I dreamed of the island.
These dreams always began with a long, patient climb up an ancient set of steps. My feet paused on the weathered rock as I bent to smooth my fingers over the grass, damp from a recent storm. The carpet of greenery hugged every rocky crevice of the island and I marveled at how readily life flourished in this place, even on bare stone.
I reached the clearing at the top of the island, where silvery clouds hung so low I thought I might reach up and tug them down. Nothing new ever happened after this point in the dream. I never saw how I arrived there, nor did I ever leave. I just simply existed, perpetually alone, until the island faded.
This dream was different.
As soon as I stepped into the clearing, I sensed the immortal presence of the living silence. It no longer frightened me like it had used to in the Graveyard, and I think I was slowly recognizing the entity for what it truly was. We regarded each other, both of us using eyes that did not physically exist, and then, after a moment, I tilted my head to the side.
The wind blew restless whispers against my ears, as if a hundred people were mumbling words at me in unison. Though the words were unclear, the message was not: I was running out of time, and would need to make a decision soon.
What decision? I wondered. Then something slammed into me with enough force to lift me clear off my feet. The edge of the clearing sailed past me as the momentum carried me impossibly far out over the open ocean, and then I plunged head first into waves as cold and dark as night.
–
My head shot forward the instant I woke, and the first thing I registered was a headache throbbing at the base of my skull. The second, and more daunting thing, was that I couldn't move.
I tried to pull my hands and legs out their restraints, but some sort of energy field built directly into the chair held them trapped. At that moment, I felt the barest whisper of pressure against the back of my head, as if a ghostly fingertip had trailed upward from the base of my skull.
My gaze snapped up. The dark being who had taken me captive in the woods of Takodana crouched before me on the floor.
"Where am I?"
He took his time in answering. "You are my guest."
"Where are the others?"
"Do you mean the murderers, traitors and thieves you call friends? You'll be relieved to hear I have no idea."
Infuriating. An agent of the First Order was the last person in the galaxy who could presume to judge my friends. If he wasn't such a coward to keep me trapped in this infernal chair, I'd smash his stupid helmet apart and then beat his head in with it.
The fingertip brushed lightly against my scalp again, and I realized he was using his powers to sense my emotions, taste my thoughts, without merging his mind fully with my own.
"You still want to kill me." He sounded thoughtful, almost... pleased by this, as if my anger satisfied him in some way.
"That's what happens when you're being hunted by a creature in a mask." My unspoken challenge to remove the helmet hung in the air.
And then the dark being legitimately shocked me: he did as I asked. His gloved hands reached up to depress some sort of latch on either side of his neck. The helmet began to come apart – gears whirring and metal parts clicking – and for a fleeting moment the mechanic in me itched to dismantle it and figure out exactly how it all worked.
But as soon as the black figure lifted the helmet off of his head and revealed a shock of black hair and scornful eyes, I knew he had done me no favors by complying with my request. He wasn't ancient, or twisted by evil, covered in scales, disfigured by corruption or even unattractive. He was human. He was young – perhaps only a few years older than me.
Worst of all, the look in his eyes sent fear shivering up my spine. Men had looked at me that way before on Jakku, when they wanted something from me and were considering trying to take it by force.
But never in my life had I been so afraid I would lose.
I dropped my gaze to an unfixed spot on the floor, breathing unsteadily.
He walked closer and pressed the helmet onto a pedestal. The impact reverberated like far more than a lump of metal should, and a silhouette of darkness flared around it.
"Tell me about the droid." His voice, though no longer amplified by his horrid helmet, was deep and calm.
I inhaled and started to ramble. "He's a BB unit with a selenium drive and a thermal..."
"He's carrying a section of a navigational chart," he interrupted, unimpressed with my tactic. "And we have the rest, recovered from the archives of the Empire, but we need the last piece, and somehow you convinced the droid to show it to you. You," he scoffed in disbelief. "A scavenger."
My hatred for him soared.
"You know I can take whatever I want." His mental touch returned, cold fingers cupping the back of my head, and again I felt his smug satisfaction at sensing my hate – and my fear.
'Do what you want, but you aren't getting the map,' I challenged wordlessly, knowing he could hear my thoughts.
'Surely you don't believe that,' he replied in my head.
Then he reached out his gloved hand and I knew what was coming next.
Intense pressure crushed my skull from all sides as he effortlessly merged his mind with my own. From the back of my head, his mental presence casually rifled through my recent memories, taunting me with controlled sweeps of dark power.
