Chapter

21

Their room was, unsurprisingly, empty when Jaina returned to it ten minutes later. She looked over everything once, looking for some sign that Zak had at least stopped by at some point through the day. He hadn't. That was becoming just a little more than frustrating, really.

So, instead, Jaina seated herself on the floor in the middle of the room, crossed her legs, closed her eyes, and allowed her mind to open and drift as she began her daily meditation.

She had gone a few days without meditating since they had arrived on Kamino, preferring instead the warm comfort of bed and the deadness of sleep. She rarely dreamed, when she slept, but when she did those dreams were often vibrant and alive, the images assaulting her senses as if she were awake and living the things she experienced.

So sitting as she was now, more or less comfortable—if a little chilled by the floor—the state of mind she needed to reach to be able to meditate come quick and easy. It also helped to have spoken to Talesa about all of the things that had weighed heavily on her mind.

Her awareness stretched out as far as she could push it. She could feel the turbulent surface of the ocean outside the city, far below, as it crashed against the supports that anchored the city to the highest points of sturdy rock outcroppings. She could feel all the marine life around Tipoca City darting around in the water. She could feel the aiwahs leaping from the surface and gliding through the air, almost as if they could fly, before they dived back down and snatched up an unsuspecting fish in their great mouths.

She could feel all of the life within the great city as well. All of the Kaminoans that were going about their business; some to labour, some to research, some to manage. The Kaminoan Prime Minister, Koa Ne, was in his chambers with her uncle, Luke Skywalker, as she expected. But there were two other presences—both human—other than her own.

Her eyes snapped open and her concentration broke for a moment. That made four humans in a city full of Kaminoans. There were only three in the Jedi party; Jaina, Zak, and her Uncle Luke. So where had the fourth human come from? Were they another client of their hosts?

But then why had they not come across them before? Even in a city this size, the amount of walking Jaina and Zak had done respectively made the chances of not coming across another human remote.

But then another thought crossed her mind.

Were the Kaminoans still cloning?

Why not? The New Republic hadn't expressly forbidden them from doing so. Clones as doubles or as body parts served well for those that could pay for the privilege. The Kaminoans would never have joined the Republic had such sanctions been placed on their business. And the Republic was nothing like the Empire had been; they wouldn't just take by force what they couldn't control through coercion.

Or would it? With the recent happenings within the Senate, how could Jaina possibly say with certainty that traitors hadn't managed to worm their way into the policy making procedures. Palpatine had done that very thing in the days of the Old Republic, after all.

Frowning for a moment, she eased the tension in her brow and shoulders, closed her eyes, and stretched out her awareness once more.

Uncle Luke's with the Prime Minister, she thought reassuringly when she confirmed as much. I'm here. She reached out to the closest of the other two presences. It felt familiar; tinged with darkness but not overly much. The person's thoughts were turbulent. When Jaina delved within them for but a second, she saw images of the Praxeum on Yavin 4, of Zak attacking her and her brothers with an expression of rage so pure it made her instinctively recoil.

It was Zak. And he was casually walking in her direction. So that meant, without having to confirm it, that the fourth human presence in the science labs on level seventeen was the other guest they had not been told about.

Not that she could exactly resent their hosts for not bringing that up. Privacy was key in their business, and Jaina could fully understand that.

She shook the thought from her mind and allowed herself to drift once more. With Zak so close, perhaps he would even sense her efforts and decide to join her. The mingling of their minds was something they both relished experiencing when they had the time.

Absently drifting as she was, she found herself reflecting on all of the events that had brought them to this place, at this time, for this reason.

Brakiss had first attacked the Praxeum eight years ago. After kidnapping her, her brother Jacen, and their friend Lowbacca, from Lando's GemDiver Station in orbit of Yavin, Brakiss had then set to the task of training them in his ways.

He had fed the three of them Imperial propaganda designed for people of their age to absorb, hoping that it would leave an impression. Lowbacca's translator droid, MT-D, had been reprogrammed to spew that same dross from his own vocaliser, which had prompted them into switching him off most all of the time.

Combat training under him had been brutal. She and Jacen had been forced to fight against one another, believing that the other was a hologram of Darth Vader, as had been projected over their bodies to help with the deception. It had been only their familiarity with each other that had rendered the trick futile. All it took were a few passes of the blade for Jaina to realise that who she was swinging at was Jacen, and not her grandfather. A holographic representation of her grandfather would have fought with his style, not Jacen's.

