Six months earlier

The door of the SUV swung shut and sealed them away from the outside world. The air conditioner was on full blast and the radio, set to a reasonable volume, was playing an upbeat pop song.

"Ah, Chuy, our closet Taylor Swift fan," Luke teased from the front passenger seat.

The gruff man only scowled then grunted.

"This is Jesús," Leia told Rey. "But he prefers to be called Chuy. It's a diminutive. A cute nickname, if you will."

Chuy emitted a quiet utterance and zippered into traffic, tapping his thick hands on the steering wheel to the beat of the music. He was so large, the wheel looked like a toy and the top of his head just brushed the ceiling of the car. He wore a leather jacket studded with spikes and patches, which seemed counterproductive to the heat outdoors. Other than the bopping to "Shake It Off," there was nothing else cute or tiny about him.

"Chuy doesn't talk a lot," Leia continued. "Once you get to know him, he can be quite nice."

Chuy's glance darted at the review mirror to assess Rey. His eyes were dark brown, outlined with wrinkles much like a walnut shell, with a faded blue mark under his left eye, which looked suspiciously like a prison tattoo. He made a noise of neutral approval.

"He's also the hairiest person I've ever met, which is why every room is going to be an ice box when you're with him," Luke complained, tucking his arms around himself.

"Oh," Rey said, saying the only thing that came to mind. "I see." She laced her fingers together and rested her hands on her lap, trying to remain calm.

No one spoke for a few minutes, unless one could consider the undulations that Chuy made that resembled some sort of sing-a-long.

"So, where you from, Rey?" Luke asked, trying to break the awkward silence.

"Um, Arizona. Phoenix," she responded.

"My favorite mythological creature," Leia mused. "What a beautiful concept, isn't it? A new life, arising from death, the ashes of the one before. To rise from the flames, stronger, wiser, and -"

"—also the name of a city that's a monument to man's arrogance," Luke interrupted. Chuy made a noise that Rey figured was a laugh.

Leia rolled her eyes. "What brought you here? To California, that is."

"I, um, didn't have much of a choice. My aunt took me in after my parents died in a car accident when I was four. She and I lived in Vacaville until she died, too." Rey fixated her gaze on a man and woman who were in a heated argument on the street corner, to distract her heartache. She didn't want to talk about it anymore, but she felt compelled. "Cancer," she finished, quietly. "She died of cancer. Then, I was in and out of foster homes down the coast until I ended up here, on my own."

There was an awkward silence. "I'm sorry," Leia finally said. "I'm sure your parents would be very proud of you."

Rey's face darkened and she whipped her head around angrily to face Leia. "Please don't talk about my parents. You don't know them." She was furious at herself for letting the tears well up.

Leia nodded. "I'm sorry. I meant no offense. It's just.. we can empathize." Her face softened. "It's a terrible thing, to grow up without parents. I'm sorry for your loss."

"Me too," Rey whispered. "And for yours." She turned to face out the window again. Her heart burned with the fresh reminder that she had no family and was alone in the world, especially after just losing all of her friends at work.

"There's no going back, Rey," Luke said, craning around in his seat to look at her. "They saw you. Even if you could make them forget, you couldn't go back, now that you know."

"I've known for a while," she retorted.

"I believe you. But you can't control it. You haven't fine-tuned it. That's where we can help."

Rey realized they were driving away from the city and were getting on the I-110 freeway north. "Where are we going?"

Chuy emitted a grunt of annoyance and Luke patted his arm. "Somewhere safe," Luke promised. "Chuy knows the best route to the place where we'll be secure, where no one can find us."

Rey was confused. "Who would want to find us?"

Luke smiled, grimly. "Well, that's what we're going to talk about." He fiddled with one of the fans on the dash. Are you getting enough air back there?" He was clearly done with talking about the subject for now.

Rey rubbed her goosepimpled arms, although she wasn't sure if it was from the cold air or the strangeness of the situation rubbing her nerves the wrong way. "Plenty, thanks."

A Britney Spears song began to play and Chuy turned up the volume, emitting a hum-sing that was an entire key off from Britney.

Rey couldn't help but marvel at her predicament. Just an hour ago, she was stumbling through a crappy Sunday brunch shift and now, she was in a fancy SUV, barreling north toward an unknown destination, with twin mind readers and a burly man that looked more like a relation to Sasquatch with an affinity for bubblegum pop.

And somehow, she was okay with it. Somehow, this felt right.

