Homecoming

"I'll wait outside while you get changed," Soren offered gently. "Mickey will help you get on your feet."

"I will?" Mickey's ears flattened at this. "Oh, bugger." Soren gave her a warning glare as he picked up the datapad and left the room.

A few moments later and Terra was dressed in the functional but not uncomfortable civilian clothing the caf fiend doctor had provided. Fortunately for Terra's arm and Mickey's sense of propriety, the outfit consisted of a belted vest with detached sleeves, meaning that her still healing arm could breathe a little, and didn't hurt too much as she guided it into the sleeve. With the exception of a few angry scars visible on Terra's skin, and her overall pallor, she looked almost as good as new.

"Soren didn't tell me what's going on with you," Mickey said as she smoothed out an imperceptible wrinkle on the girl's clothing. "But it must be big, whatever it is. I know danger when I smell it. You're dangerous, least something about you is. You don't smell like a normal human. Something's wrong in your bones."

Mickey's large yellow eyes down at Terra's. They were the eyes of a predator - a curious predator, but a predator nonetheless. "It's not my job to interfere," Mickey murmured "But I want to know the truth about you. I want to know why you're here. Why Soren and this Sith want you so badly. It's my job to protect Shellen and Skyle and Soren from threats. I need to know you aren't one."

It would be impossible to not notice that Mickey's clawed hands were still holding onto Terra by the vest in a soft but firm grip. "At the debriefing, I want you to say exactly what happened. I want you to go into detail. If I'm satisfied that you've told the truth, I'm going to trust you. If I'm not, well..." Mickey offered her a wide, toothy, almost threatening smile. "Is there an understanding between us?"

Mickey's yellow eyes widened. "W-what?!"

The lights dimmed as Terra's fear overwhelmed them like a thundercloud. Lightning crackled around her, connecting objects to Terra's body with spiderwebs of electricity. Some, like the nightstand, were light enough that they might cause minor bruising if thrown hard enough. Others, like the scalpels and surgical instruments on the medical stand, were life-threatening. All were lifted in the air, circling Terra, ready to be thrown at Mickey and anything else in the room that threatened her.

Mickey released Terra and fell to her back, with surprisingly little grace considering her feline species. She crawled back on all fours, almost as terrified as Terra.

And then Soren was there, his strong arms wrapped around Terra, his forehead pressed against hers, whispering soothing words in Terra's ears. "Shh... It's okay. It's okay. You're going to be fine. I'm here, Terra. Look at me." His hands cupped her face and forced her to look at him, his eyes meeting hers. There was something empathetic in those eyes - like Soren was attempting to soak up whatever it was inside of her that caused her so much pain. Somehow it was not nearly as agonizing as Cadivus' mental touch had been. Where Cadivus had casually sliced at her psyche with his razor-sharp mind, Soren merely moved through the paths that Terra opened on her own, leaving barely a trace of his presence behind.

If the sudden influx of Terra's anguish caused Soren any pain, only a twitch of his fingers around her face showed it. He redoubled his efforts, searching for the despair - the wounds in her spirit - and doing his best to take her pain into himself. "Look at me, Terra. I'm here. You're safe. It's just you and me. Look at me, Terra."

Soren held on through the hurricane, feeling heavy objects and lighter, slashing blades whirl around him, nearly shredding him and beating him with terrifying force. It was Terra's emotions, though, that held his attention. As he looked through each memory - feeling what she had felt, seeing what she had seen - it tore through him like a knife, stinging him and worrying at him like a nagging wound that refused to heal. And as Terra relived her memories, Soren felt each wound tear open, sending waves of agony through the girl's spirit.

But even through Terra's despair, Soren tried to see the memories as a CorSec operative; they were pieces of evidence to be examined, even if they were pieces of evidence that were tearing Terra's mind apart. He saw a dark-haired woman, a Morganian man with yellow eyes and pointed ears, a hangar, a glimpse out a starport at thousands - hundreds of thousands - of ships bristling with weaponry. He saw Terra's master, the man who had beaten her past sanity, a labyrinthine medical facility where they'd cut her and molded her into their image, and saw how memories of that place turned this hospital into a waking nightmare.

