He can't sleep—
They won't let him sleep—
Every time he starts nodding off—
Every time they think he starts nodding off—
They blare a siren in the interrogation room.
But he loves them all the same:
He loves them for the police-issue plain black clothes, once black, now un-black—
And he loves them for the handcuffs they removed—
And he loves them for the best burger in his life and the best soda in his life they got him—
And he loves them for every minute that they are not in the room.
He can't sleep—
He doesn't need to sleep—
He sees the visions they showed him even when he is awake.
He doesn't want to sleep.
Yet he keeps nodding off, and then they blare their siren, their vigilant, watchful siren, and pull him back out of it.
He loves them for the siren that they blare.
.
.
.
The door opens, and he shrivels in his chair—
They will be asking him questions, these men he loves, and he—
And he knows he cannot answer them—
Because he didn't do it—
Because he still doesn't remember—
But it's not them who enter the room, not the men he loves. These two are dressed in white and for heads—
For their heads they have skulls, their eye sockets dark and empty—
"Lieutenant Torys Kiodd?" one asks, his voice distant and synthetic—
A living voice as heard by a dead sinner in hell—
"Yes?" he asks the men in white.
"Are you in need of medical assistance?"
It must be a ploy—
Their ploy—
Of the men he loves—
He sits in silence.
One of the men comes closer. "Can you stand up? Can you walk?"
He stands up. He stumbles.
The man with a skull for his head catches him. Puts Kiodd's arm across his shoulders.
He is wearing plastoid.
Kiodd looks up at him as they exit the room—
Up at his face—
It's not a skull topping the man's shoulders.
.
.
.
The two stormtroopers lead him through the corridors of the police station that look the same as the corridors of the police station in Quadrant 30 except for the scores of men and women kneeling near the walls, their hands cuffed behind their backs, scores of frightened men and women, fat and thin, old and young, handcuffed all like Kiodd had been handcuffed before the men he loved uncuffed him, and as he looks into the faces of the men and women kneeling, into their frightened faces fat and thin, old and young, he finds no recognition for them and no love. Kill them all, he whispers to the great white dome on his left and to the great white dome on his right, kill them all, execute them.
He is unsure his rescuers hear him, but he can see in the faces fat and young, old and thin that the men and women kneeling by the walls do.
In the lobby, a short man in a white tunic with three blue tiles on his left chest stands surrounded by five more stormtroopers and at least fifty kneeling men and women—
Young and thin—
"This is the lieutenant?" he asks, removes his black cap, runs his hand through his graying black hair, and puts the cap back on.
Left-tenant—
"Yes, sir," the stormtrooper on the right answers.
"Goodness. Take him to the hospital."
"Yes, sir."
As they walk Kiodd past him, Kiodd wants to ask about Vilondri.
But this time the name won't leave his tongue.
.
.
.
No one is kneeling this once—
No one in handcuffed—
But Kiodd can see in their faces—
In the faces of both commissioners, the BPPA director and his two deputies, and ex-commissioner Poivett—
That they wished they were being handcuffed instead.
First Assistant Chief Superintendent Tchadashi Muren of Internal Affairs, Balosar Sector Office of the ISB, sits in the chair all too familiar to Cras Poivett and Gavin Lutangi, the whiteness of his tunic made more white in the absence of his stormtroopers. Kiodd is sat opposite to him, the rest on the sides of the oblong desk.
Kiodd can see it in their faces they wished they were standing.
Standing while being chewed out means you may yet have any legs on which to walk away.
"And what is utterly perplexing to me," the First Assistant Chief Superintendent is saying, "is the scale of all this. Not one man on the planetary police force has as much as thought of going to the Imperial authorities. Anyway, before Lieutenant Kiodd arrived from Corellia."
Kiodd nods slightly. His neck hurts—
It still hurts.
In a posh Coruscant accent: "And what—"
Hwat—
"—what did the lieutenant get for his trouble? Being subjected to torture and, may I say, unprescribed by the Imperial regulations—"
In a posh Coruscant accent.
R's rolling—
Heads rolling—
The faces on said heads knowing it all too well.
"Sir," says the director, his face still pale with disbelief it belongs on a rolling head now, "we never had any indication—"
Muren cuts him off: "You are mentioned twenty-two times by name and fourteen more by your position in the tapes provided to us by the lieutenant. And not once is it in the context of the conspirators fearing any retribution from you, Director. What more indication do you require?"
