Chapter One
The night in the Sinking Deserts of Jakku all smelled the same. In this vast expanse of desert, dotted with failed Imperial experiments from the weapons manufacturing and scientific research facility a few clicks due East, nothing much changed. Ever.
As temperatures dropped and the wind kicked up, even from her refuge inside of a rusted-out AT-AT, Rey's nose filled with the scents of Tuanulberry bushes and the silk of night watcher worms. The sounds of the night didn't change much either, and on they often formed a kind of scavenger's lullaby that hummed her to an uneasy sleep. The rustle of sand in the wind. The tapping of skittermice feet. The odd movements in the distance of only the most unseemly of Niima Outpost characters. The echoing of her own thoughts and wants and fears inside of her own head. The darkness, too, had a certain quality to it, a density. Impenetrable. Stoic. The darkness built walls around her, protecting her just as much as the aging belly of the AT-AT did.
But tonight…Tonight was different. Ever since she'd scarfed down her portion and settled into her makeshift bed, she couldn't help but notice something wasn't quite right. As a scavenger, one of her most useful skills was her ability to tune into the world around her and experience it, to actually feel the shifts and changes of her universe as they happened and adapt to them.
And that night, though there were more noises than she was used to—the whirring of Ion drives and the crunch of sand beneath boots—and the smell pervading the air was different—exhaust and sweat and a stringent bio-plastic polish—and though the quality of the darkness grew less and less opaque with every passing second until artificial lights seeped in through the cracks of her home, it wasn't any of those things that set her entire body on edge.
It was the way the universe shifted to accommodate new danger. The same way it shifted every time a horde of bandits tried to sneak up on her or a sandstorm threatened the horizon.
Only worse. Infinitely worse.
Without a second thought, she jumped up and began throwing everything she could carry into the nearest pack she could get her hands on, indiscriminately shoving her belongings—important or not—into it. She had to get away, had to run, had to—
Boom! No time. The makeshift door of her hovel blasted away from its weak hinges, and her fate was sealed. A pack of stormtroopers, led by a towering figure in chrome-plated armor, let themselves in.
Disaster. But Rey wasn't going down without a fight. Reaching for one of her wrenches, she held it aloft, threatening the squadron leader even as they shined star-bright penlights directly into her eyes.
"Get out of here," she commanded in the strongest voice she could manage. "I haven't done anything wrong. I'm—"
"Stand down." The communications system built into the leader's uniform crackled, a crackling that echoed the electric hum of the blue melee weapons pointed in Rey's direction. She took a step back, wrench in hand, only to realize there was no where else for her to run. She'd been cornered.
Fight or flight instincts kicked in. She couldn't be arrested. She couldn't let the Emperor's forces drag her away. Her parents would come back for her; leaving now would ensure that they never found her again. She raised the wrench higher, ready to take on an entire squadron herself.
"This is my home. You have no right—"
"By order of our Lord Vader, Emperor and liberator of the galaxy, you are to be detained until further notice."
She opened her mouth again—to scream, to question, to beg, to protest, anything—but no sound came out.
And that was the moment they took her.
Sometimes, in her dreams, she could almost pretend she remembered what it was like to travel in a starship. In the depths of her heart where she kept all of her hidden things, she knew that those remembrances—canned air on her skin, the tightness of space all around her, her mother smiling down at her and whispering that they would be back one day—were all the product of her desperate imagination.
She always expected that her first real adventure on a proper starship would be with her family. They'd swoop into Niima Outpost in a brand-new, beautiful Corellian vessel, ion engines blazing, scoop her up and take her somewhere lush and beautiful, temperate and homey, like the holo-cards she'd seen of Naboo and Chandrila.
She didn't expect to be knocked out planet-side, only to be reawakened on a starship with a vial of Uri Salts abruptly shoved under her nose. Spluttering back to life, she opened her eyes to realize she wasn't on Jakku anymore. In fact, she very much suspected—from the dark interiors that reflected the light of the stars beaming in front the view port in front of her and the black-clad officers rushing back and forth with stormtroopers close at their heels—that she had been tossed aboard an Imperial transport, one of the small light speed jumpers that serviced the larger Destroyers.
