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Kanan’s head was still spinning as he was dragged into the room. Every muscle in his body ached, seizing and cramping as if the electricity was still coursing through his body.
A hard shove between his shoulder blades sent him to his knees. He doubled over, gasping for air as he fought to get his head on straight. Slowly, he looked up, trying to piece together what was going on.
The room looked like a cross between an interrogation cell and a medical facility. A large metal table was directly in front of him, restraints lining it. Around it stood an array of equipment. An IV pole, a mask connected to canisters of something that Kanan strongly suspected wasn’t oxygen, a device he didn’t recognize that was covered in wires ending in electrodes. And most chilling of all, another table, covered in drills and scalpels, needles and vials of drugs.
Whatever was going to happen here was more than just ordinary Imperial torture.
The door opened again and the Grand Inquisitor entered, accompanied by a human woman Kanan had never seen before. In the corridor outside, he could hear scuffling and shouting from a voice he recognized immediately.
Ezra.
The boy was still fighting as he was dragged into the room by two stormtroopers. His shirt had been stripped off, revealing ghastly bruises and electrical burns littering his chest.
Kanan lurched to his feet, only for the stormtroopers flanking him to grab his arms and shove him back to his knees.
“Leave him alone!” Kanan shouted, struggling against the soldiers’ hold on him. One released him, smashing the butt of his blaster into the back of Kanan’s head. Kanan cried out, doubling over far enough that his shoulders strained and creaked.
“Get him on the table,” the woman said.
Ezra whimpered, digging his bare heels against the floor as he was dragged across the room. Kanan fought, but couldn’t break free as Ezra was slammed face-up onto the cold durasteel. The kid kicked and struggled, his back arching as one stormtrooper held him down, the other fastening the restraints around his wrists, ankles, and chest.
For a moment, the Grand Inquisitor looked down at Ezra, observing him silently. Ezra’s struggles stopped, his body freezing in terror as he met that deadly gaze. Then the Inquisitor turned to the woman and nodded.
“You may begin, doctor.”
The doctor approached Ezra with a hypospray held in her hand. Ezra’s eyes went wide, panic emanating off of him in waves as he pulled at the restraints.
“Get away from him!” Kanan growled, still fighting to wrench his arms free. “Don’t you kriffing touch him!”
The needle stabbed into Ezra’s arm, just below his shoulder. Within seconds, the kid’s struggles stopped, his whole body going limp.
“No,” Ezra mumbled as the sedatives quickly took hold. “Nn… don’t…”
His eyes glazed over, his breath coming in terrified, shallow gasps. His hands were still twitching, trying to fight the restraints even though he could barely move.
Kanan kept fighting, hard enough for the both of them, as the doctor placed a patch he recognized as a monitor on Ezra’s chest, directly over his heart. Another was attached to his finger. And finally, the strange device was wheeled over, the electrodes placed on either side of Ezra’s head.
Cold terror knotted in the pit of Kanan’s stomach. Now he understood.
“No!” he shouted. He twisted his arm viciously, nearly succeeding in prying it out of the trooper’s hand. “No! You can’t! You’ll kill him!”
“I won’t let that happen,” the Inquisitor said with a cruel smile that sent a chill down Kanan’s spine. “A bonded Master and Padawan pair is such a rare specimen these days.”
He approached the table and gripped Ezra’s chin roughly, forcing the terrified boy to look into his eyes once more.
“Neither of you will be allowed to die until we have achieved our goal.”
As the Inquisitor held Ezra in place, the doctor shoved a thin rubber block into his mouth. A terrified whine rose up in the back of Ezra’s throat, a wordless plea that no one but Kanan paid attention to.
“You’ll be okay,” he gasped. It was the only thing he could do now, try to get Ezra through the inevitable torture. “Everything… everything’s gonna be fine, Ezra.”
One of the stormtroopers struck him viciously in the back of the head again. “Quiet,” the man snapped.
The doctor looked at the Inquisitor and nodded. “He’s ready,” she said. “Charging to one hundred and eighty volts.”
“No!”
There was a harsh hum of electricity.
And Ezra screamed.
Pain coursed through Ezra’s entire body, radiating down from his skull. The restraints bit into his bare skin as his body involuntarily bucked and kicked against them. His own muffled screams mixed with Kanan’s frantic shouting into a cacophony of terror that battered viciously against the inside of his head.
But none of the pain compared to the dark, shadowed presence slithering through his head. He knew, instinctively, who it was. The Inquisitor was there, inside his mind, searching for something. Ezra fought the darkness harder than he fought the restraints, pushing and shoving against it, trying to throw him out get away get out get out GET OUT.
As abruptly as the pain had started, it stopped. The electrical charge surging through his body vanished and he was left lying there, panting as he stared blankly upward, past the Inquisitor who stood over him, gazing into the blinding lights on the ceiling.
Something sharp pierced the crook of his arm. Ezra rolled his eyes down to see the doctor’s hand holding another needle, pushing something into his veins.
“Administering another dose of sedatives,” she said coolly, like this was something she did every day. “And charging to two hundred.”