Commissioner Lutangi, his fashionable do depressed over his eyes: "With all due respect sir, those tapes can well be a hoax—"
"In which case you lot will be absolved by the Imperial Taxation Bureau."
"We don't deny it, sir," says the Quadrant 5 commissioner, "we make a little on the side. It's the… it's just the cops' way."
"Are you really trying to weasel your way out of being party to a slave-selling syndicate and torturing two of the only non-bent police officers on your planet by admitting to taking bribes? Am I getting it right?"
"We know we fucked up," Poivett says.
The old tough and straight guy play—
"And we're ready to bear the punishment—"
"Good! Because it is coming, gentlemen."
"But what this—" Poivett's eyes brush over Kiodd, bulging while at it. "Is alleging… Based on what? On Lieutenant— former lieutenant Nochel's supposed recordings."
"The veracity of which is being confirmed right as we speak at the Bureau's lab in Imperial City." Muren leans on the desk, his voice soft now. "Gentlemen, what you need to be doing is confessing. What you need to be doing is praying. Praying for the jury full of tender-hearted housewives who are going to be more impressed with the positions you've been suspended from than with the suffering you've inflicted. Praying for Kessel—because otherwise all I see for you is a very, very grim future."
Kiodd thinks back to the time a big ISB comm of ops shot came to Corellia to give a lecture in front of eighty thousand officers in Pleroma Gardens and can't help but wonder if they are all being cloned and reproduced endlessly at some remote facility, these soft-spoken men with hungry eyes, these First Assistant Chief Superintendents Murens and Chief Supervisors Partagazes, cloned and reproduced ad infinitum, until there is no-one else left in the entire galaxy but for them, but for superintendents and supervisors, but for Murens and Partagazes.
And if this is the alternative to the evolution that bears Poivetts and Lutangis, Nochels and Stovareses, Dinghams and Hol'Seros, Tegol'Naris and Mileses, he sincerely hopes they are.
.
.
.
Leaning at an empty detective desk in one of the empty detective cubicles, he applies another bacta patch to the scars on his right wrist.
There are many—many empty desks, many empty cubicles, many scars.
Many empty hopes.
"All sure's coming down, don't it, Lieutenant?"
Urmak Dubb leans on the cubicle wall near him.
"Maybe we can import some honest officers from another planet," Kiodd says.
"We'll be importing a lot of stuff all right," says Dubb as he makes the viewscreen louder.
"—the EUC does not seem to have recuperated yet following the death of Rahvalod Hol'Sero, its head of more than fifteen years. Mr. Hol'Sero passed away of a heart attack two weeks ago—"
"Just aaaaall going down, ain't it, chief?"
"—the ownership of relevant enterprises by the Corporate Sector Authority soared up to the unprecedented fifty percent—"
"Aaaaall going down."
.
.
.
When Kiodd leaves the station, the day is uncharacteristically bright for a Balosar day. It's late morning. It's time for him to go home.
He downs a painkiller. He calls Vilondri.
"You speak with him?" Vilondri demands.
Kiodd remembers the time he spoke—the only time that mattered—and wishes he—
"He's still saying no grounds for Miles," he says.
"Dammit. Nothing?"
"No."
"I'd be content with a suspension at this point."
"Don't worry, we'll get him."
"Yeah."
Kiodd walks down to his Junacre in the parking lot.
"Maybe we should do it how we did it with Nochel," Vilondri says.
Kiodd unlocks his car. "The only reason they're letting it slide is because of the holocron. He really should've destroyed it when he had the chance."
"You think? I think we made it look pretty convincing, what's with his blaster and all."
"You seriously think the fucking ISB can't reconstruct the scene? Or that they didn't see his wrists? Nah. He was just in possession of a Jedi relic, and so he could be killed if it was necessary to deliver it to the Imperial authorities."
"Then I'm sure glad the boys from 5 didn't ask us any questions about our investigation. Because let me tell you, Kiodd, I'd've given your little apartment away if they did. It's… oh, fuck this shit."
"Yeah," Kiodd can only say, thinking about the things he gave away without being asked a single fucking question about them. "Meet me there?"
"We back on track?"
"I am if you are."
"Ain't no thing. See you there."
