Cal slept for twenty-three of his twenty-four free hours.
Sore from top to bottom, he stiffly rolled onto his side. It was silent in his cramped cell, and the temperature was above its usually near freezing state.
Groaning as he woke up, Cal knew better than to trust Trilla's promise. He also knew that the lack of torture was just that, and not the overwhelming mercy that he was tempted to believe it to be.
As he slowly came to, the first thing that Cal noticed was a small tray on the floor. Nearly touching the light-wall, he was expecting some sort of trap. Upon doing a double take and letting himself calm down, Cal realized that it was a bread roll sitting on a plate.
"That's definitely a trap," Cal told himself as he sat up.
Looking around the near featureless cell, Cal found nothing to distract from his predicament. The hall beyond his cell was as silent as a tomb. While it meant that he'd had the chance to sleep, it also left Cal with a crushing sense of loneliness.
"They're not coming back for you," a memory of Trilla's words tore at Cal through the silence.
"Yes, they are." Cal tried to reassure himself.
He tried not to think back to watching Cere topple over the edge of that ledge. He tried not to imagine what the Empire did with BD-1. The little droid might have been the first one the Mantis that Cal began to consider his friend.
But Cal's thoughts got the better of him, BD. What did they do to you, buddy?
Memories of the Haxion Brood's asteroid prison picked at the edge of Cal's thoughts. Finding BD locked in that scrap heap had been bad enough, Cal could only imagine what the Empire had done to him.
Maybe he's in hiding? Cal let himself hope, simply because to alternative was too much to bear, He could have run off, hidden in the maintenance tunnels. Yeah. That's it. Besides, if they had him, they would have torn him to pieces and shown them to me.
A chilling realization washed over Cal; seeing BD dismantled would definitely be enough to send him toppling over the edge and into a blinding rage.
Long ago lessons from his padawan past lingered at the back of Cal's mind. Jedi weren't supposed to form attachments, they too easily lead to the Dark Side.
Cal huffed. He had failed the Jedi Order in more ways than one.
Searching for an escape from his troubled thoughts, Cal looked over to the bread roll once again.
He hadn't eaten anything since he'd gotten here. A gnawing hunger had nearly driven him mad at first, but then Cal had gotten used to the sensation, it being one amongst a thousand that nearly broke him. Now he looked at the unassuming morsel with suspicion.
They drugged that. He first assumed.
"I've been getting drugged since I got here. They wouldn't waste time hiding it." He replied to himself.
As if joining the conversation, Cal's stomach groaned.
"You're right, stomach. There's no way it's been a month." Cal spoke to the empty room as he stood.
Not so fast, a stubbornly rational corner of his mind poked at him, maybe Trilla wasn't lying. They've been injecting me with who knows what, they could have thrown in a few vitamins to keep me alive.
Cal's stomach groaned again.
"Still feel like I'm starving." Cal admitted to himself.
Moving in spite of the confused and contradictory conversation he was having with himself, Cal suspiciously eyed the tray of bland food.
Finding no obvious traps or triggers, he picked up the little roll.
It was bland.
Impressively bland.
Bland to the point that he was sure it had to be specially made to be so bland.
But it was the first food he'd had in a month, and that made it delicious.
It only took seconds to scarf down the meager meal. As he did, he tried and failed not to worry about what would happen next.
The threat of the torture chamber loomed over him.
The Empire isn't going to break me. They'll have to kill me first.
Cal tried to be reassured, tried to hold onto a meager amount of comfort that came with declaration that he wouldn't succumb to the Dark Side.
But he was afraid. Deathly afraid in that small way that lingers at the back of the mind. He wouldn't cower in his cell, he refused to curl into a ball and whimper in fear like the slain Jedi that had been trapped here before him. But he did feel a creeping dread. A little thing that clung to his thoughts and whispered that he was going to die here. His only choice in the matter was whether death came for him physically or as an inquisitor's uniform.
The bitter reality of how limited his choices were picked at Cal. A remembered comment from Trilla made it worse.
"So long as you pick the answer that the empire wants you to make, you'll be rewarded."
Cal scoffed. It sounded harsh and angry, he wished it had come from a stranger, "Rewarded. Yeah, right."
Just a second after Cal began talking to himself again, he heard a set of bootsteps echoing from down the hall.
Cal stiffened, sore and strained shoulders groaning in protest. He couldn't let himself be dragged back to the interrogation chamber. He could barely stand as it was, and he was sure that any more time on the table would end with him dead.
Or worse.
Quashing down fear and desperately trying to find a calm that had been second nature for so long, Cal found nothing before a set of stormtroopers appeared on the other side of the red holoshielded wall.
Two stopped just beyond the wall, with two further behind them. On the far walkway, Cal could just make out four more troopers. Whatever they were doing here, they had come ready for Cal to resist.
He was tempted to give them the fight that they had come looking for, but seeing one of the rear guards holding the control to the shock collar around his neck made Cal think twice.
"Put your hands up, keep them where we can see them." The nearest trooper barked an order.
Where he had been afraid of what the Empire might do to him, Cal now had to bite down a sharp bit of rage. He'd never been so on edge before, but the weeks of physical pain punctuated only with moments exhaustion or fear were getting to him.
The dark blot in the Force that filled the fortress halls like a noxious gas didn't help either.
About to do something he knew he would regret, Cal stalled for time with a question, "Where are you taking me?"
A beat passed, the two lead troopers helmets tilting towards each other to exchange a nearly hidden look of confusion.
Cal didn't get to watch them turn back.
Snapping electricity tore through Cal's body, dropping him to the ground as a writhing mound. Twisting and unable to breath, Cal tried to bring his trembling hands to his neck to pull at the collar there. Seconds ticked by, made long by the electric agony.
