Zak's eyes bulged in shock. The huge spider-like droid, Jaykay, had gotten its tentacles around him faster than he could move. There hadn't been even a chance of escape. By the time he thought of moving, he was already caught. The tendrils writhed and snapped like Circarpousian water snakes as they encircled his torso and limbs.

Futilely, Zak flailed and tried to get away, but the droid had him so thoroughly in its grip that he didn't even fall over. Worse, as he struggled, the tentacles extended and thinned; at first thick and ropy, they were now becoming more like fibers. This allowed them to slither even farther, encircling and knotting around their victim many more times until poor Zak was in the center of a net of steel threads.

"Rosh!" he yelled. "Help!"

But his friend—still standing hardly two meters away—only put his hands on his hips and laughed. "Wow, Zak! Seems like hereallylikes you! He hardly gets that friendly with anyone!"

"Friendly?!Have you gone off your repulsors!? Get me out of this, now!"

"Take it easy, Core Kid. Jaykay's just feeling you up! He'll let you go in a minute."

Zak's answering yell was wordless, an expression of barely controlled anger and terror. He continued to fight against the bonds, but that only made them tighten even more, until he felt them pressing into his flesh like silk-thin fibersaws. If he struggled for much longer, they would start to draw blood.

If this thing wanted,it could slice me up like nerf casserole!Zak thought... and the worst part of it all was that his friend was only standing there, guffawing!

Just when Zak Arranda thought that he was finally going to meet a messy end on that space platform, he felt the tentacles relax. The knots began to disentangle themselves. Zak shuddered uncontrollably as they slid off him. They were terribly cold, and he could swear he'd felt them brushing up against his comlink, credit chips, and the other things in his pockets—"just feeling him up", indeed.

A few seconds later he was free, and Jaykay was meandering about the two boys, inclining its insect-like head toward their feet like a carosi pup sniffing around—quite accurate to Rosh's earlier analogy.

"Easy, buddy!" Rosh said, good-naturedly clapping Zak on the shoulder. "You all right?"

"I amnow," Zak answered, clutching his chest to keep his heart from going anywhere. Now that he was free, he wasn't angry at Rosh. Obviously he had been telling the truth, but that didn't make the experience any more pleasant, and Zak didn't like that droid still being nearby. In fact, he hated the sight of the thing.

Jaykay's tentacles extended again, this time toward Rosh. Instead of ensnaring him like Zak had been, though, they simply brushed and slapped at his garments, dusting them off.

"Yeah, there's nothing to worry about with Jaykay," Rosh said, bending over to pat the droid on its head. "See? No problem." He flashed a skeptical look at Zak, who stared back stonily, not about to let his guard down again.

To his immense relief, there was a ping as the turbolift made its long-overdue arrival.

"Okay, we're going now. We'll see you around, Jaykay."

The two boys headed for the door, but Jaykay kept close, continuing its strange fixation on Rosh Penin, who gave the droid a little push. When it didn't take the hint, Rosh planted his heel on the main body and shoved hard. "Look, enough already. Beat it!"

Zak tensed as Jaykay reeled, its heavy, pointed legs scrambling to stay upright. The startled, warbling hiss that it let out really didn't resemble any sound he had ever heard from a droid. Righting itself, it shuffled away while Zak and Rosh finally boarded the turbolift.

"Are yousurethat's just an ordinary droid?" Zak asked, suppressing a shudder.

"Well, I've never seen another one like it," Rosh answered, shrugging his shoulders. "It's probably some old antique from the Clone Wars that the Rebels dug up somewhere. You know how it is, they can't exactly afford the most up-to-date tech, fighting the Empire and all that..." He chuckled. "Relax, Core Kid. That thing really got to ya."

"Iamrelaxed," Zak growled, staring at the lift's height indicator. "Let's just forget about it."

Zak enjoyed making new friends and tried not to judge beings or machines based on appearances or first impressions. But nobody was perfect, and he had a real problem when it came to droids that looked like crabs or bugs, especially spiders.

He had more than one experience to justify this phobia. A few years back, there had been those crazy crab maintenance drones aboard theStar of Empire... yet another adventure that had found him, Tash, and Hoole when Zak had hoped for nothing but a quiet break from danger.

More than anything, though, it had to do with the last time the Arrandas had gone to Tatooine. During a stay in the palace of Jabba the Hutt, they had encountered the mysterious B'omarr monks, who believed in freeing oneself from the body in order to contemplate the inner mysteries of the universe. To achieve this, they had devised a procedure to transfer a person's brain into spider-like droids.

