Since you went through the trouble of coming all the way here, you surely have the equipment needed to remove my problem without my immediate and tragic death.
“As a matter of fact, I do.
I managed to acquire a signal jammer.
Now all we need to do is carefully remove the chip, then throw it rather energetically into one of the empty spots in this beautiful abandoned warehouse.
Of course, it has to be done immediately after the operation.”
For a moment, I fell silent.
“You’re joking, right?” I asked with completely deadly seriousness.
A slight smile appeared on Vardis’s face.
“You were the one who refused my offer to buy your freedom.
Without that, this is the best option I can offer you.”
As soon as I heard the description of the security measures on my chip, all my doubts vanished.
I understood why Watto gave us so much freedom and why he barely cared where I went or what I did.
Just a few minutes earlier, I had considered postponing the operation until all of this was over and the danger the Force had warned me about disappeared.
But now, ironically, the Force seemed to be pushing me to remove the bomb from my chest as quickly as possible, as if it were the only way to survive.
“Alright.
Let’s get this over with.
If this is the best choice right now, then let’s do it.”
I walked over to the table prepared by Vardis and lifted my shirt without hesitation.
The medical droid slowly approached me, then scanned the spot I indicated.
For several seconds, it analyzed the results.
One of its arms extended a set of precise surgical instruments.
Among them was a thin scalpel, its blade gleaming in the light with a faint blue glow, like steel reforged hundreds of times.
I didn’t know whether I should feel reassured by the machine’s professionalism or even more stressed by the fact that a robot was about to cut open my chest.
Either way, it was already too late to back out.
“The patient is showing elevated stress levels,” it announced in a calm, mechanical voice.
“Thank you for that incredibly valuable observation,” I muttered.
“It certainly didn’t help.”
Vardis was definitely enjoying my misfortune far too much.
I, meanwhile, lay down on the table and clenched my teeth.
The droid paid no attention to the conversation.
To it, I was merely another task to complete.
Clearly, its memory had been wiped often.
One of its arms placed a small device against my chest.
I felt a slight prick.
“Anesthetic administered.”
A few seconds later, the area around the chip gradually began to lose sensation.
The droid performed another scan.
“Location confirmed.”
“Good to hear,” I replied.
“Probability of surviving the procedure: ninety-nine point seven percent.”
“Much less good to hear.”
“Statistically, this is a very favorable result.”
“Shut up and operate,” I sighed.
For a moment, silence filled the warehouse.
Then the scalpel descended.
I felt no pain.
Only a strange pressure.
The droid worked with extraordinary precision.
Its tools moved faster than the human eye could follow.
A holographic screen beside the table displayed an image of the inside of my chest.
For the first time, I saw the inside of my own body.
It was smaller than I expected.
A small metal module surrounded by a network of wires and miniature sensors, sealed inside some kind of transparent container.
“Security measures confirmed,” the droid announced.
I immediately stiffened.
“What kind of security measures?”
“Pressure-triggered explosive charge.”
“Fantastic.”
At that moment, I heard a blaster shot strike the warehouse.
A second later, the warehouse doors collapsed inward as if someone had blown them open with an explosive charge.
For a fraction of a second, my mind completely froze.
Damn it.
Really now?
I thought we were safe.
Just a little longer and Vardis’s people would have arrived.
I had no time to analyze or plan.
I acted on instinct.
My eyes immediately locked onto the chip the droid had just exposed inside me through the cameras displaying it.
Explosive charge.
The one thing that could give us even a few seconds to prepare.
I reached for the Force.
And then I felt something strange.
And familiar at the same time.
Something deep inside me.
A wave of emotions so violent it nearly stole my breath.
Desperation.
Anger.
Pure frustration.
As if some part of me could not accept that right now, when everything was finally starting to go my way, someone dared to try to kill me.
For a brief moment, the emotions practically exploded inside me.
I didn’t even know whether they belonged to me or to the previous Anakin.
At that moment, it didn’t matter.
Only survival mattered.
The chip ripped free with such force that I jerked from the pain.
To my surprise, not only did it fail to explode immediately after being torn from my body, it also flew unnaturally fast.
I had never managed to move an object at such speed before, like a miniature projectile.
It shot straight toward the open doorway and the man who was just stepping inside.
It struck him directly in the chest.
One second passed.
And then it exploded.
A blinding flash filled the warehouse entrance, and the shockwave threw several attackers to the ground.
There wasn’t much left of the man I had hit with my slave charge.
A lot of blood and numerous body parts were scattered across the entrance like some kind of dark feng shui.
He had no chance of survival.
For a moment, the warehouse was filled with screams, dust, and fragments.
And as I stared at the ruined entrance, I could reach only one conclusion.
Apparently, the manufacturers of slave chips really did not save money on explosives.
If that thing had detonated inside my body, only scraps would have remained of me.
I regained control of my body after that incredible state.
For the second time, I had used the Force beyond my limits.
