OOO
Chapter Twenty.
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Something was wrong. Missing.
Aiden pinched his eyes, even though they were already closed tight. A hard chill dug into him from below, biting into his body like teeth. A strange hollow contorted and pulled within him.
A stranger voice slithered the air above him and grated into his skull. "Arise, slicer. Our moment has come."
He grimaced tighter and tried his best to curl in on himself, and cracked his eyes.
Darkness surrounded him, tinged with deep purple that came from nowhere. No, not nowhere. Screens on the far wall. But the darkness smothered whatever light they tried to cast, suffocating the shards of indigo into a drowning purple that seemed to weigh the air down more than illuminate it.
The few stubborn shards that managed to pierce through anyway reflected off metal bars looming around him on all sides, curving down from the ceiling and digging into the ground around him like talons. A cage?
A soft, feminine moan to his left.
Through the purple-tinged steel, surrounded by bars of her own, Barriss lie curled on the floor, diamond-inked hands pressed weakly into the charred fabric covering her abdomen. A blinking, metal collar dug into the flesh of her neck.
He sucked in a breath and planted shaky hands against the cold beneath him. "Barriss!" His throat scratched. 'Barriss, say something. Talk to me.' He tried to touch the bond, but all that awaited inside him was a pulling emptiness where her presence used to be. 'Barriss!'
The voice slithered once more above him. "It's a beautiful sight, isn't it?"
A hooded shadow, Palpatine, stood in the glow of the screens, hands folded in black sleeves as he watched the shifting images morph across the displays. Images of GAR troopers and CPF officers carrying containers—evidence containers—out of the stretching arches of the Jedi Temple.
Palpatine turned, and yellow irises locked on Aiden from within a shroud of black. "And it's all thanks to you, my young friend."
The cold seeped into his hands, up his arms, into his core. "I'm gonna kill you."
The orbs of lava squinted in the black, and a low chuckle scraped like nails.
Barriss shifted on the ground with a small grimace, and spoke in a faltering murmur. "Don't antagonize him, Aiden. It won't help us."
He looked to her, and the sour knot twisting his gut loosened somewhat. She was talking. That was good. He tried to touch their bond again. 'Barriss?'
Palpatine shuffled toward the cages until his shadow loomed over them. "On the contrary, my young padawan. I'd expect no less from one in Count Dooku's employ." He fixed his burning gaze on Aiden. "Isn't that right, young one?"
He grit his teeth.
Barriss coughed. "Save your breath, Sith. Your games are for nothing. I already know Dooku tried to force Aiden to help him. I was there when your apprentice took him from the Lounge."
The hollow inside Aiden remained silent. A ghost of the bond's memory.
The dark chuckle above grew into something worse, Palpatine's eyes never leaving Aiden's. "Marvelous. Simply marvelous. Shall I enlighten her, slicer? Or would you like to?"
The hollow sunk deep like frost.
Barriss pinched her brow, whether in pain or confusion, the hollow wouldn't tell him. "Aiden, what is he talking about?"
He swallowed. What could he say? "Barriss, I..." The void seemed to ring in his ears from within.
Palpatine reached into his robes, and produced a holo-projector. "Perhaps this will help you explain." A holographic fizzle of blue thrashed to life above the device. And there, hovering in miniature above Palpatine's palm, stood a frozen image of Aiden, Aurra, and Dooku speaking to each other inside a very familiar 500 Republica loft.
"A gift from your friend Bane. He can remain quite unseen when he so desires." A faint tilt of his mouth beneath the shroud accompanied his words, as if he had told a joke only he understood.
Barriss stared at the image, and slowly, her brow creased, lips parting.
Glassy violet locked onto him, and he swallowed. "He tracked me down, Barriss. He was gonna kill you if I said anything. I didn't want to help him." He pushed desperately against the hollow inside him. The bond was there. He knew it was. The silence didn't matter. He needed her to see him. He needed her to know he wasn't lying.
Her violet bore into him, strained and watery from pain, and the silence resonated within him.
'Come on, Barriss, hear me!'
Finally, she let her gaze drop to the durasteel beneath her head, and looked sightlessly at the purple locks spilling from her hood and pooling on the steel. "I can't believe what a fool I've been." Her whisper reached through the darkness and slapped him across the face.
"Barriss..."
