"This is outrageous. Illegal."

Obi-Wan is inclined to agree with Master Plo Koon's assessment of the matter at hand. Sitting in the Jedi Council meeting, all he sees around him are faces that range from incredulous to frustrated to furious. In the center of the Council chamber plays a recording of the earlier announcement by Senate Vice Chair Mas Amedda, accompanied by an aide to his left and—to his right—Admiral Tarkin.

Formerly Admiral Tarkin, that is.

"The recent operations by the Confederacy of Independent Systems's droid armies, coupled with the setbacks suffered by our brave warfighters in the field, have convinced me of the need of a stronger, more centralized military command structure," Amedda announces before a flock of winking cameras. "In order to better coordinate the war effort and to bring the full might of our force and our justice against the Separatists and their barbarity, I am hereby commissioning the new rank of Grand Admiral of the Republic Navy, to be staffed by the decorated Admiral Wilhuff Tarkin, commander of the Fleet of Forward Suppression, hero of the Battle of Thyferra, and victor of over two dozen major engagements with the Separatist navy. Congratulations, Grand Admiral."

Obi-Wan frowns as he watches Tarkin accept the media's praise. Stiff. Stony. But undeniably in control. To think that so recently Obi-Wan was fighting alongside this man at that very battle over Thyferra, and now they are on opposite sides of the Vice Chair's political game. To better coordinate the war effort—Obi-Wan knows exactly who that barb is intended against.

To his left, one of the two new Jedi Masters added to replace recent vacancies shakes her head. Master Aayla Secura has not been a Jedi Master for long, but few Jedi have proven so valiant on the field of battle. On her other side, only a Council member for three days following the vote to replace Kit Fisto, sits a burly, towering Lasat Jedi Master who scowls as the recording of Amedda. Master Jaro Tapal—more at home on the battlefield than here in Council session, but with the war going the way it is, the Council needs commands more than it does diplomats. There will be no peace with the Sith, after all. No peace with Dooku. Especially not after what he told Obi-Wan on Mandalore.

Tapal waves his hand dismissively at the recording. "The Vice Chair would cut us off," he says. "Command the war directly through the military hierarchy, rather than consulting this Council. It's sacrificing lives and worlds for his political security."

"I agree," Mace Windu murmurs, pressing his thumb to his lower lip, his eyebrows furrowed, "but the timing is strange. Off-putting. Chancellor Palpatine has been missing for over two weeks without word of his whereabouts, and Amedda makes a decision of this magnitude? Shaking up the military hierarchy entirely? It smells wrong."

"Sense, it makes, if expecting the Chancellor to return, Amedda does not," Master Yoda chimes in. "Defense he seeks, from Jedi and Senate alike."

"But why would he do that unless he feels pressure? We've been struggling on the front lines for months. A move like this will only draw attention to Amedda right when he has enough of it given Palpatine's disappearance."

Obi-Wan closes his eyes and thinks. He sees Dooku once more sweeping out of the smoke emanating from the ruined palace on Mandalore, lightsaber in hand, a smug smile plastered across his face. Darth Sidious is dead at my hand. Now I am the Dark Lord of the Sith, Obi-Wan.

Yoda notices his discomfort. "Master Kenobi. Something to say, have you?"

That feeling, too—that blast of energy in the Force when he and Bo-Katan were under fire on the landing pad just when the Separatists arrived. Obi-Wan wants to doubt Dooku's words, think them just a bluff, but what does he feel? Trust your instincts, Obi-Wan. That spirit in the Hall of Knighthood—Qui-Gon perhaps it was, or perhaps not—told him that. "My instincts tell me this is all part of a larger plan," Obi-Wan says. "On Thyferra, Anakin found evidence of treachery based right in the Senate District here on Coruscant. Things are moving too fast—Amedda makes this power grab, the Chancellor goes absent, and I can't help but think of what I told you all in our last session, Masters. Of Count Dooku. Of his words to me on Mandalore."

"His claim that this so-called Darth Sidious is dead," Mace Windu says, leaning forward. "The Sith Lord behind this whole war."

"Yes, exactly."

"And involve the Chancellor, how does this?" Yoda asks.