She's so strong, Soren thought, amazed. No wonder she doesn't want to open her eyes. There's nothing but pain to be seen.

"Or perhaps it's because she prefers it in here."

Soren turned.

Had Cadivus a mouth, he'd be grinning widely. Shadows dappled his bare shoulders and chest, and turned his face into a mask where only the rebreather and yellow-red eyes shone through the darkness. Other than the rush of remembered waters and the sibilant hiss of Cadivus' mask, there was silence.

It was a moment before Soren could find the words to answer. When he did, the words came out as a low growl. "Cadivus."

"Mr. Kai."

Soren eyed the masked giant across the catwalk, hand reaching toward his belt for a blaster he knew he wouldn't find. "I didn't spend four years at Point Solitude and three months at the Jedi Academy for you to call me 'Mister.' 'Jedi' or 'Lieutenant,' please."

Cadivus chuckled - a sound that Soren wished to never hear again. "There's that trademark Kai sense of humor. But you're not either of those things, are you, Mr. Kai?" The Sith Assassin took a step toward Soren, bootsteps heavy enough that they sent vibrations up Soren's hands, and a chill down his spine. "A failed CorSec operative. And a Jedi with only marginal talent. It must be hard for you."

Images flashed past Soren's eyes. News of his mother's death reaching the hab block. An admission letter to Point Solitude. Arguments with his father. Stun rounds sending lines of electric fire down his veins. Shellen, looking disappointed as Soren fell again to the training drones. The reporters pestering him, asking if the administration's story about his insubordination had been true, and why he hadn't appealed the disciplinary committee's decision to fire him. Ice's disgusted face as Soren failed to parry her strike, and lay whimpering on the training floor, a massive welt on his body. Diamonte beating him at the obstacle course. Marko's body. Eli's face. Every failure, misstep and embarrassment Soren had ever faced rushed up to greet him again, ten times stronger, and Soren had to grip the bars of the catwalk to keep from being swept under.

"So sad. So... disappointing. They should have sent a real Jedi to challenge me. Adieumus, maybe. Or Serrin Roma - at least she lives on Corellia. But you... had to come back here, have your little homecoming, and give me another weakling to slaughter. I grow so tired of killing children." Cadivus' eyes turned to Terra's body, which lay curled next to Soren.

Soren steadied himself, crawling to his feet. Rage built inside him - rage that Cadivus would threaten him, his home planet, his friends. "Boring, am I? I'm just getting started. What are you? Some fragment? Some memory of Cadivus, left behind to torture a little girl?"

"They say that the worst wounds are those we inflict on ourselves. I am what Terra made me - an open wound.."

Soren's eyes narrowed, concentrating. He shut out Cadivus' voice and concentrated on the Force, letting it flow through him, empowering him. "No... You're not."

Cadivus stopped his slow advance, curious. "Excuse me?"

"You're a cancer." Soren thought of the feeling of reloading a blaster pistol, feeling the battery pack slide inside the dark metal. No need to switch to stun. "You might have been made by something outside, but you're all Terra's memories - the wrong ones. A useless, dangerous mass of filth that doesn't belong anywhere." Checking sights... Aim for the center of mass. Exhale. Finger on the trigger. It was like being boiled alive in his suit.

Cadivus pulled something dark from his belt and activated it, sending a beam of red-white plasma lancing through the darkness. "I will feast upon your bones, little Jedi."

"You just need to be cut free." Soren squeezed.

He felt the blade slide through his ribs, tearing at his lung and roasting his insides with Cadivus' fury. There was pain, pain everywhere, like his cells were tiny stars that were exploding one by one, leaving him in darkness. But as each supernova threatened his sanity and cut at his mind, he heard a metallic shriek in front of him. The iron girders around them melted, twisted away, and then rusted into the black, as water boiled away into nothingness. Cadivus too, then Terra, then Soren...

Soren opened his eyes and saw Terra there, lying on the hospital floor, as if for the first time. He spoke in a rasping whisper that tore out of him like Cadivus' lightsaber blade. "It's okay. I'm here for you now."

