"Teller? Where are you?"
"Thayla?"
"Teller?"
"Who is that?"
The Lost Purpose seems like such a strange place to be. Wasn't I somewhere else? Wasn't there something else I was doing?
"Teller! Help me!"
Oh, I remember now. I'm here for Millicent. Her voice is so familiar and so close.
"I'm coming, sis. I'm here."
Why does everything seem so fuzzy? I think I'm in a dream because everything has that strange haziness, like your eyes are refusing to focus. You know exactly where you are, but the details…
"Teller?"
"Right, I'm coming."
I feel so excited. I haven't seen Millicent in weeks, but I saw her an hour ago.
"Teller?"
Wait, how long has it been? She sent me to fix the autopilot, but I wanted to help dad with breaking the lock on that cargo we're smuggling to the southern half of Nal Hutta, to Zheevo the Hutt. Why am I running?
"Right, the autopilot. I'm supposed to be…"
"Teller!"
It's dangerous. Millicent is in trouble. Millicent is hurting. Millicent is in space. Millicent is dead.
"I'm coming!"
Everything started to come into focus. I knew who I was and where I had been. I knew I had been to Centrallis, but I didn't know why I was back on The Lost Purpose. It was scrapped weeks ago.
I sprinted down that hallway faster than I have ever sprinted before. I was convinced there was a chance I could save her, even though she was already dead.
"Hey!" I screamed, seeing a dark figure in the control room, holding a spanner in one hand and a torch in the other. "Get away from there!"
I could hear the alarms going off and see the countdown.
"Zheevo, you fool," called a voice in the deep and gutterral Hutt language. "I, Parzhibba, have outsmarted you yet again. Prepare to meet your end!"
The crate dad had popped open was still playing the recorded message, while the alarms blared and the explosives counted down further and further.
I could see them on the cameras, Dul, Valenen, dad and Millicent. They crawled around on the floor, the victims of some kind of stun bomb that hampered their movement long enough for the ten second timer to count down.
For one last time I screamed at the top of my lungs, but the dark figure standing at the controls didn't listen. With only two seconds left, the flashing button was pushed and all contents of the hangar were vented out into the cold void of space. Out went the bomb, the cargo, the repair drones, the engine tools, my soldering iron, my father, my sister, my brothers…
That figure just stood there, still as a corpse.
"How could you?" Thayla's bare metal staff was in my hands and seconds later it was at the stranger's throat.
But something happened. Everything came into focus for that last moment, when the dream became a crushing reality.
I saw the hands of the person who sent my family to die in space, just to save their own skin. They should have let that bomb go off and died alongside everyone else, but now their body, their clothes, their face was before me, unharmed…
… and that face was mine, albeit for a single detail, the addition of Jon Vyrone's cold and burning yellow eyes.
"Teller?" Jon asked, as the young smuggler stumbled out of the blackness and onto his knees.
"Where is the ship?"
"What? There is no ship. Where is Thayla?"
As if on queue she fell through the doorway, covered in the pungent stench of the dark side.
"What the hell was in there?" asked Ahor, as Jon rushed to her side. "Are we all going to stop having nightmares, finally? This thing creeps me out."
Thayla stood up, her strength returning and the dark side dispelling more and more with every passing second. "Yes. I hope the Rabble will consider the Jedi as their allies."
"I'll spread the word. I always knew those rumors had to be made up," he said, walking away.
"What was in there?" Jon asked as soon as he was gone. Thayla hadn't wanted to answer before and even now was timid. She placed a long metal rod in Jon's hands, eighteen inches in length, silver and cracked.
However, as he turned it over he saw the main switch, the empty power cell slot, the blade emitter… and his question was replaced by a new one.
"Whose lightsaber is this?"