Chapter Two The Chase
CHAPTER TWO
The Chase
To be honest, I panicked.
There really wasn’t another explanation for it. One second I was staring down at a not-dead Rodian with a blaster in his hand, the next I was diving for the floor as he roared to his feet, taking shot after shot at the men.
Two went down immediately.
Two more ducked for cover.
Using the commotion, the Wild Spacer slammed his head into the man with the blaster aimed at his stomach, so hard I heard the crack of a broken nose from where I was.
The man stumbled back, blood gushing down his face.
Then the Wild Spacer kicked a shelf where one of the men had taken cover.
It toppled over, spilling holobooks and cheap gadgets onto the ground.
I scrambled to my feet.
Mr. Baelor shouted, “Run!”
The leader lifted his blaster and, spinning toward the shopkeeper, took aim. I shrieked. It was all I could do. I was too far away, and he was too fast with his trigger finger. The Rodian couldn’t even aim before the leader shot him square in the chest. He crumpled to the ground.
Then the leader turned his pistol on me.
I was going to die.
Suddenly, a blur dropped from a grate in the ceiling and landed on his head.
It was a creature, sort of wide and bulky.
It trilled triumphantly as it clawed at the leader’s hair and ears, gnawing with angry teeth.
The man yelped and tried to throw it off, but every time he grabbed for it, the swift creature dodged to the other side.
And then back again. It cackled, like this was a game.
Someone grabbed my wrist. Without thinking, I swung my hand wildly, connecting with their face.
The Wild Spacer yelped in pain. I now understood what that man had meant about his eyes being strange.
They were disorienting on a human face. Completely black, save for specks of white that gave the illusion of a night sky.
He touched his reddening cheek. “You slapped me!”
“Well you startled me!”
“But you—argh! Chuba,” he cursed, “that stings.” Shaking it off, he set his mouth into a thin line and took me by the arm as if he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to. “Run,” he advised, and pulled me away.
I stumbled, catching sight of the Rodian on the ground. Check for a pulse, I thought, hoping he was still alive, but with a blaster shot that close…
The Wild Spacer tugged me to move, so I did as he’d said.
I ran.
The next few moments were a blur. Leaving the shop. The door slamming behind us. The humid, smoggy market air.
There was one inalienable fact about Coruscant, however: If you wanted to get anywhere fast, you never took your own feet. The market was loud and congested. We wove and bobbed between groups of people, and I remembered reading something about this in one of Mom’s serials—
Wasn’t it easier to follow people when they tried to claw their way through a crowd, rather than when they tried to get lost in one?
“Slow down!” I cried, pulling at his hand.
He whipped his head back to me, his eyebrows high. He replied, incredulous, “No?”
I tugged his hand again. “Slow down!”
“If you need me to carry you—”
“Slow down and we’ll blend in!” I snapped, and realization dawned on his face.
He slowed his steps—one, two, and then we were in the ebb and flow of the crowd. I forced my body to go slow even as panic clawed up my throat. His shoulders were coiled tight, as if he was also fighting the compulsion to bolt. We were like creatures resisting our base instincts.
Someone hawking pretty beaded bracelets said, “Hey, you with the silver hair! Wanna buy a trinket for your girl?”
He stiffened. “Uh, no, she’s not my—”
“I don’t do bracelets,” I interrupted, and tugged him sharply to the left and between two smoky food stalls. As we went, I pulled the hood of the Wild Spacer’s cloak over his head, disguising his hair. He glanced down at me in question, so I explained, “You’re too noticeable.”
He winked. “Sadly, it’s all natural.”
I gave him a scandalized look. “Are you flirting with me while we’re running for our lives?”
“Is there a better time?”
My stomach did a funny flip. “Yes, any other t—ah!” I yelped as a red-hot blaster bolt careened over my head and melted the edge of a neon sign above us.
One of the men chasing us shouted, “There they are!”
“Plan failed,” he said simply as he grabbed my wrist, and we were running again, down narrower and narrower alleyways.
I’d taken enough detours on Coruscant to know how to get certifiably lost—and that was exactly what we needed to do.
