightened. I heard my own scream and felt it erupt through my chest, without the awareness of making it in the first place. It sounded to my ears as the cry from being cruelly tortured, but only worse. It had a raw quality, the realness of a person consumed by a pain that knew no end or limit. Afterwards, I was left just panting, until the tightness returned once again only seconds later.
Without looking to the mess of my crippled bones, I knew there was blood seeping from my arms and I could smell it too. Torn and dirty skin around an exposed bone. Burning red and convulsing: the deep crimson matched the vibrant splutter that had stained the area of my crotch aswell.
Limply throwing my head back onto the floor, I sobbed into the murky air above that seemed to swallow me whole. The hand from my stomach reached out, the device beneath my sleeve dropping to my armpit as my fingertips began kissing the smoke and grasping at the endless splatter of wires above that spat electricity.
Everything was a blur, a blur that swirled out of existence. Suspended in the air, I closed my eyes and surrendered myself to the overwhelming pain.
A hand grasped onto my own.
Fluttering my eyes open, his face is at the forefront of my vision. The smoke drifting around his presence and the ringing around, only alarming me of the arrival of my savour.
Blond hair and blue eyes that were a tsunami of worry, Four helped me to a sitting position as I groaned with every movement.
"Six!" He panicked, assessing my broken arm and the puddle of blood that had come from my womb.
I sobbed his name low, choking on my own cries as my mouth twisted awfully when the pain returned. "Help me..." I whimpered.
Four was clearly so afraid that his complexion turned ashen. His natural golden skin had sunken in tone of something so lifeless, it scared me just to look at him. His eyes closed tightly as he nodded more-so to himself, and he sucked himself into a deeper place to cope—forgetting of his own fear to ease mine instead.
"Don't worry, Six!" He assured, throwing my arm around his shoulder and holding my stomach steadily as he lifted me to my wobbly feet. I cradled my broken arm to my stomach, gripping onto the stretched bulge with tight fingers, not caring about the pain in my shoulder because of the havoc that was erupting in my womb.
"I'll get us out of here. You'll be okay..." He breathed.
With a quick heart-rate, he snapped his head in every direction and began hobbling my weight and his own, down closer to Kylo's quarters—where there is an elevator close by.
I gasped loudly when I tumbled my way closer and heaved in heavy breaths as if I was drowning. My skin suddenly turned cold as if the extremely hot air was instead cooling my overstressed flesh.
"What's happening?" I panted through my painful moans, tears flooding down my cheeks and mixing with the sweat and blood.
Four's chin trembled but he kept his focus as he kicked debris out of my foot's way. "The Resistance is attacking Finalizer."
The alarms nearing Kylo's quarters were louder—shrieking and deafening in their eruption, as with the next explosion that came from the level above the one we now stood upon. Lights changing from red to violet upon impact, a crash can be heard above and it soars into metal, seemingly dissipating the atmosphere entirely.
"Where's Kylo?" I desperately asked, my fingernails now, digging through the material of my uniform and stabbing into my stretched flesh.
"I don't know," He replied, collected.
My chin wobbled and I let out a shriek as I said, "Four. I think I've lost—."
Twisting around a sudden corner, my heart nearly leaped through my chest as we finally saw the hatch to Kylo's quarters and the elevator to the left. I eyed the hatch with panic, hand stretching out to the button beside it, but Four snatches it away.
I screamed, "What if he's in there!?"
Four shook his head, placing his hand over my own upon my aching stomach once more, not bothered by the blood that covered his flesh as he does so. "There's no time, Six. We have to go now!"
In the tight grip of panic and pain, wild eyes, pupils dilated, heart racing, as the hatch grew smaller behind us, I sobbed again.
"No!"
But there was no use, because beneath all of this torture, I was weak enough to just let Four guide me.
Sheets of hot ash and metal spouted outwards from the walls, some of the white-hot debris landing on the floor between the elevator doors and us. When Four flinched away, bringing me with him, I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. Sharp pain laced through my abdomen and colourful spots flashed in front of my eyes.
Just when the elevator's button was in reach, the doors opened before us. But Four was never the one to make it do so.
A lonesome, StormTrooper came out from the lift—helmet missing and allowing Four and I to see the absolute terror in his eyes as he widened them before us. Blaster raising immediately towards the two os us, he stood into a defensive position, ready to strike and pull the trigger if necessary. I gulped.
"Thank the universe," Four huffed and I glanced at him with a perplexed gaze. "Here, help me get her into the elevator," He only said to the stranger.
The StormTrooper swallowed a lump in his throat and gripped onto the blaster tighter with white, shielded fingers. I watched the way his eyes took in our frames, pausing slightly at my pregnant stomach and widening even further.
Four's shoulders dropped and he breathed a sigh of relief, trying to guide us by him and into the elevator, but the StormTrooper stopped us from any further movement.
I could sense something was wrong. And I only hoped Four could too.
In the suspended air, the StormTrooper said, "Apprentice, there's been an order that you must go back to find other survivors. I will take the girl."