I focused like I had before in the forest, backing up from the memories to keep a safe distance. It was easier to stay detached this time, and I discovered I could navigate around my head more freely now that I'd had practice. The trick was to imagine flying instead of running.
All the components of my existence glittered around me like a strange spectrum of stars. And behind me... I twisted and for the first time I could see the being's manifestation lurking in the shadows, like a black, malevolent sandstorm on the horizon. He continued to hunt through my memories, and I realized that though he had found it before, the specific location of the starmap's memory eluded him now – like knowing of something that had happened in a book, but not remembering the exact page where it occurred.
I edged closer to memories of BB-8 and the others aboard the Falcon, prepared to guard them with my life. His focus snapped toward me as he caught me moving, and I quickly thought of a distraction to buy some time.
'I don't even know your name,' I thought to him.
'I am Kylo Ren,' he offered calmly while he returned to picking apart the memory where I had last spoken to BB-8 in the forest. 'Master of the Knights of Ren, a commander of the First Order and Apprentice to the Supreme Leader. And you?'
I foolishly said nothing, and without warning he plunged straight into the memories where I had recently introduced myself to Finn on board the Millennium Falcon.
"I'm Finn," I saw my friend say to me. Kylo Ren, for some reason, scoffed at the name. Then I watched myself reply: "I'm Rey."
'Rey... No surname, Rey?' he inquired lightly.
I ground my teeth, livid at his constant insults about my heritage and lifestyle as a scavenger on Jakku. I instinctively reached out in my head for a memory of pain – the searing pain of hot oil on bare skin – and before I knew exactly what I was doing nor how I was doing it, I had formed it into a crude, crackling ball of energy and shot it at the shadows where he lurked in the back of my mind.
It burst and zapped Kylo Ren upon impact. A shockwave of pressure rippled around the inside of my head and I sensed his astonishment that I had discovered a way to fight back.
I immediately swept my arms out to gather more memories – the sting of sand in my eyes, my parched and aching throat, shame at being cheated out of rations, of broken bones, sunburns, starvation, desperation, loneliness – memories I had in abundance now that I knew how to use them.
My elation was short lived when I was hit between the eyes, hard, by a blast of raw pain. I sprawled backwards in my mind, losing control of my balance like I was tumbling through space. Kylo Ren had bypassed slinging mere memories of pain and tapped straight into its source.
Two more blows hit the side of my head and pain radiated sharply from a spot inside my skull. I retreated, searching for a place to hide, or anything I could use as a weapon. Before I could defend myself, Ren shot forward to scoop up the memories I had gathered as ammunition – memories of the worst moments of my life – and with devastating proficiency he flung them straight at me. They shattered against my face and I inhaled the memories like shards of glass.
No one to take care of me, a burden to those I went scavenging with, fingers raw and bleeding from scrubbing grease off of metal, always thirsty, never full, no one my age, no one who cared, too frightened to leave, ashamed that it was easier to stay...
"Aw, you're so lonely. So afraid to leave." I jerked in surprise as the sound of his voice broke through the pain. "At night, desperate to sleep. You imagine an ocean. I see it," he crooned. "I see the island."
My sanctuary. I escaped the only way I knew how: seizing the memory of the starmap and fleeing downward, seeking out the safety of the island from my dreams. It materialized almost immediately and I landed in the clearing, breathing heavily in both my lungs and my mind. I desperately wished Finn, Chewie and Han were there with me. I heard Ren scoff in my head.
"And Han Solo," he continued out loud. "You feel like he's the father you never had. He would have disappointed you."
His thrashing, black manifestation surrounded the island, dimming the clouds overhead to twilight as they bloomed with lightning. A brash gust of wind whipped the black ocean waves below into a frenzy and nearly tore the memory out of my grasp. Dark energy coalesced around Kylo Ren as he prepared a final blow to demolish my hiding spot.
I loathed myself at that moment for being defenseless – for not knowing how to fight back. I knew this enemy would unremorsefully tear me to shreds before using the map to track down and kill Luke Skywalker. I couldn't let that happen. I had to defend the map.
"Get out of my head!" I hissed through clenched teeth, gripping the memory of the starmap so tightly my fingers and head throbbed in unison.
Kyle Ren lashed out – then, out of nowhere, a brilliant shield of light emerged around the entire island a split second before his blow struck. It cracked and sparked against the shield and the pressure in my head squeezed so hard I went blind. The ground trembled beneath me, but my vision returned and I realized the shield held my island together in one piece.
