A/N: You might want to go back and skim the previous chapter, but this chapter is a rollercoaster ride with or without the previous. Enjoy.
Edit: Author and story alerts are down on ff right now. Follow my tumblr (just squish my penname together, and that's my url) for updates on the situation. You may not have gotten an email for this chapter; I certainly didn't.
Word of warning: if you're not too great with borderline horror, don't read this at night. 3
Gold Head Stripes, Gold Tattoos (Part 2)
The evening bell rings the third hour past sundown.
Ezhno holds his head tall as he marches down the wide entranceway. His uniform may be messy, and his boots scuffed, but he is a ward of the Order and entitled to come and go as he pleases.
The wide colonnades are silent at this hour; most Jedi are either congregated at the refectory, or more likely have left for their quarters after supper. This leaves the main entranceway of Temple cool and empty save for the masked Temple Guards that flank the enormous double doors themselves.
The white-masked Temple guards allow him to pass without question, double-bladed lightsabers silent at their backs. At sixteen and a ward of the Order, Ezhno is technically allowed to leave the Temple in his spare time; the door-warden will no doubt note that he has left, but apart from that, the whole of Coruscant is open to him.
Which, for lack of a better word, is pretty blasted wizard.
Ezhno saunters down the Processional Way, and halts just before it joins the Temple Plaza proper, where crowds throng the bright boulevards between museums and entertainment lanes.
A lithe shadow slips out from behind the nearest statue.
Ezhno is far too used to Jedi stealth to react with anything other than a sigh when a hand lands on his shoulder.
"'Ey," he says.
"Hey," Quinlan returns. His gold tattoos glint across his cheekbones, barely visible beneath his raised hood.
"'Ow'd you sneak out?"
"Vents," Quinlan explains, as he leads the way into the crowds themselves. He turns his head back towards Ezhno as he speaks. "They're designed to keep things from slipping in, not out."
"Huh. You'll 'ave ter teach me sometime."
"Yeah."
They fall silent not long after that; it is difficult for them to move through the hordes of Coruscanti night-revelers and for Ezhno to lip-read at the same time. But eventually, the crowds thin as they slip into the darker alleyways at the edge of the plaza, halting in front of a dilapidated turbolift.
Ezhno frowns at it.
Turbolifts regularly service the first thousand or so levels of Coruscant, but the more grimy and out-of-repair they are, the deeper they usually go. The ones that connect directly to the Senators' Offices in the Senate district, for example, go no further than the first hundred or so levels; pressing a button for the ninety-fifth level below the surface is usually reserved for the lowest-ranked of senatorial staff, who cannot afford apartments any closer to the upper levels.
Turbolifts like this one go further. Much further.
"'Ow deep're we goin'?" Ezhno asks as Quinlan pulls on a pair of gloves and strains at the metal-slatted door of the turbolift.
"Couple thousand levels," Quinlan answers, flashing a grin at Ezhno. "Hold on, can't talk, need to turn away for a moment. This blasted thing always gets stuck–"
With a terrific crash that Ezhno feels reverberate through the duracrete below them, the door slides open.
"There's only 'bout five thousand levels on Coruscant, mate," Ezhno says, as he follows Quinlan into the oil-streaked interior of the turbolift. At least he thinks it is oil. It…might not all be.
Quinlan faces him with another cocksure smirk. "Don't worry, we're not going to the actual surface. That would be suicide. Speaking of which, wear this."
"Wot's this?" Ezhno stares at the roll of dirty cloth that Quinlan produces from a belt-pouch.
"Cloak. Your uniform's too neat, we'll get mugged or worse," Quinlan says, speaking so fast that Ezhno almost misses the movement of his lips.
And with these happy words, Ezhno feels his stomach begin to sink with the downward journey of the turbolift.
Quinlan catches sight of his expression, and reaches out to grab Ezhno's shoulder. "It's not as bad as you think!" he says cheerfully, white teeth flashing in the sickly green strip-lights above.
As he pulls the cloak over his head, Ezhno wonders if Obi-Wan's cautious nature is rubbing off on him.
He has a very, very bad feeling about this.
The turbolift stops at level 1102.
Almost four thousand levels beneath the surface.
"This turbolift technically goes deeper," Quinlan says as the doors slide open. "But that might not be a smart thing to do."
Ezhno is out of the turbolift faster than a juvenile stratt being pursued by a duracrete slug.
He steps into a dim world of smoke, neon lights, and sewage.
Ezhno has to fight the urge to cough. The air down here is thick, heady, and foul…as if it has been inhaled and exhaled too many times, millennia after millennia, by a hundred thousand different species.
It occurs to him it probably has.
Quinlan pops into his field of view. "This way," the young Kiffar says.
Ezhno follows after the brown shape of Quinlan's Jedi cloak, and strives to walk as close as possible.
