Chapter 13

That night passed relatively uneventfully. Skywalker made the mistake of allowing me to remain present when Geesev tried to bring Tash around, and I used my newfound abilities to suppress her consciousness with no effort. None of them were aware of what I was doing, and they all naturally assumed that perhaps her injuries had been too great.

They'd given up after a second attempt, and I was free to leave under the false pretence of tracking down her attacker.

But now, days later, she was still in the infirmary. For the most part, I was pretty reassured about that. But there was a tiny, tiny flicker within me that raged, cried, whimpered at the thought that perhaps I'd damaged her too much. I ignored it without much effort. It was nothing to me now what became of her. She was but a hindrance to my ascension.

Three more were in the infirmary with her too, now. A couple of students I couldn't put a name to had had the misfortune of discovering me together during one of my fouler moods—I'd been unable to replicate a new ability I had stripped knowledge of from Darth Pravus's mind. I'd taken them both down with a storm of lightning that left them twitching and smoking on the stone floor, and fled the scene only moments before Jacen and Jaina Solo arrived. I then doubled back and came around behind them, under the façade of having detected the disturbance in the Force as well. We carried them to the infirmary at once, and then I left again to "track down the mystery Sith".

The next day, Rebekah Jordan had come across me. However, I was in a rather placid mood at the time … perhaps a little too placid, for she sensed darkness upon my mind and questioned me about it. I'd often considered the possibility of taking her as an apprentice, when I was ready. She possessed quite a skill with the Force and with the blade. Though, by no means an expert at either yet, she had learned those skills while living alone in the jungle for an unknown number of years. I had to give her points for that. The Force was strong with her, and it could be nurtured until she became the ultimate tool of my destruction.

But I couldn't for the life of me think of a way to persuade her. She had grown so attached to the imagined friendship she had with me—for I felt nothing of the sort. And she was starting to become accustomed to the teachings of that insufferable Skywalker and his ilk.

Nevertheless, she was still raw and mostly untainted. I offered her the chance to join me. I offered her the chance for greatness, for power unlike anything the Jedi could show her. And how was I repaid for my generosity? By refusal. She must have sensed that I wouldn't let her leave my side unturned; for she drew her lightsaber at once and told me that I was to follow her to Skywalker.

She was now in the infirmary, unconscious, with lightsaber burns and electrical scaring along her left flank and down her left leg. It had been such a waste of talent. She might not survive. The bacta tanks had "inexplicably" been drained after I'd attacked Tash. They were going to have to wait until more supplies could be sent down from Lando Calrissian's station in orbit of the gas giant. But that could take a while, since I'd also smashed the communications array.

I checked myself briefly in the mirrpanel above the sink in the fresher. My eyes were just starting to take on that sickly taint of yellow that came with such heavy abuse of the dark side. Colour was slowly being leeched from my features, aside from the dark shadows under my eyes. I drew my hood to obscure my features in shadow and left the fresher.

As I walked, I reflected. So far, I'd been able to get away with my path of terror and destruction at the Jedi facility because no one had noticed any signs of my drawing on the dark side. The colour leeching from my skin and the bags beneath my eyes could have been attributed to stress at trying to find the "unknown" Sith. Also, I had not actually been witnessed committing any of the crimes by anyone other than the victims, and they were all unconscious, and unable to testify against me.

But now, I was going to have to be extremely careful. I hadn't slept well in days. I kept having dreams about the attacks on the others, dreams where standing beside me was another … well; me. A good, honest, strong mirror image of myself without the physical changes that mocked my every move and act, who hissed at my deeds as though they were only damaging to me and not to those I was hurting.

I couldn't stand the intrusions—for that was the only thing they could be; intrusions of the conscience I no longer listened to. I had no need for such a monster anymore. I was having too much fun terrorising everyone around me and feigning effort to work out with the Solos who the real culprit was.

I knew, however, that eventually there would come a time when I would have to stop my fun. It was only a temporary distraction while I adjusted to the new strength I found I was imbued with, a strength that grew more and more each passing day. Already, I was far beyond that pathetic joke, Darth Pravus. I could have been on par with, even superior to, Skywalker. Another week or two, and I would be guaranteed to possess strength enough to butcher the older Jedi without fear that he may overpower me, because he would not.

And on top of that lack of sleep, people were bound to notice sooner or later that my eyes were no longer the soft brown they were used to seeing. It would soon become suspicious that I had my hood up so often, and that I avoided eye contact wherever possible. And I wasn't yet strong enough to pull off a grand glamour effect to make people see me as they I had been before Pravus had taken Jaina and me from the moon.

Just as I left the hangar on the ground floor of the Praxeum—having not paid much attention to my course until now—and stepped into the empty courtyard outside, a familiar presence in the Force glowed like a nearby beacon. I turned around and saw that it was in fact two people that approached me from the lift western lift bank—I had come from the eastern.

Jacen Solo had been a good friend of mine before my capture by Darth Pravus. Though we had only known each other for a month before then, I'd genuinely considered him the closest thing to a best friend I'd had since Alderaan. But I no longer had the luxury of friends. I only continued the foolish façade because that was what was expected of me until the truth was discovered. It was only a matter of time. There would eventually come a time when I would have to shed Jacen as I had shed Tash and Rebekah to continue down the path of the dark side. Jacen was just too … good to follow me.

