Ky scratched at her scalp, one of the scabs catching under her fingernail like a flake of paint scraped from a peeling wall. Just one more small, flat, dead piece of her she inspected with indifferent eyes then flicked onto the floor. She raised her fingers to the same spot, now a tiny divot where the scab had been. Her head throbbed, and she was fevered and thirsty.
There was something new here, in this place Tajno had taken her. She sensed it in the hollow-eyed spectators that stared blankly at her from the deep folds of hoods that almost hid their faces. They parted like inky water before her and the guards that drug her through the corridors. Blank slates waiting for instruction and she was going to be just like them, in time.
Numbers. Numbers kept her sane, made sense, sort of, sometimes. She'd carried fifteen with her when they'd transported her from the ship and scratched it into the wall of her new cell. Fifteen lines marking a beginning for how many more, and... stars, where was the ending?
Tajno had gotten quite imaginative with sixteen by finding new uses for the probes inside her brain. He'd made her blind, scrambled the signals to the visual cortex, trying to trigger other senses, innate responses or hidden memories. Her hearing compensated, so acute she heard the molecules of air flowing into her lungs until he turned off their function too. She'd flopped about in the restraints and made those hideous gulping, strangled noises that fish make when too long out of water. Panic lay siege to all thought, taking her to the brink of blessed unconsciousness, then they'd turned her lungs on again.
It hurt to breathe, she gagged on oxygen, her diaphragm struggled with ragged gasps, stumbled into its natural rhythm before ceasing to function again. She had no gift to fight this. No way to navigate the alternating periods of breathing and suffocation. How long? How many hours?
Sweet Maker, please make it stop. And it did. Tajno spoke the divine words and bestowed the gift of everlasting breath like a God with a newborn child.
Still blind, she listened to them speak, this God and his doctor minion.
"When will she break?"
"Soon, my Lord. But, may I suggest you cease the oxygen deprivation. It could damage her beyond repair."
"I'll consider it. And the mapping of her mind?"
"We've found an anomaly at the synapse clusters. Ghosts of neural pathways that lie unused. An alternate form of thought perhaps or a way to access unused portions of her brain. We have yet to find the trigger. Are you sure that continued torture is the best course of action?"
"It broke the others to my will. It will do the same to her."
"As you wish, my Lord. Shall I return her sight now?"
"Not yet. Take her hearing as well and let her hang for a while longer. That may soften her resolve."
Unexpected needle pricks and electric shocks came at her from all directions. Blind and deaf she had no warning, no way to prepare. Minutes dissolved into hours and jangled nerves that perched on the edge of madness.
Sixteen finally over, finally done, sight and sound returned with blaring clarity that made her eyes water and her ears ring.
The cell and peace for a little while and now was seventeen. Prime.
The forcefield dropped. They'd come for her.
They strapped her to the chair and injected her with stimulants that made her insides quiver and her muscles jerk. Hour after hour, formulas and calculations flashed across the screen until they became nothing more than a white on black slideshow.
"Tell me how it works." Tajno prodded incessantly.
"I am telling you. I don't understand the numbers, I just know the end result. There has to be a purpose for the end result, some goal, some reason, and I can't pilot this fucking chair to get to them."
"Do you think me an idiot? You'd fly us into a black hole or a sun. Open the pathways, Ky. Look deep inside. There is no escape."
Tajno nodded to the doctor, and the pain began. The portal wouldn't open. Why wouldn't the fucking thing open? Love waited on the other side, and she needed the shelter of that love before this madman shattered her into a thousand pieces.
Day eighteen. Her menses should have started, but she didn't bleed. The drugs and chemicals perhaps or maybe she was too thin. She'd moved beyond hunger days ago and left the gruel untouched, her only source of nutrition administered through the IV needles inserted into her veins every day.
Eighteen. She wished now she'd eaten. They inserted a feeding tube through her nostril and down her throat. No lube, no kiss. Bastards!
Back in her cell she blew caked blood from her nose into her palm and wiped it on the wall. Her stomach growled and cramped, and she wanted to puke but couldn't. She wanted to die but couldn't.
Dressed now in a loose, sleeveless shift, given to her when her underwear no longer fit, she lay on the mattress curled into a ball of misery. Her bones ached and felt as brittle as twigs waiting to be snapped into kindling. Too exhausted to sleep, she lay awake, staring at the lines scratched into the wall and tried to recall anything beyond the pain. Hope was already dead.
