"The so-called Emperor's Eye does not exist. I unfortunately must reject your proposal to write a thesis on an urban myth. Please schedule a time to meet with me with in my office, and we can discuss other possible thesis topics. Thanks."

-Pollux Hax, in a letter to a student

The Tale of CC-1010, or the Clone's Tale

Air traffic darted through Coruscant's cityscape in neat and filed skylanes. Night was over the city, and the buildings screamed sleeplessly with lights, and the flying vehicles kept moving in endless streams like hot and pumping metal blood. The city roared with an electric noise, and the locals did not sleep. It seemed no one ever slept in Coruscant.

CC-1010, famously known as Warden Fox, sat in an imperial dropship speeding high and between the skyscrapers. The dropship's interior was cast in a dull red light the color of a dying twilight. With Fox stood his best men, nine total, collectively known as the Emperor's Eye. They were the Emperor's paramilitary police force on Coruscant, each clone selected from the best of the Coruscant Guard, and keeping the peace was their sole mandate. The Coruscant Guard patrolled Coruscant's streets and guarded the Imperial Senate, but it was the Emperor's Eye that knew military tactics and used military-grade weapons, and it was them that changed the planet. Under their surveillance, Coruscant's criminal underbelly writhed and died quickly like a decapitated snake. Warden Fox and his Emperor's Eye gutted the city's darkest alleys and boroughs of their illicit filth and scrubbed them clean, leaving behind safety and order. "The Eye is keen" became a saying among the owners of small bars and rundown diner joints, and they enjoyed their order and safety, and theirs was Imperial Peace.

The dropship slowed to a stop. The men heard the pilot's voice buzz in their helmet comlinks.

"Load up," the pilot said.

The dropship's red light flashed bright green. The doors slid open, and suddenly the men heard the deafening hum of Coruscant mixed with a loud rushing wind. The pilot landed the dropship high on the roof of a skyscraper, and the wind was strong and cold.

Fox and the Emperor's Eye hopped off the dropship and watched it lift off and whir away. Fox raised his two pistols, TX-13s, the new Imperial model. His men carried military-grade EM-11s. Their armor was white and red, and Fox's was red only.

"Stay dark, men," Fox said.

They slinked across the roof without a sound. The roof was flat, square, and completely bare of a single structure. It was nothing but a metal sheet. Off the building's sides a hot light pollution rose up like a fire, but the light felt distant. It was as if the clones stood on a tall, lonely mountain, and the air suddenly felt colder.

"Driller," said Fox.

A clone pulled a drilling tool and worked down into the metal. Sparks shot up, but the drilling made only a quiet scraping sound. The drill burrowed a hole just wide enough for a man to slip through it. Fox gestured two fingers towards the hole. He reached for his grappling rope and fixed one end onto the roof and then lowered himself into the hole with it. The Emperor's Eye followed.

They soon stood in an empty hallway, immaculately clean, and utterly noiseless. The walls were bare and spotless white, and the floor was of black marble, and the clones could see their reflection in it. The hall stretched far ahead of them and behind them, and it bent and joined into many other halls. Along the walls were many chrome doors, each engraved with a number. The hallway carried the strong metallic scent of an old coin.

Fox gestured towards one end of the hall and began to move in that direction, and the men stalked in a single file behind him. Their footsteps made an almost inaudible clatter. The stark white armor of the clones looked nearly as sterile as the hallway, if it weren't for the red markings. They were like undead skeletons with the suggestion of warm flesh and blood, but their eyes were black and warmthless, like the chill wind of the nights on Coruscant.

Only Fox's armor was completely red, and the Jedi called him the Red Death, and Jedi Hunter, and Traitor.

At the far end of the hallway were chrome double doors, and behind the doors was a tight staircase that spiraled down in sharp turns like a bottomless square pit. The clones moved dozens of floors down. They stopped descending at Floor 826, and Fox opened another set of double doors. Behind the doors was another maze of hallways with pristinely white walls and polished black floors and chrome doors. The floor was identical to the one above, empty and pindrop quiet. Fox moved swiftly over the black marble floor with his pistols in hand, and his men followed him with rifles in theirs. At a particular door they all stopped, and on the door was engraved TH-138. Fox crouched and leaned against the door as if to listen in behind it. He gave a nod, and two men set small explosive charges around the door frame. Fox signaled with three fingers, then two, then one. A clone pressed a button on a tiny remote, and the charges exploded and blew open the door. Fox rushed in, and the Emperor's Eye poured in after him with their rifles poised to shoot.

