She couldn’t count how many times she’d chosen to stay with the Empire. Chosen not to walk away when she had the chance.
The droid’s humming rose an octave and oscillated weirdly. “Why do you believe you made that same decision time and again?”
“Because,” she said, and swallowed the next words. “Because.”
“Because what?” the droid repeated. But she didn’t answer, and IT-O made a sound not unlike a sigh before finishing, “I detect no significant change in the tower’s response to your bioreadings. You must actively explore your feelings; passivity and resistance are getting us nowhere.”
“I’m not resisting.”
“How often,” the droid said, “did you think of Nacronis before Pandem Nai?”
She screwed up her face in confusion and disgust. Was it mocking her?
The droid went on. “I make no accusations. You knew what had occurred. Yet only after Adan confronted you did you acknowledge it to yourself—and once that was done, a barrier was broken. You began, as you told me, to remember your life with the Empire. We have been addressing the consequences ever since.”
“So what?”
“So you are very good at resisting despite yourself.”
“Give me an hour,” Quell said. “Then we can start again.”
* * *
—
She didn’t know how many days had passed, but for a while she’d counted the circuits of the black hole over the horizon. Each time it ascended, her body tensed and she forced herself not to tremble. Her heart rate increased. When the eye of Cerberon reached the center of the black tower’s lens, then it was time to sit in the dust and stare at the all-consuming singularity and be drawn into a new vision; time for the interrogation droid to monitor her vital signs and scan the machinery in the tower edifice. The droid had told her that the tower was looking for something, some biological response that would open the door. By rigorous testing and a process of elimination, Yrica Quell was determined to produce whatever response the tower required. It was the only hope of escaping the planetoid for herself and Caern Adan.
So every time the black hole stared through the lens, Quell stared back. Every time, she saw something different.
Sometimes it was a memory uncorrupted by time: The stinging detergent-scent of her first cadet uniform as she donned it in the brutal light of the Academy barracks, certain her bunkmates could see through her bare skin to her brittle bones. Sometimes the tower’s offering was fantasy or revelation or clairvoyance: the vision of Nacronis’s death that had first enveloped her, or other visions since then of Nacronis’s drowning citizens; or the view from an X-wing cockpit as rebel forces fled over Trydara and TIE fighters, her TIE fighter, picked off rebels one by one. Sometimes the tower showed the burnt and bloodied faces of the dead: comrades in the 204th, Xion and Tonas and Jidel, or the nameless stormtroopers who’d been blown apart on the shuttle over Abednedo on her first real mission with Alphabet Squadron. Sometimes visions blurred together, one after the next. Sometimes one was enough.
Always IT-O was there when she emerged. “The vision is the prompt,” the droid told her after the third nightmare. “The emotion is the password. But you must connect with the imagery; you must fully understand the experience.”
She was willing, she told the droid. She was trying.
After each vision, she spoke of what she’d seen and the droid questioned her.
It didn’t feel like therapy at all.
* * *
—
The next time she looked upon the eye and the black tower, she saw herself sitting in a repurposed shipping container in Traitor’s Remorse, lying to IT-O about what she had done at Nacronis.
She saw the hangar bay of the Star Destroyer Pursuer on the night she’d crept out of bed to repair the acceleration compensator on her TIE. She’d failed to spot the fault before takeoff earlier in the day—she hadn’t followed procedure, never should have been allowed to leave the ship, and she’d be rebuked and punished if she brought it to the ground crew’s attention now. But if she could repair it herself no one would ever know…
She saw the face of Nette, recognized the crooked jawline of the girl who’d introduced her to the Rebel Alliance and whom she’d promised everything, everything, to. She’d joined the Academy for Nette. She’d just never gotten around to leaving.
* * *
—
“You were romantically involved?” the droid asked.
“We were teenagers. I was a year younger than her. I wouldn’t elevate it to the status of romance.”
“But you were close?”
Quell squeezed her eyes shut and felt the planetoid’s dust sting her lids. “Yes, we were close.”
“What did she tell you when she decided to join the Rebellion?”
“She didn’t. We’d talked about it for a while, but she didn’t announce it before she left.”
“She didn’t say goodbye?”
“No.”
“Was that difficult?”
Quell shrugged. She adjusted her position, rising off her bottom to squat on her knees and stave off the numbness. “Everything’s difficult when you’re that age. But it could have been worse—we weren’t talking a whole lot at the time.”
“You were fighting. And while you were fighting, this woman departed your home station to fight a war, leaving you only a message. Am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“I would imagine you felt somewhat responsible.”
Quell winced. Her eyes opened, she blinked away the sand, and she shuffled forward on her knees.