Palpatine rattled another chuckle and slipped the device back in his robes. "It's not entirely his fault, young one. You've done your fair share to destroy the Jedi as well." He pulled a data pad—Dak's data pad—from a black fold, brushing his fingers across the screen in a lazy arc. "If not for your liberation of Mister Landon's data pad from the clutches of the police, events would not have aligned nearly so well for me."
On the screens behind him, videos from every news service on Coruscant played like a jumble of voices that swirled together into a numbing murmur:
"...The Jedi transport this Separatist agent, and conveniently lose him in a shuttle crash. Then, not even a week later, it's found that one of their own arranged his escape and stole critical evidence from the scene of a murder?"
"The Chancellor himself asked the Jedi to hand the search for Aiden Stari over to proper authorities, and they refused. Now we must question why. Were they hiding their culpability?"
"Have we forgotten that Count Dooku was once a Jedi? They could have been playing both sides of this war from the beginning."
Aiden heard none of it. The blood rushing in his ears wouldn't let him. The void haunting inside him wouldn't let him. The shimmering violet creased in pain wouldn't let him. "I'll make this right, Barriss, I swear." Whatever it took.
She kept her gaze on the floor.
"Indeed you will put things as they should be, slicer." Palpatine waved a hand, and a clunk resounded above their heads within the ceiling. The bars surrounding Barriss pulled upward, sliding up into the ceiling like claws retracting, leaving her looking oddly small on the floor at Palpatine's feet.
"Perhaps you believe you'll use this to expose me." Palpatine skimmed over Dak's pad still glowing in his hands, and in the weak light illuminating the shroud, his lip curled. "You are mistaken."
He darkened the screen and eased the device back into the folds of his robes, Aiden following it with his eyes until it disappeared into a hint of gold peaking out from behind the black fabric.
Palpatine's curl of the lip grew. "You must learn to be more subtle, slicer. It is the only way you will succeed in your final task."
Aiden dragged his gaze from the pocket Dak's pad now hid inside, and glared into eyes of yellow. "What are you talking about?"
Palpatine shuffled nearer to Barriss until the hem of his robes swept over the locks of purple spilling onto the floor, and he knelt, hooking an ashen finger under the edge of her hood and sliding it back, more strands falling across her forehead.
"She's dying," he spoke softly. "Slowly. But surely." He looked at Aiden. "Unless she heals herself."
Barriss pinched her brow hard and looked quickly to Aiden, and her lips parted as if to speak. But just as quickly as she opened them, they closed again, leaving her staring at him in silence and wide eyes.
Aiden's heart flipped over, but he forced himself to keep his glare on Palpatine. "I guess it's a good thing she's a Healer, then." She would be fine. She would be.
Barriss fidgeted oddly, and moved her eyes without turning her head, fixing her piercing violet on Palpatine above her.
He smiled. "Yes, I know, young Jedi. You'd like nothing more than to throw me across the room as you seem so fond of doing." He brushed his touch over the collar around her neck. "How unfortunate you find yourself removed from all that could help you."
Aiden's stomach soured, and he looked between Barriss, and the strange metal squeezing her throat. The missing bond...
Palpatine kept his thumb and forefinger pressed together in a constant, deliberate circle, and he fixed his burning yellow on Aiden. "I believe she'll find herself quite unable to do anything until you succeed, slicer."
There had to be a way to get her out of that thing. But he bit out, "Succeed in what?"
Tainted gold gleamed in the darkness, and Palpatine rose to his feet like a specter rising from the depths. He shuffled to the main console beneath the drowning purple of the displays, studying Barriss' curled form as he went. "The Jedi like to think of themselves as... separate from the rest of the galaxy."
He wrinkled his nose and continued pressing his thumb and forefinger together in a circle, and finally turned to the console where a communicator—Barriss' communicator—and a backpack lie waiting. "Their systems... their Archives are not connected to the holonet."
Aiden's eyes widened as he recognized his backpack, and his gaze involuntarily flicked to the monitor-screen showing CPF officers carrying evidence containers out of the Temple.
"I have a gift for you." An ashen hand disappeared into the backpack, and he pulled a very familiar data pad from its confines. "Fresh from the clutches of the Jedi."
His other hand still maintained the constant circle.
My data pad... Aiden shook his head. "I'm not doin' nothing for you." No way in hell.