Brakiss had punished them severely for thwarting his plan, and then, strangely, awarded them in a fashion for having seen through the deception.

Months after their escape, Brakiss had made his presence known again. The Shadow Academy had appeared from hyperspace in orbit of Coruscant, bypassing security patrols completely. The battle had been brief, and then the Academy had disappeared again after several children around her age had been kidnapped from the lower levels of the planet, where they wouldn't likely be missed.

But all of those events had culminated in Brakiss's assault on the Praxeum itself with his Darkest Knight—Zekk—leading the charge. Zekk had been a friend of Jaina and her brother. That he was fighting for Brakiss had stung them both.

Jaina had eventually won him back around when she defeated him in a one-on-one duel during the invasion.

Inevitably, the Imperials had been knocked back and Brakiss had been thought destroyed along with the Shadow Academy when it exploded.

Only to resurface two years later.

Armed and alone, he stormed the Praxeum in a cloaked ship and slaughtered half a dozen of Jaina's friends with little warning and no mercy before fighting Skywalker once more. He lost, and Jaina's uncle had tracked him all the way to his hideout on Tatooine and confronted him again. They'd thought him dead, when Luke had returned and told them that he had ended up in a Sarclacc.

But Brakiss had proven his resilience once more, returning yet another two years later horribly scarred to take Jaina and Zak hostage. He had held them for five months on a station almost completely saturated with anti-Jedi countermeasures and trained them in armed and unarmed combat as well as some of the darker arts of the Force.

He had not nearly been lenient with either of them, but he had targeted Jaina with all of his punishments. They hadn't known at the time that Brakiss, a newly anointed Sith Lord, had been ordered by his master, who they now knew to be Alitha, to acquire Zak and turn him to the dark side.

In that, he had been partially successful. And that was why they were now on Kamino.

Because of everything Brakiss had done to Zak to bring out his darker side, his darker instincts.

Because Zak had fallen briefly to the dark side and turned all of his new anger and hatred for Brakiss on those surrounding him; his friends, his mentors, his sister.

Because most of his memories when he had returned to normal had been blocked by his subconscious.

Because he wanted them back at any cost.

And it didn't matter that she disagreed with the methods.

The sound of the room's door hissing as it slid open jolted her senses back to full, immediate awareness. She withdrew her thoughts slowly from the corners of the planet she could not see, from the outermost edges of the thoughts of everyone in the city.

The link, she noticed when she checked it again, still felt dulled. She sighed an opened her eyes to see Zak standing in the doorway, hands clasped behind him and wearing a set of black clothes she had never seen on him before.

It suited him, eerily. The shirt was buttoned only halfway up with the collar turned down and the sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. The pants were loose fitting, tied off with a drawstring in the front. He was barefoot and barehanded, and his hair was even more of a mess than it usually was.

He didn't smile.

"Good afternoon," she said with a smile as she pushed herself up from the floor and, unnecessarily, dusted off the back of her pants. "How was the treatment today?"

Zak took a step into the room and quickly looked around without moving his head an inch. "It was what it was. I did not really see anything new this time; only more of what I saw with the last treatment. I believe I am getting close to the crux of the issue that caused my mind to withdraw to protect itself from the memories it deemed most traumatic."

Hold on … Jaina thought. She frowned, barely enough to be noticed. "Did you see the other visitor? When I was meditating, I felt the presence of a fourth human, and they were in the lab where you've been—"

She didn't get to finish. A dangerous look flashed through Zak's eyes in that instant, and in the next, he had whipped out his hand, fingers splayed, toward her and summoned upon the Force.

Jaina wasn't prepared for it in the half a second it took for the invisible wall to slam into her and shove her back. It threw her with such Force that she hammered into the wall above the bed, the back of her head cracking against the hard, white durasteel.

"Zak?" she gasped. The pain brought tears to the corners of her eyes. Her back hurt. Her head hurt.

The hand he had stretched toward her turned over, with the splayed fingers now slightly crooked, their tips pointed to the ceiling. An invisible hand seemed to grip her by the throat and squeeze tightly. Soon, she found she was short of air, and unable to draw more oxygen in any great amounts. She took as shallow breaths as she could, which left her breathing rapidly through the crushing, but not deathly so, grip around her throat.

