BEN

PRESENT DAY

"Thalia" cants her head, eyes alive with voracious curiosity. "So what? You're not going to finish the story?"

Hunched against the bitter, slicing winds as we trudge toward our ship, I don't answer her immediately. Midnight is encroaching swiftly, bringing with it the pure, naked cold that only the dead of night can, and I don't want to be caught in any of that. It's not nutil we've safely entered our ship (nestled along the outskirts of town, naturally) and sealed it off to the cruel world beyond that I respond—but not in the way she was expecting. Rather, I ask her a question.

"What does this Chameleon Talisman do, anyway?"

Shrugging out of her snow-dusted parka, Thalia shrugs. "Oh, it simply binds you with a spell: a concealing enchantment. You can still use the force, touch the force, blah, blah, blah—but no other force-users can tell you're force-sensitive. It's as if the spell is blurring that part of yourself, allowing you to keep your abilities while obscuring from other's view."

My hand strays to the talisman resting under my clothes, against my bare chest. "Does it alter my appearance in any way?"

"There are Chameleon Talismans with that capability, yes—but I didn't think you'd need to. You look totally different than you did the last time any Imperials caught sight of you." She scrutinizes me openly, as if I'm a product in need of appraisal. "Too much sun-bathing out in the Jundland, eh?"

Alarm rips through my mind, under my ribs. "You know what I used to look like?"

Another shrug. "Kryze showed me some holos of you from back in the day, then time-lapsed them a bit so I'd at least have some sort of clue what you'd actually look like." She settles onto a nearby chair, regarding me languidly with lazy, half-lidded eyes. "You two were friends or something, right? Like, good friends?"

As I busy myself with shedding my winter gear, I feel the past well up, its tides stroking the beach. I flashback to Mandalore, five years ago, as a slender, emerald-eyed woman streaks down from the blazing war-sky. As I turn to leave and she stays behind, the light of flares and concussive missiles dancing in her eyes, and then it's four years ago. Four years ago, when we crossed paths in that bar. When we decided that maybe, maybe, we had a chance. That she wasn't merely the shadow of a dead woman to me, that she was someone more. Someone special.

Then flashback to two years ago, when I'd realized that Bo-Katan Kryze really was just a fading echo of her sister.

The last time I saw her, I'd sworn I was gazing into the face of a ghost.

"Something like that," I finally say.

"Were you friends with Ventress, too?"

"Yes. No. Maybe—truth is, I don't know. I thought she had changed, but…well, escaping prison would fit her old M.O."

"Thalia" scowls. "What if the Empire was preparing to execute her or something? Wouldn't you say it'd be pretty reasonable for her to escape with…that…looming over head?"

"It would be," I agree, "but it still doesn't explain why the Empire's so keen on re-capturing her. Or why they've kept her alive all these years."

"She used to be an assassin, right? Well, maybe old Sids has decided she might useful to him in that way, that she can knock out a few of his enemies for him."

My head snaps up. "What did you say?"

"Thalia" blinks. "Um, I said she might be useful to him in—"

"No, no. Before that. When you said—you said 'Sids', didn't you? As in Sidious?"

She glances about, bemused. "Yeah, I guess."

"Thalia," I say quietly, oh-so softly, "that's not common knowledge."

She bites her lip. "Well, maybe Bo-Katan told me or something."

"I never told her that name."

"Okay, okay. Then it was that Togruta. That—what do you call her, again? Oh, yeah: Ahsoka. Commander Tano."

"I never told her, either."

I need to know, to know who she is. What she really is, beneath the lies and "Thalia" and the not-Nightsister veneer, but not right now. Because as this very moment, in the tiny fragment within the ever-spanning paths of time and space, agony rips through the force. Slices through my conscious in an ocean of pain and mounting fear.

And I recognize who's drowning in it.