Palpatine was already shuffling back toward Barriss. "Don't do it for me, slicer." He stopped above her curled form. "Do it for the sake of your friend's future health. And for the sake of your future freedom."
She still shifted and fidgeted oddly, her wide violet piercing into him.
Lying bastard. "Do you honestly expect me to believe you'll let either of us live through this?"
Palpatine studied him. And in a slow, smooth motion, placed his foot on the charred fabric of Barriss' abdomen.
She jerked, and a choked gasp caught in her throat, eyes flying open wide.
Blast! Aiden launched himself to his feet and grabbed the steel bars until he thought his knuckles would break through the skin. "Stop!"
"There are worse things than death, slicer." His eyes burned like fire. "And I fully expect you to believe your friend will experience them all if you disobey me." He twisted his foot, and a strangled cry wrenched from her throat.
Aiden's stomach wrenched with her. "You son of a—"
Palpatine lifted a hand toward Barriss' legs, and lightning burst like a clap of thunder. Blinding tendrils engulfed her lower body, and her cry pierced long and loud in the darkness, sending prickling shards of ice shooting through Aiden's bones.
'Barriss!' "Alright!" he yelled through the bars, and he thought his knuckles really would break. The electric assault didn't let up, and he shouted all the louder, "What do you want!" His throat burned.
All at once, the storm stopped, singed ozone stinging his throat. Palpatine looked at him, and raised his data pad. "What I've wanted from the beginning."
Barriss shuddered in silence on the ground.
Aiden licked his lips and grit his teeth. "You want some information from the Archives? Fine. You got it."
A chuckle and a gleam. "There is no knowledge the Jedi possess that I do not." He stepped over Barriss' shuddering form, and slowly stretched out Aiden's data pad toward him until the screen lit the bars. "You are not removing anything from the Jedi's Archives, slicer. You are adding something."
The screen burned through him. Orbs of yellow burned through him. But he kept his gaze on Barriss. "Adding what?"
"Proof," Palpatine said simply. "Proof I've placed within your data pad. Gain access to their systems, embed it within their Archives, and I will let you live." Cracked lips curled. "And I will let your friend heal herself before it's too late."
Barriss looked at Aiden desperately, but still didn't speak. Didn't move except for involuntary shudders still passing through her.
"Decide quickly, slicer. She doesn't have much time."
The hollow drained within him. 'I give up, Barriss... I give up.' His grip on the bars failed, hands sliding from the purple-tinged steel, and he couldn't meet her eyes anymore.
Without a word, he grabbed his offered data pad through the bars and ripped it from Palpatine's grasp.
It felt wrong in his hand.
Palpatine's curl of the lip widened, and another clunk, this time louder—worse—resounded above his head. The talons surrounding him retracted upward. "Then the future is yours, slicer."
The claws disappeared into the darkness, and he stood unmoving as gold and violet stared at him.
He couldn't bring himself to look at the violet. "The Temple is a cyber-island. How am I supposed to get inside for a hard connection?" Maybe he could buy some time to think of... Something.
Anything.
Palpatine looked past Aiden's shoulder, and a nasally rumble grated from a corner of the room untouched by the purple glow. "Don't worry yourself, slicer. They'll never know we were there."
Aiden flinched and whipped around, and in the shadows of the corner, blood red eyes squinted beneath the rim of a hat. "Pleasure." Bane reached up a blue hand and tugged the rim once.
He can remain quite unseen when he so desires.
Smug bastard. Aiden huffed. "Pleasure's all yours."
Blue lips tilted.
"Time passes quickly, slicer." Palpatine waved a hand, and in the nearest wall, panels clicked and slid away to reveal a turbolift platform lying in wait, harsh light stabbing like knives from luminators embedded around the circle of durasteel. "For some, more than others. Move with haste."
Barriss' gaze burned the back of his head. And for a second, he thought he could almost hear the echoes of a whisper through the hollow. Too faint, too far away to understand.
'I don't have any choice here, Barriss.' And he didn't. The crossroads he had stood at... the choices he had made... it had all been nothing but one big, blasted illusion. There was only one road in front of him. There had always only been one road in front of him.
All he could do now was walk it.
A low chuckle scraped. "Perhaps you and I are more alike than either of us realized, slicer."
He looked at Palpatine, and Palpatine looked right back at him.
'Trust me, Barriss.' He gripped his data pad until his fingertips numbed, and stepped onto the glowing turbolift, followed closely by Bane. "I do this, and I go free," he said. "And Barriss lives."