Mickey, unsteady and looking as if she had just been dragged fur-first through a cyclone, crawled to her feet. She looked at the two Jedi, then around the room, and then at the doctors. Finally, her gaze settled on the silver-haired Echani doctor, and she moved toward him, dodging the bustling physicians as they worked to reattach Terra to her IV drip. "What happened? There's a -"

"Quiet." The Echani's gaze never left Soren.

The alien bristled. "Excuse me? That's my agent. Shellen told me to -"

The Echani turned and simply looked at her, metallic grey eyes absolutely calm, his voice like cool water rolling over a glass windowpane. "Go tell Chief Shellen that he will have to wait a moment or two longer for his guests to arrive. Now, if you please."

Mickey shook her head, trying to shake his eyes out of her vision, but she was already moving. "No, I'm -"

"Goodbye." When the door clicked shut, the Echani turned to look down at Soren again, who lay twitching on the floor.

He didn't look much. Others were taller, more heavily muscled. Most were more experienced. And nearly all were more powerful in the Force. The young man on the ground in front of him was a candle flame, where others, like Adieumus, Feral and Sinistra, were raging wildfires.

And yet the Force had sent him here. And what he'd accomplished with limited supplies and resources had astonished even the Echani physician.

Soren's eyes fluttered open. He lacked the strength to focus them, much less to see the man standing over him. After a moment of trembling, his lips formed into words. "Your voice... I remember... Who... are you?"

"A physician," the Echani replied. "And little else that matters to you." He knelt down next to the man, either ignoring or not noticing the doctors behind him working on stabilizing Terra. Drawing a pulse stethoscope and PK meter from his pocket, the elderly man began scanning him - drawing laser lines across Soren's face, then changing search parameters and scanning again. Slowly, like a sculptor gradually kneading at clay, a holographic representation of Soren's body rose out of the readout, tinged with blue, green, yellow and red. It told the physician nothing he didn't already know.

The Jedi apprentice blinked rapidly, feeling a growing sense of unease. It was like when he'd bluffed his way through a conversation with the Jedi Knight at the Academy - being picked apart by eyes that saw everything and judged all. Except he had nothing to protect himself. He had no alias, no asp-weapon stowed in his vest or blaster at his hip. "... What are you-"

"Ensuring that you've no physical ailment. " The Echani closed the stethoscope and PK meter and stowed them in his coat, then addressed the caf fiend, still keeping his eyes on Soren. "Doctor. Do you have a diagnosis?"

Soren slept, and did not dream.

He had a vague recollection of waking and dressing himself the next day, grabbing a datapad and creating a brief presentation. There was an impression of corridors – winding white hallways that seemed too rounded to be humanly designed – and the Echani's silver eyes watching him as he walked.

Then he was in Shellen's chambers, that gaudy penthouse suite full of glass and blinking lights, a still of a shockball match suspended over the fat old man's desk. Shellen was speaking, concerned. Was Soren alright? He'd heard something about an incident in the med bay. Soren noticed, dumbly, that Skyle was there, still too withdrawn to offer a simple “Hello, Soren, how are you doing?”

The eyes told Soren to tell Shellen that he was fine, and that he was ready for a debriefing.

“The first thing that we need to accept,” Soren began, something in the back of his mind egging him on, “is that we are under attack. Marko tried to warn us, warn me, and I was too stubborn to listen. Until it was too late.”

Marko's dead face on pavement. Blood around his mouth. Tired, sad.

“Cop killers,” Shellen declared, nodding. “Go on, lad.”

“Not killers, per se. I think that this was the work of one man.” Soren flicked an image from his datapad to cover the shockball game – the armored and masked warrior Mickey's cameras had captured as they escaped the hospital. Another flick juxtaposed it against Skyle's sketch.

“This man, specifically.” Skyle tapped the viewscreen with the barrel of his rifle, eliciting a scowl from Shellen.

“A lot of work for one man,” Shellen replied. “You have a theory?”