Nineteen. Something different today. New questions about Scourge and the Jedi he traveled with. Something new out on the rim, something about father. Time was paramount, he needed her to break, and soon.
Strapped to the chair, new drugs injected, something alive and vile squirmed through her veins. Chanting from all those hollow hooded creatures that now stood like black unlit candles around the room. Bright amulet, scarlet, and gold held before her eyes. It opened like a blossom, a hand reached out and touched her forehead, light as a lover's promise. She was no longer alone.
A dark specter with a hungry maw that would devour all she was chased her through the pathways of her mind. NO! You fucker, no! Synapse fired like angry stars. She jumped the gaps and ran, spurred on by her gift, instant calculations, directions for thought. She knew where to go.
Breath on her neck, claws at her back, teeth poised to close and hold. She saw the portal and leaped, tumbling through and into Corso's arms. Skavak folded around her back, and she was held in the center. She was home, and nothing could reach her now.
The portal closed with a resounding click, a deadbolt slid into place. A roar came from the other side, it raged and howled and railed against the door. She melted into Corso's kiss, dissolved into Skavak's hands on her shoulders, his lips along her neck. Her men would keep her safe and warm, and Tajno would never touch her again.
#
"Damn her! Get her back," Tajno growled at the doctor.
"I told you it was too soon for the amulet, my lord. She wasn't sufficiently broken yet. If you'd waited another week or so."
"Tear her mind apart if you have to, we can reconstruct it later, just find her or you will be the next on the table, and I doubt you will last as long as she has."
Tajno stormed away to stop in front of the stasis tank holding the shell of his only son. His poor force-blind son whom he'd hollowed out over the twelve short years of the boy's existence. Nothing remained of the child's personality or the man he might have become. He was only a cell donor now, a genetic match that kept Tajno alive and a future vessel for Tajno once his own body failed. The thought of occupying a stranger was repulsive.
He'd euthanized the mother soon after she'd spit the mewling infant from her womb. Stupid cow, though she was the only one who'd carried a child to full term despite his countless dalliances with a number of women. Father's favor always came with a price, and he would never sire another child, now being infertile as well as impotent. He tapped on the glass. Ah well, he only needed one for now, force-blind or not. He'd father many more children once the transfer was complete. The supply of vessels would be endless.
Tajno left the med lab and went to his inner sanctum where he stripped off his robes and knelt on the rug to meditate. Every joint and muscle ached from the degenerative muscular atrophy that ravaged his body.
The darkness settled around him like a cloak. It gave him clarity of thought and manipulated his twisted muscles, stretching and strengthening them although the effect never lasted. Stem cells harvested from his son provided the real foundation for his survival, but his body still crumbled day by day under the merciless assault of his disease.
The woman was the key, not only as his way to get to Scourge and his Jedi whore but also the secret of how his father sought to create force sensitives from the force-blind. He needed the woman to turn her extraordinary gift inward, navigate that glorious mind through her memory and her own cells down to the molecular level. Despite his many years of research and countless lives he'd snuffed out along the way, there was always something missing.
Some part of a ritual, a bending of the force, an alchemical agent that had eluded his father to the point of abandoning Project Creation. But he wouldn't abandon it so easily. No. He'd see it through, create his invincible army and see father's corpse at his feet when he took the emperor's throne. Oh yes. He would change the stars.
The darkness pulsed around and through him with exquisite pain. He fell into the agony and sighed with pleasure.
#
Time was infinite and finite in her sanctuary, and Ky hadn't scratched one single line in anything to track the passing days. This would last as long as her body was alive and at some point, simply stop. Evil hammered at the walls and pried on the door, but it would hold, she would hold.
They strolled the beach, hand in hand, Corso on one side, Skavak on the other. Always together, lounging on sun-heated rocks, or sprawling on a blanket beneath waving palms. Long showers, moonlight swims, citrus and melon juice licked from lips and chins at breakfast. Making love, gentle or frenzied, sweet or rough, she to them and them to her. If this was delusion or insanity, she hoped she'd never be sane again.
Ky stood on the balcony, looking across the expanse of sand to the sea. The hem of the Cyrene silk robe fluttered across the planks under her feet exposing her legs to the warmth of the sun. Corso's shoulder was firm against her cheek, and Skavak's arm coiled around her waist.
They were the pillars, she was the center, and she would hold. No more pain or worry or struggle. Corso tugged the end of the sash; the robe billowed and fell to the floor. She turned and guided them toward the bed. So much to explore and all the time in the world. She'd never been happier or more at peace.