Hello! Welcome to my newest multi-chapter fic. This was the hardest fic I've written in absolutely ages, so I apologise if things are unclear, or not adequately explained, or nonsensical. I'm at that point where I can't tell anymore. Furthermore, the STEM in this fic is worse than it was in Executor Given. I apologise to any actual scientists out there.
That said, I would like to lay out some clear warnings:
- Mentions of suicidal ideation. It is not a major part of the fic, nor does it actually happen, but there are a few mentions of a time where it was considered. I want to warn for them in advance (every time there's a mention of a balcony, it is there.)
- Torture. The fic is centred around torture.
- Existential stuff about not trusting your own senses. This is also a central part of the plot.
- Extremely unethical scientific practices.
- Mentions of other torture/unjust punishments that one can expect from Palpatine.
It's a dark fic, so take care of yourself. But if you do decide to read, enjoy!
"Luke."
Luke's eyes flew open. His forehead was slick and clammy, his heart racing and throat hoarse, and he flinched at the sight of the ghastly mask leaning over him at first. Then he blinked, his eyes adjusting to the dim light of the cockpit... and registered the blaring of a hyperspace proximity alarm.
He made to sit up and slapped for the button to turn it off; the sound was a knife through his addled brain. But his father caught his arm before he could and turned it off himself, flicking the switches to initiate the reversion to realspace, then sat himself down in the co-pilot's chair next to Luke.
"You fell asleep," he observed.
Luke swallowed. "I did." His voice was a croak.
"You were on watch duty. I offered for you to rest while I stayed in the cockpit, but—"
"I'm fine. It was only a short doze."
"I heard you screaming."
Luke shook his head, more spasm than intentional movement. "I'm fine."
"You do not even know what I was going to ask."
"I do." Luke's hand clenched into a fist on the edge of the control panel. If Vader noticed the faint white flecks that scarred his knuckles, he didn't mention them. Luke wasn't wearing his gloves, for once. "You always ask the same question. And I'm fine. They weren't visions. I'm not watching anyone die repeatedly every time I close my eyes."
The sight of his balcony on Coruscant flashed to mind, the lights glittering below the Imperial Palace, the frigid wind gusting through his hair and deafening him. He said nothing. He kept his shields tight, so his father could see nothing.
Vader was struck silent for a moment, and Luke regretted that particular jab. His father cared about his health. He wanted him in the best shape possible, and he knew personally how harrowing constant visions of horrible events could be.
But Vader just said, "I had thought that the doctor prescribed you sleeping medication."
"It doesn't work," Luke said, then hastened to add on before he was sent back to Palpatine's doctors again, "when I fall asleep by accident. I can't take it before sleep if I don't know I'm about to sleep, can I?"
His father watched him for a moment. Luke stayed silent; to keep talking would be to incriminate himself.
Vader asked the key question anyway. "Then why were you tired enough to fall asleep unintentionally?"
Before Luke had to answer, they reverted to realspace. He immediately swung the pilot's chair around and took hold of the controls, ignoring his father's frustrated huff as he dropped into the co-pilot's seat and started initiating the landing sequence.
The moon of Arikan IX loomed in front of them, its surface steel grey and unevenly built up in an industrial patchwork, like a child's three-dimensional logic puzzle. He couldn't help but watch the layered, interconnected walkways and architecture as they swooped in. It was all one factory, he knew, but each wing felt unique, nonetheless. The Arikan system had been rich with resources, a long time ago, and each aspect of Arikan IX was built up with a different substance mined from the other moons orbiting the great planet. But it was drained, now, empty, and its only glory lay in its dead, barren structures and the factory that drove people mad.
"Military transport Cape Red, your signature has been scanned and accepted. Submit the authorisation code—"
"Submitted," Vader rumbled. The voice on the line went quiet at his voice.
"Code confirmed. Please follow the transmitted trajectory."
Luke kept them steady as they did. He glanced to his right, at the violet gas giant clouded in the shadows of moons, meteors, and dust, and shivered. From this angle, with Arikan's white sun glaring off the atmosphere, it seemed to spark, blue and electric.
"You can tell that's poisoned gas," he murmured.
"It is a mundane chemical, compared to the Force. We can achieve better effects without it. But the standard officer of the Imperial Security Bureau is not so talented."
"I know."