Uncle Hoole and the Arrandas had run afoul of a scheme between Jabba and one of the monks, who eventually replaced Tash's brain with that of a wanted murderer named Karkas. Poor Tash was imprisoned in one of the droids for some time, and (among other ordeals) Zak himself had several hair-raising encounters with these "brain spiders" before finally figuring out what was going on. As usual, it was Uncle Hoole who saved the day and got the monks to return Tash's brain to her body. Ever since that incident, droids that resembled spiders had always given Zak the creeps.

Of course, he couldn't explain all that to Rosh—among other things, because Zak couldn't believe it himself half the time.

The turbolift deposited them on a lower level of Refugee Commons. From there they took a short walk, then huddled behind a thick metal support pillar. Gaggles of other children in several species milled about across the concourse: mostly humans, with a few groups of Twi'leks, Rodians, or other species. As with before, they were mostly absorbed with simple games or conversation.

Zak creeped to the edge of the pillar and sneakily took a look. "Is that it?"

About fifteen meters away, a security door outlined with blue glowlights was tended by a Rebel platform resource officer. A male Zabrak (human-like except for the horns on his bare skull), he was the only adult in sight.

Rosh squeezed up beside his friend and said, "Yeah, that's it. Quickest way to get to the Medical Wing, or so I heard. I always took a longer route. Anyway, there should be a maintenance hatch just down the hall, and we can take it as a shortcut to Medical without anyone seeing us."

"Of course, we'll have to get past that guy first," Zak noted.

"And unlock the door," Rosh added, pointing. "You see those blue lights around it? That means only a Blue Key can open it."

"Or a scramble key like mine," said Zak slyly, reaching into his pocket... only to realize, after a panicked search, that the little device had somehow disappeared. Stifling a curse, he looked around, hoping maybe it had fallen out while they were walking, but it was nowhere in sight.

"Looks like we're up bantha poodoo hyperlane without horizontal boosters," Rosh commented. "What do we do now?"

Zak didn't know. He could feel his face reddening. He was angry with himself, not just for screwing up, but also for losing something that belonged to Kyle Katarn. He had fully intended to give it back... More to the point, though, what in the galaxyhadhappened to it?

He remembered his encounter with Jaykay only a few minutes ago, those cold metallic tentacles slithering all over him... Could the scramble key have fallen out of his pocket then?

He gritted his teeth. There wasn't any time to go back and check. That turbolift was slower than a Hutt with Morellian torpor, and Kyle's team was on the move. Now the two boys didn't just need to distract that guard, but also find another way through the Blue Door.

Rosh Penin snapped his fingers. "Wait, forget it. I've got an idea."

"You do?"

Rosh crossed his arms over his chest, his face oozing smugness. "Hey, it'sme. Of course I do, and it might just work... if you're feeling brave."

Zak snorted. "You don't know me as well as you think you do."

"What him call to me? What him call to me?!"

Bax was a big kid two or three years younger than Rosh, and four centimeters shorter but twice as broad. For a Twi'lek his green skin was unusually dark, like Circarpousian swamp-coal, and he had brains to match. His presence near the Blue Door at that hour was a lucky coincidence, but even if he hadn't been, there would still have been others nearby to make do with.

"It sounded like he said your mother was a skag bug-eating schutta, but I think maybe he misspoke," Rosh repeated good-naturedly. He was trying to fraternally drape an arm around Bax's shockball-sized shoulders, but the Twi'lek youth was stomp-waddling across the commons so fast that he hardly could keep up.

"Like I said, I don't think he really meant it." Rosh waved a hand at the victim he had chosen, who loitered about in a ring with four other human boys some meters ahead, oblivious.

"I show to him schutta. I show to him schutta!" Bax's fuming lapsed into his native tongue, and the huge, meaty coils of his head-tentacles flopped about wildly. The Twi'lek put on another burst of speed. Rosh let him go and quickly veered away, much as a Y-wing pilot has no desire to be too close to the impact point of his proton bomb payload.

And that was about the way Bax hit his target. He might've mostly been fat, but weight was still weight, and he knew how to throw it around, most of all if it was to defend the honor of his mother. The poor human that Rosh had singled out got pasted hard, and as he flopped to the floor, it took all four of his buddies to keep Bax from following up. A few seconds of grunts and shouting drew the attention from elsewhere in the commons, and right according to plan, two impromptu gangs of younglings assembled, one human and the other Twi'lek.

