In the previous chapter: Rey and Ren work together to escape a massive storm on the planet of Gryl. Afterwards, Ren pushes for Rey's help in exploring the Force, telling her about an ancient theory called Potentium. Like before, Rey brushes him off, but it's clear her resolve is wavering.

Chapter 6

Nobody ever told General Organa 'no.'

So when she ordered everyone in the meeting chamber to leave, they all filed out without protest. When Luke started explaining where I'd been, she gave him a look and he fell silent. And when she asked me bluntly, "Have you seen my son?" the only answer I could give was "yes."

She briefly closed her eyes, hiding a stab of intense pain. "Did he hurt you?" Her voice was steady. I wondered how many times she'd had to ask that question.

"Not… exactly," I said, thinking of Ren's threats and the way he'd put his hands on me through the Force, knowing he wouldn't have had a chance to in reality. Better to leave all of that unspoken. "I went to Gryl to recruit a Force user. After Tehanne, I wanted to… It doesn't matter. Kylo Ren was there, and he told me he wanted my help exploring the Force. He talked about an ancient theory called Potentium."

"Kylo Ren is interested in Potentium?" Luke asked, startled. He shook his head. "That boy is taking a tragic path through the Force."

Leia's sharp gaze flicked to Luke. "Tell me about this theory."

"Potentium abolishes the light and dark sides of the Force. It claims the Force is inherently good, and only a person with evil intentions can corrupt its nature. But it's a misguided and naive notion. It's dangerous to use the Force emotionally, as the Sith do. It draws its followers straight to the dark side."

"Ren claimed he and Snoke were not Sith," I said. "I don't know if it's true, but I think he seeks… an alternative to what he's learned from Snoke."

Luke's eyebrows bunched together, a hard look in his eyes. "He is looking for an excuse, nothing more."

Or redemption, I thought privately.

Leia leaned forward in her chair, giving me her full attention. "Do you think he might abandon Snoke and the Order?"

I considered my words carefully. "He didn't say anything about it, though he claimed he still feels the light side of the Force. That's what interests him about Potentium. He wants to combine the powers of the light and dark side together."

"He wants to grow stronger so he can corrupt or kill anyone that stands in his way. That includes you, Rey," Luke warned.

Leia looked at me thoughtfully. "Forgive me for making assumptions, but it sounds like Rey is the only person in the entire Resistance that my son doesn't want to kill."

Luke stared at her, appalled at the direction her thoughts were headed. "Rey is still in training and vulnerable to the dark side. One slip and she could become our enemy. Or Kylo Ren could change his mind at any moment and we could lose her to the Order. Is that risk worth the chance of seeing your son again?"

"Rey has a stronger moral compass than you give her credit for." Leia was still looking at me, measuring me by some invisible yardstick. Neither Han nor Luke had been able to stop Ben Solo from falling into the darkness. Why did she think I had the strength to drag him back?

Luke argued long and hard against Leia's plan, but at a certain point he stopped fighting with his sister and began to fight with a General.

Leia finally had enough. "The Order becomes stronger, richer, and meaner with every day that passes, while the Resistance is run by whoever decides to show up and care. I'd take just one of our soldiers over a transport full of Stormtroopers, but courage and spirit alone can't fly starfighters. Bravery and honor won't fire blasters. My job as a general is to protect our resources, and our troops are at the very top of that list. If I sent a hundred soldiers after Kylo Ren, I'm not sure any of them would survive."

She tilted her head toward me. "Or I could send one person, and hope that two come back."

"How is Rey supposed to do that if she never sees him?" Luke demanded.

I flinched, knowing this conversation was about to get much worse. As soon as I finished explaining the Force connection I had with Ren, Luke covered his face and sat in horrified silence.

"You can't put Rey in this kind of danger!" he whispered harshly. "It's selfish, Leia!"

Leia shot to her feet and slammed her hands against the table. "You were selfish for years! The entire time you were in hiding, I was trying to stop a war!"

I wished I could shrink back and vanish into the wall behind me. I felt like I was eavesdropping even though I sat in plain sight.