I hoped the alleyways would lead out into a larger street, but instead we found a dead end.
So we backtracked to try to find something—anything—but the buildings were squeezed so tightly together there was nothing save for a narrow crevice between two grimy buildings.
I could fit, but the Wild Spacer was too broad.
“I’m dead,” the Wild Spacer groaned.
Yes, yes, he was. We both were. My mind raced.
Wait—
There was a scene like this in the third installment of Under the Tan-Tan Sun.
“Try anyway!” I instructed.
He opened his mouth to complain, but the remaining three men were catching up to us through the alleyways, their footsteps growing louder.
He muttered something to the sky and squeezed himself sideways into the narrow crevice between the two buildings.
I grabbed a large piece of scrap from the ground and shuffled in after him, propping the scrap at the opening to try to hide us.
“This is your best plan?” he hissed. “I can barely breathe in here.”
“Then hold your breath,” I snapped in a sharp whisper. Then I wiggled my arms up and pulled his hood over his head, hiding his bright hair again. “There.”
He narrowed his eyes. “It’s the mole on my face, isn’t it? Everyone notices it.”
I honestly hadn’t seen the mole, but now that he mentioned it, there it was—just below the left edge of his mouth.
“And now you’re looking at it!” Was he—was he pouting?
“It’s not the mole,” I replied, looking at the mole. It was very close to his mouth, which seemed to always settle into this half grin or half grimace, tucked in at the corner. It was a nice mouth.
I startled myself with that thought—a nice mouth? What even did that mean?
“Well, it can’t possibly be—I think they’re coming,” he said, his voice going dangerously low. His arm went around my waist almost immediately. I tore my attention away from his mouth, my heart beginning to race in my ears.
The footsteps were close now, the men’s voices so loud they reverberated off the metal buildings.
They would find us, kill me—I’d heard enough stories that I knew exactly how this was going to go, because they were probably syndicate goons or bounty hunters or, or, or some sort of militia—and probably drag this Wild Spacer into an alleyway to torture him for whatever information they must think he had and then—
Stop, I chastised myself. My imagination was getting away from me.
I should’ve stayed on the ship.
Fear clawed its way up my throat, even as I tried to swallow it down. Was I breathing loud? I felt like I was. What if they found us because of my wheezing? Why was it so hard to breathe? Painful, even? Why was—
Oh, wait.
Something sharp poked into my ribs. It was hidden in the Wild Spacer’s cloak. I squirmed, trying to alleviate the pain. “What is that?” I hissed.
He hesitated. “What’s what?”
“That.” And I squeezed my hand between our bodies and moved the object. It was solid and cylindrical.
“Nothing…”
“That is not nothing.”
“It’s just—chess ko! Watch yourself!” He hissed as I slipped my hand into his gray cloak and pulled it out. At first, it looked like a metal handle to something. The insides rattled. It took a moment for me to realize what exactly I was holding.
A lightsaber.
He tried to grab it back, but I quickly moved out of his reach.
I stared at it, wide-eyed. “Is this yours?”
“Obviously.”
“No, it’s not.”
He turned his face to the sky and took a calm breath. “Then why did you ask me?”
“You’re not a Jedi. They don’t exist. They’re gone,” I said, and then another thought occurred. “Is this what those guys are after?”
His mouth tightened into a thin line. I took that as a yes.
“Are you in trouble?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “How do you know I’m not the one causing the trouble?”
“Are you?”
“Do you want me to be?”
I caught his gaze and narrowed my eyes. Looking into his eyes felt like looking into the night sky itself, too large and unfathomable to stare at for very long—though I’d stared into the sky so often, his eyes didn’t bother me at all.
He frowned. “Are you all right?”
I cocked my head. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because my…You know what, never mind.” He turned his face away, breaking eye contact.
I asked, “How did you get this l—”
“They’re here,” he whispered, bending over me and lifting his cloak around us so we were a little more hidden in the gap.
The sudden darkness made it intimate, and under any other circumstance I would have wondered at our closeness.
But my hands were trembling. My heart rattled against my ribcage, so loud I was sure the whole alleyway could hear. We couldn’t move. We didn’t dare.
And so we waited.