It was a small room, with medical holoscreens and computer terminals on the walls, all black and long unused. In the center was a medical bed hovering silently. The bed was a flat, elongated platform shaped like a saucer, made completely of white plastoid, and it casted a dark shadow beneath it. On top of the bed was a teal insulfoam mattress. In the corner, a deactivated medical droid stood motionless. Like the rest of the skyscraper, the room looked abandoned. The building had once been a bustling hospital, and one of the best in Coruscant. The Crystal Star Hospital it was called, and even the poor farmers and market stall owners on remote planets knew its name. During the Clone Wars, the Separatists had unleashed a biological weapon on the hospital in what became the greatest terrorist attack in Coruscant's entire history. The Republic quarantined everyone in the building. The Republic scientists scrambled together but found a cure too late, and everyone in the hospital died. Patients, doctors, visitors, janitors. Only the droids survived. The Republic sent hazmat clones wearing decontamination suits to clear the building of the dead, and the building was left abandoned since, all nine hundred floors of it. All that was left was the silence, as if the hazmat clones had come in and sanitized the air of the cries of the dying. Now was just the still quiet, and the numb awakeness, and the dead medical droid in the corner.

The room seemed clear. There was a chance the report had been wrong, that no Jedi was hiding in the hospital room.

"Check for false walls," Fox said. He was called Jedi Hunter for a reason. The spies were rarely wrong. If a Jedi was here, Fox would find him.

The clones began feeling and tapping on the walls, listening for a hollow sound. Meanwhile Fox pried the teal mattress off the medical bed and found a young boy crammed inside the white plastoid frame. The boy was wearing the earthy colored garbs of the Jedi. He looked terrified, but he acted immediately. He reached into the Force, channeled its mystic energy through his arm and into his hand, and propelled Fox off his feet and into the wall with the strength of a hurricane wind. He then reached for his light saber and ignited it. There was a snap and a hiss, and a blue blade of light burst from the metal hilt. The clones surrounded him, aiming their rifles. Fox was winded. He grabbed his TX-13 pistols and pointed them at the boy. He forced himself onto his feet and managed to speak with a labored breath. "Don't do anything stupid, Jedi."

Fox recognized the face from the Imperial holorecords. J-127. The boy was a human named Jak Morako. He was a Padawan, but he didn't have the Padawan's braid. All the Padawans had removed their braids after the burning of the Temple to better hide from the Empire. It hadn't helped J-127. Ten expert killers were ready to blast the boy to the event horizon if he so much as took a step.

"Jay One Two Seven," Fox said, "In the name of the Emperor, you are under arrest. Drop the light saber and put your arms where I can see them."

The Jedi stood tensely, staring into the black lenses masking Fox's eyes. The only sound in the room was the soft electric hum of his blue blade, and the side of his face caught the blue light. His shoulders lowered. He dropped his gaze from Fox and down at the floor. The light saber hissed, and the blue blade was gone. The boy dropped the hilt, and it clanged on the tiled ground. He raised his arms.

The clones tackled the boy and cuffed him. Fox bent over and picked up the light saber hilt. He looked at the Jedi and began the procedural Illum Warning. "You have the right to remain silent," he began. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in the Imperial court. You also have the right to an attorney. The attorney will be appointed to you by the Senate."

The clones escorted J-127 out of the hospital room. Fox spoke into his comlink and notified the Imperial Police. The hospital's elevators had been deactivated for years, so the Imperial Police arranged a dropship to pick them up.

"Punch a hole in that wall," Fox ordered.

Clones set up explosive charges on one of the walls. They activated the bombs and blew a hole through it. Coruscant's wind blasted inside the hall and howled, and the clones could see the skyscrapers and the air speeders and the dark and starless skies.

An imperial dropship gave a low droning as it flew in front of the gaping hole. A platform lifted from the dropship and lowered with a mechanical groan onto the hospital floor. The clones moved with the Jedi onto the platform and into the dropship. The platform raised, and the doors shut.

The night over Coruscant was still young. As the dropship soared high over the air traffic, Warden Fox felt the calming hum of the engines and listened to the dropship whir. And the wind whistled, and below the city roared.