"Its effects are limited to humans. The Force—"
"I know this very well, Father." Luke glanced at him, and the planet Arikan thankfully slipped out of his line of sight. "Why did you join me for this mission? I was meant to come alone. You hate menial inspections like this."
"I find the fact that Director Horne reportedly has an intellectual interest in Force-sensitivity something to keep an eye on."
"Considering you delegated hunting Jedi to the Inquisitors for years, I think that's below your notice."
"Horne runs this place like his own personal fiefdom. His intensity and insistence that only people who share his vision should be allowed to work here is a concern to the larger Empire, especially if his work is significant to the workings of the ISB."
"That's still not a convincing reason for why you're here."
"Would you rather I was not?"
Luke didn't answer. Any answer, true or false, would complicate things. "It is extremely out of character for you. Palpatine commented on it."
"I have been away for months," Vader pointed out. He sounded almost weary. "Perhaps I wished to spend time with my son."
Perhaps.
They landed. It was warm on the moon, the heat from the molten core of the factory reverberating up through the metal architecture and leaving the air heavy and searing. He regretted his plain black Imperial uniform, but he had to look professional when running errands for the Emperor. In vain he drew on the Force to wrap around him, cool his bones in quiet stillness, but when he touched it, it just flashed like a live wire—bright, warm, familiar.
He swallowed.
The director of the factory, the fifth son of a disgraced thorilide magnate, was waiting in the doorway on the other side of the landing pad. He stepped forwards eagerly to greet them, despite anxious glances shot at Vader.
"Agent Skywalker," he said, nodding in respect. They'd met briefly when preparing this inspection.
"Director Horne," he replied. "I trust you know my father."
Horne, in fact, hadn't been able to look away from his father. "I do, sir. It is an honour to be in your presence, Lord Vader. I wasn't aware you would be joining us, but had I been—"
"You would be far more obsequious, I am sure."
Horne clearly didn't know how to respond to that. Luke cut in. "Where do you intend for me to begin my inspection?" He noted the way Horne's gaze slid back to Vader again at my inspection, and an idea struck him. He might be able to use his father's presence to his advantage after all.
"You requested in our previous discussion, sir, a more thorough account of the chemical we are producing and what it is capable of. I have taken the liberty of preparing a presentation to brief you on it from the very experts in the field, so you can conduct your inspection with an in-depth understanding."
"Your diligence does you credit, director."
Horne nodded. "Thank you, sir."
Vader cast Luke a look.
When Horne turned and gestured for them to follow him, Vader murmured, "You already know a great deal—"
"It is always useful to know more. You would know this was how it would be happening had you read my mission plan before hopping on my ship."
Vader broke his stride to pause for a moment, while Luke strode through the automatic door. "Are you upset I am interfering in your work?"
Luke hit the button to stop the door closing in Vader's face. "Come on."
It was warm outside, but it was warmer in here; sweat beaded his collar and greased the roots of his hair. His father's chilling presence was ironically a boon, but Luke made sure not to look like he was intentionally hiding in his shadow. He made sure not to look like the Force was repeatedly vibrating at the back of his mind, like metal scraping metal.
"Is something wrong?" his father insisted on asking.
"Nothing." He knew what the Force was telling him. He didn't need help figuring it out.
Horne led them through hodgepodge, cobbled corridors, rust-flecked in a thousand colours underfoot, worn smooth where transportation trolleys' antigrav units passed over them regularly. They were quickly brought to a board room, where a collection of scientists waited around a circular table. Rising rapidly, they nodded at Horne, nodded at Luke, then froze when they caught sight of Vader. It let Luke glide right past them, to the head of the table.
It let Luke draw out a tiny datachip and plug it into one of the slots around the rim.
"I'm told you have a report for me, officers," he said. "Shall we begin?"
Epistemolide hexal was what the ISB ran on. Injected as a serum into the human being interrogated, it inhibited higher cortical thinking, reportedly increasing compliance, decreasing the capacity for deception, and had certainly seen confessions skyrocket from the moment it was first introduced to standard ISB practice. In particular, the ability to resist suggestions or reject information given to the subject was significantly hindered by the drug, enabling the interrogator to further manipulate them into revealing their secrets through multiple methods, depending on the finesse of the agent. Many informed their subjects that they already had the information, or that some fundamental truth they clung to was false, while others were blunter. The merest suggestion that the subject's skin was on fire would be enough for them to believe it—and feel it.