“Each killing took place between six hours and three days apart, within five kilometers of a sewer access port.” Soren drew up each crime scene still, arranging them around Cadivus' face, each scene carefully timestamped. “You'll notice that each murder was performed differently. Synox on the rim of a caf mug. Vibroblade.” Soren's mouth tightened. “Shuttle crash.”

“You mean -”

Skyle stepped in, gesturing at the data pad. “It's hard to find bodies in a starship crash, but EMTs did pick up a few skeletons from the crash pad. One had a crushed chest, the other was missing a hand, and the last was pulverized on impact. CorSec Air Safety attributed it to the crash, despite the intact cockpit canopy. I would have too, except for this still -” at this he drew up another image, a blurry still from a chatter vid of the crash. There, visible against the skyline, was the shuttle, and falling from it a black speck. “Which shows something falling from the shuttle just before the crash.”

A vid clip joined the growing display, this one of an infrared view of the city. The shuttle, its engines flaring, bloomed white against the reds and blues and greens of Coronet city life, and just before it struck the doomed hab-block below, a speck of red and yellow fell from an open door. Small, hot, and almost imperceptible against the dying spacecraft.

“Something human.”

Shellen leaned back, thinking. “Why didn't CorSec investigate? Why didn't it show up in any of the media coverage?”

“To avoid a panic?” Skyle asked, mirthlessly. “Or maybe they invited him to clean up.”

“Do you really think Arnolict would stoop that low?” Shellen asked quietly.

“He might not be such a bad guy,” Soren said, shrugging. “But it's getting more and more convenient for him.”

Shellen turned back to Soren, blue eyes icy. “Explain, lad.”

Three more holograms joined the image of Cadivus in the center: a heavily tattooed and scarred Rutian Twi'lek, a ruddy-skinned and brutish human male, and a white-haired human male.

“Muri Tal'dira, Sergeant Jorj Bride, and Director Arnolict.” Soren tapped each in turn, pausing over Arnolict's sour-looking face. “Tal'dira is our vector. He controls the sewers, and – humor me for a minute – allows our assassin to move about undetected. We know through your bug that Tal'dira and Arnolict were talking about weapons shipments; things that a drug kingpin needs but can't get easily in the quantities he needs.

“Director Arnolict is our intelligence. He has access to in-depth information on every CorSec officer working for the Corps, and on a few pensioners as well. He knows our patterns. He knows where we live. If there's a man who could order a dozen hits on a dozen men and women over the space of three months, even including paranoid recluses like Marko, it would be him.

“Bride is our go-between. A man like Arnolict can't meet with his contacts directly, so he orders Bride to do his dirty work for him.”

“But why would Arnolict order a hit on Bride?” Shellen interjected. “He was Arnolict's man. Why kill your own agent? And what need would the Director of CorSec have for a thug like Tal'dira?”

Skyle spoke first. “It all leads back to Norbet's Nest.”

Soren nodded. “Nine months ago Skyle, Eli, Marko and I were ordered on a CT op in Tyrena. We were tracking a group of three possible targets, who Command assured us were responsible for the Cafe Bombings. Eli followed them to Norbet's Nest, a dive bar in the Skids. Command told us to go in quiet, eliminate the leader's guards and take him into custody, then exfil on the rooftop with Sel Wayland's team. Marko and Eli ran ground, Skyle and I ran control and long range support from the landing pad nearby. We were given less than three hours to infil, operate and exfil.”

“It ended less than well,” Skyle finished.

“It was a bloodbath.” Shellen nodded grimly. “Though not your fault, given the impossible parameters. But I'm not seeing how this connects to Bride.”

“Bride ran cleanup on that op,” Soren said, tapping the viewscreen. “A man good at removing fingerprints and planting blasters. Backing him up was Virik Ismar's squad.”

Skyle counted off on his fingers. “Virik Ismar's squad. Sel Wayland's squad. Bride. All dead or missing within the last three months. Eli, her father and Marko round off the list. Eleven dead. Twelve if you count the pilot of the shuttle, and a lot more if you count the crash victims.”

“Speculate.”