Obi-Wan sighs. "I don't know. I don't have hard evidence, Master Yoda. No proof. But it's what my instincts say. I feel that the longer this war goes on, and the more ground the Separatists gain, the more the heart of the Republic fractures. That there could be double-agents next door to the Senate itself doesn't surprise me. If the Vice Chair really is making a play to reduce our influence and expand his own power—with Tarkin as his tool—then he poses a danger, not just to ourselves, but to the Senate. If Palpatine's absence continues, what is there to stop Amedda from making further moves?"

"The rest of the Senate, at the least," Plo Koon says. "The courts, as well."

"Yet he must know that as well. I don't know. Chancellor Palpatine has been—or was, depending on what has happened to him—in power long beyond the end of his term in office. Nothing about the Republic's leadership feels right, and Palpatine going missing only exacerbates that problem. If Amedda, with Tarkin's help, would weaken our ability to fight on the battlefront, then perhaps we need to start looking around at things here at home."

Yoda looks perturbed. "An investigation of the Senate District, are you proposing, Obi-Wan? Based on Skywalker's findings on Thyferra?"

"Perhaps," Obi-Wan said. "But before we get too deep into anything, I think we need to speak to the Senate. Not to Amedda, nor to Tarkin, but to the senators. There's still a few honest ones left. And with the beating the Jedi Order's taking in the media these days, we could use some allies."

Mace Windu nods. "See it done, then," he says. "It's not a formal investigation, and we can't assign anyone to officially dig into details—but if you have suspicions of corruption or treason, then do your due diligence, Obi-Wan."

"Yes, Master," he says. "I think I know a good place to start."

Her new legs don't want to work. Her hip shrieks in pain. But on the fourth day since she's woken up back in the Jedi Temple, Ahsoka gets to her feet.

"Don't rush yourself," the Jedi healer on duty, a grey-haired woman with the Service Corps, urges her. "Even though the bacta has healed most of your surgical wounds, it will take time for your mind and your body to accept the prosthetics."

"I'm fine," Ahsoka grunts. She grimaces as red-hot pain lances her hip and she stumbles, reaching out and grabbing a chairback for support.

The healer looks between her and Anakin, who waits near the door. "Perhaps going back to bed for the day. Standing is an accomplishment on its own," she says.

"No. No it's not," says Ahsoka. Sweat beads on her brow; her legs feel like foreign objects, like bags of sand on which she can just barely prop herself up. But she feels her master's gaze: Anakin says nothing, does not make a face, does not so much as bat an eyelash. He doesn't encourage her. Doesn't tell her that it's okay, as the healer has done a hundred times since she awoke. He looks on, with expectation. An expectation she will rise to meet. No—exceed. She will. Even if it kills her, like it feels as if it will do now.

"I booked the small dojo for an hour. It won't wait forever," Anakin says as Ahsoka rights herself.

The healer looks mortified. "The dojo? Is that a joke, Master Skywalker?"

"Nope."

"But—but she—Padawan Tano can barely keep herself upright, let alone do something as strenuous as train. Surely you can see that?"

"Why don't you ask her?" says Anakin. "Ahsoka? You want to stay here or come with me?"

"We're going. You promised we'd go."

Anakin shrugs to the bewildered healer. "See? Nothing you nor I can do about it. Now come on, Ahsoka. Let's get out of here. The smell's getting to me."

He hardly looks her way as they go, but Ahsoka notices that Anakin's taking the long way to the Jedi Temple dojos, down a series of hallways with conveniently-placed tables and wall mountings that she uses to stabilize herself on her shaky implants. She still hates to look down every time her legs threaten to give out. Her legs. Metal stalks sprouting out of her pinched-off skin, from her stomach down to her toes. It will be an adjustment, the healers crowed. It will take time for you to think of your prostheses as parts of your own body. How she wished they were lying. How right they were.

"Hold on," she pants as she stumbles, catching herself with her hand—her one good hand, the right hand, the one she still has that she was born with. "I just need a second."

Still Anakin says nothing. Then, finally, as Ahsoka struggles to right herself, he murmurs, "Patience."

"Quoting Master Kenobi now?"