And then there was his insufferable aunt, the traitor, Mara Skywalker. The wife of Luke Skywalker was actually more of a threat to me than Luke himself was. Where Luke had been raised as a farm boy on Tatooine, Mara had grown up in Imperial service. Where Luke had started his training under a war hero Jedi Knight of the Old Order, Mara had been trained in the ways of the dark side and served as one of the Emperor's Hands. Even when Luke Skywalker had pretended to capitulate to the cloned Emperor years ago, he had not learned nearly as much in the ways of the dark side as his wife had learned in nearly her entire life. And yet, even stripped of the Force, Mara Skywalker was still deadly. She had been a highly skilled assassin before becoming the Emperor's Hand.

She would be a tough nut to crack—physically. Mentally, she was perhaps only a little less Jedi than her husband. She would definitely press any advantage, honourable or not, to kill me if I tried to kill her first. But because of her past, I knew that she was more susceptible to emotional warfare. I could use her husband against her, by beating him senseless before her very eyes. It would bring out her anger, her rage. She would want to kill me and she would make mistakes.

Though she had more of a touch of the dark side in her than any other member of the Skywalker-Solo family, there was no way she would ever follow the path of the dark side again. Killing me would be justice in her eyes, would be a protective measure to keep me from hurting those she loved. She would be angry, but she wouldn't let that stay her hand. It was laughable that she would even follow me.

And yet, as both she and Jacen approached me, I noticed that neither of them was smiling in a way that would convey friendship, familiarity. They didn't look hostile either, though. Each of them had a hand resting on their belts, near their lightsabers.

I frowned. What could possibly have given me away?

"Hey, Zak," Jacen said evenly when they stopped a couple of meters away from me.

Stang! They were just out of reach of my own lightsaber. There was no doubt that this cool distancing and demeanour meant that they suspected something of me. Usually, they were casual to a fault in my presence. At any of those opportune times, I could have slain them both and not bat an eye; only the thought of premature discovery had kept me from doing it.

"Hey," I said stiffly.

"Sorry, Zak," Mara started, "but I'm going to have to ask you for your lightsaber. Do you have it on you?"

Of course I did. Surrounded by Jedi everywhere I turned, how could I go anywhere unarmed? Any one of them could have seen through my deceptions, much as Rebekah had, and attacked me without warning, much as she hadn't.

"Um …" I hesitated, trying to make it as convincing as I could. "Why?" I fumbled at my belt in a way I hoped looked to them like a clumsy attempt to grab my lightsaber.

"Rebekah woke up about a half hour ago," Jacen responded. Both of them stiffened visibly when I gripped my lightsaber and unhooked it from its place at my belt. I tossed it across the space to them casually, knowing that I could rip it out of their hands with the Force with as much effort as using it to cut down a tree.

Jacen caught the lightsaber and gripped it tightly in his left hand. "That's good news," I said with false cheer, but really my insides were roiling. "What did she have to say? Was she able to tell us who attacked her?"

Jacen nodded. "She told Uncle Luke that you attacked her," he said glumly. His fingers flexed around my lightsaber and I resisted the urge to send an invisible hammer-ball of the Force slamming into his wrist and rendering it useless. "She said that she sensed something dark in you, and when she confronted you with it, you tried to seduce her with promises of dark side powers."

I swore under my breath. Her memory wasn't as faulty as I'd hoped it would be when I'd gone scrambling through her mind during her unconsciousness. She had an uncanny ability for self repair and recovery, it seemed. It only fuelled my desire to teach her, to train her, to guide her.

I didn't think that either Mara or Jacen had heard my cursing, but I considered that they probably had. I looked up from the ground so quickly that my hood flicked back to reveal my features fully to them. It wasn't intentional, but it was something that could not just be undone.

Mara's lightsaber hissed to life the instant she registered the changes she had seen in me. Jacen's lightsaber was a little slower, but it still flicked to life. He seemed a little less comprehending than his aunt, gazing more at her expression of disgust and pity than on my face and its new appearance.

"He's the kriffing Sith!" Mara shouted, nodding in my direction once. She took a step back, and it struck me that perhaps there was some manner of intelligence in her after all.

"What—LOOK OUT!" Jacen screamed as I went spinning through the air at his aunt.

I reached them faster than they could see it coming, and I kicked out with my back leg to send Jacen flying into the wall away from me for a moment. Mara recoiled a step, and brought her lightsaber slashing around to take my head off at the shoulders. I ducked under the first swing, dodged left around the second that came up vertically. Something hard and cold and metallic slapped into my palm and I flicked my lightsaber to life without hesitating. I had the blade in place, ready to block Mara before she knew what she was planning.

When her lightsaber swung away from me, I jumped straight up and stabbed down at her, intent on driving the plasma blade straight down the grown of her skull. But Mara was faster, and she rolled to the side with her lightsaber outstretched to avoid injury.

Without missing a beat, I flicked the second blade of my lightsaber to life as I landed and slashed up behind me without looking to block the incoming strike from his weapon.