Unsigned. Another note resting innocently against her door. Glancing up and down the hallway, Shara stooped down to pick up the little piece of paper. As before, it weighed heavily in her hand, its texture vaguely bumpy against her fingertips.
"Hello, neighbor! I see you just moved in. We live down the hall from you in 1607. Stop by for tea sometime. I insist."
There was no postscript this time, but, otherwise, the message read much like the first. Stepping into her apartment, Shara set the letter on her coffee table. Reaching into a pocket, she pulled out the first and placed it on top before making her way to a hot shower, food, and bed.
Tap
Tap
"This formula demonstrates the uncertainty principle, which states that one cannot know both the momentum and the position of a particle simultaneously. Now, breaking this down..."
"We hardly need you to break it down for us," Shara turned slightly in her chair as her desk partner, Calix, muttered under his breath. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, pausing briefly in the act of tapping his stylus against the desk.
'What?' he mouthed.
Shara just shrugged, dutifully returning her attention to the front of the room. She empathized with his boredom, and she had a feeling the majority of the class did as well. He wasn't wrong. This lesson was both painfully easy and dull.
However, possibly due to the fact that most of his students would never show their disinterest beyond a glazing over of the eyes, their instructor didn't seem to realize he'd completely lost the attention of his four and five year old charges.
Tap
Tap
"Do you know what I heard?"
Shara ignored him for a few seconds, but the feeling of his eyes on her compelled her to answer at last.
"What?"
"I heard that out there, in regular schools, they don't learn this stuff until they're nearly teenagers. Can you imagine? Seven or eight more years of this? I mean, what are they doing in the meantime?"
Shara didn't know. Calix was fascinated by 'life among the masses' as he'd termed it, but she had very little interest in contemplating the lives of such people. What was the point, after all? They, the subjects of the Imperial eugenics program, were created to be superior to other humans. Contemplating everyone else's shortcomings was a waste of time and brain power. Sure, they needed to know enough to eventually work with them, but ruminations about their poor educational standards didn't really serve a purpose.
Tap
Tap
"Can you stop that, please?"
She liked Calix, really, but sometimes he got on her nerves.
"I also heard something else that may pique your interest, Shara Jenn."
"I very much doubt that," she intoned quietly.
Then again, even ruminations about the general populace might be worth it under the circumstances. She was trying to pay attention, but the droning monotone of her lecturer's voice, and his casual condescension, was very off-putting the more she listened to it. None of the adults around them seemed to have any real delusions about the extent of their intelligence (even if that wasn't always reflected in their lesson plans), but, nevertheless, they all possessed the same air of vague superiority when speaking with their charges.
Shara supposed it sort of made sense, even if she didn't like it. Just like the rest of them, she'd been created with a singular purpose in mind, altered and edited to ensure submissiveness and compliance with that purpose.
Things didn't always go the way their creators had intended, of course. Calix was proof enough of that.
Tap
"Zaccur's being put in advanced classes. They think he may have what it takes to make Watcher."
"Zac?" Shara wasn't surprised, but the news pleased her nonetheless.
"Planning on following in your big brother's footsteps?" Calix teased.
"He's not my brother," Shara replied patiently. "But yes, naturally. That's why we're all here, isn't it?"
"He may as well be. And yeah, but not all of us make the cut, you know," the stylus resumed tapping with slightly more force, Calix's eyebrows furrowed in contemplation.
"You don't lack the intellect, Calix."
"Just other things," he muttered, so softly Shara almost didn't hear him.
Tap
Tap
Tap
Shara's eyes flickered open to greet darkness once more. She'd managed not to get herself twisted the wrong way this time. Blue symbols in the dark showed her alarm would soon go off, though. Reaching over, she turned off the clock and settled back in bed to stare at the dim shadows thrown across her ceiling by the handful of passing speeders up and about this early in the morning.
Tap
So she hadn't just dreamed it. Cold tiles beneath her bare feet stirred her to greater wakefulness as she trudged towards the door in her nightclothes which, come to think of it, weren't all that different than her regular clothes. Less formal, sure, but the same shade of neutral gray covering her legs and her arms.
Unlocking the front door panel, she listened to the soft 'whoosh' of escaping air as she greeted her visitor.
"You're back? It's kind of early to be out, isn't it? Don't you go to school?"
It was the boy again. As before, his fist lingered in the air mid knock. Still as a statue, he regarded her with his dark eyes before, ever so slowly, extending his opposite hand to her. A third note was clutched in his small fist.
Thrown off balance by this repeat of the day before, Shara accepted the note, eyes flickering downwards to find the exact same message of the first letter glittering up at her in shining black ink.
Who uses paper and ink? I've only ever read about them. They're incredibly primitive.
The boy was gone again when she looked up.
Shaking her head thoughtfully, Shara stepped back inside her apartment and quietly shut the door.