Leia dropped back into her seat, as if the outburst had sucked away all her energy. "I was ready to retire from politics. Spend more time with Han and Ben. Then Ben was gone, you vanished, and the threat of the Order grew too dangerous, too fast. I had to stay and fight. Now I've lost both my husband and son to the First Order. I've lost other people's children, too. I'm not proud of that."

Her gaze refocused on Luke, lit once more by an inner fire that would never be doused, because that's just the type of person General Organa was.

"I have a chance to bring him back, Luke. I can't ignore that. I won't. No mother in her right mind would deny the chance to protect her son."

"You are a mother to one person, but a general to thousands. They all deserve an equal chance."

A faint smile emerged on her lips. "That's what a Jedi should say, and why Jedi weren't permitted to have families. They have a way of blinding you."

The room was silent for a long moment.

"It's a bad idea," Luke muttered. "It's a bad, terrible, dangerous idea."

"I appreciate your council, Luke, you know that. But we might be the worst two people in the Resistance to make a decision concerning Ben. I'm leaving the choice up to Rey."

She turned to me, her expression full of hopeful uncertainty. "Will you do it? Will you try to turn Ben away from Snoke?"

My heart clawed its way up into my throat as I looked between Leia's earnest stare and Luke's thunderous scowl. I was already too curious about Potentium for my own good. Consenting to research its power with Kylo Ren would have consequences.

"This would not be a full-time assignment," Leia explained, sensing my hesitation. "You are still expected to serve the Resistance and continue your Jedi training with Luke. Just help Ben see that the Order isn't the only choice he has left. But absolutely no one can know what you're doing. For your safety and his."

I knew, at that moment, that I had a way out of this. I could tell them how Ren had almost kissed me, even if it had only been a fantasy conjured through the Force. I could expose my darkest shame: the dreadful exhilaration I'd felt while his lips hovered over mine. Leia would realize what was truly at stake. She'd never ask me to go near him again.

The words surged up my throat, but I swallowed them back down into the depths of my being, where they bled and stained my soul.

Scavengers didn't survive by confessing their secrets.

Leia was still speaking: "You're the best person the Resistance has for this mission. Truthfully, there's no one else I'd consider asking. But I'm not ordering you to do this as a General. I am asking you as a mother. Please find the light in him. Bring him home."

My throat was dry, like I'd swallowed a mouthful of sand. After all, no one said 'no' to Leia Organa.

–

–

–

The next evening, sitting in the quiet mountain clearing outside of the base, I realized I had a very strange problem. The previous two times I'd talked to Ren through the Force over a great distance, he had been the one that sought me out. Now I had to go find him, and I didn't know how.

I closed my eyes, sinking into my mindscape of glittering stars in a nighttime sky. The answer lay here, inside my head. There was something I simply wasn't seeing because I didn't know to look for it. I gently rifled through memories where I'd spoken with him through the Force, seeking some hint as to how he'd found me.

I thought of our very first fight in the Starkiller interrogation cell, when I'd ended up inside his head, and something flashed out of the corner of my vision. I instinctively turned my head to the side, though the mental scene painted on the backs of my eyelids did not move with it. I thought back to the previous times I had battled Ren in my head, and readjusted to the notion of moving around mentally.

I saw the flash again, and managed to turn my vision fast enough to catch sight of a golden thread of light. It led away from me, outward, toward some sort of infinite space between the reaches of my mind and the physical shell of my skull.

It occurred to me that if I imagined my mindscape as just one piece inside an infinite galaxy, it meant Ren's mind existed here, too. I had to figure out a way to travel through the Force web and find him.

I followed the golden path through my mindscape, but the thread appeared to be endless. Or worse, I wasn't actually moving. I couldn't tell which. I twisted the golden thread through incorporeal fingers and gently pulled on it. The thread grew taught and moved toward me, but I had the sense it was unraveling from an infinite spool, and I was still no closer to reaching Ren. He was thousands of parsecs away from me, on the opposite side of the galaxy. How could I cross such a vast distance, even if it was through the Force?

I hung in space for a moment, thinking through my options. Ren had done this before. It wasn't impossible.

Then an idea came to me. On Gryl, he had manipulated the Force web in a way I'd never seen before. He'd moved it in a direction that didn't fully make sense, sort of down and inward at the same time. It was like pulling a tablecloth down through a hole drilled in the center of the table.

