Ludolf's eyes followed the mercenary as she exited the room, until he was left only in the company of the woman's blackstalker. Indeed. The hideous thing panted and snarled, drooled occasionally, and General Vaas had to hide his grimace at the thing's grotesque appearance.
The next several hours passed by in much the same fashion, though in fact, there was a silent game of chess being played between Ludolf and the beast. The game was to see who could doze off first. Ludolf had closed his eyes and lowered his heart rate, feigning sleep, hopefully enough to keep the beast disinterested in his presence. After a long time, the blackstalker was resigned to the fact that the prisoner would be going nowhere, and so its own eyes began to fold shut due to the monotonous boredom of the dank room. It was then that Ludolf knew he had a window of opportunity.
There was one last ace up his sleeve, though it wasn't much of one and truthfully, he was not exactly looking forward to it. Ivy had done a fair job in patting him down for weapons, and had in fact confiscated all of them - almost. No one could blame her for missing the most inconspicuously hidden weapon in his arsenal: a small blade that lay retracted in the tip of his boot. It was a weapon meant for surprise purposes only, to turn a kick to the face potentially fatal. It wasn't even a vibro-weapon, or else it would hamper his walking. Rather, it was a simple crude blade, a small remnant from his days as an Agent, where he had been taught to make any body extremity into a concealed weapon. In fact, he had never even used this idea before in a real-life combat situation. Now, however, it would find a use, though not the one he intended.
Slowly, Vaas brought his leg behind him, so that he could reach down with his unccuffed hand and feel for it. With a squeeze of his toe, the blade sprung out of the tip of his boot, the sound soft enough not to wake the sleeping blackstalker across the room. Wrapping his fingers around the blade, Ludolf tugged sideways, and then tugged again. The third time, it popped off in his hand.
Pressing both feet to the floor, Ludolf extended his legs and raised himself to a standing position. He closed his eyes again and began to focus on his pulse. He felt his heart rate slowly begin to drop while his hand went to work behind his back.
Drip, drip.
Squinting, Ludolf lost himself in meditation. The pain that began to surge through his broken arm eventually melted into the rest of his body, dissipating in a feeling of heat and eventual numbness as the small blade raked through his flesh incessantly.
The drips became more frequent.
One thing was fortunate; the arm had already been damaged anyway, and so Ludolf resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't be losing his best arm. The blade cut through skin, and veins, and eventually bones, all the while Ludolf slipped himself into a near trance-like state as his heart rate slowed to a near stop. Every Agent in the Sith Empire was trained to perform field surgery without the use of an anesthetic. It simply involved the same methods that encompassed the rest of their training; finding a quarantine in the mind for the sensation of pain, and rhythmic breathing and meditation to slow the body to a near comatose state.
A dead hand fell to the floor into a puddle of blood, and Ludolf felt himself free from the cuffs, the other end still clasped onto the pipe that had kept him tethered to the wall.
His remaining energy was spent tourniqueting his arm the best he could with the sleeve of his shirt, pulling off the cover to one of the ship's air vents, and crawling inside. Ludolf would only be able to crawl a little before he would need to stop and rest, for fear of passing out. But the deed had been done, and he was free - for now.
As such, Ivy would return to the prisoner bay to find a sleeping blackstalker on one end of the room, a severed hand lying underneath a dangling set of handcuffs in the other, and a small trail of blood that led into an open air vent. She would only have a few seconds to process this information however, before a bang was heard on the cargo bay doors.
"Open this hatch immediately, by order of the One Sith!"