The first time had been during meditation, and now during telekinesis.
The system had been right.
Emotional fluctuations really did affect my abilities.
A brief notification appeared before my eyes.
Telekinesis
+680 XP
(125/800 XP) → Level 5 (5/1600 XP)
Willpower Level unlocked
Level 1 (0/100 XP)
What the…
Never mind.
There was no time for this.
I waved my hand, dismissing the notifications from my vision.
I quickly slid off the surgical table and, together with Vardis and his guards, tipped it onto its side, using it as a makeshift cover.
We ducked behind it just moments before another burst of shots came in.
Vardis’s four guards immediately took positions on both sides of the table and leaned out from behind cover.
A moment later, the entrance to the warehouse lit up with blue blaster flashes.
They opened fire in full bursts.
The air filled with the roar of shots, the sound of walls being hit, and the screams of attackers.
At the same moment, I noticed something far more concerning.
Blood was still flowing from my chest.
A lot of blood.
“Damn it…” I hissed.
I quickly looked toward the medical droid.
Thankfully, it had suffered no damage during the attack.
Without wasting time, I crawled over to it and dragged it behind the cover of the table.
The droid lost a part of its body, it just so happened that it needed it for the operation it had just performed on me.
Several shots struck the durasteel floor barely a meter away from us.
“Medical priority,” I said quickly.
“Close the surgical wound.
Self-dissolving sutures.
Immediately.”
The droid’s photoreceptors flashed.
“Command accepted.”
It immediately extended several surgical arms and began working.
I pressed myself tighter against the cover while a full firefight raged around us.
A perfect situation to celebrate my new freedom.
After stitching the wound, the droid opened one of its internal containers and removed an automatically adhering bacta-coated dressing.
A moment later, it sealed itself to the skin around my wound, securing it tightly.
I let out a sigh of relief.
Only then could I pay more attention to what was happening around me.
The situation looked far worse than I had initially thought.
Two of Vardis’s guards were already dead.
The first had died during the initial attack.
He had been standing near the warehouse entrance and had been almost directly in the center of the explosion that tore the doors from their hinges.
His body lay several meters away.
Head was a few meters from us.
The sight of the severed head resting alone on the duracrete floor immediately sent a wave of nausea through me.
Unfortunately, my problems did not end there.
The second guard had been hiding behind the table with us earlier.
During the exchange of fire, however, he had been shot straight through the head.
Now he lay only a few dozen centimeters away from me.
With open eyes.
Staring into emptiness.
There was no life left behind that gaze.
For the first time since my rebirth, I found myself this close to real death.
Lying right beside me.
I swallowed and forced myself to look away.
If I wanted to survive the next few minutes, I could not afford to be distracted by something I could no longer change.
I reached toward the dead guard and pulled the blaster from his hand.
I also noticed several small devices attached to his belt.
I assumed they were grenades and quickly grabbed them as well.
The blaster turned out to be heavier than I expected.
I almost toppled forward under its weight.
When I regained my balance, I noticed that Vardis was clearly not happy with the current situation.
He was sweating heavily and shouting into his communicator, yelling that his people had better hurry up or he would shove something very unpleasant through someone’s back door.
I will not repeat his wild shouting, but I am certain that in any family movie, all we would hear would be:
“Biiip!
Biiip!
Biiip!”
And even more curses thrown in every direction like weapons against his own helplessness.
Apparently, Vardis was not used to situations where someone tried to kill him so ostentatiously.
I carefully peeked out from behind the overturned table.
The attackers were slowly approaching our position, hiding behind some kind of portable shield.
With every second, they were getting closer.
After a brief brainstorming session, I reached a simple conclusion.
If I didn’t do something, we would be finished before the rest of Vardis’s security arrived.
I took out one of the grenades.
Fortunately, it was fairly small.
I pressed the arming switch on top and threw it over the table, roughly toward the attackers.
As the grenade fell, I focused every bit of strength I could muster and used telekinesis to alter its trajectory.
I directed it behind them and pulled it hard towards me, thanks to which it bypassed the shield and fell into it because, like in the droidekas, the shield was a hemisphere.
A second later, a powerful explosion shook the warehouse.
I felt the shockwave even from behind cover.
Clouds of dust and small fragments immediately began falling onto our heads.
For a few moments, it felt as if the entire building had trembled.
When the fighting briefly died down, I felt incredible weakness.
Not only had I earlier overstrained the Force by launching my chip at a speed I had never achieved before, I had also lost quite a lot of blood by tearing it out without a proper operation.
And now I had additionally moved a grenade with telekinesis from more than a dozen meters away.
Apparently, for my nine-year-old body, it was simply too much.
Suddenly, I felt my legs begin to buckle beneath me.
The world spun for a moment.
I slowly slid back against the overturned table that served as our cover.
I breathed heavily, trying to calm my racing heart.
Apparently, adrenaline could no longer hide my exhaustion.
I had paid a far greater price for the last few minutes than I had initially thought.