The streets – if they could be called streets, and not strips of duracrete matted so slick with grime that the grain of the floors themselves is invisible – are lit sporadically with strips of yellowish lights that flicker dully in hazes of Spice-smoke. The few people moving between the closely-packed buildings walk quickly, with their heads down. Most of them are covered up so completely it is impossible to tell what species they belong to.
Skin crawling, Ezhno is more than relieved when Quinlan ducks through a darkened archway and keys a code into a decrepit keypad.
The door slides open into a chaotic jumble of lights, consoles, and young sentients of uncountable different species. The thud-thud-thud of synth music trembles up through Ezhno's boots.
A holo-game den.
Blinking, Ezhno allows Quinlan to drag him by the wrist over to an older Togruta, who is sat before a podracing game with a bottle of something that looks suspiciously like bootlegged Kessel spirits by his feet.
Quinlan says something – Ezhno misses this, too preoccupied with staring at the older Togruta's magnificent blue montrals – and nearly misses the orange-skinned hand extended in his direction, too.
Ezhno clasps the hand offered, belatedly.
"Mister Ezhno, aren't you?" the Togruta boy – young man, really – says. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Krayt."
"Krayt?" Ezhno asks. He is quite sure he read that correctly, though the name itself–
"Yeah," Krayt says. "Over there's my lil' sis, Fyrnock. Fyrn for short."
Ezhno turns in the direction Krayt points at and spots a leather-jacketed Togruta girl, perhaps a year or so older than him, dancing so violently to a holo-dance game she looks as though she might punch through the console. The flashing holo-screen says different, though; zero points for style, a hundred for point-accuracy.
Ezhno turns back to Krayt and catches the latter half of his next sentence.
"–might break her own neck."
"Sorry, didn' catch that," Ezhno says, speaking a little louder than usual. Judging by the pulse of bass beats in his sternum, it is needed. "I'm deaf, I needta be lookin' at ye."
"Oh, sorry," Krayt says. "You a friend of Quinlan's, then?"
"Yep."
"Surface kid?" Krayt's eyes hold a sudden glint.
"Yeah," Ezhno says, watching him warily.
"Quinlan tells me you're a slicer. Bet you can't hack like us underdwellers, though."
"Betcha I can," Ezhno retorts. He has not spent half his time at the Zan Arbor Academy for Gifted Children hacking into the school security system for nothing.
"C'mon, then." Krayt jerks his head towards the back room. "Let's see what you can do."
Ezhno looks around for Quinlan, and finds the Kiffar padawan already thoroughly engrossed in a match of Starfighter Smash against a young Twi'lek, gloved hands moving with impressive speed over the mishmash of controls.
Breathing a silent sigh, Ezhno follows Krayt.
Half an hour later, Ezhno has discovered just how much he has yet to know about hacking.
Fortunately, Krayt is also willing to teach. The older Togruta faces Ezhno, leaning over the holoscreen and gesturing at it without ever looking down to actually verify what he is pointing at. But it does not matter. He is always correct.
With Krayt speaking a parsec a minute above a flashing holoscreen, Ezhno is hard-pressed to keep up; but he does, and soon afterwards brings down an entire half-sector's worth of lighting up on the surface.
The only results visible from here, of course, is a swathe of blinking red lights where there had once been green; but Krayt throws his head back and bares fearsome canines in a laugh that Ezhno sees shakes his throat.
"You've got it!" Krayt says, grinning. "That'll be a nice bunch of bigwigs up there without power for a couple hours, now. You've rerouted it so they can't find us?"
"Yeah," Ezhno says, montral-stripes flushed dark gold with success. A niggling thought at the back of his mind is wavering slightly, though, with the morality of this particular endeavour.
Krayt claps him on the back, and leads him back out into the gaming den.
Quinlan is waiting for them, grinning as he pockets a wad of credits.
"Good haul?" Krayt asks.
"Yeah," Quinlan says. "Some people here can't game for a nerf's turd."
"They aren't Jedi," Krayt grins, good-naturedly. "Your man Ezhno here brought down the power of half the Temple sector."
Ezhno blinks up at him. Did he just say…?
Quinlan seems to be of similar thought. "What?" he says, lips pulled back from his teeth in disbelief.
Krayt frowns at both their horrified faces. "Oh, yeah, it was the Temple sector. I hadn't managed it before, but with Ezhno's help that worked quite well."
Ezhno stares at Quinlan. Temple policy dictates a count of all its inhabitants in the event of a blackout.
Quinlan's hand suddenly moves towards his belt. The comm hooked there is blinking.
"'Ow's that workin' down 'ere?" Ezhno says, slowly.
"Sithspit," Quinlan begins, staring at it. "Sithspit, sithspit!" He opens his mouth wider with each repetition, biting out the syllables.
For a moment, it is as if Quinlan has shrunk.