Ren abruptly retreated, first moving away from the island and then drawing out of my mind completely. I sensed his physical presence leave my side, and the stark walls of the cell refocused in front of me. It seemed as if ages had passed while I fought him inside my head.
But something else was in the room now, too – that familiar, strange intensity of being watched. As soon as I recognized it, the living silence did something it had never done before: it pushed gently but insistently against my mind. It wanted something.
I closed my eyes to concentrate. The interrogation chamber fell away and I was once more standing on my island, shielded high above the waters of the ocean. The living silence was already there, waiting and expectant. What did it want?
For a moment I stood in silent confusion. A breeze from the receding storms toyed with my unbound wisps of hair. Then Maz Kanata's words came back to me: Close your eyes. Feel it... the light. It has always been there...
I closed my eyes a second time, my mental vision of the island going dim. Though I was left in utter blackness, the whispered urgings of the living silence became clear. I breathed deeply and nodded my head in assent...
And then something inside of me not only awoke, it erupted from an abyss inside of my very soul. The living silence, the Force, enveloped me like rays of the sun, warming my skin from inside and out. Light danced in rivulets across my vision, drawing lines and ancient symbols that illuminated the darkness surrounding me. How had I ignored this my entire life? Why had I let this power slumber for so long?
I imagined reaching my hand toward the light, and in response it converged around my fingertips and hummed through my veins. It waited only for me to give it purpose.
"I know you've seen the map."
I heard Kylo Ren's voice from a great distance as I marveled at my new source of power. I opened my eyes to see Ren, now standing in front of me, engulfed in a pillar of shadows – dark energy that I could now perceive with the use of the Force.
"It's in there," he said, though his voice had a tremor of uncertainty. "And now you'll give it to me."
I leaned forward in the chair, summoning energy from my abyss of light and pulling it into existence in the very air around me.
'We'll see.'
His lip curled at my brashness and he extended his hand toward me, calling forth corrupted energy of his own. My new powers allowed me to interpret his own use of the Force in a way I could visualize and understand. Shadows raced across the contours of his arm and leapt into the air, straight toward my face. I pressed my light into a barrier in front of me, but his consciousness crashed against mine with such intensity that my ears rang and I tumbled backward in my own head. A low pitched rumbling, like a choir of guttural groans, reverberated around my mind. I was hit by a powerful swell of emotions – aggression, fear, and seething, uncontrollable anger.
"Don't be afraid. I feel it too," Ren breathed.
I visualized pushing the emotions away from me, wiping them from my mind like grease from my palm, and they receded as quickly as they had come.
'The Force surrounds you,' he whispered to me mentally, the words tickling my ears from the inside, 'but you use it like a child. Give me the map, and I will make you its master.'
"I'm not giving you... anything," I said, shaking and burning with energy.
"We'll see," he replied evenly, eyes gleaming in anticipation.
Ren flexed his hand, but I blinked and saw a strange, flickering version of his form stick his left hand out to the side. A lightless aura emanated from his entire body as he called to the dark side of the Force. Particles of black energy emerged from nowhere and chaotically surged toward his hand, creating an outline of his lightsaber. It flashed in and out of sight – not truly manifested in the physical world, but a deadly concentration of energy all the same.
A rivulet of sweat threaded down my temple and I took a heavy breath. The odds of the battle were clear: if I didn't have a weapon, I would lose. Fortunately, Ren had just shown me how to create one.
I used the Force, for there was no simpler way to describe it, to summon shining white energy toward my own hand. It flowed in even, symmetrical lines – a marked difference from the turbulent movements of dark Force energy – and formed into a replica of my quarterstaff from Jakku.
I met Ren's unyielding gaze and grinned. This put us on even ground.
I launched the energy of the Force toward him, imagining it in my head as I would plan my movements while battling with my staff. I struck furiously, putting as much mental weight as possible behind the blow. Light beamed toward Ren, but he intercepted it with a shaft of shadowy energy from his forged lightsaber. The opposing forces collided, melting together until they nullified each other and vanished.
I pulled more of the Force into the air around me and lashed out relentlessly, mentally hurling several blinding blasts of power toward him. Though he matched them like before, repelling my attack took his full concentration. I pressed the advantage and flung a blow at his head, shaping the angle of impact like it was the tip of my staff. At the last moment he repulsed my attack with a blast of pure Force energy.
