Jezideg Kossar's place on Coruscant: Quadrant D-156. Level 409. A coffinly narrow corridor with a bathroom growth on its side and a tiny room, aka kitchen, in the end. Another building stands so close to the window that sun only gets in for about twenty minutes at midday - the rest is a reminder of Telos IV.

It costs only a thousand a month, though. Mr. Kossar can live in here for eight years, give or take - that is, if his life doesn't take an extravagant turn.

Why would it, however? Does Mr. Kossar have something stupid to buy - like a secure-line-calcuting computer?

Well, Mr. Kossar has something to buy. Matter of fact, he buys it before renting the flat. The market price is quite insane - but the market price is the last thing on Mr. Kossar's mind when he injects a half-ampule of something into his femoral vein on some sunless level.

That realization comes later - maybe when Mr. Kossar lies down to sleep and wonders how he managed to choose an apartment he could afford but wasted more than his monthly rent on two ampules of glitterstim. And although he knows he'd never have been able to make any informed decisions without the glitter, he begins to regret going for the fastest option. Not the quality stuff - not that Gzulla's supply was much better, but it didn't cost five fifty per ampule.

Next day: he gets over the space lag. Gets used to living with an open window. The air outside smells of repulsors working past their retirement age. It's good.

He stares into the viewscreen. Coruscant news broadcasts look different on Coruscant. Maybe it's the smell.

He leaves Mr. Kossar's place some hours after the daily dose of sun. There's a grocery store in the next building. An empty-eyed old lady tells him there's one two minutes down on the communal turbolift - but he prefers to walk. The passageway is made of transparisteel. Not much transparency anymore - thousands of flimsiplast and paper notes hang over the four hundred and nine levels of Coruscant, covering each other. The sun has passed Mr. Kossar's abode, but Krev can still see it - its echoes - far up the street, above the pledges to fix any computer, buy any item older than thirty years, teach anyone how to dance, play the ommni box, and pass any exam. It feels good.

Dozens of quick-serve dinner packs he's never heard of at the store. He buys two different kinds. Both taste the same as the ones he ate on Telos.

The day after, he sets out on a trip. Destination: none in particular. He tells himself it's to probe for better spice spots. He'll just visit some he remembers from way before.

He goes ninety-one floors up. Gets on an airbus. Calls Sorval.

"I was getting worried," Sorval says.

"Sure you were."

"How was the trip?"

"Could be worse."

"You only got there now? What's the delay?"

Krev considers lying. Nah - it's too nice being on Coruscant.

"The day before yesterday."

"So why didn't you call then?"

"I was a bit under the weather after the flight."

"Aaand... now?"

"Better."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. When are you coming here?"

"Oh, come on. I told you fifty times."

"Ah, get the fuck out of here. I can't remember how old I am with all these interplanetary trips."

"You made how many? Oh yeah, exactly one. That's enough to fuck up your perception of time, old man?"

"You mind cutting the crap? These calls are expensive."

"Aha, sure. Two weeks after the Fete Week."

"Right, but you'll need time to settle."

"That's the idea. You come to a new place, you need to settle down there. I don't know, it will maybe take me a week or two. Would be nice if you made some preparations before that, so I can just take it over from there."

"If I do anything tech related, you'll have to redo it later. Nah. I'd rather wait for your professional input."

Sorval lets out a long sigh. "Okay, gramps."

"Right. Any news from the old man?"

"Not that I know of. It's you who's best buddies with his son."

"I haven't seen Old Man Junior in a while."

"Plan to?"

Krev thinks about it. Not the easiest topic to mull over two days after the first dose of glitter in a month.

"I don't know yet," he says.

"We could use him, you know. At least to get intel on the old man himself."

"Maybe it's better not to. I mean, we got lucky it all ended how it ended."

"Man, I don't know about that. Not being able to go closer than ten kilometers to the factory doesn't scream lucky to me."

"What are you so worked up about? You think he has people waiting there for you?"

"I don't want to check out, you know. I mean, we don't know what his son told him about the whole situation. Honestly, I'm on the anxious seat over here."

"Don't worry too much. The son is a nice dude. Didn't give me the impression he loves the old man too much."

"It's very good to hear it from you, Mr. Coruscant. But until I leave Telos, I'll keep looking over my shoulder."

"Come on. Coruscant is less safe than Telos. What interests do you think he has on Telos? It's just where he brought some people together to work for him."

"I don't feel safe saying 'safe' over comlink."

"You're stressing out too much. Think about something good."

"Care to share your recipe of something good?"

There's slight hostility in Sorval's voice. Maybe Krev did choose the right poison, after all.

"Alright, alright," he tells Sorval. "Don't get so riled up. I need you fresh and ready to work."