Four wore a puzzled expression and my mind became a surging perplexity that began mixing into the haze of pain. I glanced my eyes from his exposed face, all the way down to his dirty... combat boots?
"What?" Four barked with his eyebrows knitted together as he huffed a loud breath. "Upon whose request?"
In the silent tension, the StormTrooper's finger tightens over his trigger and I get an overwhelming sense of uncertainty that flooded his system and all at once, both Four and I realised... that this StormTrooper was not a real member of the First Order.
"Resistance scum!" Four suddenly shouted, letting me go and reaching towards his lightsaber—but it was too late for the StormTrooper imposter, thrashed the tip of his blaster into Four's temple.
"Four!" I screamed, ignoring the rush of pain that shot through my abdomen as I reached out for his wobbly frame.
Four, like the fighter he really was, balanced himself before the fall and turned back to the Resistance attacker with a dark glare. Then trowing a forceful punch to the StormTroopers face, the imposter flails to the floor limply—almost too easily.
Watching the quick way the StormTrooper had fallen to the floor, waves of heat coursed through my blood and a cold sweat glistened in my gaunt features. Suddenly, my eyes felt sunken and skin sallow, everything ached, everything sagged.
I think I'm going to faint.
"And the First Order think I'm most fit for reading," Four rolled his eyes and boasted, turning back to me but immediately, that grin on his face dropped when he noticed my lips turning blue and my complexions fading so pale with all this pain.
"Six." He rushed over, placing a hand over mine on my stomach and keeping me steady, "Hey, don't pass out on me now."
Tapping his other hand on my cheek and forcing my eyes open, I looked into those pale blues and gripped onto the colour with all the strength I had inside.
Suddenly, the device in my sleeve started beeping, and Four furrowed his brows towards it.
"What's that?" He asked, breath coming in quick spurts.
Tearing my hand from underneath his own as we stood wobbling again before the opened elevator, I shook my arm until the metal device fell to my wrist and I guided it out of the material with that same hand.
Holding it now in my grip, my face was still twisted in pain but I held the device it before our eyes, listening to the rhythm of beeps coming from it.
"It's a morse code device," I yell3; over the sudden crash from above. Stars are clouding the corners of my vision.
"What's it saying?" I asked with wide eyes as Four's face fell listening to the tune.
"It's saying..." Four had began.
Instantaneously, I watched from over his shoulder as another StormTrooper lurched from around the hidden corner of the elevator and pointed his blaster to Four's back.
In mere seconds I felt the sweat drench my skin, the throbbing of my own eyes, the ringing alarm vibrating in my ears, and the thumping of my heart against my chest. My fingers were curled into a fist, nails digging into the metal and I started to feel blood trap beneath them. I couldn't hear my rapid breathing, but I could feel the oxygen flooding in and out of my lungs in this slow of time.
Four hasn't seen him yet and when he spoke, so does the StormTrooper who steps over his awakening buddy—the two of them saying the same thing, at the same time, whilst I also screamed with terror into Four's face.
"I'm sorry."
They all answered my question.
I saw the way Four's face caved a nano-second after the StormTrooper, had cocked the blaster to his back and pulled the trigger without hesitation. I tried to shout, but the inside of my mouth lacked any moisture and a croak was all that was issued from my gape.
Death spat out of the blaster, red in the smoke and it hit Four so harshly that it propelled him forwards against my stomach. Finally finding my voice against the surge of deep ache within, I screamed as if I was the one who had been shot instead.
Four fell limp to the floor. Crimson bursts pulsating around the wound on his lower back along his spine, intensifying with each heartbeat that flooded more blood out of the hole.
Just when I made eye contact with the StormTrooper who had pulled the trigger, the other imposter from before, rose from the floor and brushed himself off casually.
"So these are the Project Destiny kids?" The imposter retorted, eying my stomach as if I wasn't watching him do so.
"I thought they were a myth."
I'm sobbing loudly and frozen in my place, glancing occasionally to Four's limp body on the broken tiles.
The StormTrooper who had shot Four, walked closer as he chucked his gun behind him. His raw voice is brutal against my ear, "Make this easy for us, will you?"
Hand gripping my non-broken forearm, he pulled me into the elevator with him and his accomplice. I screamed and shouted, hot tears streaming down my face as I spat onto them.
"Stop struggling! We're trying to help you!" He fought back against me and I watched with wide eyes as the other man roughly dragged Four into the lift also.
When the doors closed, I struggled against him, shooting my elbow out but my movements were far too slow. Hands moving from my skin, the stranger seized the blow that was to come, trapping them to my side.
He twisted the arm around my back and pushed me roughly against his chest, the agile gesture causing more pain to follow.
Another cramp clenched itself in my abdomen. The pain resembling a fiery blow that choked the breath from my lungs as if it had tied a noose around my neck. My heart constricted in its tune as if not sure if it should go on beating.
My stomach lurched and I began choking on the vile that threatened its way up my throat. I was paler than a sheet of paper and lathered in sweat. Hues and spots began to stain my vision.
Just before I passed out completely, I mumbled one last time, my words clinging onto the air as tightly as I had once clung to the warmth that my final word brought.
"Kylo..."