Horne said proudly, "The human brain, is a fantastic thing, but it is far from perfect. It interprets the information it receives from the senses, but has to make generalisations and guesses most of the time. It can't perceive reality, exactly as it is—only the best approximation of it that it can manage."
The human brain. Luke didn't have to wonder why Horne, an Imperial scientist, had fixed on that species, but he did wonder what was lost by doing so.
Horne swept his hands to show the projected holograms, diagrams. "We've taken advantage of that. This drug confuses the brain into misinterpreting the input from the senses and drawing more on memory, in order to cause pain and blur the subject's understanding of what is happening. We are all trapped inside our own heads; epistemolide hexal, as we are developing it, makes this prison a much more unpleasant one."
"And you have research to support this?" Luke interjected.
Horne paused, and the scientist who had been narrating the information earlier chimed in, "Sir?"
He waved at the holographic statistics scrolling in mid-air. "Where are these statistics coming from?"
"We have done thorough research on this—Rebels captured in this sector are sent straight here, both for confinement and for questioning, and they make excellent test subjects."
"Rebels? In this sector? I was unaware there was anything of interest to them here."
"They are interested in this," Horne said darkly. "They should be thrilled they get such a first-hand experience of the phenomenon they are trying to gather information on."
Luke nodded. "I see. So you compare their verbosity before and after the administration of the drug?"
"Yes, sir. Their confessions are far more numerous once they've had a taste of it."
"And are those confessions honest?"
Horne glanced at his scientists when none of them answered, then back at Luke. "Agent Skywalker?"
"You tell me that the patients talk more when this is administered. But we don't need them to talk. We need them to tell us their secrets. Are you certain they are sharing secrets, and not simply lying? Are you certain they are even capable of producing a logical, coherent, truthful statement in that state?"
"We pass the information onto the ISB, Agent Skywalker," Horne said finally. "If there is a problem with it, you would know it better than us."
"I see. Where are these cells and Rebels of yours? I would like to inspect the facilities myself."
"I thought you were only here for the chemical production, sir."
He repeated, "I would like to inspect these facilities myself. Where are they? Will they be on the route for your planned inspection?"
"They are quite out of the way, sir, all the way down on levels one through eight and close to the moon's core. But," Horne glanced sideways at Vader, who had only sat and loomed this whole time, "we can amend the inspection, if you insist."
"I do. Now, tell me about the gaseous form of the drug you have been developing?"
The scientists grimaced at that.
They were making progress, the information came. It was better than before. But the components required could not remain a gas for long outside of temperatures no human could withstand, and their edited formulas were not quite as effective.
"The one we are experimenting currently seems more useful as a punitive or threatening measure," one scientist suggested. "It causes not only suggestibility in the subject, but also seems to blur their ability to define their memories. Experiences most formative for them come to the fore most strongly, and mingle closely with their experience of the interrogation. They have difficulty separating different spaces and times. It creates terrible pain, even without an agent suggesting that they are in pain. However…"
"We are working on it, sir," Horne said proudly.
Luke ignored him. "However?"
The scientist stared between them. "However, it is not always… effective. It relies on the subject forgetting that this is already memory, and the division between their own perception of reality versus the drug's. Some subjects are able to define this more easily. One of our current subjects cleared the effects from herself within an hour."
Luke tried very hard not to react to that in any way. It wasn't amusing. But he knew what was happening there. "Did she?"
"We cannot explain it, sir. We've run more tests, but she—and any subject she has communicated with—seems able to resist it. No amount of interrogation will have her reveal how she achieved it."
"You interrogated her with the drug you already knew did not work on her?" he observed. He was met with silence. "Is this all you have for me?"
Horne nodded. "We suspect she is Force-sensitive," he said. "I used to work with the Inquisitorius in analysing midichlorian levels in infants' blood—a wonderful, useful way of identifying assets to the Empire—so I am uniquely qualified to investigate this. If the Empire were to permit me to run some experiments on other Force-sensitives, I could discover how this is possible. How to eliminate this problem."
"You want to study the Force?" Luke raised an eyebrow. "You know that is forbidden, Director. Only certain allowances granted by the Empire are permitted to do so, and they are all loyal Inquisitors working within the Inquisitorius." He swallowed, his mouth dry, before he said the next part. "If you suspect there is an issue, you should turn it—and the subject—over to them."