And then he straightens, grabs Ezhno's arm, and drags him out of there.
"Wha-?" Ezhno's surprised squawk does not slow Quinlan's pace in the slightest.
Quinlan turns his head to respond, the barest flick of his chin over his shoulder, only enough for Ezhno to read "Master Tholme, rerouted tracker," before they are running again.
They reach the turbolift without being stopped, and Quinlan has the gate shut and is jabbing the topmost button before Ezhno can even open his mouth.
The turbolift gives an aged shudder as it begins to rise…
And then the boys are thrown to the floor as it drops like a stone.
It takes a moment for Ezhno to realize what has happened, and quite a few more once he has fought to his feet to understand the gravity of it, pun or not.
They are falling.
Deeper.
"We're gunna die," Ezhno says, to nobody in particular, as the rattle of strained durasteel reveberates up his wrists.
Quinlan throws back his hood, stares at his feet, and clenches his fists.
Ezhno watches him snarl, and then–
The lift shudders to a stop in a terrible wrenching of metal.
Words fly across the cracked holoscreen at the top of the turbolift doorway:
Our apologies. This turbolift is out of service. Please exit and find another. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
The door slides open to pitch darkness.
Kiffar and Togruta stare out at it, neither moving a muscle.
Quinlan edges over to the level display, blinks at it, and then scrambles back over to Ezhno. His eyes are very wide.
"Level 35," he mouths.
Ezhno has never lip-read anything more terrifying in his life.
Strangely enough, the air filtering into the turbolift is breathable – not ideal, but breathable.
Ezhno stands and grasps Quinlan's shoulder.
"We gotta go find 'nother turbolift," he says, trying to hide how much his hand is shaking.
Quinlan's shoulder doesn't seem all that steady, either. He moves as if to grasp his lightsaber, and then seems to think better of it. Instead, he detaches a small hand-light from his equipment belt.
They step out, carefully.
The turbolift doors close behind them, and – impossibly – the lift begins to rise.
Without them.
"You've gotta be kiddin' me," Ezhno whispers. But there is no choice left to them, now.
Each with a hand grasping the other's sleeve, they move into the darkness.
It is soon apparent that there is no discernable layout to this level; there are passageways, open spaces, unidentifiable debris under their feet, but there are no lights, no living things, and nothing save for the stray drip of water that hits their heads.
It is a maze. And they are lost.
For the fifth time in as many minutes, Ezhno feels panic rear up within him.
Quinlan is the one holding the hand-light; and he has the benefit of sound, while Ezhno does not.
Ezhno is suddenly struck with how horrifying it would be if he were both blind and deaf.
But he forces it out of his mind, and focuses on the limpid pool of lamplight.
The light flickers over something grey-white just ahead, that disappears just as quickly.
Quinlan stops abruptly. His fingers tighten in Ezhno's sleeve.
Ezhno wishes he could say something – but what can he do, when he cannot judge the volume of his own voice, or read Quinlan's reply in as little light as this?
And then Quinlan turns his head and stares behind Ezhno, and opens his mouth in a silent scream. He jerks Ezhno forward.
Something brushes past Ezhno's back, like cold, questing fingers. That same moment, Ezhno becomes aware of a smell – a sweet, sickly scent, like rotting flesh.
Ezhno finds his feet.
They run.
The ground below them comes alive with the pulsing vibrations of dozens of syncopated footfalls, and duller, muted tones. Too many for two boys.
Quinlan drops the handlight and grabs his lightsaber, activating it.
The world around them is suddenly lit in green.
And so are the creatures around them.
Ezhno screams a scream so loud he fancies, for a mad, mad moment, that he can hear it.
Rotting flesh, matted hair, hollowed eye-sockets covered over with tough, pale skin, webbed hands tipped with long nails that cast longer shadows; joints that move paradoxically, stop-motion movements in the writhing shadows cast by the solid green of Quinlan's lightsaber.
Ezhno does not know how his legs keep moving; but they do.
And as he follows Quinlan, chasing not his friend but the lightsaber that is the only point of light in this hell, he remembers a horror story the students of the ZAAGC used to tell, in the dead of night, huddled together under one flickering penlight in the dormitories.
"There are monsters under Coruscant," one of them had said, to the horrified delight of his assembled classmates. "Ossified creatures that once were humans, abandoned there for their crimes. They have no eyes, because the radiation has burnt it away; no tongues, because they drink the filth of generations above. They hunt and eat their prey alive. They are called-"
Cthon.
A white, four-limbed creature drops down in front of them, opening an impossibly large maw that flips itself inside-out, flattening purple gums that bare teeth dripping crimson.
Quinlan hesitates for the merest second, then rushes towards it.
Ezhno forgets to scream. He is beyond that now.
