Chapter III

Now, fourteen years after Return of the Jedi…

Guri did not remember once being close to Dash Rendar. Guri did not remember once wishing to stop being the only Human Replica Droid programmed as an assassin. Guri did not remember once feeling grateful to Luke Skywalker. Guri did not remember betraying her master after his death.

In fact, Guri did not remember feeling much of anything. Ever.

Though she had had much of her memory erased so that she would no longer know the violence she had done, her hardwired, core-programming had remained—hidden, even from the experts she had gotten to purge her mind.

And some things were just so hardwired that you couldn't even think of getting rid of them.

Like reflexes. Reflexes and skills that had stood her in good stead many times before. And today. She tightened the pressure on the creature's spine and it screamed shrilly…

Or codes. Certain codes had been burned into her cortex so far that she was stuck with them forever. Unless she wanted to completely remove her neural cortex and replace it and be nothing more than the same body with a different brain, completely blank, those codes were permanent. And so were their orders. And when a code had been whispered to her, deep in the dank, dark levels of a small, scummy little planet, it had…started things. Begun a slow, undetectable looping through her neural circuitry. And when it was done…

Guri had belonged to Black Sun once more.

She was now more emotionless than she had been built, more cruel than ever. She did not even bother to pretend to have emotions out in public. Nor in private. Not unless her circumstances or mission dictated it. And right now, they didn't.

She didn't need to show emotions to break the creature she was interrogating now. In fact, appearing absolutely emotionless was better than any show of anger or rage could be in unnerving the creature in her grasp. Not many understood this, but it was true nonetheless.

Fett had understood.

He had understood very well. Human though he was, the bounty hunter had done a better job at distancing himself from whatever few emotions he felt, and of eradicating more emotion from whatever organ functioned as his heart, using nothing but the razor-sharp will he possessed than many droids did using technology and procedures devised specifically for that purpose.

Yes, Fett had known very well.

Fett…