Rosh slipped into the loose ring of curious bystanders who formed to watch the brawl really get going. "Blaster bolts, what's wrong with you?! Stop it! Stop fighting!" he cried, hamming it up. It was almost impossible to keep the grin off his face.

Unsurprisingly, his plea and those of the other bystanders may as well have been shouted into vacuum. An interesting fact—one mostly lost on Rosh—was that of the two dozen or so male younglings who had coalesced around Bax's introductory punch, most were not in Rosh and Zak's age group. Here on the platform, those who had made it into adolescence tended to be embarrassed by the prospect of violence. However, the younger ones had yet to have their enthusiasm dulled by existential angst or the perplexing differentia of girls. Little did Rosh Penin know it, and still less would he be able to articulate it, but this spectacle which he had engineered (as much for his own amusement as to aid his friend's plan) was a viewport into the primal nature of sentient beings. This galaxy in which they lived was no kind, gentle place, full of creatures who simply wanted to be loved. It was a gleeful, ravenous place: a playground. The air smelled of blood from scraped knees, and even the vacuum of space rang with cruel laughter.

Rosh barely held onto his wits enough to have a look around. He spotted an ashen-faced Zak opposite him in the ring of bystanders mere seconds before the Rebel platform resource officer crashed through it like a charging Gammorean warrior. "ALL RIGHT, BREAK IT UP! BREAK IT UP!" he bellowed, his sweeping arms parting the children before him like shafts of Utapau wheat. "WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!"

The melee slammed to a halt, every participant staggering as they whirled to face the thunderous adult. Youngling eyes bulged and youngling mouths hung open, and skinny little fists shook, stopped in midswing, raised like hyperspace transceiver antennae aimed at the stars.

"I said, what in the stars is happening here?!" the resource officer demanded. His native facial tattoos twisted and took on a hellish quality as his face flushed.

"Uhhhrrr-uhh-urrr..."

That was from Bax, who had been straddling another boy (not the one Rosh had intially steered him toward) and possibly half-crushing him to death while pummelling his now-swollen face. Deciding the obese Twi'lek had volunteered, the resource officer turned on him. "Bax? Get on your feet and tell me who started this! Answer me right now, or I'll—"

Ducking behind a few other bystanders, Rosh Penin cupped his hands before his mouth and shouted, "IT'S THAT UGLY KRIFFING HORNHEAD! GET HIM! GET THE HORNHEAD!"

His voice was so loud, so unlike that of Rosh Penin, that he startled himself a little. The squall of the murderous words echoed through the Commons twice, three times, stunning everyone motionless. Then, as if a Jedi mind trick had been cast, a dozen feral younglings swarmed the Zabrak. Nobody liked a horned freak. As the astonished resource officer struggled to fend off his attackers, the melee took his preoccupation as permission to resume. The lone representative of sanity, order, civilization, and adult supervision staggered about, breaking one grapple after another, recovering from one tackle after another.

The most strident tackler was none other than Zak Arranda, who pelted into the Zabrak from behind, yanked at his belt and jacket several times, then pushed him further into the hive before disappearing himself.

Zak emerged from the scene a moment later, crawling on all fours before sprinting for the Blue Door, where Rosh was waiting. He beamed with admiration as he watched his friend approach, the Blue Key gleaming in his palm like the negative image of a Corusca gem.

"Is that kid gonna be all right?"

"Which one?"

Zak grimaced, trotting to keep up with Rosh, who led the way down the maintenance corridor. "The one Bax pasted first."

"Oh, he'll be fine. A couple scrapes and bruises never heard anyone, right?"

Zak had a feeling that Rosh—prone as he was go overboard on absolutely everything—had enjoyed triggering the fight a little too much, but he decided to let it go. Scrapes and bruises really weren't the worst thing in the galaxy, and in any case the deed was done. Most important of all, Tash still needed rescuing.

Rosh's information proved accurate, and they soon found the correct hatch out of the maintenance sublevel. After a few turns they cautiously entered a wide corridor running through the Medical Wing. Compared to the bright bustle of the rest of the space station, it was troublingly desolate—not dark like the sublevel, but still murky and dim... and aside from the occasional echoes of unknown footsteps from somewhere, there was no sign of life.

"Wow, there's... hardly anyone here," Zak commented as they wandered down the hall.

"What'd you expect?" said Rosh.

"I dunno, more people. Droids, nurses... Patients."

