"Do I see a half trillion? Half trillion bid by Number 29. Very good, Sir. Do I see three quarter trillion? Three quarter trill to Number 25. Do I have…" The Auctioneer glances up, falters, then trails into speechless disbelief. "I…"

In the Vorian box, Rey holds down the SUBMIT button. "Go on," she urges, staring daggers down at the auctioneer. "Say it."

Rosshel seizes her wrist, breaking her hold on the number pad. Her holographic bid blinks out. But she can tell from the slack expression on the Auctioneer's face that he'd seen it clearly.

"What in the Force are you doing?" Rosshel hisses.

"I have… an octillion…" the Auctioneer sounds as disoriented as if the weight of the number had struck him over the head.

Below, the bids in the mezzanine wink out. The audience falls into complete silence.

"An octillion," the Auctioneer repeats. "Going…"

Rey twists her wrist out of Rosshel's grasp. "I'm making a bid for my own hand."

"Going…"

"But you don't… you can't have that kind of money!" Rosshel protests. "No one, not even the Vorians -"

"Gone."

"Know that for a fact, do you?" Rey asks.

"Number 15, please make your way to the stage."

Rey stands, Rosshel's hand trailing after her like a half filled balloon.

"There's a reason my father always hid our exact worth. Our resources… my resources are beyond anything you can imagine, Rosshel. An alliance with you?" Rey scoffs. "You'd only weigh me down."

Rosshel stares at her in abject shock.

"Now, if you excuse me, I have to go claim my prize."

#

Rey is struck almost immediately by how different it is to be up on the stage instead of watching it from the audience. Up here the spotlights are intense, creating a barrier of heat and light — an impenetrable veil between her and all the eyes she feels but cannot see watching her. The collective gaze presses in close. She is keenly aware of the makeup caking her face and the thin layer of sweat seeping into the silk lining of her suit.

And then, there is Ben.

Ben, leaning heavily, breathing raggedly, watching her from behind his mask. His wounds are gruesome, his body wrong at the angles. But at least he is alive. For now, he is safe.

And when this is all over, Rey thinks, she will tear down everything that was ever touched by the people that did this to him.

Rey blinks at the sudden viciousness of her own thoughts. A savageness that had flashed briefly to the surface up from some darkness down below. It leaves her a touch shaken to know it had come from her own mind.

"Please feel free to uh… begin your duel." The Auctioneer says. Rey realizes that she and Ben have just been staring at each other for what must have been an awkwardly long moment.

Alright, she tells herself. You made this bed. Time to put a show on in it.

Rey lifts her chin and sets her shoulders. She slides her hands into her deep, silk pockets. She takes her own sweet time walking across the stage, elegantly skirting the blood and debris as if she were sidestepping litter. Because nothing would ruin the aura more efficiently than slipping in her stupid kitten heels.

When she reaches Ben, she stops right before him. She lifts a single finger and places it in the center of his chest. Then she shoves gently.

Ben collapses onto the floor.

It takes a moment for the audience to recover. Then it's fury erupts all at once.

"That isn't allowed!"

"He just lost on purpose!"

Rey turns to glower into the shadowy sea of greed and malice. The spotlights prevent her from seeing their faces, but even a blind person could feel the outrage emanating from the seats below.

"Shall we run the bid again?" Rey cocks her head in challenge. "I'll only win again. I'm ten times wealthier than anyone in this room. And he," she points to Ben's collapsed form, "will never harm me."

The audience grumbles angrily.

"Let's ask the Auction Master then," Rey turns to look up to the Vorian box. A spotlight hits her square in the face. She can't make out Rosshel in any detail, but she catches the silhouette of an elegant suit standing at the balcony, gripping the ledge as she had only moments before. Rosshel is caught, she knows, between his greed for Virya's fortune and his desire to see Ben beaten down.

Rey waits for his response, hoping she's right about which vice is his strongest. What will it be, Rosshel? Going to walk away from an octillion?

"Even she doesn't have that kind of money!" some straggler protests.

Rey arches a brow in the shout's general direction. "Don't I?"

#

"I have no idea if she has that kind of money," Rey whispers into Ben's ear. She is helping him off the stage, having been named the victor of her own hand by Rosshel himself.

Ben grunts. His arm is slung over her shoulders. He moves with a heavy limp that Rey hopes is a show for the audience and not the real thing.

"I just figured…" Rey continues a touch defensively, "well, you said no one really knows how much they actually have. So I figured no one could challenge it."

Ben gives another little groan. She can't tell if the pain is from his injuries or the astoundingly stupid words leaving her mouth.

"And then I sort of just threw out a number I thought no one could ever match. But I probably… I guess could have started a little lower?"

"Lower," Ben wheezes, "would have been good."

"Anyway, I think we should leave now. Before anything else goes wrong. Can you make it back to the docks?"

Ben nods somewhat unconvincingly, his mask ruffling Rey's birdcage veil.

When they reach the mezzanine, the medics are notably absent. Rey suspects Rosshel has banned them from helping, though they'd rushed in with gurneys and bandages for all the others. Instead, they are met in the mezzanine by a pair of yellow eyes and an ingratiating smile that Rey has come to hate.