“I would imagine,” the droid continued, “that you were afraid you had driven her to depart. And that you felt afraid for her, knowing that you had failed to join her in her venture.”
“What’s your point?”
“Many would-be rebels failed to ever make contact with an Alliance cell. If you are unaware of her fate, you should consider the possibility that she never had the opportunity to join. Substantial numbers of smugglers who promised to transport prospective rebels were in fact traffickers working for cartels and crime syndicates—”
The fingers of her right hand combed through the sand. When she’d palmed enough she hurled it at the droid. An expanding cloud billowed around the machine as the larger granules fell to the ground.
She lacked the strength to do anything else.
“Bastard,” she said.
The droid tilted on its axis, readjusted itself, and floated out of the cloud of dust.
“I overstepped,” the droid said, and its voice was grave. “I apologize.”
Quell dropped to her elbows and rubbed her filthy palm in her hair. “What was that about?” she murmured.
“There are connections that I believe would be beneficial if you made,” the droid said in the same unshaken tone. “I am concerned about the timeline and I inappropriately pushed you in an attempt to expedite.”
“The timeline,” she said.
“For you. For Caern Adan. You have limited time.”
Until we starve to death, she thought. Until the planetoid drifts so close to the black hole we’ll never be able to get out.
She nodded brusquely, though she found the excuse a poor one.
The droid spoke again a minute later, and the gravity in its voice was replaced by something resembling contrition. “I have limited time,” it said.
She looked at the gouges in its black paint; the unlit indicators. She remembered what it had said about its faulty memory circuits and its failing power cells.
“I am afraid I will lose all capacity to assist,” it said. It was no longer contrite. It was confessing.
“We’ll get this thing open,” Quell said, and forced herself to rise.
* * *
—
The next time she subjected herself to the eye, she saw herself in the hangar bay of the Lodestar, hurling her fist into Caern Adan’s stomach in a fit of frustration and rage. She saw General Syndulla watching her with an expression of puzzlement and disappointment. On Troithe she saw the Twi’lek woman cast a glance backward as she fled to aid another squadron that needed her more—Vanguard Squadron, a squadron that wasn’t composed of traitors and failures. Quell saw the astromech droid D6-L wobbling excitedly, its transparent dome whirring around, its pings joyful as she offered it a crumb, the smallest hint of gratitude for serving her ceaselessly on the Harkrova moon and accepting fault for her failures. She saw D6-L burnt and ruined after saving her life on Pandem Nai, its chassis wrecked and its memory chip the only thing she’d been able to recover.
She’d treated D6-L unfairly. She’d treated it as a tool, and now she wore its chip around her neck as if that somehow mattered to the machine that no one but she would remember. Then she’d treated CB-9 with disdain, as if D6’s replacement were at fault for her old astromech’s destruction. CB-9 had repaid her by locking her out of her X-wing when Alphabet Squadron had needed her most, when Shadow Wing had returned.
Her bitterness had cost her her droid and her squadron.
The visions continued from there.
* * *
—
She lay on her back, the cold air washing over her sweat-damp shirt. She ignored the chill and told the droid about the last vision she’d seen: the day she’d broken the painted plate her father had hung by the kitchenette light controls. “I was seven, maybe, and I’d been running back and forth, and the plate just came down. When he found out, he thought my brother Garrit had done it.
“He yelled and yelled. He said the plate had been his grandmother’s. My father never got angry but he yelled at Garrit and I think he was crying.
“I never told him I did it. I haven’t thought about it in years.”
“Do you regret not telling him?” the droid asked. It floated out of view just behind her, its hum low and gentle. Almost soothing.
“I don’t know.”
“How do you feel?” the droid asked.
“Same way I feel about the time our felinx was sick and dying.” The tower hadn’t shown her that memory. It came unsummoned into her mind. “My parents were sure she was in pain, and they were probably right. But I refused to go with them when they had her put down. I got to be angry and self-righteous and my pet got to die without me.”
The droid’s voice was soft and soothing. “Say the word.”
“I feel ashamed,” she said.
“You were a child,” IT-O said. “You were a different being.”
“I wasn’t—”
“In the years since those experiences, most every cell in your body—every atom—has been replaced and renewed. You have rebuilt yourself, both physically and mentally. You do not need to carry the guilt of prior incarnations.”
She rolled onto her elbows in the dust. The droid was almost within reach, and its form blocked her view of the tower.
“I’ve got more than enough guilt for this incarnation,” she said quietly, and raked her fingers through the sand.
“All the more reason to let go of the distant past. One step at a time, yes?”
She nodded carefully, considering the words.
The droid’s photoreceptor seemed to fix on her. “You are a good man, Caern Adan,” it said. “You are far braver than you realize.”