"Well, the whole station's short-staffed pretty badly. They're always complaining about that. Guess Medical's no different. I thought there'd be more guards, but this works for us."

They passed one door after another on either side, as well as wiry, uncomfortable-looking chairs set beside the doors in pairs or threes. Aside from that, there were no furnishings to speak of.

Zak looked sideways at his friend. "Didn't you say they kept kicking you out of here?"

"Well, I didn't mean I'd made it to Special Sentient Needs. They always caught me on the way to Medical. Anyway, what's the big surprise to you? You were living here. Don't you remember it being like this?"

"I..." Zak swallowed and looked away, torn between his inability to remember and his need to forget. Much of his time here was still scrambled up in his head like a databank that had been half-fried by an ion charge. Come to think of it, though, when he was in his cell, he was confident that he'd never seen anyone walk past except the one security guard. It was always the same human... and before being taken and drugged by Sandov and Demarakesh, he did remember hearing talk about how the Rebels were struggling to keep this place staffed, even the Medical Wing. That sounded pretty serious, given the platform's main purpose was to serve as a hospital. The one guard Zak had kept seeing might have been responsible for Special Sentient Needs all by himself. Possibly even the whole Medical Wing.

Zak said, "I've had a lot on my mind lately, Rosh. It's hard to remember everything."

"Being a Rebel agent? Yeah, I bet."

Halfway down the corridor they found a wall holomap. It wasn't very well-detailed, but it showed Medical's basic layout, including the location of Special Sentient Needs. "Let's cut through here," said Rosh, tracing a path with his finger. "That should keep us out of the main halls."

Their path took them directly through one of the main hospital wards: long rooms crammed with rows of cylindrical bacta tanks. The steady beeps and chimes of monitors and soft bubbling of the churning fluids muted the pair's footsteps. A body floated in every tank, shrouded and indistinct. There were humans and Twi'leks, Gran and Gotal, Mon Calamari and Multopos, and dozens of other species. All were more or less undressed, their obscured faces muzzled by rebreather masks. Many showed grievous wounds. Blaster burns were in the majority, but not a few patients were missing limbs. One seemed to be a blue-skinned near-human, until one looked closer at the head and saw the ragged flops of flesh where the Twi'lek's head-tentacles had been ripped free by some grisly trauma.

Rosh lagged behind a step, gawking this way and that, and his face looked sickly in the cerulean light cast by the bacta tanks. By contrast, Zak only shifted his eyes to make sure that there was no one else moving about in these wards, or at least no one who would bother them. Here and there they spotted a medical droid (sometimes a tall, cylindrical, many-armed FX-7 unit, but more often an outdated model like the tri-legged DD-13 or a short, stocky astromedic) shuffled from tank to tank, emitting mournful trills from their vocabulators as they methodically checked on their patients. Like the repair droids, these paid no attention to the adolescent intruders.

Zak tried again to recall if there were any unusual or suspicious droids that he should be wary of, but again he was blocked by the mental fog left by whatever the Bothans had drugged him with. A single, spontaneous pang in his skull, red-hot and quivering like the serrated blade of a Mandalorian electro-bonesaw, slashed through his attempts to remember. For the briefest of standard time parts he thought he was on the cusp of remembering something...

He had no choice but abandon his efforts, letting the matter slip into the stygian abyss of his subconscious. It was a relief to let go. In all probability, it was likely nothing—only a stress reaction to everything he had gone through in this place, exacerbated by his disturbing run-in with Jaykay back in the Commons.

"This place gives me the creeps," Rosh muttered after they'd gone through three or four wards of bacta tanks.

"What's the matter? You never seen a Wookiee with all his fur burnt off by a plasma explosion?"

Rosh retched when he saw the tank Zak was pointing at. Recalling the map, Zak took a left turn. "Hey, step on it," he snapped over his shoulder, nearing the exit. "We're not here for sightseeing."

"Y-yeah—sure, Zak. Hey, wait up!"

Zak did not wait up, and Rosh barely made it through the door before it closed automatically. The next room was another rectangular ward, but this one was narrower, and instead of bacta tanks, the main feature of note were rows of beds, where prone figures—most of them humanoid, but not all—lay motionless beneath white sheets which shrouded them from head to toe. The lights here were even dimmer than in the rest of the Medical Wing, and there were no life sign monitors or holoreadouts with reassuring beeps and glows; in fact, the room was startlingly quiet.

And Zak was nowhere to be seen.

CHAPTER COMPLETE

PASSWORD: HETHRIR