“We let the slicer girl go,” Soren said, bluntly. “Even if she died, which is probable, anyone could have found her body and taken whatever information she had. We kriffed up. We left witnesses – including ourselves – and now everyone who was there on that night is getting killed. CorSec is turning a blind eye because they're feeding the assassin information on where to find us.”

“What could the slicer have that would require that kind of force?” Shellen asked.

Soren shrugged. “Blackmail material. War intelligence. The “perp” we were hitting at Norbet's Nest was a doctor of xenoarcheology and Cold War-era linguistics from Baobab Archives with a Wookiee bodyguard, so anything's on the table. Whatever it is, Arnolict doesn't want it falling into anyone's hands but his own, and the assassin is willing to kill anyone who came into contact with it.”

“And half a hab-block, apparently.” Shellen tapped his cane against his desk, no longer skeptical but still trying to puzzle it out. “Why would an assassin do this? Why not simply land at a spaceport, where he wouldn't raise as much noise?”

“Three reasons: First, this man has heavy augmentations. Mickey's cameras got a read on him, and at least his arms and limbs are military-grade cybernetics. Add that trendy mask of his, and he'd stick out at a spaceport like a skinny Hutt.”

“Second,” Skyle continued, “He's trying to eliminate us as quietly as possible. No one's going to pay attention to some dead cops if half the city is crumbling from a wildcat destabilization event. Add in the Byrrhen Telecomm tower electrical fire, and he's got a perfect time frame to spread chaos.”

“Third, I think that this man is something Arnolict wasn't expecting. I think he wanted something much more controllable than what he got, and now he's paying the price. He wanted an assassin, and instead he got... Something much worse. The kind of man who would kill seven hundred people just to avoid leaving a trace. Someone who can get the Blood Hounds under his thumb in just a few months, and rally all the conspiracy nuts and ex-Imps in the sewers. And they're looking for someone, if we go by what Kiros tells us.”

Shellen was silent for a long moment, then met Soren's eyes. "Who?"

Soren swallowed. "A Sith."

The Force was curious, bringing swirling sensations and memories to the adept, like leaves being carried down a current. Soren was barely an initiate, and yet he felt the flutter of surprise - and recognition - from Shellen that moment.

Soren found his voice first. "You knew."

"I suspected."

"How?" Skyle demanded. "The Sith are supposed to be extinct."

Shellen glared at Skyle from under his heavy russet eyebrows. "I kept the mission brief that Arnolict sent me for the counter-terrorism operation in Norbet's Nest. Jonas Caesura, PhD, xenoarchaology and Cold War linguistics. The man was an expert in a Sith dialect that died out three thousand years ago, and had just returned from an expedition from the Stygian Expanse."

"Why would the Sith want him dead, then?" Skyle asked.

"To keep the secret safe," Soren offered. "Maybe he found them. Maybe they followed him here to make sure he didn't spread the word."

"Then why wouldn't Caesura go to the Republic for help? They're itching for a fight - anything to distract the public from pirates and the galactic economy. A good war would make their day." Skyle shook his head, unconvinced.

"Or maybe he just found something he didn't understand," Shellen answered. "Maybe he found something on a dig somewhere and brought it back, not knowing it marked him for a dead man. In any case, we don't have all the answers. If the Sith are still looking for someone connected to Norbet's Nest, it can only be one person."

"The slicer," Soren whispered.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The bucket of ice water hit her face like a thunderclap, rousing her from fevered sleep.

She sat in a dark room, her arms and legs strapped to the plasteel chair with electrical cords, just loose enough for her to ball her fists in rage. Or, rather, fist; even now, months after that night, she still had to remind herself that she was no longer entirely human. The botched alleyway surgery deal she'd taken had made sure of that.

The being that had so rudely awakened her stepped forward and grabbed her hair, pulling her head back until it was painful to swallow. She caught a glimpse of him from her rather poor vantage point; he looked like a Duros, even if his face was mostly augmetics and scars by this point. After a long moment of scanning her face and her arm, the blue-skinned alien stepped back, beyond her vision.

The voice that came from somewhere in the ceiling was clearly not the Duros'.

::WHY DO YOU THINK YOU ARE HERE?::