A few days turned into a week, which then turned into a month. Not counting her regular reports, Keeper had met with her individually three times in the interim, supposedly to monitor her adjustment. Each occasion was just as awkward and uncomfortable as the last. Whether out of obliviousness (which seemed unlikely), politeness (which seemed equally likely and unlikely), or simply because he didn't care, Keeper never acknowledged the uneasy tension in the room, merely going about business as usual. She should probably find comfort in that response. Not quite knowing what to make of the man though, or where she stood with him, introduced a lot of uncomfortable unknowns into the equation that prevented her from doing so.
Perhaps, with time and growing familiarity, the awkwardness would lessen. Still, when it really came down to it, she felt as if she'd been passed off from one owner to the next. That was more or less the idea, in reality. She was infinitely grateful that he was the only one here who even had an inkling that she could be turned into a marionette with the proper phrase. The idea of someone like Watcher Three or Minder Twelve having that much power over her bodily autonomy was disconcerting.
The former had grown no more friendly or tolerable with time, in spite of Keeper's reassurances, and she was often startled to find the latter eying her suspiciously with no provocation. She very rarely spoke with him, but, when she did, everything he said and every question he asked was laden with a complexity of double meaning that seemed designed purposely to trip her up. To trick her into admitting...something.
No matter how she answered, no matter how rude or polite she chose to be, he would adopt the same knowing look, privately filing away her responses for whatever report of her treacherous nature he seemed intent on composing.
The rest of Intelligence was neither friendly nor unfriendly. If anything, she felt invisible. Shara was torn between gratitude at the fact (she'd never really gotten along well with most people) and a budding sense of loneliness she had no prior reference for dealing with. Before, when she'd been...home, she'd never felt quite so isolated. She'd been more or less among siblings, people she'd grown up with.
She'd had Zaccur, for a time at least.
She didn't want to think about Zaccur ever again.
It was different here. The strict, rigid, and comfortingly familiar Imperial way of life had not changed, but everything else felt alien. These people felt alien. She had no idea how to even begin speaking with them.
Some of them were so...slow.
Not to say that they were unintelligent. Quite the contrary, actually, but she was gradually beginning to internalize just how different she really was by comparison. She'd always known she was impatient with others who were slow on the uptake. However, she'd never been exposed to people who lagged far enough behind for her to realize the extent of that flaw.
More often than not, before an agent could finish relaying information, she would find that she'd already anticipated the likeliest conclusion to the conversation, devised and analyzed half a dozen potential routes moving forward, and chosen the best overall plan. As a result, she tended to either interrupt or speak very brusquely. She'd not received any complaints on the matter, but the scarce few who'd been initially friendly towards the newcomer very quickly retreated into cool professionalism when speaking with her.
Additionally, though it may have simply been a product of her own imagination, she couldn't help but feel that the circumstances surrounding her arrival didn't play in her favor. She was gradually piecing together just what sort of a front the previous Watcher Two had presented, and she could easily understand why other members of Intelligence would feel disgruntled that she'd replaced him. He'd been popular, easy going, and well-liked. She, on the other hand, could charitably be described as standoffish.
Bemoaning the situation did nothing to change it, however.
It doesn't really matter. I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to work.
There was one person on Dromund Kaas who didn't seem to have gotten that memo, though. The odd boy with his even stranger letters had only ceased his daily appearance on her doorstep after a week of futile delivery attempts. From that point on, his visits had declined to twice a week, but each time he appeared, the message he brought from his mysterious caregiver had grown exponentially more passive aggressive in its attempts at obtaining her company. It had gotten to the point of seeming, in context, vaguely threatening, actually, though the language itself remained perfectly polite and non prosecutable.
Watcher Two had briefly debated informing Keeper of the incident (She worked for a spy agency, for god's sake. She wasn't about to be threatened in her own home), but she'd quickly dismissed that idea as far too humiliating to pursue. Clandestine research into the building's occupants had revealed that specific apartment as inhabited by an N. Hannor, female, no age given. The boy himself was not mentioned, and Shara had no idea what the woman's first name could have possibly been.
Cross-referencing a list of all known Hannors in the Empire revealed precious few results. A Sergeant Gavrol Hannor (male) had died at the age of fifty-five in a speeder malfunction twelve years prior, while an Izaric Hannor (also male, and with seemingly no relation to the first) worked for the Ministry of Logistics. A Tyrshe Hannor (female), a private in the army, had been listed as KIA some eight years earlier. Again, the woman appeared to have no relation to either of the others who bore her last name.
Finally though, after an unreasonable amount of digging, she'd stumbled across a record that seemed promising. Reazan and Arakai Hannor, a married couple, had produced a child identified only by the first initial.
Shara stared at the N in the record for a long time, her eyes flitting back and forth to the date of birth listed for the unnamed child. Over a hundred and ten years had passed between the birth of this N. Hannor and the present day.
It could be a fake name...but why use that one? I suppose there's really only one way to find out.
That was how Shara found herself on the doorstep of Apartment 1607 late one evening. It was actually the first time since setting foot on Dromund Kaas that she'd reentered her building before two o'clock in the morning. Keeper had given her a strange look when she'd departed early, but, well, there wasn't anything she was actively working on that couldn't be done from home. Besides, like always, she'd be back before the sun rose. She didn't need much sleep, a product of her design.