"Sir, I am certain I am the best equipped to do this. I understand the issue as no one as does."
Luke cut his gaze to his father. "What do you think of this, Father?"
Vader jerked his head, clearly surprised at being addressed. He'd stepped back, thankfully, and let Luke do his job without interference. There was even a faint melancholy he could feel from him, though Luke could not pin it down.
But any invitation to let his irritation be known, he would take. "This is farcical. Pathetic."
And while the scientists and Horne gaped at Vader in terror, Luke checked his datachip—blinking blue with the indicator that it had finished downloading—and slipped it back into his pocket.
"I can't disagree." He stood up. Vader did not. Horne and the scientists had a panic trying to decide who they should stand or sit in unison with. "Shall we begin the tour, then?"
There was not much in the factory that he was shown that Luke hadn't already expected to see. He was an Imperial agent, not a scientist or industrial worker, so walking around the research laboratories and factory floors was largely a useless endeavour. Even with Horne explaining how everything worked, a lot of it went over his head, though he understood enough to get by.
He did not let this on to Horne, however.
"And I trust that your project here is up to Imperial standards?" he interjected, giving an arch look over the mezzanine to the factory floor. It seemed perfectly clean and organised, droids and their supervisors rushing back and forth to get things done, but he was hardly an expert on these things. He had been sent to sniff out any doubt of Horne's loyalties to the Empire, and Horne knew it. This was a farce.
When Horne's chrono chimed to indicate the break they had scheduled for lunch, they'd already been around most of the important areas of the factory—but not the cells Luke had demanded to see. He could probably still carry out the charade of wanting to see them to inspect what interests Horne held, in the drug and in the Force, but…
Lunch was an unnecessarily overstated affair; Luke doubted that Horne would usually treat his chief researchers and administrators to an open buffet like this. But he wasn't complaining. His father stood at the other end of the table and loomed over all of them, drawing a great many nervous glances.
As Luke had been hoping, a few people tried to break that terrified silence with small talk. "We are honoured by your presence, Lord Vader. I have always been a fan of your work, and a great envier of your talents. I am glad you show such a great interest in our attempts to allow a standard agent achieve a fraction of the effect you can."
Vader replied curtly, "All your technological advancements crumple in the face of the Force."
"Indeed!" one said. He was a small, stocky man with an Outer Rim accent, peering at Vader in abject excitement. "And I am fascinated by it."
"How so?" Luke asked. If he could get them talking long enough, he might be able to figure out what interests and ideas Horne was sowing among his staff.
The scientist turned towards him. "Sir?"
"How so? The Force is indeed fascinating, but I wasn't aware that there was an interest in it outside of our communities. Until now." He glanced at Horne. "Most people I have spoken to view it as an," he coughed politely, "esoteric religion."
Horne, who had been neatly cutting up his steak, stilled.
The scientist laughed. "I am aware of the reputation that it has garnered since the Jedi's betrayal. I remember when the news broke across the galaxy. But researching belief systems is a hobby of mine"—Luke sensed his father fuming at the word hobby and shot him a warning look—"and I would not reduce the Force to one sect. Lord Vader's skills and sect in particular, I admire greatly." He nodded at Vader with open awe and respect. "And I writings on the Force in my youth, from Nightsister to Whills"—and Jedi and Sith, went loudly unspoken—"and their varied takes on the Force were most useful to consider."
Silence dropped for a moment. That was tantamount to treason, to admit to researching a forbidden topic even before it was forbidden, but it technically wasn't treason. He had not done it since. Horne's interest in studying the Force now was more problematic, in fact; that was an honour reserved for Palpatine and his handpicked vassals alone.
Luke told his father, Keep talking to him.
Vader nodded. He may be the key to learning about Horne's interest.
Luke didn't acknowledge that but listened to his father engage the scientist in halting, reluctant conversation as he satisfied his curiosities about the Force. Horne nodded along with a smile, but Luke didn't miss how he reached to his wrist to tap out a few buttons and send a message. Perhaps he was trying to signal to his scientist not to offend Lord Darth Vader on such an important inspection. Or not to implicate them in treason.
That wasn't important. What was important was that with his vocoder, his father was incapable of being quiet, and his cold, large presence inevitable drew attention anyway, so before long the entire table was fixated on him.
