Lieutenant Connix is shoving Finn away from the control room. "What— why— I'm sorry I'm late! I just saw the message for an officers' meeting at 1400 to view a new piece of intel. I was out on the training yards with the new recruits. We're a little understaffed now, without Lieutenant Arana—well. But I'm here now. Why aren't you letting me in?" Finn shoulders past her and barges into mission control despite her urgent protests.

Poe's speaking. For a moment Finn's head swims with a rush of hot relief. Poe. But then he sees the other officers' horrified expressions, recognizes the metallic buzz of a holocomm transmission. Finn frantically elbows his way to the front of the room.

"—that is why I am proud to have shot down Iolo Arana—" What? Finn's mouth drops open in disbelief. Frenzied shouting obscures the next sentence. "—destroyed twelve Resistance supply ships, exterminated nine Resistance outposts, and assassinated four New Republic Senators in exile. Thanks to my service to the noble and all-powerful First Order, the universe is now a safer place. I am proud to fly for the First Order. Stability, progress, and order will save our galaxy." The transmission cuts off.

The room erupts into chaos. Finn's stomach is clenching and reclenching, nauseated at the image of Poe's familiar form, wearing black TIE-fighter pilot armor, spewing First Order propaganda.

"Why would he transmit a message like that?"

"Why would he have turned?"

"There must be an explanation. He must be playing at something."

"Why didn't you know he was still alive?" Finn grits the words through his teeth.

"I don't have that kind of bond with him," Leia answers, grim. "Neither does Rey, nor Luke. None of us had any idea." She straightens, turns to face the head commtech. "Major Raiset. Report."

"General Organa, our techs have run all of the relevant tests on the projection. It is an original transmission, not cobbled together from any old holotransmissions they may have gotten their hands on. And it is indeed Commander Dameron, not a look-alike, droid, or any synthetic creation. He speaks with the same timbre, inflections, ellison, and syncope as comparison transmissions in our database. His microexpressions indicate full conscious— and not Force-controlled— awareness, as well as true belief in the statements he presents. His pupil dilation and lack of visible sweat contraindicate the use of drugs, although there may well be one we do not yet know about. In sum, it appears to be a genuine, willing transmission from the real Commander Dameron."

When the Major Raiset finishes, the room erupts again. This time the tone is not one of shock or disbelief, but of fury.

"We trusted him!"

"How could he betray us?"

"He killed Iolo?"

"We knew the First Order had an incredible new pilot, but we never dreamed—"

"How could you have known?" Leia's gravel voice cuts through the chaos. "How could any of us have known? There are thousands of good pilots in the galaxy. Any one of them could have become the First Order's best pilot, with a bit more training and practice. There was no way to know."

"But how could he have turned against us?" Major Ematt whispers.

"He didn't." Finn looks around the room in disbelief. "He wouldn't have! You can't possibly believe that he did."

"Anyone can turn, Finn. Anyone." The lines of Leia's face cut slightly deeper with each new betrayal.

"Permission to view the transmission again, General," Finn pleads, desperate. "There may be some detail that we missed."

"The commtechs have already run all of the tests, Finn." Leia presses her lips together, eyes hard.

"They don't know him like I do. Please, General. If there's any chance—" His throat is too tight to speak.

Leia sighs. "You have two hours." The room clears slowly, officers huddling together in small bunches to discuss the situation on their way out. Several cast Finn death glares. That's the ex-Stormtrooper who poisoned our son, their eyes say. Finn stares straight ahead, body fixed in parade rest.

He doesn't understand the transmission on the twenty-seventh viewing any more than he did the first time. When his time is up, Finn manages to stand, leave the room, and walk dazedly to the nearest fresher, where he throws up everything he's eaten in the last month. Kneeling on the cold fresher tiles, he leans his head on the toilet, numb. Poe. Oh, Poe. What have they done to you?

"He can't have turned." Finn's sitting back-to-back with Jessika atop her ship, now painted as Red One. "You know he wouldn't have turned. Not voluntarily. Shit, Pava, he—"

"—would shoot himself before turn against the Resistance, yes, Finn, I know." Jess pulls her legs up to her chest, drops her head onto her knees. "All of us know that, even the ones who believe it right now. Poe's the most loyal fighter we've got. But we can't— there's no way— look, we don't even know where he is. And it— it was a convincing transmission, Finn. He admitted to killing Iolo—" Her voice cracks.

"We have to get him back, Jess." Finn's voice has a durasteel spine these days. It is rare to see him smile, and unheard of to see a smile reach his eyes. "We have to get him back," he repeats.

"Yeah," Jess sighs, to Finn's surprise. "Yeah, we do. But it's going to be one hell of an uphill battle, convincing the General to let us go. And convincing anyone to come with us."

"I'm in." Snap's voice rumbles from below, two ships over where he's been working on the stabilizers on his ship, now painted Black One. "But I don't know how we'll find him."

"The transmission was sent from Iriny. Could be a good place to start."

Finn shakes his head. "No, Iriny is just a propaganda station. It transmits every First-Order-wide broadcast. But if I could take a look at the encryption notes, I might be able to figure it out. Each base has a particular code signature."

"We know," Snap brushes this off impatiently. "We track them. But they change too rapidly to be of any use."

"No, I mean not just a code, a—a style. A particular format. Motif? Language? I'm not sure how to explain it. The specific code changes, but the style remains the same. It's not an exact science, and I don't know all of the new bases, but I might be able to glean something, if they'll let me see the original pre-decryption code."

