It was happening again.

Every time it started the same way: she sat down at her cold grey console, began working with the complicated system, and felt it. A soft, strange sensation inside her head, as though someone were poking around with thick fingers. She would squeeze her eyes shut and shake her head — imperceptibly, so as not to draw General Hux's attention — until the feeling went away.

And it did go away. Eventually. Until a few hours later, when it came back. Poke.

Manna wondered if she'd been working too hard. Being promoted from stormtrooper to a systems technician on Starkiller Base was a big deal, a huge deal, and at the very least meant she didn't have to wear that fucking mask anymore. She looked much better in black anyway.

She'd spent the previous few months doing everything she could to prove her talents to the General — which, naturally, meant proving her talents to about five other people before word of the dexterity of both her hands and mind met his ears — and so maybe this was a side effect. A strange sort of headache. A new form of migraine.

Maybe, Manna thought with a small pang of worry, it had something to do with the planet itself. Where it drew its power from. What it was intended to do.

Nonsense. The First Order knew what it was doing. Overthinking, that was her problem.

She'd always been an overthinker. Growing up in the First Order did that to you, Manna supposed. You either thought too much or you didn't really think at all.

Poke.

She screwed her eyes shut and shook her head, losing the blinking lights before her in sudden darkness.

Poke.

"MN-8486." The General's clipped tone jolted her nearly out of her seat; Manna sat straight up and gave him a quick salute.

"General. I apologize — I —"

"Might I remind you that you were afforded this position based on a series of highly ranked technicians assuring me that you could perform this duty flawlessly?"

The fingers suddenly withdrew. Hux stared at her, his eyes as much cold metal as the console she'd been ignoring.

Most of the other technicians didn't even glance her way but Manna could feel the room nearly humming with tension. Shit.

She wanted to explain the poking but that was most definitely a lost cause; she opened her mouth instead to issue another apology only to be interrupted by the clicking of boots on the floor of the cockpit.

Shit. If the room had been humming before, it was all but rumbling now.

"General," crackled a familiar, almost robotic voice. Everyone knew what the sound of those boots meant and who they brought with them.

Manna went furiously back to her task, hands working away at the charging system, hoping like hell Commander Ren hadn't seen her slacking on the job. A mistake like that didn't get you fired — it got you far, far worse.

She could feel Hux's icy stare on her still, but only for a moment before he turned and faced the tall masked man to his left.

"Yes, Ren, I'm currently dealing with a situation —"

"Supreme Leader Snoke wishes to speak with us," Commander Ren intoned, sounding almost bored and interrupting the General as though he hadn't even said anything at all.

Hux pressed his lips together in a thin line, then looked back at Manna, who was no longer shutting her eyes or shaking her head but working madly at the system controls like the good little technician she was supposed to be.

When the Commander spoke again, it was one impatient word:

"Now."

Blessed relief rushed through her when General Hux turned to the cockpit's supervisor and snapped, "See to it MN-8486 does not shirk her duties again. If you notice noncompliance, send her to reconditioning straight away."

Harsh, Manna found herself thinking in reflex, though she knew it was lucky the Commander had shown up when he did. She might already be on her way to reconditioning, as it were.

"Affirmative, General."

Hux marched out of the cockpit, stiff and bristling. Manna waited for the hooded figure near her console to follow suit but he stood there, a new set of eyes staring at her — at least, she assumed he had eyes behind that hideous mask.

A hot lump had formed in her throat she suddenly found herself unable to swallow.

Commander Ren leaned in, presumably to reprimand her as well, at least oh god she hoped that's what was happening, she had seen the melted consoles he took his frustration out on and heard more than one of his tantrums from the hallway, maybe he had sent Hux away so he could deal with her himself? It was only a moment she had shut her eyes, only a moment and she had just wanted that strange feeling in her brain to go away so she could —

Poke.

When the robotic voice hissed out of the mask, it was quiet enough that Manna was fairly certain she was the only one who could hear it.

"You're absolutely right," the Commander whispered. "You think too much."

Before she could even make sense of what this meant he began to lean away, thought better of it, leaned back in again.

"And too loudly."

Then he was gone, black cape whisking behind him, boots clicking away down the hall until all Manna could hear was the sound of her own panicked heartbeat thudding at the back of her skull.