He has to get off the bus at the turbolift to Equality Station and take another one going down Gisam Street. He doesn't. Tells himself he won't recognize the Togruta hashery they used to sell some good stuff in a set with balvi and sutara.

But in reality, Krev has another reason.

He wants to see where the bus will take him. Never been past Equality in that direction.

And so he goes past it now.

He doesn't know of any joints here. But it doesn't matter. Skyscrapers on both sides of the airlane look the same: unpretentious white facades typical of this part of the planet. It doesn't matter, either.

Krev thinks he feels like Brate must have felt on Denon. Right when he deserted. Like a new place is going to birth a new time. A new life. Like he's about to shed his old skin with all the problems stuck to it - and face new problems in his new skin, pink and soft and tender, and perhaps this time, it will not turn into an ugly, obscene carapace.

It's like life itself screams at him, screams with all its white facades and standard houses: this is new. You are new. Are you really the same Krev Devin who wasted ten years running from someone? Can that be real?

I'm still on the run, he thinks. That makes me closer to Brate.

The outfit won't find him. Not on Coruscant. Black Sun hold Coruscant, and Black Sun won't go out of their way to find someone for their come-with-a-knife-behind-your-back friends. Even assuming the Ixtlari can guess where Krev is.

Vygo Alnam, though. Vygo Alnam is another matter. He's gonna keep his grudge.

When did he devise his fucking plan? Must've been when Krev demanded a raise. Money's nothing to Alnam - Krev can't imagine his shares doing too well nowadays, but thirty thousand a month is pocket change to him anyway. No, it's the fact that Krev learned what his little crusade was really all about.

Be honest: he saw right through you. Knew you're a scrupulous cocksucker who wouldn't keep his mouth shut for money. Bad acting skills, Krev. Bad acting skills.

Krev hems. It's a miracle Vad is this man's son. Vad was trying to do the right thing even before they got shot at. Refused to give Krev to the boys. Wanted to make it a by-the-law arrest. Risked his fucking life to do so. And then he broke the law - because that was the right thing.

Krev watches more skyscrapers come and go. A gargantuan fresco on one depicts a Duros shaking hands with a Human - both clad in antique spacesuits. The bus flies past it before Krev can make out any more details - but he's fine with plainer buildings, too.

A lot has happened to get you here, Krev boy. A lot of wrong and a lot of right. And now it's up to you to stop fucking around and do the right thing. Which may be the rightest thing in history.

That's exactly what I'm doing, he tells himself.

Oh yeah? That's why you've been delaying any more inquiries into Alnam and Ulmis Systems like a climax? You've done jackshit since your ultimatum.

Well, maybe, he admits. But there's nothing I can do right now. Not until Sorval arrives.

You try and find that cheap glitter, brother. That's what really gotta help.

Krev rubs his thigh. He can't go into rehab - that's out of question. Maybe they won't check where Mr. Kossar comes from, but there are more problems with it. Not that it works that well. Remember 'the Fruit' Erdingail? How many times did he go in? Three? Four? Still died in a playground at forty-something.

Rehab centers here are different to the ones on Kessel. Attitudes, too. Yours should be, anyway. Everybody does spice on Kessel. People only get worried when you take more than usual. Come on - you gotta fucking do it. You can't be wasting the op's money on this shit.

As opposed to wasting it on going into rehab? No. He can't afford it. Can't afford the time. It will take more than a month - and they need to start working as soon as Sorval gets here. They've wasted enough time as is.

And besides - he's fine. No one who's not fine could've made an eleven-day trip on fucking Flu-Aways.

He shuts the voice in his head up. Enjoy the view, fucker.

The view doesn't change. Soon, every branching or intersecting street beckons Krev like glitterstim. They don't even look that different from the one he's in - but different enough from Telos IV. The one he's in is nice, too. He keeps going. Looking for a better option. Coruscant has millions of them to offer him - and Krev's willing to explore each and every one. If only one life was enough!

He finally gets off at a small park on top of an eight-shaped building. Gets off mostly to stop the voice from coming back - he can feel it shuffling on the threshold. Leaves before the sucker can knock.

Fete ornaments hang on the trees and bushes. It's ten days to the Fete Week, but they look dull as if it ended a good month ago and some jackass forgot to take them off.

The war's doing a number on Coruscant. It's parsecs away from the capital, but feels much closer than on Telos. Will it end if you make the ConCare shit and the Ulmis shit and the Alnam shit and the Dangor shit and all the other shit public? Like, really public? So that there's nowhere for the unbelievers to hide? It sounds like a pipedream. Wars don't end like that. Wars are always about interests. About big people wanting to be bigger.

