Chapter 1. Awaken

Awaken…

The stinging smell of antiseptic assails your nostrils at your first deep breath of recycled air. You've never felt so heavy before. You flutter your eyelids open and try to focus. You notice the familiar shape of a kolto tank.

Your clothes are heavy, wet even. Your skin is sticky.

What?

You focus harder. Your head is foggy.

Where are you?

The words echo in your head, awaken.

You ignore the uncomfortable cling of your undergarments as you sit up. Your head is still foggy.

What happened? Where are you?

Another look around and you think you must be in a med bay. There are others in the tanks in the room. They float unconscious in the bubbling kolto.

Where are the medical personnel?

Why is no one here to help you?

How did you get here?

Your head fills with these questions and it hurts to think them. Thoughts with no discernable answer and you're too drained to make sense of them. Stop thinking. Just get up.

You stand up and walk towards the bay doors. The glow of computers from an empty comm. room to your left catch your eye. There is still no one to help you.

You enter the comm. room to find medical supplies and sit heavily in the chair in front of the computer. Blinking icons flash on screen and the brightness hurts your fresh eyes. You close them. Open them. Look at the words on the screen.

The computer holds records of a video log. You watch the videos with your sensitive eyes and try and concentrate on the words. The first log reveals that you are the lone survivor of the Ebon Hawk. The others are dead. Only you have survived.

This situation is not unfamiliar for you. You've survived many times when others haven't.

What happened on the Ebon Hawk? How did everyone die? Why were you the only one to survive again?

Weary. You close your eyes to shut out the questions. Your head falls back against the chair.

Awaken…

That voice…

This time when you wake, you're more focused. You remember the questions that seemed impossible to answer. Their openness bothers you and you set out with purpose, to get answers.

You listen to the remaining logs on the computer, taking mental notes as you retain the information. A battle. No indication of who fired upon the ship. A fuel station. Peragus. An old woman. Utility droids. You're a Jedi….

Wait, you know that's not right. You're an exile.

You try to reach back in your memory to the Ebon Hawk. You can't remember. You remember lots of other things; other people; other ships but not the Ebon Hawk.

Maybe someone else has answers on this station; if anyone else is here.

Your survival instincts suggest you find a weapon before you find answers. You see bodies across the hall in a med bay. Maybe they'll have what you need.

An old woman. A miner. The miner might have something useful. You scavenge his body and find a plasma torch. Not much of a weapon but it's better than nothing.

Find what you are looking for amongst the dead? A voice startles you…

That voice… you turn to find what you thought was the corpse of the old woman standing before you. Her eyes hooded by her brown robe. She calls herself your "rescuer." Kreia.

Tell me. Do you recall what happened? You tell her you don't.

She seems to know what happened and she has answers for you. There was an attack. She confirms you were the only one who survived. She knows who you are. Jedi…

This woman, Kreia, there's something about her that makes you wary. She seems odd; alarmingly perceptive. How could she possibly know what you were?

Your stance, your walk tells me you are a Jedi. Your walk is heavy, you carry something that weighs you down.

Her assessment troubles you. A total stranger is able to read you so easily. Have you forgotten how to protect yourself? Had you not learned your lesson before? But no, she is no average person. She is familiar with the Jedi. You have no proof of this but you feel confident that she knows their ways well.

You decide to let her comment slide. You need to learn more about her. You know you don't trust her.

She doesn't give you any more answers and you don't ask, perhaps out of fear that she'll perceive more about you. She believes another attack is imminent and you must leave.

You don't have many choices and you have to find a way off this facility. She will stay behind and center herself. Make sense of things.

You start to make your way through the many rooms of the facility. The metallic clank of jammed doors and the hum of space are the only sounds. The entire facility is devoid of life. Bodies are lie on floors, chairs, as if they simply fell asleep on the job. It is eerie and unsettling but you have no choice but to continue on.

You enter a room full of corpses. Kreia's voice comes to you. A warning…be careful…there is much energy in the room beyond…yet it stems from nothing that lives.

Kreia's voice penetrates your mind. You haven't experienced anything like that since you were a kid at the temple. The masters used to invade your thoughts this way.

Before you can think to ask her how she's done it, she interrupts you. Can you not sense them? Reach out… cast aside your sight, cast aside what you see…and instead reach out with your perceptions.

You balk at what she's encouraging you to do. You can't do that. You haven't been able to for years. You've lost the tool she's asking you to use.

She encourages you, as the masters did to use your perception. Feel the energy of the things around you. Your skepticism at perceiving these things quickly fades to shock when you realize that you can.

You reach out with your mind to try and understand the energy of the next room and perceive the inorganic force of droids. Their purpose is malicious and you know you will have to destroy them to get by.

You hadn't been able to perceive anything like this for years. You were cut off. Alone.

You lost the Force.

Now you have it back again? Surely it couldn't have been that easy? This couldn't possibly be the Force. The same Force that was lost when you were exiled from everything you knew.

You sense the small threads of understanding and it feels like tasting a huge gulp of fresh clean air after having breathed in recycled staleness for years.

This feeling is so familiar. You had no idea how much you missed it. You feel so alive! You are excited! You burst through the doors with a rush of adrenaline and attack with a ferocity you haven't seen in yourself since Malachor. You feel so alive!

Ah you hear it. It is faint, but it is there.

What's happening?

It is the Force you feel. It has not been so long as for you to forget.

Oh my, the Force. You didn't think you could. It's so different than it was. Like a faint echo rather than an energy within you. You hardly recognize it. Kreia is wrong; it feels like forever since you knew this. Strangely though, you know you couldn't mistake it for anything else.

Kreia encourages you to listen…feel it echoing within you…

She claims she will help you. She will show you the paths you need to take to reestablish your connection to the Force.

You will need it if we are to survive and escape this place.

You don't really know how to proceed. You don't know if you should. But it feels so good to feel connected to something again. You listen to the Force. Feel it flowing within your veins & your mind can sense the connectedness of all things again.

Insolently you think why shouldn't you feel this again? You had such a strong connection before. This precious gift was lost when you were banished by a group of people who claim they knew what was best. You had little choice in the matter. And now it's back…

Your entire existence in this universe is dependent on other things. You've always known this and it's the reason why you've chosen the course that has led you here. You've learned from your years in exile how worthless & empty it is to deny such a thing. To ignore those around you, to cut yourself off is merely to survive.

You don't want survival anymore, you want this.