I wasn't quite skilled enough to yank it like he had, but perhaps I could use something heavy to help me. I reached out into the Force web with calm, clear intentions, ushered energy toward me and then formed it into a dense sphere. The stars around me shivered the slightest bit.

I kept compressing more energy down into the sphere. As its density increased, the Force web started to bend around it. The stars were trembling now, and some of them started drifting toward the sphere as its strange gravitational influence became stronger.

But I still needed more power to make this work, and though I knew it was a shortcut, and not what a Jedi should do, I succumbed to a flash of anger and scraped energy toward me. I squeezed it all into my sphere, then reared back and threw it at my feet as hard as I could.

It flew inward and down simultaneously, and several things happened, and they happened fast.

The Force web vibrated and shot toward me from all directions at once, caught in the gravity of my energy sphere as it hurtled down into my mindscape. Stars blurred as they streaked past my mental vision and were swallowed inside the enormous well of energy growing at my feet.

Power streamed against my mind like a strong current in a river, and I plunged my hands into it and then launched myself through the Force web faster than I'd ever moved before. It was like travelling at lightspeed inside my own head. Fortunately, I was a damn good pilot.

I left the confines of my mind, following the thread's golden light through this strange mental galaxy, and passed stars of other minds and consciousnesses as I flew.

A red spark flickered ahead in the darkness. As I moved closer, it ballooned into a molten star made of magma and shimmering heat. I knew it was him.

'Ren.'

I felt a jerk of surprise from a mind that was not my own.

'Rey?' His tone held no animosity and my heart made an unexpected tremor in my chest. Anger and suspicion swept through the bond moments later. 'I'm busy. What do you want?'

I didn't reply because I was having trouble slowing down. The mental galaxy continued to streak past me, leaving Ren's mind behind, and I strained to hold on to our mental connection. I braided energy into a cord that tethered our minds together across the Force web. I understood now why Ren had refused to cut his end of the bond when I asked him to. It was exhausting to create it in the first place.

'You're giving me a headache,' Ren warned. 'Drop the energy you don't need.'

What energy? Oh. Far away, I still had my sphere of Force power, which was now as dense and heavy as the core of a dying star. It had sunk so deep into my mind that it was almost out of reach. I tried to grab for it, but stabbing pain radiated from the center of my head and I gasped.

Ren groaned, apparently hit by the same spike of pain. 'Ugh, scavenger. Hasn't Luke taught you anything?'

Phantom hands reached into my mind and steadily lifted the sphere's mass up and outwards. The flood of power that came with it momentarily shocked me, and I was thrown out of my head, all the way back to my physical body sitting in the mountain clearing on Emmett II.

For a moment I thought I had lost the connection, but then Ren's presence flared in my head as he carefully transferred the sphere of Force power back to my control. I turned my gaze inward once more. The sphere was cold and smooth like glass. Its reflective surface mirrored the stars inside my head, except for a dark patch where Ren's black aura blotted them out.

'You need to release its energy,' he explained. 'But don't let it go all at once, or else it goes off like a bomb. Let it expand slowly.'

I spread my incorporeal hands apart and the sphere grew between them. Bits of power began to peel off, spreading and separating around me as if blown by a cosmic wind. Piece by piece, the energy dissipated back into the Force web. Half a minute later, it was gone.

'You have a lot to learn,' Ren sighed. 'Why are you here?'

'I want to talk.'

'I don't.'

'I want to talk about Potentium.'

That caught his attention. I sensed his focus deepen and turn inward, toward my end of the bond, and he waited.

'On Jakku, when I was younger, there was a time where I lived as a slave. Not to Unkar Plutt, but to another scavenger. His name was Krewzu. Every morning he'd haul me out to the Graveyard. He taught me most of what I know about scavenging, but I had to surrender everything I found. I once tried hiding a half-empty fuel cell from him. Krewzu found it and beat me til I bled. He told me I owned nothing except the air in my lungs and the shit in my bowels. After that, I feared him more than anything in the galaxy.