But the war on Atnakis ended. Hadn't seemed like it would - not back in the trenches. But it did. Both Illustrious Leader and Supreme General Vahar Kazot and the Council for the Peaceful Transition came if not to their senses, then to an agreement, at least. There would come assassinations and pogroms - sure. His Immense Illustriousness would still flee the planet in his wife's dress and makeup, taking his golden statues with him - but not his wife. Half the Council would still be executed in the two following years. The Republic embassy would still be stormed and the heroic Ambassador Mummare's ashes would still be delivered to his family in a cornflake box. There would still come the Great Hunger - Krev saw its first signs when leaving Pattarra City, and its first corpses. But there was an end to that war. It ended, and Atnakis went back to peace - through many crucibles, but it did.

Okay. Let's say you turn Alnam's weapon against him. Let's say you get him. Let's say you get Palpatine. What next? Who is going to take care of the mess the Galaxy's in? Let's assume Dooku and his Seps just fuck off to mind their own business. Who's gonna take care of the Republic? Know any honest senators? Know how to protect them from opportunists and warmongers? From the people with interests?

I'm not a politician, Krev thinks. I don't know anything about it.

Yet you put your hands into it so deep only your feet can be seen. Think about it. Not your forte, I know, but give it a thought before you fuck everything up for everyone.

I know that war isn't good for anyone but the people with interests. Save for Dangors and Palpatines and Alnams. That's enough for me to try.

Oh, you are going to fuck it up for everyone, aren't you? So much that the war will be fondly remembered.

Quit overdramatizing. I don't know shit about politics - but other people do.

And just who would that be?

Sorval isn't too bad. Nobody I'd entrust the fate of the universe to - but that's in the perfect world. He'll have to do. He and his embassy woman. Not a bad team, huh? Can't fuck it up any more than it already is.

He knows it's all bantha - of course. But he also knows he won't be stopping - not after what he's been through. Not after Brate and not after ConCare. Not after Telos and not after Citadel.

Vad is the one you need. He is the one the Galaxy needs. He's well-educated - with a father like his? Come on. Probably better educated than most senators.

There's a problem with this, if you haven't noticed - and that's apart from the complete insanity of this supposed plan. Vad doesn't want anything to do with any of it. Can you blame him? The lad's probably fed up with his dad's banthashit.

And that's another problem: the lad can do some stupid, stupid things. Out of frustration, you know? You know.

He takes another bus going perpendicularly to the first one's route. Same buildings, same building style. Same thoughts keep rolling in Krev's head.

The lad is frustrated with Alnam alright. That's good. Dangerous, but good. Means he won't object when Alnam Senior goes down - that is, if he doesn't do anything stupid before that.

And Alnam Senior should go down simultaneous with the rest of the gang - so that they all become heavy artillery against each other. Everybody will be blaming everybody else. What Krev needs to make sure of is that there's nobody left standing when it ends.

And you'll be going down with them lot, won't you? No other way around it. Who knows more about Alnam than you? You got it. You'll be the anchor that pulls him down to the bottom.

Just a year ago, he was too afraid to live. Now, he's not scared of dying.

Having a purpose does terrible, beautiful things to you.

The more he looks at this idea from every angle, the better it looks. Look: Vad can be trusted to do the right thing. He won't switch sides when his dad comes under fire. He could've been a CEO at a branch of Alnam RoboTech that makes more than Citadel Station annually - but he works his ass off in the DS. He's got conviction. What is right is righter to him than his blood.

It lasts while the weather is fair, the voice comes back. But if anything - like you - threatens his father with jail time... Let alone if anything threatens his father's billions - to which Vad must still be the sole inheritor.

Not necessarily, Krev tells the voice in an upbeat tone that he's only capable of when the voice is nascent and weak. Given how their relations are, the old man could bequeath everything to some fund or university. Quiberon Sector Institute for Unethical Experimentation - how about that?

You can hide behind jokes as much as you want. Just admit that you have no idea what you're doing.

So what's your proposition? I just leave everything as it is? Fuck all the injustice and lies and shit? There's no fixing them, anyway?

Don't be an idiot. This is not a holofilm. A team of unlikely heroes won't defeat a corrupt government or two before the show gets cancelled. You need to find the right people to do the job - and then let them do it. It's not about a glorious end for you - let's face it, you'll most likely OD one way or another. Just find somebody to take it from there.

It makes sense - of course it does. Krev is not a boy to fall to delusions of heroism. He understands how it is.

But whom are you gonna entrust with this? The press? Don't be silly. It's run by the very people you want to take down - or by their friends, or by the friends of their friends. Even if it wasn't, people don't trust it. They didn't on Kessel and they didn't on Telos. From what he's seen on the Holonet forums, Krev is inclined to think that's true for the rest of the Galaxy as well.