Just barely opening her eyes, she held herself as still as she could possibly manage, letting her pupils move just enough to take in her surroundings. She'd been strapped down to a high-backed black chair, shading most of her view, but she did manage to catch a few things. For one thing, she wasn't alone. To either side of her, she could see similar chairs in a line stretching down out of her peripheral vision, with dangling, female legs spilling over the sides of the chair just like her own. They were in some kind of abandoned hangar bay. No ships, which meant chances of escape—even if she could manage to work her way free of the metal restraints around her wrist—plummeted to exactly zero.
The impossibility of escape and a return to Jakku, though, wasn't what gripped her with panic.
It was the darkness.
There was darkness on this ship. A darkness she couldn't explain or name. It hovered in the air like a physical presence, stalking her. She shivered, though from the terror or the ship's freezing, canned air circulating across her bare arms, she couldn't tell.
"What's going on?" she hissed, more of a prayer of desperation than an actual question.
A response came from the green-legged creature to her right. "Don't speak."
Under normal circumstances, Rey might have agreed. Dealing with Unkar Plutt, for example, was always easier if she just didn't speak. Arguing never got her anywhere. But Unkar Plutt was a familiar classification of evil. This was something altogether worse, something that with every passing moment drove her further and further away from the place she needed to be. If The Empire stole her away to some far-off prison colony, then she'd never find her family.
"What are they doing to us?" she asked, turning her face slightly to the left, hoping for better luck with the creature sitting in that direction. Rey thanked the stars when that prisoner had fewer reservations about conversations. Still, they spoke in whispers to not agitate the stormtroopers standing at attention against the far walls of the hangar.
"We don't know." The feminine voice whispered. "They said that they would release us once we'd been inspected."
"Inspected for what?"
"We don't know. No one's said anything else."
Inspections. She'd heard rumors of Imperials scooping up women for their own cruel ends, but she'd imagined that those sort of tawdry tales were confined to the fiction of holo-novels. One thing she knew for sure, in the deepest parts of her? They were not going to be released. No matter what the Imperials promised.
The green, scaly creature to her right apparently grew her nerve, breaking the ominous silence to ask: "Does this have to do with the Rebellion?"
"I'm not part of the Rebellion," Rey snapped, instinctively, but her mind reeled at the very question.
"Exactly what Rebel scum would say," green legs replied, sniffing her displeasure.
Rey was too wrapped up in talk of The Rebellion against the Empire to even consider being offended at her implication. "I didn't even think the rebellion existed."
Again, all she had to go on were stories, conjecture. There was the tale of the Senator from Naboo, Padmay Ahmee Something or Other, who'd fallen in love with Darth Vader and bore his children, only to betray him and flee to a Force-Dead planet where he couldn't find her. Many said she started the Rebellion before she'd even left him, plotting to save the Galaxy from his grip. Some said she tried to save him from becoming the Emperor altogether, but she failed and fled with her children before he could kill them all. There was the tale of Darth Vader's son, who'd joined The Academy and become and Ace pilot, only betray his father and destroy the Death Star. There was talk of his daughter, who did everything from ferry secret messages across the galaxy to freeing entire planets full of slaves with her scoundrel husband as a duo of outlaws. There were even rumors that he'd stolen his own grandson from the arms of his daughter and taken him under his wing, training him for years to become the fearsome Kylo Ren.
If any of these were true, the Empire's propaganda ministries worked quickly to cover them up. After so many stories bleeding together and so many tall tales about run-ins with Darth Vader's rebel children or close shaves with Kylo Ren's dreaded lightsaber, Rey had given up faith that anyone was going to try to save the Galaxy.
But if other people knew about The Rebellion…
She shook her head, clearing all thoughts of salvation from The Empire out of her mind. No one was going to save the galaxy, especially not Darth Vader's children. If they existed at all, they weren't going to rescue her, not from this hangar bay and certainly not from the clutches of The Empire.