"He's said it a few times," Anakin says with a smile.

"Like you listened to him."

"I definitely didn't. Not for a while. But lately I'm thinking that—maybe—he had a point," Anakin says. "An hour's a long time. Take your time. We're not in any rush."

That determination is still steeling his voice, but there is a softener too, a touch of cloth to wrap the metal blade of his will. It's odd, not like him, but in a strange way, refreshing. As if Anakin has let go of some vise grip holding back a locked-away part of his heart and is making peace, little by little, with whatever is spilling out.

It seems to take the full hour Anakin has claimed to have booked the dojo for, but at last they reach the humble training center. Blue-grey steel floor surrounding a square of stitched-reed matting at the center of the room. Lights dimmed and tinted to a pleasing, relaxing yellow. The air just warm enough to stave off a chill. Along the walls stand idle training lightsaber hilts, wooden poles and practice blades for training with weighted weapons, target drones at rest in their holsters, even ambulatory sentry droids in deactivated slumber in an alcove along the far wall, waiting for their next opponent to bring them to life. Everything a Jedi could need, every battle situation accounted for.

As Ahsoka rests on a bench, Anakin grabs a pair of practice lightsabers and draws their power down to the minimum. He tosses one to her, and she catches it with her right hand. Anakin shakes his head. "Your other one."

"Huh?"

He motions to her, and she releases the lightsaber as he draws it back to him with the Force. "Catch it with your left."

Ahsoka frowns and looks at her prosthetic hand. "I'll try."

"Good answer. Eyes up."

He tosses the lightsaber in a lazy arc. Ahsoka reaches out to grab it, but her left hand fails her and the hilt clatters along the ground. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Just catch. Again."

Once more he pulls the lightsaber hilt back and throws it. Once more she reaches out. This time she snags it with her palm, but her fingers fight her will. Once more the hilt clatters away. "One more time," says Anakin. "Then we'll stop."

"I'll get it."

"Don't tell me that. Show me. Catch."

For a third time he tosses the hilt. Ahsoka reaches out. And she cheats—she pulls the saber to her with the Force, just a tug, enough to drag it to the cradle she makes out of her left hand. It bounces off the metal palm, but she manages to clench her fingers the smidgen necessary to contain the rattling hilt until she has it.

Anakin chuckles. "I saw that," he said.

"Hey. You didn't say how to catch it."

"No. I suppose I didn't. All's fair," he says. "Now come on. Pick up that blade—whatever hand you want, now—and swing at me."

She activates her practice saber as she gets to her feet. He does not switch his weapon on. "Aren't you gonna defend yourself?" she says.

"Don't worry about that. Set your feet. Proper stance. Then attack. It's a practice saber. I'm not going to need a prosthetic head if you hit me," he says.

Always quick with a disarming joke. Some might find it distasteful, but for Ahsoka, it's just the right note. Humor just on the dark side, but still light enough and self-deprecating to make her smile. So she sets her feet—legs holding—as if on the attack, then steps forward to swing.

Then her legs give way.

She stumbles, finding her footing just in time to avoid crashing to the ground. Anakin only looks on. "Try again."

"I'll get it."

"Like I said—"

"I'll show you. I'll get it," she says through gritted teeth. He really is sounding more like Master Kenobi. Patience, he urged. Maybe he was saying it not to her, but to himself.

Again she rocks back on her feet to attack. Again she swings, shorter this time, a humble swipe. Again her legs fail, and this time she does not catch herself. She drops her lightsaber and falls, dropping painfully to her knees—for all the lack of control in her new legs, they certainly are capable of hurting. She winces, balling her fist. Damn it. Stop this. Get up. Work. Do something.

Anakin puts a hand on her shoulder and she shakes her head. "I'm all right."

"Hey. Look at me."

"I'm fine, Master. I just slipped."

"Ahsoka. Look at me."

She looks up, frustrated. "It's not going to happen in a day," Anakin says. "Don't give in to that anger. Focus. Find your strength, and don't concentrate on what you can't do. Find what you can do." When she huffs in exasperation rather than rising, he adds, "I'm here if you need something to lean on, but I'm not going to pull you up. Stand. Stand on your own two feet."