'Several months later, I found a body while scavenging. There was a metal blade stabbed up between its ribs. I wanted to use it to kill Krewzu. I'd never taken a life before, though, and I was terrified at the thought of attacking him. The only thing that scared me more than killing Krewzu was living as his property the rest of the life. That was the moment I understood that fear only controlled my life if I let it.'

'What happened to him?'

'Krewzu didn't find the blade till I'd put it through his heart. What I had once feared became the easiest thing I ever did.'

'Does Potentium frighten you?'

'No. The dark side frightens me, and I worry that Potentium is a path straight toward it. But I don't want to blindly follow the Jedi code for the rest of my life, either.'

My words were honest, but they were also what Ren needed to hear as proof I'd changed my mind about Potentium. I took a deep breath. There was no turning back after this.

'So I will help you, Kylo Ren. We can explore the theory of Potentium and see what's possible. You think the dark and light sides of the Force can be combined without repercussions, and I hope you're right. But I have conditions.'

Ren's energy stirred in my head, a churning mixture of excitement and satisfaction. 'And they are?'

'You claimed that with Potentium, good or evil cannot manifest in our use of the Force, but only in the intent of our actions. So wherever we go, whatever we do, our intentions will only be good. If you even hint at wanting to use the Force to cause corruption or pain or harm while in my presence, we are finished. We are done. I will draw my lightsaber and take your head off.'

'I accept,' he said after a grudging pause.

'I wasn't finished. I'm not leaving the Resistance, so don't ask me any questions about it or our plans, and I'll do the same for you and the Order. And while we're researching Potentium, we won't represent anyone but ourselves. So you can't wear your helmet.'

'Agreed,' he said again, though the word was hard and clipped and rattled in my head. 'And how shall we use our powers for good?' he asked, a mocking lilt to his voice.

'I have something in mind…'

–

–

–

"Why are we here again?" Ren grumbled two days later as he walked down the ramp of his ship. He looked out over the torched landscape that appeared to have never seen a lick of rain, despite the storm that had nearly taken our lives just days before.

"I made a promise," I replied, and with no further explanation started walking across the hard-packed sand to the village carved into the cliff.

The Grylix chattered in excitement at our arrival. Children intertwined with each other around my feet while the adults scampered up the stone walls of the cave to meet me at eye-level. Several of them held out small gifts in their prehensile tails: shining rocks, a desert flower, bright yarn twisted artfully around a twig. I tucked them into my vest pocket and chirped thanks in their own language, which made them all squeal in happiness.

A few Gryls had taken cautious interest in Ren and circled around his feet, but he just stood still and watched me.

A Gryl approached us, hobbling a bit on her injured leg. Her name was Mer, and she was the mother of the Force user I had recently recruited from the tribe. Her daughter, Ammen, had used the Force to break her fall and saved her life.

"How is Ammen?" Mer asked me.

"Making friends fast. She asked me to give you this." I took a geode from my pocket that Ammen had found in the caves of Emmett II.

Mer wrapped her tail tightly around the gift and bobbed her head up in down in silent thanks.

The tribe led us through several cramped corridors which burrowed deeper into the rock of the plateau. We entered a large audience chamber, the same one I had sat in a few days ago while asking the tribe to allow Ammen to join the Resistance. I remembered how my hands had trembled the entire time, both from nerves and from the lingering, phantom feeling of Ren's forehead pressed against my own.

The Grylix's leader waited for us, seated on a pillow. She was large for her race, nearly three feet tall, and decorated with bead necklaces, a cape of gleaming feathers and other gifts given to her by her tribe.

"Thank you for allowing Ammen to begin her Jedi training with the Resistance," I said to her. "We are here to help, as promised."

She bowed her head and her tongue flicked out the front of her mouth. 'I knew you would return, Rey of Jakku.' She then spoke a curiously worded phrase, one that I had never heard before and struggled to interpret, but my face lit up once I caught the meaning.

"What did she say to you?" Ren asked as the tribe swept us out of the room.

"Your soul is as bright as the sun, I think is what it translates to. The sun is a religious symbol to them. It was... a blessing, in a way."

"She's not the only one who sees light in you," Ren replied. I looked at him in surprise but he simply continued walking, careful not to step on the Gryls underfoot.