When Luke quietly excused himself to the refresher, no one stopped him.
He went, then quickly ducked down some side corridors. The memory of the map of the facility Horne had shown him flared to mind and he moved in that direction, towards… what had he said. Levels one through eight, close to the moon's core.
There was a turbolift nearby. This was the central command wing of the station, so there should be access to all areas from here, but even so he checked—there. Levels one all the way to ninety were available.
But which level was the cell he was looking for? His fingers hovered, then he jabbed the button. Level two.
The lights shifted, and he descended.
When he stepped out, it was to a long, dark corridor. He wandered down it, glancing over his shoulder, eyeing the security holocams mounted along the walls. If he was caught before he reached his objective—and he likely would be—he could argue that he was just doing his job. Inspecting. He couldn't have Horne show him around all the nice stuff, not if he wanted to get results.
On his left were a series of illuminated transparisteel cells, airtight and—Luke noticed nervously—equipped with vents leaking suspicious-looking gases. He wondered how safe it was down here just as he turned a corner and spotted an abandoned trolley laden with vials, ingredients—and gas masks.
It took him a few attempts at fumbling with the catch to fix the mask to his face, but he did. Better safe than sorry. Then he leaned over some of the vials, peering at the labels of each one. They were denoted with their scientific names. Useful to the scientists, meaningless to him.
He stepped back and, still with the gas mask, walked towards the next row of cells. The ones closest to the turbolift were empty, but the farther in he got the more prisoners he encountered. They were hard to miss: their cells were lit up with a crystalline brilliance, with no dark spaces to hide in. All humans and all Rebels, judging by their bright orange flight suits or soldiers' garb. It was tattered, and in some places torn, but they were all clean. Some wore soft white clothes instead, which looked warm and preserved their modesty. It seemed that Horne's researchers didn't intend to humiliate the prisoners as well as torture them—at least, not intentionally. The lighting and constant surveillance would do the job for him.
He looked over them and tried not to grimace, tried to resist the urge to do something now. Dozens of times he'd had to walk through the belly of Imperial operations and see what they did to Rebels. Dozens of times he'd had to resist the urge to take more immediate action. What he needed to do here was fulfil his objective.
He fulfilled it when he turned the corner and spotted Leia, sitting cross-legged in her own cell and meditating.
"Leia?" he asked. With the gas mask on, he couldn't talk well. It came out garbled.
Her gaze snapped up. "You're early for another round, Horne." But when she reached out to sense him in the Force, she frowned. Reached out again.
He removed the mask so she could see his face. "I thought you would be the 'subject' Horne was talking about."
Leia snorted. "Intuition?" The humour fell flat with how pained her voice was, but it was a valiant attempt.
"Familiarity with what you're like."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"It was intended as such." He glanced around. "What's going on here? Are you—"
"Being tortured?" The sarcasm was biting. "Yes."
"Horne is frustrated that you don't seem to be."
"It's a drug. Trained Force-sensitives can clear drugs from their system… if they focus enough. You know all about that. Are you here to shut them down?"
Luke nodded and eyed the cell setup. The cameras were holo only, no sound—Horne had let that slip during the tour—so he felt comfortable enough to nod. "Palpatine asked me to investigate the director's interest in Force-sensitivity and check he's still loyal. Command asked me to investigate why you had vanished in this sector while investigating Project Moonshine and get you and your squad out if possible. I think shutting them down would be preferable, but more difficult."
"Never knew you to shy away from a challenge."
Luke narrowed his eyes. "Are you alright? Really? The drugs—"
"Take their toll. I'm doing better than the others, and I presume that's how you found me. Now, do you know what your plan to get me out is?"
"My father is distracting Horne on one of the upper levels. While he's there—"
"You got him in on it?" Leia looked horrified. "Does he know? That's a terrible risk."
"He doesn't know. But he's back from six months in the Outer Rim with barely a word to me and came on this mission without asking me or being ordered to because he wanted to spend time with me. So I get to tell him what to do here. I'll figure out how to explain this in an innocent way later. In the meantime, while he's doing his job, how do these doors open?" His voice dropped towards the end, low and rapid. He felt…
Leia felt it too. She glanced up, eyes wide, then back down to him. "The keypad there has a combination. I've been tracking it, and the first two characters are Thesh and Aurek, but I haven't had the chance to figure out the rest."