The gold squinted in the darkness. "Indeed."
Then it was worth it. No matter what Barriss would think of him from now on. No matter what happened to him. At least she would be alive.
He swallowed, and grit his teeth. "Then what are you waiting for?"
A ghost of a smile haunted Palpatine's face, and he waved his hand once more. The panels of the wall began sliding back into place to seal Aiden and Bane within the confines of the lift, and as the gaps grew smaller and smaller, Aiden braved a single glance toward the violet shimmering on the floor. And in the heartbeat of time their gazes locked, everything the hollow wouldn't tell him bled through. Pain. Hurt. Regret. Betrayal.
The final panel sealed shut with a hiss. Blast it...
The blue creep didn't talk as the lift rocketed them upward, and then jolted to a stop in front of a crimson-washed metal panel as large as a door. The crimson hissed and slid away, and there, through the newly-opened threshold, the red-choked living room of Palpatine's 500 Republica loft lie in empty silence before him, nothing but the glass of floor-to-ceiling windows separating him from Coruscant beyond.
His lips parted, and Dooku's voice echoed in his memory. "This panel connects to a secret mainframe beneath this very tower..."
Unbelievable. He stepped out of the turbolift between two hulking vases standing like guards on either side of the newly-exposed doorway. The alcove...
He shook his head and glanced at the portrait on the near wall, looking for only a moment into the muun's unnaturally red eyes before lowering his gaze to the carved dagger resting in its stone cradle below.
"Best not to admire the scenery too much, slicer," a nasally rasp spoke behind him. "Might give someone the wrong idea your thinkin' about things."
He tensed his jaw, and looked back at the other set of red eyes he had come to despise.
Bane tilted his lip and jerked his head toward the outer balcony where a speeder idled against the granite railing. "We doin' this, or what?"
Aiden stared at him, and the hollow swirled within him. Nothing ventured... "Yeah." He squeezed his data pad, and released a slow breath he couldn't fully stop from shaking.
"We're doin' this."
OOO
Barriss couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Oh, but she wanted to. She screamed and thrashed within herself. Screamed into her silenced bond with Aiden, begging him not to do this. Not to go with Bane. Not to do anything Palpatine said.
But the invisible hands gripping her, holding her down, pressing her lips together and closing her throat held firm.
Palpatine's eyes gleamed a sickly pleasure, his thumb and forefinger never stopping their constant circle as Aiden and Bane disappeared into the hidden turbolift, and the walls sealed shut behind them with finality.
'Aiden!' But he couldn't hear her. The metal squeezing her neck would ensure that.
A flash of blue above her, and in Palpatine's palm, Admiral Tarkin appeared in miniature. "Your Excellency?"
Palpatine kept his fingers pressed together. "They have just left, Admiral. Our time has come."
Tarkin straightened, and inclined his head in a facsimile of a bow. "Yes, my lord."
Cracked lips pulled back, and he disconnected the call and stood motionless in the glow of the displays, a draping silhouette of black in the drowning purple. He closed his eyes and drew in a breath, and held it a moment before the irises of gold reappeared, staring straight at her.
Her throat ached and stuck, spasms still trailed electric fingers of pain up and down her body, but she refused to look away. If a silent glare was all the defiance she could give, then she would give all she had.
He studied her with that blasted curl of the lip, and the constant circle of his thumb and forefinger slowed, and then finally stopped altogether, pulling apart for the first time in what felt like forever.
The invisible hands holding her down and pinching her lips vanished in an instant, and she collapsed against the floor as if dropped, pain lancing through her core as skin stretched and pulled. "Agh..." She grabbed her abdomen.
"Forgive me, young one," he said. "This was a critical moment in the history of the galaxy. I could not allow you to interfere." He glanced at the charred fabric pressed tight beneath her diamond-inked hands. "After all, who knows what unfortunate choices the slicer would make if he knew how far from death you are."
She curled her fingers into the fabric. "What did you put in his data pad?" Her voice was rough with pain. "What is he planting in the Archives?"
"The final nail." He stepped closer, ashen black swishing at his ankles. "A millennia of planning... Of waiting..." He knelt. "As the slicer said, you are a Jedi Healer. You know as well as I how much time remains for you. I could not allow you to ruin the culmination of Sith legacy by sharing such knowledge with him."