##

Thirty minutes later, after ensuring there was no one on their trail, Chuy pulled into a garage of a modest tract home in a nice neighborhood north of Old Pasadena. Every house was slightly different than the other, with a mirrored floorplan or a slightly different shade of rustic adobe or desert sage painting the exterior stucco walls. Every yard was perfectly manicured, with a mixture of native and non-native plants and grasses, the latter of which likely consumed too much water in this arid land. Half the neighborhood's houses, including the one they just arrived at, had solar panels on the roof – a near-necessity if one could afford it in California.

"Welcome to one of our safe houses," Leia said as they all exited the SUV.

"A safe house?" Rey echoed. "Gee, think you should be telling me that? What if I don't want to join this cause?"

Leia and Luke exchange knowing glances. "I don't think we have anything to worry about," Leia said. "You're trustworthy."

Rey followed the group into the home where a short, grandmotherly old woman was bustling around in the kitchen. The smell of something sweet and tantalizing filled the air and Rey's stomach grumbled. She realized she hadn't even had the time to scarf down a shift meal and now she was very, very hungry.

"Ah, just in time!" the woman exclaimed, eagerly scraping a spatula across a baking sheet to free some cookies. "A batch of my top secret almond cookie raspberry jam thumbprint cookies!"

"You can find them in the refrigerator at the grocery store," Luke loudly stage whispered to Rey. "Next to all of the other pre-packaged cookie dough."

The woman pretended to not hear Luke and arranged the treats on a big plate. She smiled broadly, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes appearing enormous due to the thickness of her glasses and offered a cookie first to Chuy.

"I had you fooled the first time, Mr. Skywalker," she cackled. "You thought they were homemade."

Rey's heart quickened as the obvious began to dawn. "Skywalker," she repeated. "That's where I know the name!" She pointed at Luke, then at Leia, accusingly. "You're the heirs to Skywalker Enterprises!"

"You look silly with your mouth agape," the old woman admonished. "Put a cookie in it, at least." She deposited a cookie in Rey's other hand.

Rey grumpily chomped at the cookie, keeping a suspicious distance between her and the Skywalker twins.

Luke shrugged, resigned. "Disenfranchised heirs. But that's something we can talk about later." He gestured toward the old woman. "This is Maz. She's not only our resident baker, but she's also one of the most brilliant minds behind our operations. Maz, this is—"

"I know who she is, Mr. Skywalker," Maz interrupted, putting the plate of cookies on the kitchen island. Chuy hurriedly helped himself to a couple more treats.

Rey recoiled slightly as the tiny woman approached her, the old woman's eyes magnified and huge behind thick lenses. Maz climbed up on a barstool to get closer.

"Hmm, this is Rey," Maz said after an uncomfortably long linger at Rey, up and down. "Yes, yes, this is Rey."

"How do you know my name?" Rey asked.

"Maz is older than you'd think," Luke said. "She knows a lot. Probably knows more about you than yourself."

Chuy chirped in agreement, reaching for more cookies. Maz swatted at his hand.

"Wait until everyone gets one!" she scolded him. Chuy snarled in annoyance but waited until Luke and Leia each grabbed a cookie.

"Maz is the mind behind the operation," Rey said. "Tell me about that."

Maz grinned. "Why, when I can show you?" She hopped off the bar stool and indicated for Rey to follow. "Come now, down this rickety and not-at-all creepy basement staircase, will you?" Maz moved with a surprising spryness and Rey hurried to catch up.

Luke couldn't help but roll his eyes. "She loves shoving off her toys."

The staircase was indeed rickety and rather creepy, and as they descended into the basement, the air grew a little colder and there was a humming that grew louder and angrier. Rey hugged herself tightly as she and Maz reached the bottom where there was a big, thick plastic curtain that reminded Rey of the walk-in fridge at her job. Former job, she reminded herself.

"Welcome to my hideaway!" Maz grinned, holding the curtain open for Rey to walk through.

The basement was larger than Rey expected; it was about the size of her studio apartment. But with all of the crap crammed inside, the room looked much smaller and more claustrophobic. A huge, portable air conditioning unit shuddered as its temperature display dropped down another degree – to 60 – and a thick foil exhaust vent snaked up the wall to the window, which was completely taped up save for the hole through which the hot hair filtered out. The side opposite of the window was completely filled by a hodge podge array of various flat-panel monitors, a television (muted, and playing one of the 24/7 news channels), a few posters, and a handful of newspaper and magazine clippings.

What impressed her more were the computers and the cacophony they generated. It felt like being inside a bee's hive; a loud, churning, and furious hum rattled her ears and made it hard to think. Two open-frame racks in the center of the room were packed with server blades, all lit up with an array of lights, tethered together with expertly-organized, mesh-wrapped power and Ethernet cables.