"How long is the combination?"
"Twelve characters."
Inconvenient. "I'll have to figure it out, then," he said. He typed in Thesh and Aurek, then let himself relax, reaching for the Force. There was a resonance in his chest as he moved his finger towards the next character—Yirt, Qerek, Osk—and no red light bleeped yet. He was doing well. "You still have access to the Force in there, right?"
"I do. But it's not much use if I don't know what combination to open the door, and I haven't dared betray that I'm Force-sensitive by trying to break it down."
"That would triple the bounty already on your head." The next two: Onith, Zerek. Five characters to go. "We just need to get out of here and then—"
A shock barrelled through his body. Blue sheets of light—lightning?—flickered in his peripheral vision.
Leia didn't shout Luke! She was smart enough not to. She just watched with narrow eyes, giving them both plausible deniability, as the stun bolt shuddered through Luke and shut down his muscles like a faulty droid. His finger dropped from the keypad, and he dropped to the floor, spasming.
"What…?" he rasped out. A cloud of green smoke was all he got in reply. One gulp of it set his nerves alight like molten wire and only then, on the edge of delirium, did his brain register what this was.
He flailed around desperately. Leia had dropped the act by now, staring in horror. The gas mask he'd discarded had rattled to the floor a few feet from him; he reached for it now, desperate, only for a black booted foot to pin his trembling hand to the floor.
The floor was so polished, immaculate, that his breath fogged it up. He could see his roiling eyes in it. He could see the white-coated reflection of the figure above him.
The figure—a scientist, wearing a gas mask of their own—leaned down and seized his arm. He tried to pull away, but a compression and a click later and there was something on his bicep, beeping.
It kept constricting, until he was sure it would bruise. Then, even more vicious, it turned hot and sharp as a blade in the midst of forging, and burrowed into soft flesh until he thought he would lose the limb. He screamed.
"Luke!" Leia was at the transparent cell door. "Luke, focus—get rid of it! Get—out of here, you need to get rid—out—find—" Her voice grew higher and less intelligible, until her words were screeches. He'd been to Kamino, once, to see where the once great clone army had been manufactured by the once great Kaminoans and now he could see it in front of him. The screeching of their mounts, the aiwhas soaring overhead as the rain hammered into his neck. It trickled down through his hair, the back of his neck, struck his palms like drums.
It was cold, then hot and sluggish. He opened his eyes again and they told him his hands were covered in blood.
Horne had said that the drug could cause victims to blur memories. He thought. It was like trying to catch flimsi in the wind. He had no memory of this, looking down to see blood dribble through the life and heart lines of his hand, though his hands had been drenched in blood too many times to count. Was this real? Was—
More constrictions around his shoulders and he shouted, yelled, kicked out. "Don't you dare leave me!"
They vanished. His father looked at him miserably, his hands dropping back to his sides, whatever heartfelt sentiment or wisdom he had intended to pass on lost to the Coruscanti night. He just said goodbye, Luke or was it farewell, Luke or had he said Luke at all, unable to say aloud which son he was abandoning to the mercy of the court, as he turned around and left Luke alone on that balcony, overlooking the dark, bright world.
And then the red guards kicked him from behind and he was left sprawling across the marble floor of the throne room. He waited to hear Palpatine's laughter, but there was none. Only…
He opened his eyes. There was a face swimming above him, pale as chalk dust, with dark hair and brows pulled together in a frown.
"Mother?" Her portrait always looked solemn, not concerned. That was the only image he had of her, and he had no others.
A sharp pain to his rib and he blinked. "Leia!"
"I didn't think you'd ever been pinched before. Didn't spend much time around other kids, did you?"
"What…" He glanced around. A white cell. A crystal-clear cell door, shedding blinding light onto its inhabitants.
Onto them.
Lightning crackled through his body and he buried his eyes in the palms of his hands, in his knees, to stop the pain cleaving his body in two.
"Breathe. Remember to breathe. Breathe and reach for the Force, clear the drugs from your system."
He'd been taught how to do that. His father had taught him. Large, metal hands guiding him in the motions that helped, so Luke put his own out palms-up to imitate, and focused…
When he lifted his head, the light assaulted him again and he cried out.
"Luke! Can you do it?"