The light behind the photoreceptor lens flickered. The droid tilted on its axis and then righted itself.
“We have more work to do,” she said. There was no point in drawing attention to the droid’s glitching. “We have to get inside the tower.”
* * *
—
She saw her mentor.
She saw Major Soran Keize walking beside her aboard the Pursuer for the first time, taking an interest in her she’d feared was neither innocent nor appropriate. In time she’d been proven wrong about Keize’s intentions; but that day she’d wondered what he would ask of her, and those fears—the image of the major as a corrupt man, an honorless man—made her skin feel ill fitting.
She saw Major Soran Keize leading the squadrons at Taka Shier, burning the hives of the natives for reasons she never heard explained.
She saw him on Nacronis, trudging through the mire in his flight suit, telling her that they’d lost the war. Ordering her to desert her unit and go to the New Republic. “You have the nature of a soldier,” he’d told her.
* * *
—
But she could tell IT-O none of that. She had lied to the droid and lied to Caern Adan. She’d claimed that Soran Keize was dead, though compared with her lie about the murder of Nacronis it was a mere fib—barely worth a rebuke from New Republic Intelligence, barely worth a mention were she ever brought to trial for her crimes.
But to tell the truth about Soran Keize was to admit that she had needed his push to leave the 204th. If you would do this, he’d told her, gesturing to the corpse of Nacronis, then there’s nothing that will drive you out.
She would not make that confession.
“It was Nacronis again,” she told the droid. Her tongue was dry and her head felt heavy. She was dizzy when she stood and stumbled away from the tower.
“There has been no significant change in the tower’s readings.”
“Maybe that’s because I saw the same thing.”
“If you are experiencing the same vision, you should be able to apply the lessons we have discussed.”
“I’m trying,” she said. She marched across the plain, and the droid followed her. “You want me to make connections. You want me to find the links between the visions and give the tower what it’s digging for.”
“Yet you experience the visions at a surface level instead of confronting and integrating their emotional resonance.”
“You know that because—what?” She whirled and nearly fell, but she bent her knees as if the ground were bucking again and maintained her balance. “I’m not hurting enough? I haven’t plumbed all the depths of shame and misery you want me to experience?”
She breathed heavily. She stared into a scar in the droid’s metal.
“I have taken oaths to do no harm to my patients,” the droid said. “Those oaths are not unbending but they were made solemnly and with clear intent. I take no pleasure in the tower’s nature. If the structure was a prize of the Emperor—if it was targeted for destruction by Operation Cinder for that reason—it is a prize only a sadist would treasure.
“Nonetheless, it is our only means of escape.”
Long after the droid’s voice faded she listened for an echo in the soft wind. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. The sockets of her eyes seemed to throb. Physical distress was a shelter from the ocean of the visions; the visions were a shelter from the disintegration of her body.
“I know,” she said. “Not your fault the Empire is full of bastards. I’ll keep trying.”
But she didn’t tell the droid about Major Keize. She hoped her shame would be enough.
* * *
—
Nette was dead. Chass was dead. Wyl was dead. Nath was dead. Kairos was dead. General Syndulla was dead. Major Soran Keize led Shadow Wing and burned the galaxy and never even asked Quell to come home.
* * *
—
She snapped out of her vision certain that she was falling through the burning ring of the black hole. Her body felt beyond hot, as if her skin were ready to blacken and peel away and leave only charred bones underneath. She groaned and rolled on the ground and saw the droid hovering above her, a manipulator extended and its syringe touched with crimson.
S
he hugged herself, rubbing her fingers along her arms until she found the corresponding dot of blood and soreness on her left biceps, opposite the squadron tattoo on her right. She shuddered once, forcing down the pain before asking, “What the hell, droid?”
“The damage to my hardware is now affecting eighty-two percent of my systems,” the interrogation droid said. “You have made minimal progress. We must accelerate this; the tower does appear to respond to physical pain.”
She tamped down her fury. It wouldn’t help. She accepted the answer and they resumed the work.
* * *
—
She no longer noticed the rise and fall of the black hole. She would look up, see it outside the frame of the lens, and return to her rest; or she would find it staring and enter its depths once again, focused on the sins she had repeated over and over, the flaws in her spirit that had brought her to this point and had caused her squadron and her wing and the galaxy so much suffering.
IT-O had pinpointed those flaws well enough. She knew what she’d done, even if she chose not to confess everything aloud.
The droid rationed its serums and chemicals, enhancing her agonies when the tower seemed most responsive. Once, it told her, it had detected an energy surge; but she’d woken screaming at the wrong moment and the tower’s equipment had gone dormant. So they repeated the process time and again.
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