Little by little, slowly, surely, she stands. She grabs his arm, both hands holding on, and struggles upright, mechanical legs shrieking in pain all the way but obeying. Little by little she is making this new body hers. Bit by bit she is finding the strength Grievous stole from her. Then, when she attacks Anakin again at his behest, she does not slip. She does not fall. Instead she slices at his upper arm. He does not protect himself: Instead the training saber singes his sleeve and he leaps back with a yelp of surprise. "Damn. That's low power?"

Ahsoka breathes hard. Every muscle screams in protest, but she did it. She landed a strike. She can still fight. Even if it's only practice. "You set it."

"Yeah, but I blame whoever thinks this qualifies as 'low,'" he grumbles. "Oh well. Boring cloak anyway."

She smiles. It's just a cloak. Just a blackened mark on loose brown fabric. But it's a lightsaber in her hand, it's the Force at her command. It's her body still moving, still reacting as she trained, even if it's taking a little getting used to. A lot of getting used to, really. She's battered, scarred, defeated—but she hasn't lost. Not yet. And so she can bounce back, even if it's just little by little, even if it takes the whole war before she's right again.

Because she will be right again. Not now, maybe, but patience. Patience. Anakin believes in her. And she believes in herself.

Pinkish-orange sunlight sets a brilliant blaze across Padme's apartment. The drone of Coruscant traffic in late rush hour hums like a bee searching for a last bloom in the fading day. This old, familiar peace. Coruscant is no Naboo—far too much metal, far too little green—but she can close her eyes here, take a deep breath, and be happy. It is more than just what she fights for in the Senate, more than her ideals. Here in her home overlooking all this durasteel she is not alone, because there on the couch by the overlook sits Anakin. Her husband. Her lover. Everything that matters, everything that counts.

She smiles at him as he sets down a datapad. An honest, cheery smile, not that plastic wrap she wears for the Senate and the media. "Tea?" she says, setting down a cup.

"You know what I like," he says, taking the cup and sipping. "It's good. Something new?"

"A blend from Pantora. I'll let you in on a secret: It's instant."

He chuckles, but there's a dullness in his laugh, an exhaustion. Her smile dims. "Is everything all right?"

"It's nothing. Just thinking, Love."

"You can tell me. It's not like we're in a rush."

There. His smile once more. "Funny. I was saying something similiar to Ahsoka earlier today."

"Thinking about her?" Padme says, careful to approach the subject slowly.

"No, not that. She's…she's doing fine," he says. "Not all that fine, I guess, but she's still kicking. Still fighting."

Padme puts a hand on his shoulder. "That's all you can ask for," she says. "It still baffles me that the Jedi let you teach, but you're good at it, Anakin. And Ahsoka's strong. You'll help her bounce back."

"I better. Otherwise…" he lets the point drift off. "Ah, forget the Jedi. I see too much of the Order every day. Tell me about you. Tell me about what you're up to."

She smirks. "You hate talking politics."

"Yeah, but I like when you tell them to me. It's the 'you' part that matters."

She chuckles, a little too girlishly for senatorial approval. "Flatterer," she says. "I miss these awkward little compliments of yours when you're away."

"Good, 'cuz I can't make them any less awkward. They fit my awkward love life."

Now she laughs, a full-belly thing, and nearly spills her tea. "Why do you say these things?"

He grins. "Can't help myself. Just instinct. We're supposed to be trusting our instincts, you know."

That catches her. Instincts. Does she trust them? Her instincts tell her something ill is afoot in the Senate. That Senator Burtoni—for all her wretchedness—isn't wrong about Mas Amedda. That the thousand-plus voices of the Senate are slowly being pulled away by one opportunist seizing his chance. And her instincts tell her that if she doesn't do something about it soon, she won't ever get the chance to do anything. You have friends in the Jedi Order. Win them over.

"All right, I know that face," Anakin says, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She leans in to him, quiet. "What's the matter?"

"It's just Senate business."

"Care to share? Or is it that secret kind that only Bail Organa needs to know about?"

She rolls her eyes. "No, as a matter of fact, but Bail is trustworthy. You don't have to keep giving him the side-eye whenever we're around each other."