"Miss Vorian," The Twi'lek servant greets them in the aisle, heedless of the rows of guests staring at them from either side. "Master Rosshel has bid me to escort you back to your box, where he awaits you."

The only thing keeping Rey from clobbering the servant is her suspicion that Ben can't stand on his own.

"That isn't necessary," she says. "I know the way."

The Twi'lek smiles again. Rey barely quells the urge to dump Ben to the ground and get to the clobbering anyway. "It's really no trouble. After all, the last thing we'd want is for you to get lost. In fact, my Master insists."

#

Rey's hope that Ben's limp had been an act is crushed when they reach the stairs up to the private boxes. She has to brace more of his larger weight than she'd expected. She starts to reach for the Force for aid, but hesitates when she thinks of how unpredictable it's been. She decides to make the trip up using her own strength alone. Besides, it would be more realistic for Virya to struggle.

Halfway up, Ben makes a small, stifled noise. That's about all the warning he gives before something unhinges in the column of his spine and he pitches suddenly backward. Rey has to grip the railing for dear life to keep them both from breaking their necks.

"Sorry," Ben pants against the pain, trying to steady himself for her.

"It's fine," Rey assures, barely managing to pivot their center of mass forward again. "We're fine." She squeezes gently at his ribs and wonders which of the two of them she's reassuring. I'll heal you as soon as it's safe, she thinks. Just hang on a little longer.

They take the rest of the stairs much more slowly.

#

The Twi'lek servant draws back the Vorian curtain and Rey's heart sinks. Rosshel and the legal droid are waiting for them, along with the small squadron Rey has been anticipating all night, this time in the flesh. Over a dozen armed men and women stand in a cramped perimeter, guarding every point of the terrace.

Rosshel, leaning casually against the railing, uncrosses his arms to clap as Rey and Ben stagger in. His applause is slow and sardonic. "Well, that was quite a show. I'd ask for an encore but," Rosshel gestures to his entourage, "I think instead we'll just move onto the next act. The one where I get this alleged money."

Rey takes in the armed guards, the Twi'lek, and the hard look in Rosshel's gray eyes. Ben tries to straighten but only manages to barely suppress a gasp of pain as his body shutters out. Every instinct in Rey tells her to turn and run, to find some opening and punch her way through. Violence would be so much easier. Simpler.

It would also ruin everything. Last resort, she thinks to herself. Only as a very last resort.

She tries on a smile that's a bit too thin. "Of course."

She squeezes Ben's hand and unloops his arm from the nape of her neck. Carefully, she lowers him down onto the sofa and whispers in his ear. "Stay."

The fact that he does only makes her worry more.

Nevertheless, she straightens her posture and her expression as she turns to face Rosshel. "I can transfer the money as soon as I get home."

"You can transfer the money here and now. The legal droid is equipped with everything you need to send an electronic wire."

The legal droid steps forward. A panels slides away at its chest, revealing a datapad. A wire transfer form sits ready on the screen. Rey is acutely aware of more than a dozen eyes watching her as she stares at a form she has never seen before.

"I've gone to the liberty of completing my side of the form," Rosshel supplies. "All you need to do is provide your account numbers and authorize the transfer with your signature and thumb print."

"Right," Rey says, realizing she doesn't know what Virya's signature looks like, let alone her bank account numbers. And, she thinks with sickening dread, her fingerprints are definitely not a match for Virya Vorian.

Rosshel is standing very close. As if he might grab her hand and put it to the signature line himself.

"Just give me a moment to review this," Rey says. "I need to make sure everything is correct."

"Take your time," Rosshel says. "None of us have anywhere else to be."

Rey scrolls to the top of the form, just a few short pages, and pretends to review it carefully. Meanwhile, her brain kicks into overdrive. Can she find some way to put this off? An error in the text? Even if she finds a typo, the droid would be able to amend it in a manner of minutes. And as soon as she puts her fingerprint on the sensor pad, their little play will screech to a halt.

Rey scans the document as she would an old wreck picked clean by a dozen scavengers before her. She searches for anything out of place, anything she can use to survive. When she finds it, it isn't at all where she'd been expecting. Her careful eye catches, not on a line of text, but a jagged scrape along the side of the droid's chest display.

Rey frowns. A scratch like that would never be made by a proper key. It almost looked like someone had forced their way in… If she hadn't been a gear head, she never would have seen it.

"What's this?" she asks the droid gently.

"What's what?" Rosshel asks.

"Did someone… tamper with you? Here?"

"I…" the droid looks down, puzzled. "I don't… recall."

Discrete data wipe, Rey thinks. As if someone's overridden its memory drives.

"May I?" She asks, touching the seam.

"May you what?" Rosshel snaps.

The droid hesitates, then unlocks its internal mechanism from the inside.

"What are you doing?" Rosshel snaps. "Enough of this! Stop procrastinating and get to the-"

The chest plate swings open. Rosshel stops dead in his speech. Every body on the terrace goes stock still as Rey reveals an ugly mangle of foreign wires beneath the droid's chest plate. In the center, a large chip sits wadded in putty. It blinks, a little red light in its center like an angry eye.

Beside her, Rosshel takes a half-step backward.

"Is that a…?"

"Bom-!" One of the guards shouts, but his warning is cut short as the Vorian box explodes.