Padmé tried to push away the thought of the poor woman being dragged down the hall, kicking and screaming, without anyone to come to her aid. Unfortunately, there was a risk even for sympathizers, and Senator Maydar knew that. They all did. She looked back at Dormé, trying to keep her mind on the task at hand.
"But what about Bail?" she asked, needing to know that piece of information. "What about Mon? Has there been any news regarding them?" Dormé's eyes seemed to change at the question, her brown color nearly matching the paleness of her skin. She opened her mouth, then closed it, glancing upwards. "I– Umm," she stumbled, taking a deep breath and turning back toward the senator. "I haven't seen Mon," she confessed, her expression becoming serious. "But Bail was here. He came looking for you."
"He came looking for me," Padmé echoed, her words rolling off her tongue in the most comforting way. She let out a small sigh of relief, although her heart raced wildly in her chest. She knew it wasn't the best news, but just hearing that Bail was alive made her feel a little better. "What did he want?" she asked. "What did he say?"
"He came looking for you," Dormé repeated slowly, sounding very much like a broken droid stuck on a loop. "He came looking for you because people were disappearing." She paused again, shaking herself out of her trance but not hiding her evident fear. "We both feared the worst when you didn't arrive. We tried to contact your security team, but it was as if all communications had been jammed." Dormé shook her head, a genuine look of sorrow on her face. "I wanted to warn you. I wanted to go to your apartment myself, but the troopers secured the area. They wouldn't let anyone leave."
Kriff, Padmé cursed to herself. It figures that on the one day she was late, all hell would break loose. Typical. She wasn't surprised.
"Where is he now?" Padmé asked, looking around the room as if he stood in one of the corners. She hoped he would appear out of thin air, like one of the clone troopers from earlier. Out of everyone in the Rebel Alliance, she prayed that Bail was safe– he had to be.
"He was going to wait here," Dormé replied. He was going to wait to see if you arrived, but—" A large sigh of air cut her statement short, the woman's face falling as Padmé's eyes met her own. "But he had an unexpected meeting."
Padmé frowned. "Unexpected meeting?" she asked. "With who?"
Dormé froze, her eyes hollow and her breath shallow. Whatever information she held within was somehow visibly eating her alive. "With Emperor Palpatine..."
As quickly as hope had filled the inner workings of her chest, it evaporated without a trace. Padmé felt her heart break as the words reached her ears, the pieces shattering throughout her being. She tried desperately to recover and do whatever she could to keep the pain at bay. Deep down, she knew what that statement meant – or what it could mean - but she didn't want to think about it. She couldn't. Even if Bail was under investigation, or something much worse, she had to remember that she was still there. She was still a senator, a loyal member of the Imperial Senate, and she had not been questioned. She would maintain her façade while all others failed. There was no need to panic for herself– or even Bail, not yet anyway.
"We need more answers than this," Padmé said, striding toward her desk and slamming her hands down on it. "We are making assumptions on pieces of information."
Dormé shrugged her shoulders and raised her arms outward. "It's all we can rely on," she replied. "I have nothing else to offer."
"Where's the captain?" Padmé pressed, determined to keep hope alive. She demanded answers, and she would get them.
"Right here, milady."
As always, Captain Typho entered her room with perfect timing, the two other guards who had previously been with him missing from his side. "Captain," Padmé greeted, feeling as though she were standing on pins and needles. "Did you discover anything?"
"Hardly," he replied, clearly annoyed with himself and very irritated by the entire situation. "Many of the senators, or at least the decent ones, along with their parties, are not in their rooms. It's almost as if they have vanished."
Padmé knew what the captain meant by "decent," and the thought made her already sinking stomach bottom out. Only the Imperial loyalists remained. The Rebel sympathizers and, even worse, members had disappeared, along with their staff. This left only Padmé and who knew who else to continue fighting the suddenly very failing battle against an unfeasible force.
"Vanished..." Dormé laughed, expressing her belief that the statement was absurd. "You mean dead." Captain Typho's head snapped toward Dormé with daggers in his eyes. "We don't know that," he said sternly. "There may very well be other options besides death that we haven't considered."
"Where else could they be?" Dormé asked, pressing the question. She didn't wait for the captain or Padmé to respond as she stepped forward, raising her hand and pointing her finger at the captain's face as if she held a weapon. "You weren't here. You didn't see it." She pointed toward the open doorway. "The screams. The troopers! Him!" She took another step closer to the captain, her eyes locking onto his in a challenge. "And don't tell me you didn't notice something strange about the missing members of the Senate compared to those sitting comfortably in their offices."
What remained of Captain Typho's supportive composure shattered under Dormé's intense gaze. Taking a deep breath, he looked down and nodded his head, indicating that he agreed with what they all already knew.
"I thought so," Dormé replied, but Padmé wasn't interested in the standoff. She was more focused on the words behind the challenge.
"We can't lose our heads..." Padmé tried to say, immediately admitting that it was a poor choice of words. We need to stick together."
Her words fell on deaf ears. The two members of her staff were too caught up in their pride-filled standoff to even remember that she was in the room. When the captain's eyes rose from the floor, the two continued to stare at one another for a long moment, an internal and private battle waging between them.
It was Dormé who broke the silence first. "So I ask again, Captain," Dormé challenged, her voice low yet sharp as ice. "Where else could they be?" Captain Typho attempted to regain his composure, his face relaxing slightly, but his eyes retained the same level of seriousness anddare she say– fear. His eyes scanned the room as if a spy were hiding in the corners, listening and waiting to attack. When he finally met Dormé's gaze, his voice was low, very, very low. "Perhaps," he whispered. "Some managed to escape."
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