"I—" He tried. He tried to breathe, to grasp for the Force. He was in a cell. He needed to get out. He remembered what had happened the last time he was in a cell, and it had been horrendous, he wouldn't go back there, couldn't believe he was back there. He couldn't feel the Force.
His heart jackrabbited. What happened last time? Who had helped him last time? He needed to get out. His father—there, twanging their bond like a child abusing a viol's string, banging on his skull until he heard. Help me. Help me. Help me.
No.
He looked at Leia again and remembered. Leia. Leia was here. Vader couldn't come. Don't come. Don't come. Don't come.
"I'll do it," someone said, and then there was a presence in his mind.
It was warm and soft. Everything in him stiffened, then relaxed—and then it touched the skin of his thoughts, seeped through the highways in his body, and he exploded.
When he opened his eyes again, the light was blinding, and there was a green and brown stain on the wall. Leia peeled herself off, grimacing, and stared at him.
"So that's not a viable option," she said. "Luke. You need to clear it yourself."
Her voice came from very far away.
"You're not wherever you think you are. You're here, on Arikan IX, in the cells below a monstrous factory. If you listen closely, you can hear the machines clanging. You're with me, in a cell with me, and the scientist who threw you in here has gone; I don't know why. I didn't have the chance to launch an attack while he was shoving you in here. Luke, feel this." She held his hands and squeezed them tightly. "You're here. I'm here. Come back."
She hugged him, and Luke had not been hugged in years—not since his father had spent more and more time away from him. But under the cacophony of his own racing mind, after that comfort was not enough.
"Agent Skywalker?" Horne asked. "Force-sensitive? You are sure?"
Bartholomew kept his voice low, even though the corridor was empty save for them and the distant squeak of trolley wheels. Lord Vader was still being distracted by Martin's incessant, borderline-treasonous babbling about the Force.
"I saw him throw the other prisoner back without touching her, Director." He still looked very shaken by the information that the supposed Rebel he had drugged and thrown into a cell for attempting a rescue was, in fact, the high-ranking Imperial officer come to inspect them. Horne couldn't fault him for that, even if he had been doing his job.
"He would certainly have been engaging in treasonous activity, trying to release her in the first place," Horne mused. "We may have unmasked a dangerous spy working at the very heart of the Empire."
"Or the prisoner is a double agent, and Skywalker was obliged to keep it—"
Horne waved Bartholomew's concerns away. "Princess Leia Organa, a double agent?"
"It is a possibility, sir, and I don't want you"—me—"to get in trouble—"
"Preposterous. We are doing our jobs, above and beyond. Leave Skywalker in there, if he is Force-sensitive. It may be exactly what we need. You put the vitals' monitor on him?"
"Yes, he won't be able to get it off."
"Perfect. We have all we need." There was a loud crash coming from the dining room and Horne cast a glance back there. It sounded like Lord Vader was kicking up a fuss about… something.
"But sir, Lord Vader—"
"Is loyal to the Empire. He wants to see the Empire grow mightier. I am certain once I explain the situation to him, this will be permissible. And if it is not, this is the best we have if we are not granted access to the Inquisitorius's ranks."
"Skywalker is his son."
"You believe that? Perhaps, with this newest reveal about Skywalker's abilities… but no. Look at Vader. He is not human. He likely took Skywalker in because of those abilities, perhaps seeking to resurrect his dead religion. But I doubt he will object to our methods. We need Skywalker as a subject, if your observations are true, and he will understand that."
There was another crash and bang—a stifled scream. Horne turned all the way around to investigate this time and was greeted with the massive sight of Lord Vader stalking towards him down the corridor. His tread was heavy enough to wear new shine into the floor, his cape billowing behind him. In the doorway, he could make out a glimpse of his scientists peering out, terrified.
Vader stopped in front of Horne and loomed over him. Horne lifted his gaze to meet his, resisting the urge to curl his lip.
"Where is my son?" Vader demanded. "Something has gone wrong."
How could he know that? How could he possibly know that? What evidence was there to support his claim?
Still, Horne was a scientist. He dealt in objective, observable truths, not lies. "Indeed it has, my lord. We have made a most unfortunate discovery."
"And what, Director Horne," he made his name sound like a threat, "is that?"
Horne let the bomb drop, utterly dispassionately.
"Your son is a Rebel spy, I am afraid."