Ezra barely had time to whimper before the current was switched on again. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stay quiet and save his energy as he braced himself for the Inquisitor’s next attack. But when that dark presence stabbed into his mind once more, he couldn’t help it. he screamed. Screamed so loud he thought his throat might tear open. This attack was more vicious than the first, stronger and more precise.
The Inquisitor wasn’t looking for something anymore. He’d found it. And he was going to rip it from Ezra’s mind by any means necessary.
Another ragged, almost inhuman scream met his ears. Ezra turned his head to see Kanan, doubled over and howling in agony, hanging limply between the stormtroopers who held him.
The current stopped for only a split second before it started again. With it, the attack on Ezra’s mind grew more brutal. The pain crashed through him, splintering his mind apart as the Inquisitor stabbed deeper, surgically cutting at the brightest corner of Ezra’s mind.
The part where a shard of Kanan lived.
He was attacking their bond. Trying to rip it apart.
Ezra shrieked, pulling at the restraints so hard he felt blood well up around them. He struck back at the Inquisitor’s presence in his mind, but the monster just stabbed deeper. The Force was far beyond his reach, the pain shattering his focus every time he dried to draw on it. This time it didn’t stop. It kept going, kept piercing him like a blade driven between his eyes, kept ripping away at the bond that tethered him to Kanan and he couldn’t stop screaming and Kanan was screaming too and he needed it to stop STOP JUST STOP!
There was a shriek of metal against metal.
Bodies slamming into the wall.
The room was shaking.
And the world exploded.
Eerie, terrifying quiet settled over the room. Ezra cried out, his screams muffled by the block still wedged between his teeth. He pulled frantically at the restraints, the sedatives in his system making his movements sluggish and erratic.
Cold, shadowy tendrils were tugging at him, sliding beneath his skin and twisting around his bones. Encouraging him to let them in.
He knew this feeling. It had clawed its way into him and tried to eat him alive at the old Clone base.
The dark side.
He’d used it.
He’d drawn on his anger, his fear, and destroyed everything in his path.
Kanan.
Sheer terror taking hold of him, Ezra turned his head. He couldn’t see Kanan. Couldn’t sense whether he was alive past the freezing static that filled his head.
You killed him, a panicked voice in the back of his mind whispered. You killed him you used the dark side and you killed him.
Footsteps echoed off the walls, steady and calm. The Inquisitor appeared above him, a terrifying grin on his face.
“Not the result I was hoping for,” he said. “But certainly acceptable.”
Ezra whimpered, his head spinning. Kanan was dead because of him. He’d lost control and murdered his own Master. His father.
Shadows moved in at the edge of his vision. This time he didn’t fight them. Instead he let them drag him down into an empty void.
It was all he deserved.
Kanan’s head was pounding as he slowly forced it upward. He was lying prone on the ground. The stormtroopers who’d been holding him lay on either side of him, not moving.
A deep, bone-breaking cold still hung in the air. A cold he’d felt surround and consume his Padawan once before. The cold of the dark side, once more trying to claim Ezra for its own.
He jolted up onto his knees, frantically looking around. Ezra was being hauled off the table by the only still-conscious stormtrooper, thrown limply over his shoulder. Kanan tried to get his feet back under him, only to be slammed back into the wall. The Inquisitor stood on the other side of the room, his hand outstretched toward Kanan.
“Take the boy back to his cell,” he said. “We will begin again when he regains consciousness.”
Begin again. So they hadn’t succeeded. He reached out, feeling for Ezra’s presence in the Force. The bond that tethered them together, was still there, battered and bruised, but holding strong. It would take more than an electric current to destroy it.
“You won’t win,” Kanan growled as the stormtrooper carried Ezra out of the cell. Already the crew would be mounting a rescue. Or they would find a way to escape on their own.
“I already have,” the Inquisitor said. He crossed the small room, still keeping Kanan pinned to the wall until he was close enough to grab the Jedi’s throat. “Or didn’t you notice how easily your apprentice gave in to the dark side? He knows where true power lies, and in time he’ll learn how to harness it properly.”
He squeezed Kanan’s throat viciously, making him gag and gasp for air.
“Why not just kill me?” Kanan croaked, forcing the words out past the vise around his throat.
“I intend to,” the Inquisitor said, that sinister grin broadening. “In fact, the order for your termination has already been issued. But I don’t want to waste time forcing the boy into compliance. And breaking your bond will break him.”
He dragged Kanan away from the wall, shoving him toward the two stormtroopers who’d entered the room.
“Return him to his cell,” he said. “Keep him restrained and under triple guard.”
Kanan fought, but in his dazed, concussed state, it was no use. The stormtroopers easily dragged him to the cell and threw him to the floor.
He lay there, unmoving, fighting against the hopelessness that pressed down on him. The bond might still be intact, but he could feel the damage that had already been done as the Inquisitor violated his Padawan’s mind. It might not hold up under another attack like that. The next attack very well could break the kid, mind and spirit.
He had to find a way out.
If he didn’t, Ezra could be lost forever.