The door itself, predictably, looked like all the rest. Shara raised a hand, hitting the buzzer and stepped back to wait.
Ten seconds passed, then twenty, then thirty. She'd just lifted her hand to ring again when the most peculiar feeling of being watched settled over her. Lowering her arm, Shara glanced over her shoulder, taking in the empty hallway as her eyes swept back and forth over the line of silent doors.
A woman was standing in the doorway when she turned around once more.
Shara flinched instinctively. She wasn't proud of it, but that was what happened.
The short woman beamed up at her from her place in the doorway. Curly, graying auburn hair, once the same shade as the boy's, was cut close to her chin and swept back from her face, allowing a clear view of the woman's wide hazel eyes. She appeared older, perhaps in her early to mid sixties, but nowhere near as aged as her records indicated she should be. If, indeed, this mysterious occupant and N. Hannor were one in the same, something Shara had sincerely doubted from the start.
Upon observing the woman's relatively youthful appearance firsthand, she felt justified in her suspicions. However, there were still questions to which she lacked answers.
"Hello," she began lamely. "I believe I've been receiving...correspondence from this address?" She held out one of the earlier, less insistent letters she'd received in explanation.
The woman didn't look at it, not taking her eyes off Shara's face as she continued to beam at her in an uncomfortably familiar manner.
"Yes! You're the new tenant! Oh, we so rarely get new people, and when I saw that you were all alone, I thought to myself, 'Now, Nokomis, you must surely invite that young lady over for tea!' And here you are! Well," she sighed, smiling and folding her hands in front of her, "Isn't that lovely?"
Several thoughts and realizations fluttered through Shara's mind at once, trailed by even more questions.
Nokomis? Is that what the N stands for? But...that's impossible. They can't be the same woman. That woman can't possibly still be alive...And if she is, she wouldn't be sitting around in her apartment sending children to leave threatening messages on my doorstep.
And why does my being alone matter? This woman unnerves me, even though she seems...friendly.
Wait a minute, when the hell did she see me moving in? I didn't make it back till after midnight.
"Yes, I...apologize that it took me so long to reply. I've been busy with work."
Nokomis smiled serenely, nodding in understanding. Quite suddenly, however, she threw up her hands in an exaggerated motion, exclaiming, "Oh! But do come inside, dear. I've just finished Kamau's lessons for the day. I'm sure he'll be quite pleased to see you as well."
Shara doubted the boy had the emotional capacity to be pleased or displeased by anything short of a pivotal, life changing event. She didn't voice that opinion, instead allowing herself to be gently shooed into the abode of the strange, overly friendly old woman who'd so eagerly sought to make her acquaintance.
Through an open archway to her right, she caught a glimpse of the boy who'd been delivering her letters as he perched like a small, dark bird on a stool behind a kitchen table. A datapadd and stylus had been discarded beside him, and he was currently working his way through a plate of baked goods that smelled heavenly. Dark, expressionless eyes raised to meet hers as they passed by.
"Kamau!" the old woman paused in the archway, putting one hand on her hip as she frowned at the child. Kamau paused as well, his hand frozen in midair in a position reminiscent of the one he'd adopted every time Shara interrupted his knocking on her door. Then, just as slowly as he had extended his little hand to offer her the cryptic messages, he placed the sweet back on the plate. The whole while he continued to watch them, his face as blank as ever.
The woman tutted and shook her head, but Shara thought she sounded more amused than annoyed. "Those are for tea, silly boy. Don't you want our guest to have some?"
The boy didn't answer. Shara was beginning to doubt his ability to speak.
"Go wash up now," the woman waved impatiently at him. With surprising swiftness, Kamau climbed off his stool and scampered down the hallway, ducking through a door and disappearing from sight. Nokomis turned and smiled at Shara with a shrug. "Children. Now, come just through here to the sitting room."
At the beginning, Shara had, briefly, entertained the thought that this whole thing was some sort of a setup, possibly related to her connections with Imperial Intelligence. The frequency and subsequent intensity of the entreaties had prompted this internal dialogue. Whoever her neighbor was, she'd seemed hell-bent on getting her way, failing to lose conviction at a simple lack of a reply.
Witnessing the woman summon a tea set and the plate of desserts with a nonchalant flick of her wrist, however, caused Shara to realize that the small holdout blaster she'd tucked under her tunic wouldn't be much use if she had, in fact, stumbled into a trap.
The woman seated herself with a playfully regal air on a worn, yet sturdy looking sofa of dark brown. Her exotic looking tea set, fashioned out of the opalescent shells of some kind of water dwelling creature, settled itself gracefully on the carved wooden table in front of her. With no more than a guiding motion of her pointer finger, she proceeded to pour herself a cup, drop a cube of sugar in, and idly stir the steaming beverage with a spoon lifted by invisible hands and placed in the liquid.
"How do you take your tea, dear? Also, I don't think I got your name."