The tribe led us down a corridor that dead-ended in a pile of rocks and gravel. A few Gryls chirped in mournful sorrow at the sight.

"This leads to our Ramarode. Our temple," the Grylix's leader explained. "After the storm, the path was blocked. Can you clear it?"

I studied the stone rubble, then glanced over at Ren and translated the leader's request. "We need to use the Force to clear this cave-in."

"As long as we have good intentions," he said with a slight sneer.

I pushed a few waves of Force energy at the cave-in and sensed a jumbled mass of rocks in the corridor beyond us. It would take weeks to dig out by hand, which was why the Grylix hadn't even tried.

Power had already started coalescing around Ren, emerging as inky black cords twisting around his forearms. I crafted a sphere of Force power like I had a few days ago, when I'd contacted him through the Force for the first time. Ren glanced over, recognizing the technique.

"Don't take more than you can handle," he warned. "My head hurt for hours last time."

I didn't answer, focused on finding the right balance of mass that would pull the Force web toward me without losing control. I tested the sphere's weight in my head and then dropped it like a boulder into a pond. A wave of power rushed at me, but it wasn't overwhelming like before and I caught it all with ease. The energy materialized as symmetrical golden lines all around me. I would never grow tired of seeing my Force signature emerge out of thin air.

We mentally pressed forward against the rocks. We pushed and shoved and our separate masses of Force energy caused individual rocks to tremble and shift, but the pile of rubble didn't budge.

I exhaled and stepped back. How would I have done this as a scavenger?

"Let's try making a net," I suggested. Ren looked ready to scoff at my suggestion, but then I mentally snatched a scrap of dark energy from the air next to him and swiftly wove it into my more orderly Force signature. "See? Like this. They'll reinforce each other and apply pressure against the rocks more evenly."

He frowned, but this time it was in concentration. For a few minutes we worked in silence, combining the energy we had summoned separately into an intricately braided structure that hung in mid-air. When we were done, I had to admit it looked impressive: a shining, golden lattice interwoven with shadowy black cords.

"Last time we merged energy like this, I wound up inside your head. Why isn't that happening now?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Something we'll have to research as part of Potentium. We both have better control over our powers right now, I think. And we're not about to die. Ready?"

I nodded and we moved forward again, jointly pushing on the net of Force energy. It melded to the shape of the rocks in front of us, and as we pressed forward the entire corridor shivered from our efforts. The rocks grumbled and shifted a few inches. I pushed harder, placing my hands directly against the mass of power in front of me, and strained with muscles both physical and mental.

Beside me, Ren did the same, and the entire pile shifted forward inch by agonizing inch. After a minute, my arms burned and I desperately wanted to stop and catch my breath, but then Ren growled and gave the entire mass a hard shove. The rubble from the cave-in lurched forward a foot, and the extra momentum leant us more power.

We made steady progress after that, every slow step forward moving us closer to the end of the corridor. The rocks scratched against each other as they dislodged piece by piece. With a final heave, the rubble spilled out of the corridor, clearing its path completely.

Ren and I stepped into a large cavern that was shaped roughly like a dome. The ceiling had eroded away at the highest point. The hole let in enough natural sunlight to illuminate the space. The floor sloped down steeply until it was submerged under several feet of clear water. A brilliant shaft of sunlight illuminated a solitary rocky island in the center of the cavern.

The Grylix tribe crowded past us as they cheered and chittered in celebration. The noise echoed around the temple. Some of them dove straight into the water and swam out to the island. They laid down on the sun-warmed rock and appeared to settle in for a long, relaxing nap in the afternoon heat.

"I might adopt their religion if it means I can take naps all day," I said, though privately I thought their temple, the Ramarode, was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen.

I turned to see Ren's reaction, and was startled by the look of utter defeat in his eyes.

"Why are you upset?" I asked.

"I've started down a path I can't turn back from," he muttered, more to himself than me.

I caught his arm as he turned to leave the temple. "We both have."

I already knew that following Potentium outside the confines of the Jedi code would leave a permanent mark on the way I used the Force. Ren shrugged off my grip and left the temple. As I watched him go, I wondered what kind of mark he was going to leave on my soul.

.

.

.