They seem to have an unhealthy hard-on for their Chancellor, though. If they believe one lie the press is feeding them, it's that he is the chosen one who will lead them out of this mess. Maybe it's nostalgia for the better times - he's been in charge for what, two terms before any talks of secession? The notion that the Chancellor is complicit in all these schemes will be a hard sell for them. And he is complicit beyond any doubt - he'd need to be brain dead not to be when Ars Dangor is his aide, and Chancellor Palpatine is anything but.

Oh yes. Krev can see angry posts and holovids already. The Chancellor didn't know! It was all spies and traitors' work! It's impossible to convince people who believe in something this nonsensical otherwise.

Facts won't do shit. Can't plant no trees in solid duracrete - gotta blow it up first. Some rumors..? Something ridiculous enough to get through. Like, Palpatine-lobotomizes-clones-to-fuck-them ridiculous. Maybe they'll look into it out of their fucked up curiosity - and then you can give them a fact or two. No, he doesn't fuck clones - at least, there's no evidence of that. But he does lobotomize them with the help of his pals from BioTech and fucking Dragoon Merchandise - you can be sure of that.

Would be nice to connect him to Alnam, while we're at it - not leaving him any wiggle room. As in, force him to admit it live. Yeah, good luck with that. I'm sure you'll manage it just fine between looking for discount glitterstim and seeing generic Coruscant places.

The places keep being generic - same simplistic architecture all around. Krev gets off on a random stop. Takes a walk through a pedestrian tunnel.

It's mostly clean inside. No broken lamps. Almost no graffiti. Only one bum by a stairwell to one of the apartment buildings. Has an upside-down hat and a handwritten note at his feet: "Not gonna lie, it's just for booze."

Krev walks up one of the staircases and ends up in a lobby. No artificial light here - there's a large window looking into the garden enclosed by the well courtyard. The local cleaning droids do a good job. Maybe they're powered by Alnam RoboTech parts - who knows? The transparisteel is covered with faded out, almost invisible scratch marks - you have to touch it to know they are there. Krev knows it even without touching - has seen this eternally dying and reborn palimpsest million times before, on Kessel and Coruscant and Telos IV.

He looks at the garden. It must cost the locals a good credit to have this bit of greenery. If that comes with this high-rise project, it's pretty dope. Krev wouldn't mind living here.

There must be millions of such buildings on Coruscant. It feels positively surreal to actually be in one of them.

Krev can't brush aside the feeling he has no right to be here. Not in the lobby - if it ain't guarded, it ain't forbidden to go to. On Coruscant. Coruscant was the older Krev's. The pre-Atnakis and pre-Manaan Krev's. This Krev? He belongs to Telos IV. Where he should've stayed.

Yet he savors this feeling. It's like when he'd get in somewhere he was not supposed to get into as a kid - like the sorting facility his mother worked at. He went there once after the working hours and got lost for two days. The frisk they gave him when they found him was harsher than the ones he'd see from many cops in the later years. The beating his mom gave him - ditto. Wasn't scared inside the facility, though - got some money on him to buy snacks from vending machines. Yeah, that money. Took it from someone younger and weaker than himself. A fucking shameful memory of what once was the norm for Krev Devin.

He steps on the windowsill and opens the vent pane. The garden air is stagnant - but it's better than the shitty fragrances some vast underground factories emit: fake sea, fake forest, and fake everything absent on Coruscant.

He wonders if Vad Alnam is already here. Never mentioned when he was going back. Maybe he's still on Telos.

But he won't stay there forever - sooner or later you'll have to find him and have the image in your head meet the real man. Not scared of disappointment?

It doesn't matter, really, because Krev will have to face Vad regardless. He needs a sane man in the operation - preferably running it, but at the very least, being there. Sorval looks up to Krev too much, no hired help - if he's even going to hire any - can be trusted, and Krev himself... the less said, the better.

He refused once. What's stopping him from refusing again?

What's stopping him from arresting you this time? If you annoy him too much?

Vad isn't the type of man to do that. That's the fact. He can refuse, though. He may not agree with his father, but working against him would be a different thing. No wonder why he's not interested.

Then you have to make him interested. Vad's got that little thing in his head that lets you know what's right and what's wrong and starts tumbling somewhere at the bottom of your skull if you mess it up. You have to convince him to listen to it. If you ever hope to convince the public, you'll have to start with Vad. With someone who already knows you're right - but has all kinds of reasons not to think about it.

So prepare. Get your facts straight - Vad's smart enough to recognize them and their importance. Get your points cohesive. Work for it - for once. Don't rush to whatever you perceive as the end - you won't be done with this shit. Whichever way it goes, you'll never be.

So take your time, Krev boy. You aren't dying - for now. Wait for Sorval. Get the op going. Find out more about Ulmis and Alnam's companions on that picture to pass the time.

It sounds good enough. Having a plan is always good.

Krev leaves the lobby - but he leaves the pane open.