It took Rey a few moments to notice the shiny, bald head of a man sitting at a computer workstation. She almost missed him in the mess.

"He's one of my best boys," Maz practically yelled over the din. "That's why I call him BB. I also forgot what his real name is but can't be bothered to learn a new one now!" Maz shuffled over to the man and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Eek!" he shrieked, jumping out of the chair. The puffy headphones around his neck caught him as the cable ran short, and he flopped unceremoniously to the ground.

"BB, this is Rey!" Maz said. "Rey's a new recruit – maybe!"

BB disentangled himself from the headphones and stood up. He barely stood taller than Maz, which wasn't saying much, and was about as wide as he was standing. To say he was rotund like a beach ball was most accurate, and if it weren't for the huge sunburst of a red beard, Rey would have pinned his age at no more than 12 years old – the curse of a baby face.

"Rey, nice to meet you!" BB yelled, extending a hand out to which Rey accepted and BB pumped in an enthusiastic shake. "So glad to meet you, yes!" He didn't stop shaking her hand until Maz thwapped him on the shoulder.

"BB doesn't get out much," Maz explained. "He spends most of his time down here."

BB nodded. "I like computers more than most people! 'Cept Maz, here, of course. And the twins. And the others."

"Others?" Rey was confused. Who else could there be, well, besides the mute Chuy?

"Come join us upstairs, BB," Maz said. "I made your favorite."

"Raspberry thumbprints!" BB squealed. With a quickness Rey had never seen for a man of his size, she was impressed with how quickly BB raced out of the room and up the stairs.

"That little slice of heaven you saw," Maz began, once Rey and she were back in the kitchen and sitting at the bar with a pot of tea Leia brewed, "is one of the ways we fund our organization."

"Cryptocurrency!" BB interjected, not realizing or not caring about the shower of crumbs that puffed from his mouth while he happily ate some cookies. "That's our mining operation!"

"Mining?"

"You heard of coin, stuff like that?" BB asked. Rey nodded. "Well, the more computers you have, the more chance you have working out the algorithm to find a coin! It's very energy intensive, though, so you have to keep everything cold so it doesn't melt the servers." He bobbed his head side-to-side, as if he were listening to a song or shaking the water out of his ears, and happily grabbed a couple more cookies.

Rey wondered what a computer did to find a coin, but she had many more pressing questions in her head. Her lack of poker face must have revealed her confusion.

"You've got a lot going through your head right now," Leia said matter-of-factly. "There's a lot to go over and no good way to start. Why don't you take a rest, get refreshed, and we'll start discussing things over dinner tonight?"

A rest. That actually sounded very enticing. Rey's energy had sapped the moment she had exerted herself in the restaurant, but the pure adrenaline of what followed kept her on edge and awake. Now, with another cookie in her belly and a mug of tea in her hands, she felt at ease enough to let her guard down a little bit to acknowledge these people weren't about to rob her or leave her for dead.

"That'd be nice. Do you have a couch I can crash on?"

"Did you happen to see the size of this McMansion when you walked in? There's plenty of bedrooms. Come, I'll show you and you can get a little shut-eye." Leia got up and walked Rey upstairs to one of the spare rooms.

"Kick off your shoes, get some sleep, and I'll wake you up for dinner," Leia said with a smile. She turned off the lights behind her and gently closed the door.

Rey surveyed the room. It was spartan, with a queen-sized bed topped with black comforter, an empty nightstand, and a small white desk. A little bit of sunlight peeked through the white blinds and cast shadowy lines on the polished hardwood. There was a framed artistic print hanging above the bed, all black-and-white with not a splash of color. She peeked in the closet – empty – and guiltily cased the room for any obvious cameras or microphones. When she didn't find anything suspect, she stepped out of her shoes and stripped down to her underwear, dumping her clothes and purse on the desk chair.

She crawled under the comforter and immediately was encased in a feathery paradise. She couldn't help but release a content sigh. This was much nicer than the rock-hard futon she called a bed back at home.

Home. Would it be safe to go back? What about her plants? They were half-dead, but they were still hers. She had some clothes, nothing nice to speak of, but hers all the same, plus the few other meager possessions she had locked in her tiny room at the apartment she shared with Kelly and two other girls.

Rey's heart ached. She and Kelly weren't best friends, but Kelly was still a good friend and Rey wondered if she'd see her ever again. She replayed Kelly's reaction over and over in her mind, each time the blonde's face contorting into more disgust and more horror. Surely, she thought Rey of a monster by now. There'd be nothing kind waiting for Rey back home.

Rolling over to face the wall, Rey hugged a pillow close to her chest and let her tears lull her to sleep.