"Say, around three?"
"Sure."
He disconnects and he drives home, straight down the Julius Rego throughway and then north through Mochaise and Konder.
Norve is home, both it and her failing to feel like it. He thinks about Sorina as he showers and as they eat.
"Are we going to leave this place?" she asks.
"Maybe."
"And go where," she asks, hysterical notes seeping into her voice as though demanding notes did not seep into it the last time.
"Who wouldn't want me? I'd be a decorated police officer if there was anyone left to decorate me."
Apart from Major Derek fucking Miles—
"And what about me? Am I supposed to just be an accessory?"
He sighs. "I know jack all about fashion, but aren't there more opportunities for that on the moon than here?"
He doesn't want to say Corellia—like it can make her stowaway in his suitcase if—
If—
If—
If—
If he takes Sorina's offer.
I don't plan to, he thinks, the afternoon detachedness palpable in the house. Sorina never felt like home either.
But he knows—
He knows—
Corellia did.
.
.
.
At two-twenty he goes there straight—no more reason not to.
His war room—
His panic room—
His sacrosanct—
Its sanctity disturbed—
For days—
By men and women in white uniforms, by men and women cloned and replicated ad infinitum at some remote facility.
He goes up the stairs—
Floor two—
And he flashes his passcard to the door panel, but it's unlocked already.
Vilondri's letting his guard down—
They both are—
Now that the sanctity has been disturbed.
And yet there's a ringing in his left antenna as he walks in—
His right one still doesn't feel anything—
"Sit down, why don't you," says Derek Miles.
Major—
Kiodd's hand is stopped before it reaches the holster on his belt by a hand grabbing it and by a touch of cold metal on his nape.
Another hand removes his piece from the holster—
Derek Miles, Derek fucking Miles: "Sit down, Torys."
Derek fucking Miles, sitting on a couch in the middle of his—
Sanctity disturbed—
Sanctity violated—
Kiodd sits down in a chair opposite to the couch. A Human male in a sharp suit walks from behind his back towards the computer room—
His panic room—
Stepping over—
The sound Kiodd makes makes his left antenna go numb too.
"Torys," Derek Miles says, getting his face in the way of Kiodd's eyes—
Between them and Vilondri's body on the floor—
"Torys," Derek Miles says, his face in the way, "I need you to listen to us very, very fucking closely."
Two more men show up from the computer room. Both are wearing bespoke suits too.
One of them is a Balosar.
Miles takes a holopad out of pocket of his jacket—
Of his black jacket—
He puts it on the caff table between the couch and the chair and turns it on.
The hologram springs out of it—
Of Tchadashi Muren, the First Assistant—
"Look, Lieutenant," he says, his posh Coruscant accent dropped—
His rolling r's dropped—
His bombs dropped—
"This planet is fair game," he says. "Politicians, cops, what have you. All going down—that's fine by His Highness. But you do understand it goes way beyond Balosar. And that… that has to be controlled. A lot of useful people who can't go down. Your friend didn't care for it, and we can't have that. We can't have a vigilante."
"The lesson I learned with Sumwali," says the Balosar in an obscenely expensive suit—
Norve knows that—
She studied to be a designer—
"So now, Lieutenant, what you have to do is decide what happened to your friend," Muren continues. "Did he top himself or did you shoot him?"
Derek Miles takes a blaster pistol out of his pocket and lays it on the caff table and he takes a ticket card saying Coronet Spacelines out of his other pocket and lays it on the other side of the caff table.
"A terrible tragedy," says Muren, "either way. A police officer such as Mr. Vilondri… I'm sure his valiance deserves some recognition. A street named after him, perhaps? Won't happen for you, though, if you killed him. Take the ticket. Go back to your wife. She will have you. I even told her about the little whore you've been fucking, and do you know what she said? Do you want to know? She said, 'Please don't hurt either of them. I just want my Torys back.' I found this quite a touching display of love, even if the implication that the ISB would hurt someone who is not a threat to the safety of the Imperial order did not sit right with me.
"So," says Muren, "what is it going to be, Lieutenant?"
Kiodd looks at the caff table before him—
With the blaster on one side and the ticket on the other—
At the blaster and the ticket—
At the blaster and the ticket—
From the blaster to the ticket—
At the blaster and the ticket—
At the blaster and—