She clamped her teeth together and stared as hard as she could into those eyes of yellow. "Maybe I'll ruin it yet."
His smile slowly widened, and that horrible chuckle filled the darkness. "There is fire in you. Repressed, but there. Hidden beneath discipline and good manners." His gaze wandered to the metal squeezing her throat for a moment, and then continued down to her legs still twitching with the last remnants of electricity.
"Do you know why I struck your legs, and not your body?"
She forced herself into rigid stillness against the fading shudders racking through her, and didn't look away. "I told you once already, Sith. Your games are for nothing. I'll not play them."
He tapped a fingernail against the collar. "It is for the same reason devices such as these are useless against Sith." He spread his fingers between them, and glowing tendrils crackled to life in front of her face, whipping and cracking back and forth across his fingertips. "A single current of electricity renders the collar dead."
She flinched as the embers sparked inches from her face, but she held her eyes open and set on the black-shrouded gold above her. "And the collar would render the Sith unable to produce the lightning to disable it."
The flashing arcs fizzled away, giving her a full view of his curled lip. "That is what the Jedi would have you believe. And if the Sith limited themselves as the Jedi do, it would be true. But would you like to know a secret, young Jedi?
He leaned close, and she tensed her jaw as he whispered into her ear as if someone might overhear, "A strong enough will can overcome a force-suppression collar... A will that is not weakened by a lack of emotion... A will such as yours.
He took her hand, unnaturally cold fingers clamping around hers, and with a gentleness that held no kindness, he placed her hand against the collar. "It is a very easy thing. Allow yourself to feel the outrage of being caged and collared like an animal. Focus on the steel biting into your flesh. And allow your outrage to flow freely... Through your hands... Into the steel that binds you.
His eyes glowed fiercely, and his voice tapered into a soft murmur. "And you shall be... free."
Sickly-sweet tingles trailed down her arms, her spine, and her heart fluttered. She sucked in a breath and ripped her hand from his, and planted it against the cold with a grimace as pain lanced through her. "You're wasting your time if you think I'll give in to anger to save myself." She would allow herself to die first.
"You say that as if it is not already in you." His voice swept over her, and she closed her eyes as the purple-tinged darkness swirled.
Calm yourself... Her own voice sounded weary to herself in her mind. Calm yourself and focus... She pressed her molars together and focused on the cold biting into her palms through the floor, allowing it to numb her mind, her thoughts, her feelings. "It doesn't matter what happens to me."
"Don't do it for yourself, young one. Do it for the sake of your Order." A cold finger eased a loose strand of hair from her pinched brow. "After all, only you possess the knowledge of the destruction about to come upon them."
She jerked her head away from his touch and glared violet at him, and he smiled gently and spoke, "The proof the slicer will embed within the Archives is, in fact, proof the Jedi have indeed been orchestrating this war from the beginning." His voice became regretful. "The Republic will have no choice but to respond with appropriate severity."
Operation Knightfall... The Temple schematics... the bodies... The children... Her core soured once more, the darkness swirling.
"So you see, young one, only you can save them. Free yourself from your shackles. Run to them. And they may yet live."
The Order... Luminara...
"I'll make this right, Barriss. I swear."
The silenced bond gaped like a chasm inside her, and she pressed one hand to her abdomen, and curled the fingers of her other into the cold durasteel below. Aiden had lied to her from the beginning. He would disappear the first chance he got. He would run. He would hide. Just as he said he would in that blasted Uscru motel so long ago. And if he had to, he would do anything to save his own life.
Of course he would, the old voice said.
She closed her eyes. But he also never quite did as he was told. "Aiden might end up surprising you, Sith." A lance of pain stabbed, and she hunched over and pinched her eyes tighter. "He has a tendency of doing that." For better, and for worse.
"Yes, the slicer..." His voice was contemplative. Distant. "Would you like to know another secret, young one?" The cold touch of his fingers eased under her chin like sour ice, and he slowly but forcefully lifted her gaze until burning yellow filled her vision once more. "When the slicer has finished embedding the final nail into the Order's coffin... Bane is going to kill him."
The silenced bond sunk within her, and her lips parted as finally, his eyes glowed with full, unrestrained brilliance. "I lied, young one. The future of the Jedi does not rest in the slicer's hands." He brushed his thumb across her cheek.
"It rests in yours."
END CHAPTER