The kids are about to go back to school, which alters our ability to write together. But we're determined to finish this story! So please keep checking back.
Part 7 is here.
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“He is too dangerous to let him live!” Finn insisted. He and Rey stood outside the door to the cell in which they’d left the unconscious Kylo Ren. They’d removed everything from the room except a thin pallet on which they’d laid him, but Finn wasn’t convinced those precautions were enough. “He could pull this whole mountain down right on top of us!”
“He won’t,” Rey said. “He’s not even awake.”
“Yeah, but once he is—”
“He won’t,” Rey said again. She took a deep breath and marshaled her arguments. “We don’t know why he’s here. It’s possible he . . .” She swallowed her hopes. “Maybe he heard about or . . . or felt his mother . . .”
Finn grimaced. “He killed his father. You think he’d care about his mother?”
Rey changed tack. “Suppose he’s here scouting for the First Order, though honestly I don’t know why he’d be here alone, or at all. But for the sake of argument,” she went on, forestalling Finn’s burgeoning protest, “even if he is here on some First Order business, he’s more useful to us alive. We can get information from him.”
“How?” Finn demanded. “You can’t break him! I know you have abilities, Rey, amazing abilities, but . . .” He shook his head. “He’s been doing this a lot longer than you have.” Finn narrowed his eyes at her. “What do you know that the rest of us don’t?”
Rey found she couldn’t meet Finn’s eyes. “It’s just a feeling.”
“A feeling. And does this feeling have, like, a name?”
Still unable to look at Finn, Rey gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
“Well, I think you’re going to need stronger evidence,” Finn told her. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the long, empty corridor behind him. “Because they’ll be coming. I’m surprised there aren’t people lined up to view the execution already.”
As though on cue, Poe appeared at the far end of the hallway. Rey swallowed her anxiety as he approached. “We need to make a decision here,” Poe said. “Everyone’s waiting.”
Rey glanced at the bolted door. It was made of a slab of metal as thick as her upper arm. But was it enough?
Probably not.
“Someone should stay,” she said, “in case he wakes up.”
“You should go,” Finn told her. “You’re the one with the . . . feelings.”
Poe frowned. “We need you, too, Finn. We can set a guard in front of the door.”
“I have the most experience with him,” Finn said, and he thought he saw Rey flinch. “Indirectly, but still. I was with the First Order. I know how they do things.”
“That doesn’t mean you’ll know how to deal with Kylo Ren, especially when he wakes up cranky from his nap,” said Poe.
Finn turned to Rey. “Leave me the lightsaber.”
“What?” she asked.
“A blaster clearly doesn’t do enough,” said Finn. “If things go wrong—”
“And if he gets hold of a lightsaber—if he manages to take it from you—” Poe said.
“I can’t stand here defenseless,” Finn told him.
“You can’t go in with a weapon,” Poe contended. “He’ll pull it right out of your hands.”
“Poe’s right,” said Rey.
“Then what do I do if he wakes up?”
“Nothing,” Poe said. “Don’t go in, don’t engage him.” He held up his com unit. “Just call us immediately if anything changes.”
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