The little bit of bravado that Cal had scrapped together in the face of the troopers evaporated in a flash, torn away long before the electricity was called off.
When the hissing machine stopped and Cal was able to breathe again, he found two of the troopers beside him. Reacting too slowly to fight back, Cal was only distantly aware that a set of cuffs had been fastened around his wrists.
Half standing, half carried between two troopers, Cal was shoved forward and dragged out of the cell.
.***.***.***.***.
The Stinger Mantis touched down on a baren landing pad, its suspension dipping under the weight of the ship before extending upward and bringing the ship to a stop.
"We're here, and we're still in one piece." Greez held onto some of his faked bravado, "You're welcome."
Cere set her headset down on the control panel, "Thank you, Captain."
Upon hearing a wounded edge to Cere's words, Greez added on, "Hey, don't mention it. Why don't I get started on dinner, eh? Do something to celebrate dodging another blockade?"
At once grateful and resentful of fact that she was being treated so gently, Cere replied with a level tone, "That sounds wonderful. Thank you, Greez."
Knowing full well what Cere's polite don't-talk-to-me voice sounded like, Greez hurried from the cockpit and back to the living quarters.
As the door shut behind him, Cere could just make out Greez's shouting come from the back room, "Hey, Merrin! Get the good spices down, the ones from the top shelf!"
Cere tried to let the familiarity be a comfort.
But she knew they were missing someone.
And she knew it was her fault.
Knowing better than to dwell on defeat, or to let grief consume her, Cere sat with a straight back and focused on her breathing. Meditating had long been an escape for her. Though, since leaving the Fortress, she'd once again cut herself off from the force.
For good this time. Her thoughts got in the way of true meditation.
She couldn't do this again. She couldn't lead another hopeful young Jedi astray.
Maybe it's a good thing that the holocron was destroyed. She realized, the lives on that list may be safer without me.
Cere stiffly brought in a breath, held it, and then struggled to let it out evenly.
A lot of people would have been better off. Cal… Trilla…
"I'm sorry." Cere spoke to the empty room.
The silence that came in reply was far kinder than her own thoughts, I should have helped them. I should have brought Trilla with me. I shouldn't have dragged Cal into this.
I should have done so many things.
Abandoning her attempt at meditation, Cere took a slow look around the cockpit. A dull gray planet stretched out beyond the viewport. Dust, black and thick with iron, drifted along the wind. The magnetic nature of the fog was enough to hide the Mantis' signature from imperial scanners, but Cere wasn't sure how long it would last.
Safety seemed like such a fleeting thing.
A glance to the data readouts in the cockpit told Cere that they had been on the run for weeks.
Weeks, and they hadn't found a way back to the Fortress. As much as they had tried, every lead they'd found ended in an ambush or some other failure.
They'd approached once, only to find that the Empire had discovered what happened last time. A TIE piloted by some white skinned and golden eyed inquisitor saw right through Merrin's illusions. They'd barely escaped with their lives.
Cere pulled her sight away from the calendar.
She'd been locked away for less time than this. Disturbed beyond what she was willing to admit, Cere fought to ignore the churning in her guts.
Weeks in the fortress. Cere had seen what happened to Trilla. She had nearly given in herself.
Hoping beyond hope that the Cal she knew was still out there, Cere tried to ignore a sharp memory of a small conversation.
After their last trip to Bogano, Cal had come to Cere speaking of a vision. Some terrible thing that had ended with him in an inquisitor's uniform.
The future is always changing, Cere tried to tell herself, always.
Dusting off her failed attempt to center herself, Cere stood from her seat.
The future was a terrible, unknowable thing. As tempting as it was, Cere couldn't let the failings of her past shape it. She had to go on, had to fight the Empire until her dying breath.
Doing anything less would be an insult to Trilla, to the person she was before the Empire corrupted her.
Doing anything less would be an insult to Cal, to the person that Cere had known.
.***.***.***.***.
Some days, Trilla was thankful that her helmet hid her features from view.
The static even did something to regulate her voice.
However, it didn't completely hide the dangerous edge that clung to her words.
"This task is beneath the Inquisitors."
"Perhaps, Second Sister, but your deployment has been authorized by the Grand Inquisitor, and by Grand Moff Tarkin." A hologram of a haughty admiral replied.
A heavy sigh that Trilla didn't try to repress came out as a static hiss through her voice regulator, "Very well then. I will do what has been ordered of me."
And absolutely nothing else. She added on for herself.
"So glad that we could reach an understanding." The admiral on the other end of the line heard her reluctance, but didn't fully understand how defiant the young inquisitor could be. "The ISD Vehement will reach Nur in one week. You'll receive a full mission brief once aboard."
"Naturally. Understand that I have other obligations besides your errands. Reserve a second room while I'm aboard."
Suddenly aware that he was being challenged, the admiral straightened, "You're in no position to be making demands, Second Sister."
"I too am under strict orders form the Grand Inquisitor; he's given me a charge to look after. Of course, since you're apparently so close to the him and the Grand Moff, I'm sure you could demand that I work on your project at the expense of theirs."
Trilla had left the admiral with no room to deny her request, and he knew it. Even worse was the fact that she had pointed out that he wasn't as influential as he claimed. Flustered, fearful, and desperately trying not to cede and more ground, he replied, "That won't be necessary. Do what you must, so long as you fulfil your orders."
Taking that to be as much of a victory as she could expect, Trilla simply nodded before cutting the holofeed.
She was sure the arrogant admiral would take offense to her sudden hang up, but she couldn't bring herself to care about his delicate sensibilities.
The Second Sister had plans for Cal. Unfortunately for him, this new mission meant she needed to speed them up.