"Who says I do that?"

"I say, because I see it. But no, not this," she says. Her knowing smile fades and suddenly her heart feels heavy, weighty enough to sink through her into the couch. But she has Anakin there, Anakin's arm to hold her steady. It is enough. It always will be enough. "Something wrong's happening in the Senate."

"Okay, what kinda wrong are we talking about? Start swinging at people wrong?"

"No, Anakin, and please don't threaten anyone just yet. It's about the Chancellor. His absence is growing, longer and longer, and the longer it grows, the more Vice Chair Amedda is grabbing at whatever power he can."

A shadow touches Anakin's face. "Amedda."

"How well do you know him from all those chats you've had with Chancellor Palpatine?"

"Not all that well. I always took him for one of those weaselly politician types."

She snorts. "Huh."

"What?"

"Senator Burtoni also called him a weasel. Funny."

"The Kaminoan?"

"Yeah."

"The one you hate?"

"'Hate' is a strong word. Severely dislike, maybe, with an urge now and then to shoot her," says Padme. "But yes, that one. She doesn't trust Amedda's intentions any more than I do, and if Palpatine is gone for long enough, we're both worried that Amedda might try for a power grab."

Anakin scowls and looks away. "Is that what this business about Admiral Tarkin is?"

"Watching the news?"

"Nah. Obi-Wan came to me after his Council meeting. Apparently everyone's upset about Amedda naming Tarkin Grand Admiral. They think he's cutting off the Jedi's control," says Anakin. He shrugs. "I don't know. I trust Tarkin."

"Do you trust Amedda, though?" says Padme. "He's the one behind this. No matter if you trust Tarkin or not, what if he's just Amedda's tool to seize more control?"

"Maybe. I don't know. This is why I don't do this politics stuff. The Chancellor must trust Amedda. He keeps him around."

Padme tenses up. This was the subject she was uncertain about approaching. Anakin is closer to the Chancellor than anyone, even anyone in the Senate. It's obvious by the way Palpatine looks at him. There is no better source to get to the bottom of her questions, and yet Anakin has always been touchy about their relationship. Still, she has to try. For the good of the Republic and the Senate. "Anakin, do you know anything about where the Chancellor is?"

Anakin frowns at her. "He's been missing for a few weeks, right?"

"Two and a half weeks, yes. He didn't tell you anything about where he might've gone?"

"How should I know where he is? I was busy at Ziost," Anakin grumbles. "It's war, Padme. He probably had something to do. He's Chancellor. It's a busy job."

Padme lowers her eyes. "Of course."

"Hey, come on. Don't be like that."

"I'm not being like that. I'm just…just frustrated by how little we know," she says. "It feels like things are accelerating towards some bad end. I wish I could just get a handle on it before that happens."

Anakin drains his tea. "All right: What can I do to help?"

"No, it's fine. I don't want to drag you away from Ahsoka. You need to be there for her."

"I can be there for her and help you. The Council's not sending me out on any campaigns, apparently, so here I am. Come on. There has to be something."

She thinks back to her meeting in Bail Organa's office. "Obi-Wan said—"

"Oh, no. What'd I mess up?"

"Anakin, please. You wanted me to be serious. He said you found some incriminating evidence about a…conspiracy or something…in the Senate District. Oh—back from when you were at Thyferra. That was it."

Anakin presses his fists together and nods. "The Taths."

"Maybe there's a connection there and some larger plan at work. Are you looking into it?"

"I would've, had Ziost not happened. I'd like to."

Padme thinks. Where, where. Where can she send him that will help? "I don't speak to him much," she says, "but the director of the Senate Bureau for Intelligence might be able to help there."

Anakin frowns. "Armand Isard? Never met the guy. Heard the rumors."

"What rumors?"

"Isn't he an alcoholic?"

"Oh, I have no idea about that. But the Bureau's civilian, not military. They work with Republic naval intelligence, but they report directly to the Defense Appropriations Committee in the Senate," Padme says. "I wouldn't approach him myself. I imagine Director Isard speaks pretty regularly with Amedda. But you're a Jedi, not part of the Senate. If you went to him on the auspices of investigating your Thyferra business with the Taths…"

"I could use that to get some information on Amedda to help you out. I get it," Anakin murmurs. He shrugs. "Eh. Worth a try."