The air shimmered like a heatwave in the open desert. Through the haze I saw him thrust forward with the lightsaber of dark Force energy. Instinct drove me to raise my own mental staff and focus every ounce of my being into blocking the attack. Kylo Ren's outstretched hand shook and strained as he pushed several more vicious waves of power at me, seemingly attacking from all directions at once.
I imagined how I had intuitively piloted the Falcon during the escape from Jakku and let those same motions guide me now. I slashed and blocked with bursts of Force energy, controlling the flow of battle and steadily beating down every defense he offered with his own power. I grit my teeth in determination, pushing forward against the restraints of the chair. Though his face betrayed no distress, I sensed Ren's bewilderment at my strength as he fought to regain the upper hand. Our physical bodies shook under the strain of the mental battle, while in our minds we tirelessly shaped and expelled energy with lightning quick impulses of will and instinct.
Then his form flickered again, and he shifted his mental weight to draw power into his arms for a devastating burst of Force energy. However, the movement drew him off balance and he struggled against the air as if pushing through quicksand.
Moving faster than I thought possible, I imagined shifting my grip on my own Force staff and slammed a hammer of energy directly into his jaw. His head flickered, one version absorbing the blow, while the alternate form's head snapped back with almost supernatural force.
The room around me blurred and streamed past my vision like I'd entered lightspeed. A split second later, I no longer existed in the interrogation room, bound by gravity and the chair's restraints. I was in his head.
While my own mindscape reminded me of a glittering ocean of stars, Kylo Ren's was a turbulent, molten storm. I floated in the center of a perfect sphere of chaos, while all around me his memories and thoughts twisted together like serpentine currents of oil.
Kylo Ren's dark form flickered into existence in front of me, rage seething on his face. I realized I couldn't waste the advantage I had just earned in our strange mental duel and spun to face the outside of the sphere. I plunged my hands into the currents of memories and ruthlessly ransacked his mind.
Flashes of past events flooded my vision – a burning village at night time, chasing me through the forest of Takodana, hurtling toward a planet with an enormous construction on the surface.
Then I sensed Ren's presence flying toward me, intent on throwing me out of his head for good. At the last moment I spun and shot a blast of energy toward his eyes. The blow threw him off course and he crashed into the sphere right next to me, but I felt his grip clench on my forearm (though from far away eyes I saw that he wasn't even touching me) and for an infinite second we wobbled on the precipice of the sphere's edge together before falling... not down, but deeper into his mind.
For I moment I surrendered to the sensation of tumbling through space. We broke through memories as we fell, and they ruptured into ephemeral, wailing screams. My soul filled with the emotions that fueled his existence – pride, shame, hatred – and I felt a second heartbeat in my chest that was out of rhythm with my own.
Ren shoved me violently, trying to propel me out of his mind, but I pushed back with my own Force energy and used it to slow my descent while gathering it around me like a shield.
I needed a memory to use against him to end this encounter on my terms, before he stole back into my mind and took the map to Luke Skywalker. I wasn't even entirely sure what I was looking for until I fell into it: a dark memory, more brittle than the rest, of a melted and misshapen mask laying atop a pillar. Kylo Ren spoke desperately in the memory, and though the words were muffled, his emotions engulfed my mind and heart. Fear. Fear of being too weak, too soft, fear of ridicule... fear of failure.
My mind strained against simultaneously holding together the Force shield while remembering how to form words.
"You..." I hissed out loud, low and vicious. I felt Ren jerk in surprise, and our vision jointly swarmed with images of his memory, to where we struggled and grappled inside his head, to the physical world of the interrogation cell.
"You're afraid... that you will never be as strong as Darth Vader."
Then I clenched every muscle in my body, concentrated with every part of my mind, ignited all of the otherworldly power I now knew I possessed – and walloped Kylo Ren square in the face so hard that shockwaves rattled the entire room.
He stumbled away from me, both mentally and physically, and I was jolted out of his mind and firmly back into my own. We both gasped for breath as Ren's fear and astonishment swirled in the air between us, and I could sense his thoughts though I knew I was not supposed to hear them: 'Who are you?'
He summoned his helmet to his hand and stormed out of the interrogation room, leaving dark ripples of energy in his wake.
I managed to control my breathing and my pulse eventually slowed. For a proud, quiet moment I relished in my victory. I knew, however, that this was only the beginning of my battle with Kylo Ren.