"You Jedi," Zak said as he fully entered the room and let the door close shut behind him, "are so naively trusting. It will be your downfall."

He approached her with slow, purposeful steps. Jaina struggled against the hold his mind had on her. She tried to erect barriers around her person, thinking that she could just push and push until they had forced the power used against her to release her.

Her attempts failed.

The link was still dulled, sleepy.

What was going on?

"Zak?" she breathed desperately. "What are you doing? Let go of me!" She gasped another breath when the force around her throat lessened slightly.

Zak's hand had dropped to his side now, but the Force at his command did not let up. It was still there, still as strong.

She could read his intentions in his eyes. She didn't need to go into his mind to confirm what he had planned, what he was going to do to her. And with his power having caught her before she could prepare any defences, she could do nothing until he decided to release her.

Perhaps, she thought frantically, distracted, he might let slip just enough for me to force my way out of his grip.

Zak chuckled as the thought ran through her mind. He was in there, reading, watching, and laughing. He knew what she was thinking, when she thought it and how she thought it. He knew what she wanted to do. He knew now that he couldn't let up for even half a second, lest she repay the favour he had bested her with in kind.

Again his hand came out, touching her below the knee and trailing slow fingertips up the inside of her left leg. All the while, his eyes never left hers, and all the while, he was smiling that same smile she had seen on him four years ago. It made her shudder.

"Anticipation is sweet," he whispered to her in that bone-chilling voice. "And I can tell you're greatly anticipating this."

She struggled again, not deigning to reply in words to what was so obviously the delusions of a madman.

What was happening?

What was Zak doing? And why like this? He knew she was his. He knew she would want no other. Why would he want it like this? What was happening to him?

Had the Sith personality reasserted itself?

Zak shook his head in response to that thought, and that's when true panic set in.

She screamed. She screamed like she had never before screamed. But it was for nothing. The force around her throat dulled the scream to a throaty gurgle of resistance. No one would hear that. She was going to die here.

"Zak!" she wailed around her attempts to scream.

Meanwhile, Zak's hand trailed higher.

It reached about her mid-thigh when she found the strength she needed. Her anger burst forth in an uncontrollable wave. Rage seeped into her thoughts. She knew she couldn't let herself give in to those emotions, but for now they had given her the strength she wanted to end this assault.

The Force burst forward with the anger. A wave of invisible energy so powerful that, even though Zak's defences had been up and strong, it rendered any defence useless slammed into him and hurled him across to the other side of the room.

His eyes were wide and his jaw hanging in shock of what she had accomplished.

She was readying a follow-through attack when he responded. He was faster than her, faster than he usually was, and that scared her. Her concentration faltered. It gave him an opening. He used it.

The invisible wall hit her again, reinforced with his own hatred and his own anger and his own pain. It pinned her to the wall above the bed by the neck, tight enough to hold but no longer to restrict breathing or screaming. It was as though he no longer cared if she screamed. A sadistic need had taken him over.

So in lieu of breaking free, which, she soon found, was futile, she screamed.

She screamed so shrilly that it hurt her own ears. She screamed so loudly that she was sure even her uncle would hear her, far away as he was.

And yet the doors to her room remained stubbornly closed; locked, even, she sensed. No one came rushing in to her defence.

She screamed again. Zak laughed, watching her with that sick look in his eyes as he came closer again.

There was a ripping sound. Her clothes fell away from her chest, exposing her. She moved to cover herself with her arms, only to have them pinned to the wall behind her. She screamed again as the cool air of the room touched her bare skin and brought gooseflesh.

"Stop this!" she snarled when he was within arm's reach. "Stop this right now, Zak, you kriffing bishwag!"

Right then, she hated him. Right then, none of her feelings for him mattered. It didn't matter that they had escaped Brakiss and death together. It didn't matter that he had come to her defence many times since then. It didn't matter that he existed at all. Right then, all she could think about was her own humiliation, and how it was Zak that was bringing it about.

She couldn't understand why. No matter how many times she tried to reason it, through the panic, there was nothing that came to mind to explain his behaviour. Even four years ago, when he had been a self-proclaimed Sith Lord, he had never attempted this. He had treated her tenderly and with kindness, or with violence. But he had never attempted to force himself on her.

She screamed again when he reached out and grasped her.

And then the door exploded and everything went white.