The girl to the right of her dared to raise her voice a little louder, stirred up by the excitement of gossip. "No one knows for sure. I heard—"
But she didn't get to finish her story, because just at that moment, a loud series of clacks filled the hangar bay, and a tightly formed phalanx of Imperial officers strutted out in perfect unison, halting in the center of the hangar until one stepped forward and addressed them all, raising a hand in an upward motion.
"Rise for your Emperor."
Rey glanced down at her hands and tugged on the restraints. The clacks must have been a remote release device, because this time when she pulled, her wrists came away from the chair.
The restraints encircling those wrists, however, stayed put. They tingled at her skin with a quiet electricity, an assurance that if she stepped one foot out of line, she'd be electrocuted into the next star system.
Only then, standing on steady feet, with a line of female aliens and humans of every description on either side of her, stretching out the length of the hangar, did she realize what the ashen-faced Imperial Officer with a shock of red hair had just said. The Emperor.
The Emperor was here.
And no sooner did she see him, resplendent and terrible in his towering, mechanical black suit than she knew that he was the darkness she had felt in the air. Her eyes traced his imposing form, only for her eyes to catch on the sword swinging at his hip. She'd heard of his laser-sword, but that was another thing she'd thought was just a myth.
Apparently, today was the day of myths and legends coming real.
As Emperor Vader stalked into the room, black cape flowing behind him, his steps deliberate and powerful, the leader of the Imperial troops stepped forward to announce him.
"The Emperor—"
But, it seemed that The Emperor was not in the mood for pomp and circumstance. Instead, he held up a hand, effectively silence the man, who rushed to join him as he surveyed the waiting women.
"These are the candidates?" A hissing, labored voice asked from behind Emperor Vader's mask.
"Yes, your excellency. As instructed."
When they reached the center of the room, Emperor Vader scanned the candidates. Rey's hands shook. Candidates for what? What could have been so important as to drag her, a nobody from Jakku, into the presence of the Emperor?
Slow, calculated words echoed from behind the mask. Leaving the Imperial lackey behind, he began to walk closer to them. Rey could only hope he wouldn't notice her. "You have all been chosen for a grand and glorious purpose. There is one among you…"
Her hope was in vain. Because just at that moment, a spark struck that darkness she felt in the air, and his gaze—or rather, the black eyes of his mask, came to focus solely on her. And her alone.
"One among you who will serve The Empire."
The world moved at half its normal speed. Rey struggled to make sense of what was happening. Emperor Vader, the other candidates forgotten, strode directly to her, stopping so close that she could see her own reflection in his polished armor.
He was a monster. And she saw herself reflected in him. The darkness settled over her, too, now.
But it was more than that. The edges of her vision clouded, and in a flash of a moment, images flashed before her mind's eye. An angry red laser-sword. A shattered view screen overlooking a sea of stars. A calm lake by a green countryside suddenly ravaged by an impossible storm. Emperor Vader, reaching up to remove his mask. A pendant in an unfamiliar design. A pair of gold dice. A crystal glowing in the darkness. A sad man with a pair of pretty eyes, holding his hand out to her.
Somehow, she knew the images had truth in them. They were real, as real as The Emperor standing here before her. And that, perhaps, was more terrifying than him.
"What is your name?"
"Rey," she said, surprised at the strength of her own voice. She didn't dare fidget or look away, didn't dare to ask questions or beg for mercy. He'd petrified her, tightening the darkness around her so she couldn't move. Despite the fact that she couldn't see his eyes, she knew he was examining her like a captured specimen, inspecting her.
"Rey," he repeated.
"Just Rey. Nothing else."
It was the first time, perhaps ever, that she'd admitted that out loud. She was nobody. Nothing.
Surely, Emperor Vader didn't want a nobody, for whatever purpose he had.
For another moment, he regarded her, then waved a gloved hand in her direction before stalking off and releasing the darkness that constricted her.
"This one."
The redheaded officer spoke up, his eyes widened in insubordinate shock. "But my Lord—"
"I have spoken."
And with that, exactly three things happened:
One, Emperor Vader disappeared.
Two, Rey's knees gave out from under her.
And three, she dreamed of the sad man with a pair of pretty eyes, holding out his hand to her.