"So you'll do it?"

"I'll think about it," he says, looking at her. "I'm a little distracted to make up my mind right now, though."

She snorts. "Really?"

"Hey, all this talk about serious stuff, and the sun's setting…if I'm not careful, I'm gonna get sleepy."

"Not that sleepy, I hope," she says, brushing his chest with her fingertips.

"The night's young. Plenty of time," he says. He grabs her teacup. "How about we leave that dreary talk behind and I get you another one of these. This time with a little something plus the tea."

"Oh, I know where this is going to go," she says. "Not too much."

"I'm an expert at this sort of thing. Leave it to me."

She smiles as he heads to the kitchen. Yes, she can leave it to him. The serious stuff. The little things. Tea. Her whole world.

She drifts from cell to cell like she passes in and out of consciousness. A blind-beggar passage from one imprisonment to the next, bobbing atop a wave that bears her along on tides of hours and days numberless and nameless, this then that, one after another. Time has lost all meaning. Space fades from her understanding. Past, present future; the lines blur, the boundaries dissolve. Tamri is adrift, and even her thoughts come loose like split threads in the patchwork fabric of the cosmos. There are hands at work, weaving it all together, but she cannot see them, does not know them. The weaver is mute, and she hears only her faint heartbeat.

When Tamri finally regains full consciousness, she is in a cell of pure steel on all sides. She tries to move her hands and feet but finds the oddly unresponsive. She looks down: No shackles. No restraints. Just an intravenous tube meandering over her left shoulder and poking out from just under her collarbone. She moves to pull it out, but again her hand fails to respond. Her arm is still. She is awake and aware, her head and her tongue and eyes fully under control, but the rest of her body defies her will.

She feels a rising panic. Stop. Slow down. Focus. Listen to your instincts. What do they say? By the stars, it is hard not to panic. Is she paralyzed? Maybe—a medical paralysis? Drugs in the intravenous line keeping her from moving? Well forget this: She tries to bite the line, but a shock from above elicits a yelp and pulls her away. Above her hovers a spherical drone with an electric emitter aimed downward, clearly in place to keep her from doing something just like that. Damn.

Patience. She will have to wait this one out, see just where she's ended up. After all, it's no different than before. Once again she has no idea where she is. A ship, a planet, a space station: It's all the same when her world is a cell.

She does not know how much time passes. Long. Too long. There must be a food line running through the IV, enough to ensure that no one brings her anything. The lack of company—the lack of anything beyond these barren walls—tempts her to act out, to try and get to the shock drone to hit her again, just to feel something. Anything. Someone do something. Someone tell her she's still alive.

At last someone does come. The far door slides open and a slender Selkath enters, skin blue and moist, eyes dark and wet. The Selkath pushes a gurney up next to Tamri, kneels down beside her, and pushes her eyelids open. "Still home?" the Selkath asks with the gurgling voice common to the aquatic species. When Tamri pulls her head away the Selkath rises. "Good."

Tamri says nothing. She will not give her captor the satisfaction of an answer.

The Selkath decouples her IV line, lifts Tamri up with remarkable ease given her lithe frame, and straps her down to the gurney. Tamri can do nothing but look on; even with the intravenous line decoupled her body still does not react. Whatever was in that has knocked her out for a while. Then they are off, the Selkath pushing her down a gunmetal-gray hall with unnaturally white overhead lights. A hospital, or a science facility or some sort. All of it too clean, sterile, a sour-chemical stink in the air. Stay calm. Patience. Stay calm.

Oh, is it hard.

Sae, please. Please come get me. But Tamri knows she is beyond that help now. No one is coming to help her.

The Selkath takes her to a bright white room. Monitors beep and bloop. There is a churning, a rumbling of machinery, but with her head strapped to the gurney Tamri can only look with her eyes, and all she sees is too-clean metal. Now comes another voice, lighter than the Selkath's and with a nasally inflection: "Hook her up. Keep her awake this time and run the usual."

"Yes, Mistress," the Selkath says, looking away. So there is another. Who? Does it have to do with that Echani trio that stunned her?