"Then why haven't you done that yet?" Jess slides to the edge of the cockpit, dislodging Finn. She jumps to the ground. "Come on, lunkheads. We've got a renegade pilot to catch."

The code signature is similar to that of three different bases. One is on a distant, uninhabited mining site— not likely. The second is a political center— possible, given that a primary purpose of the First Order's government is to spread propaganda to the rest of the galaxy. But the third potential base is the star destroyer Obsession, known for its extensive fleet of TIE-fighters.

Jackpot.

"I cannot allow you to go after him. We need all of you. This is a fool's errand. We're already down too many pilots."

Finn stands tall. In Poe's absence, both he and Jessika were promoted to Lieutenants, leading a squadron each. This gives him absolutely no license to disobey the General. He's not terribly concerned about that right now.

"General Organa." He looks her dead in the eye. "I have to go rescue him. He is my commander, my comrade, and my friend. To leave him in the hands of the First Order would be cruel and inhumane. Even if—" Finn gulps. "Even if he has actually turned, he deserves a fair trial and— and execution."

"And I, for one, do not intend to lose another pilot to him." Snap's lost three already, more than any of the other squadron leaders.

"Poe's saved my life more times than I can count. He saved all of us at Starkiller. We owe him." Jess stands tall.

"We owe Iolo." Karé's here for vengeance as much as for redemption, but they trust her to wait for justice at the hands of the Resistance's court.

"And if you think I'm letting the two of you fly off into a dangerous mission without me, you're more idiotic than I thought." Heads turn towards the door as Rey sweeps in, Luke behind her.

"Rey!" Jess leaps over a console to greet her with a flying hug. Rey accepts with a grin, then steps forward to face Leia. "Luke felt your sorrow. And I felt Jess' and Finn's. We came back as fast as we could."

Leia meets her brother's eyes. Her mouth quirks upwards suddenly. "Like old times, isn't it?"

Luke's smile takes years off of his weatherbeaten face. "He's lucky to have such friends."

Leia sighs. The lines around her eyes are tight with years of pent-up sadness. "I can't have four squadron leaders on the same dangerous mission. Snap, you're the most senior pilot among us now. I need your experience. I'm taking you off this mission. The rest of you—" She looks from face to face. "Bring him back," she says at last. "And come back yourselves. Even if— no matter what has happened with him. Be sure that you all, at least, return."

Finn, Jess, Karé, and Rey salute. "Yes, General."

Finn trains the rescue team on how to walk, stand, and act like a Stormtrooper until they are all stumbling with exhaustion. "It's the details, Jess, it's the details!" Finn snaps when she grouses about walking like a droid. "Rey can't go Force-ordering everyone not to remember us. The fewer people who have any idea something's wrong, the better. If you have to leave the ship, you'll need to act the part."

By the end of the day, he's still not satisfied, but they're at least passable enough not to raise many eyebrows. As long as no one looks too closely, they'll be ok. He hopes. And if not, there's always blasters. So they spend one more day training with blasters haphazardly modified to feel and act more like Stormtrooper blasters, until they're decent enough to make most of their targets. He can't stand the thought of leaving Poe in the First Order's clutches one more day—none of them can—so at 0600 the next day, the Millennium Falcon roars up and out of atmo, braced for action.

"May the Force be with you," Leia whispers as they leave.

Poe tries to find something, anything, that can wrap around his neck or slice his wrists or stab his heart. Nothing. They move him to a padded cell, lock him up in a full set of restraints so he can't even slam his body against the soft walls. He keeps waking up with deadly headaches, nauseous, unsure how much time has passed, wondering what he has done, unaware— The calluses grow rougher every day. He refuses to eat, but hey must force him to eat and drink when he is—gone, killing his own people, he must be, oh Force— because although he is far thinner now (they keep tightening the restraints so he can't slip out), he's still alive. Despite his best efforts.

Even sleep is no longer an escape. When he closes his eyes, he's behind the controls of a TIE-fighter, watching the terror in Finn's eyes as he blasts Finn's X-wing into oblivion. He's bombing the Resistance base. He's strafing his own squadron as they attack a First Order outpost, sending his friends plunging to the earth in one fireball after another.

He knows they're dreams, because they repeat from night to night, skipping across reason to present him all of his worst fears. Sometimes he shoots his mother down from the sky, burns up the long-gone Force-sensitive tree that used to grow beside his house, unleashes a proton torpedo on the long-gone Republic Senate, blast his own X-wing out of the sky over Starkiller.

I'm killing them. I'm killing all of them.

He wants very much to be dead. They will not allow him the mercy.

Finally Poe loses it. He starts talking to the guards again, just to convince himself that he has not yet gone insane. But maybe he has, he's pretty sure that he has, the guards aren't even looking at him, he's just talking to himself. He can't even stop himself now. He tells old stories from his childhood, tells Finn to move on without him, tells the General it was an honor to fly for her, tells his squadron he'll always fly with them, even when he's no longer here. Speeches and love notes give way to random babbling, anything and everything, describing his favorite Correlian brandy, coaching his childhood neighbor through climbing her first temple, trading jokes with BB-8 in the endless darkness of space.

And then he's screaming, thrashing in the restraints. They reward him with a gag. What's next? he shouts at them, muffled by the cold steel. You've got me restrained here hand and foot, gagged, why not a full metal suit, while you're at it? How about a lightsaber through my heart? How about a blaster to my brain? Please, please, please.

He is trapped in the belly of the sarlacc, but he's not the one who's dying.