The Cthon snaps its jaws shut a hand-span from Ezhno's nose as Quinlan brandishes his lightsaber and cleaves it in two.
Quinlan's face is visible for the shortest instant, white-eyed, filth-streaked, terrified tears streaming down his golden tattoos as he yells for Ezhno to keep running.
Ezhno obeys. He might be sobbing, now, but he obeys.
Far off in the distance, a point of violet light blossoms into being, with an emerald one beside it.
Quinlan pivots so sharply that Ezhno almost slams into him, and the next moment they are tearing towards the lights, adrenalin lending their terrified feet speed.
A grey-clawed hand reaches over Ezhno's shoulder, and for a slow, slow moment, he glimpses vessels pulse in its skin.
And then it clamps down on his shoulder, and digs sharp-pointed claws into his flesh.
Ezhno finds, in the heartbeat that this happens, that there is a logical solution to this. It is what Obi-Wan might have done.
He turns his head, draws his lips back over the sharp, hunter's canines gifted to him by his ancestry, and tears into the Cthon's hand.
He tastes–
The Cthon releases his shoulder the same time he spits out a mouthful of something, gagging, running both blind and deaf now, with only Quinlan's hand around his wrist guiding him–
And then he is scooped up into a pair of arms, and Quinlan's hand slips off his wrist. Ezhno thrashes for a moment, shrieking, only to freeze in shock when he sees a very human pair of brown eyes, lit in violet light.
Mace Windu spares him a single burning look before hefting him over one shoulder and leaping into the air.
Ezhno notes, with some wonder, that Master Windu's lightsaber is purple.
They soar through the darkness, and land with earth-shattering force by a box lit from within–
No. Not a box. A turbolift.
Ezhno glimpses a brown Jedi cloak mixed with Quinlan's mussed dreadlocks slip in after them, and then the doors are slammed shut and the turbolift begins to move.
Everything falls still.
The brown cloak in the corner by the lift controls unfolds into a human Jedi master with an impressively scarred eye, and Quinlan tucked under his arm. The other is holding a green lightsaber, which he deactivates and hooks back onto his belt.
Quinlan and Ezhno stare at each other across the artificial white light of the battered turbolift; both crumpled on the filthy floor, held by a Jedi Master.
Ezhno becomes aware he is clutching Mace Windu's arm for dear life. He stares at his orange-skinned hands – grime-streaked, covered in a multitude of tiny cuts – and he cannot bring himself to loosen their grip. It is like they are welded to the Jedi Master's brown sleeve.
There is a warm hand on his shoulder, and he lifts wide eyes up to meet Master Windu's gaze.
Master Windu is saying something, over and over. The shapes to not make sense to Ezhno.
It takes a while, but eventually Ezhno realises the Jedi is saying, "You can let go, Ezhno. You can let go, now."
Mace Windu knows his name.
With this realisation comes the shaking.
The broad thumb pressed to Ezhno's shoulder begins to rub slow circles.
Ezhno unhooks one finger after the other, slowly, and then folds himself into Master Windu's clean tunics.
He is hugging the second-most senior Jedi in the Order.
It doesn't matter.
For a moment, the Jedi does not respond. And then wide cloak sleeves settle over Ezhno's shivering back, and a hand rests in the groove between his montrals.
Ezhno begins to cry.
The turbolift door opens into a back alley, but the air is sweet, and there is a sky.
Master Windu hefts Ezhno up onto his back, like a child, and two steps later, Ezhno is blinking at the wide boulevard that runs clean and bright all the way up the steps to the–
Senate building?
It is only after the Masters have bundled the boys into an airtaxi and they are on their way that Ezhno realises that they have travelled two districts over, simply by going down almost five thousand levels, and up again, like two bars thrust into a sphere; the tips at the centre almost meet, though the tips at the surface are far apart.
It is with this incredibly logical deduction that Ezhno falls asleep.
When Quinlan has also succumbed to exhaustion, Mace looks at Tholme, an unreadable expression on his face.
"Those two turbolifts couldn't have been more than a hundred metres apart, at that level," Tholme says.
"The one they used to travel down opens up right at the edge of the Temple Plaza."
"The one we came up in opens in front of the Senate building."
The two masters stare at each other, each lost in their own thoughts, but thinking, all the same, of an unorthodox path that links the Temple and the Senate, but is no more than a hundred metres in length.
But who would be so desperate to move quickly between the Senate district and the Temple that they would brave the horrors down below?
For the moment, there are the children, the healers, and a dressing-down that needs to be delivered, about hacking, and illegality, and the underlevels.
Anything else can wait.
I had to get this chapter of Silent Measures out first, because this lays groundwork for the next chapter of The Silent Song. Thanks for reading! Do leave a review if you like.
Next up: Huei's first days as Feemor's padawan. Also featuring our favourite jaunty Nautolan, Kit Fisto.