Another intravenous line; another surge of drugs. Tamri can feel them in her veins, a heat, a stinging in her chest. She winces. Clamps her eyes shut. A needle jabs at the crook of her arm; quick pinch. The other voice snorts. "That's disappointing."

"Mistress?" says the Selkath.

"Go, Kesh. Leave me with the Jedi girl."

The Selkath—Kesh—looks lost. "But what about—"

"Go! Get out. Now. Go away."

A piece of paper swats at Kesh, and the Selkath hurries away without a word. Tamri's heart races. What is happening? What are they doing to her? Where is she?

Then, suddenly, she is alone no longer. A woman—young, pale, hair the color of snow and freakishly tall—looms over Tamri with a smile. It is not her height that is strangest, however, but her eyes: They are totally without color, no iris, no pupil, simply an empty white that seems endless, an inverse deep sea. Tamri knows it by her childhood teachings: An Arkanian. The mad scientists of the galaxy. "Oh, Mother's not going to like you," the Arkanian woman croons.

At last Tamri finds her voice. She licks her lips, swallows, and says in a cracked, dry voice, "Who're you?"

The woman laughs. "Yurica," she says. "Yurica Tath. Don't worry, you're in good hands."

"What are you doing to me?"

"We're just—" the Arkanian, Yurica, pats Tamri's cheek— "poking around in you. I never thought we'd get our hands on a Jedi before, but goodness me, look at you. Those pirates put you up for sale and here we are. It's your blood that's special, Tamri. But maybe not that special." She makes a face. "Jedi are supposed to have outrageous midi-chlorian counts. Yours are…a bit depressing to look at it. Better than any normal human's, sure, but for a Jedi? I've seen Jedi charts before. This? Yich."

Tamri focuses. Try it. Use the Force. You never know what'll happen. "Let me go."

Yurica Tath laughs. "Oh, funny, you," she says. "Your mind tricks. Funny. We engineered an immunity to that a thousand years ago, my people. Back on Arkania. Ugly place. Glad I left. Or glad Mother took me off it."

So much for getting out of here the easy way. She'll have to either wait it out or talk it out, and Tamri does not want to wait. "What're you using a Jedi's blood for?" she says, trying to keep the Arkanian talking. If Yurica Tath is the scientist type, maybe she'll talk about her work to the point of slipping up and saying something important. It's all Tamri has to work with. "What're you doing here? Where are we, anyway?"

"You're on Telos, silly. I know it's hard to tell in here. I didn't build this place; don't blame me."

"Can you at least tell me what you want with me?" Tamri presses. "Maybe we can work together. You don't have to…to do whatever you did to me."

"That's a paralysis drug. Cyclotetramycin. Don't worry, it's temporary. We just keep shooting it into you to keep you from doing something stupid, like when you were trying to eat your IV line back in your cell. As for what we need with you…" Yurica trails off, puts a finger to her lips, and grins. "Top secret. Sorry. But even with your less-than-great midi-cholorian count, I think we can make it work. Got to, really. Mother will be pissed otherwise."

"Who's your mother?"

Yurica laughs. "Oh, you'll meet her soon. She's coming for a quick check-up. Be here in a day or so."

Tamri tries to think as the Arkanian fumbles with machines. Telos. Telos is in Separatist space. "Are you with Count Dooku?"

Yurica snorts. "Blazes, no. Horrid little man."

"Little? He's a Sith."

"Yes, so high and mighty. Who cares."

Her eyes are unnerving. Tamri has no idea if the Arkanian is looking at her, looking away—just another unpleasant feature of this mad woman. "If you're not Separatist, who're you working for? Please. I can help. The Jedi Temple will—"

"Shh, now," says Yurica, pressing her hand over Tamri's mouth. "Gotta put you back under for this next part. Sit tight. Won't hurt a bit 'til you wake up."

"No," Tamri mumbles as she hears a machine whir to life. "Hold on. Just hold on."

"Sleep tight, Jedi."

Then she is whisked away again, back to that state between consciousness and the vast black, her mind swimming in the subconscious ether, not aware, not dead, suspended until someone, something, might break her free.