Rosh Penin's hurried footsteps staggered to an uncertain shuffle, and he gulped audibly. The sound practically echoed in that stuffy, dry room.

His voice failing him, he glanced from side to side. He recalled that the sign over the door had identified this place as PRIMARY MORGUE #1.

"H-h-hey, Zak? Zak!?" he managed to say. His voice sounded heavy and dry, like a dehydrated dewback that could not travel far. The words may have died as soon as they left his tongue.

"Zak? Where'd you go? I didn't mean to fall behind, it was just the..." He trailed off, wandering wide-eyed down the center of the hall. On his left and right the beds were motionless, the white-cloaked bodies looking as stiff and heavy as stone. Deep in the everlasting torpor of death, it was certain that they would never move again. Yet as Rosh Penin made his way down that gloomy mausoleum, his imagination ran away from him, casting terrible contemplations before his mind's eye—things which he knew to be impossible, yet in that baleful moment, so terribly and unexpectedly alone, seemed much more likely than he would ever admit in the cheery, prosaic light of the Refugee Commons.

Those... those dead bodies, Rosh thought to himself, fighting to keep his knees under him. What if... what if one of them wasn't quite all the way dead? And what if he—

Then, with no hint of warning, the sheet-covered corpse on the bed nearest to his left jerked upward like a man emerging from a nightmare, except that he was emerging into Rosh Penin's nightmare rather than from his own. Rosh's heart exploded into his throat, choking away the scream so that no sound emerged from his gaping maw except a gurgling, pitifully effeminite squeal. With legs frozen as solid as carbonite, he could do nothing but watch as the sheet crumpled and fell away from the risen dead, revealing...

...Zak Arranda, grinning from ear to ear like a mutated Kowakian monkey-lizard.

From the way Rosh gulped air as Zak hopped from the bed, you'd think he'd spent the last ten years holding his breath in the Hrakert Rift of Manaan.

"Got you good, didn't I, buddy?" Zak japed, tossing the crumpled-up sheet back onto the bed. Had he not spied one that was unoccupied, he wouldn't have bothered with this little prank.

Rosh heaved and wheezed, his first six attempts at speech dissolving into inarticulate sounds of exasperation, before finally ending with a weak, "That was not funny."

"Maybe not," his friend granted. "So next time you should think twice before you grab your friend from behind in a dark hallway." As Rosh sputtered an apology, Zak clapped him on the shoulder and smiled, warmly this time. "Look, it's all right. We're even now. Now let's get a move on."

They did so, and from then on Rosh did no lagging behind. In fact, the guy was practically hanging onto Zak's backpack. Still leading the way, Zak had to fight very hard to keep from gloating any more and instead focus on where they were going. The corpses here in the morgue didn't bother him, any more than the floating, unconscious patients in the bacta tanks had.

He still remembered—like anyone could forget—what he'd gone through on the planet Necropolis along with Uncle Hoole, Tash, and their droid companion DV-9. The mad Doctor Cornelius Evazan had experimented with bringing the dead back to life as shambling, violent monstrosities subservient to his will, before he met a well-deserved end at the hands of the bounty hunter Boba Fett. The undead creatures that Evazan had raised for his army of darkness, not to mention the doctor himself with his twisted, blaster burn-scarred face... It was not uncommon for Zak to see them in his dreams.

Compared to all that, a few mutilated Rebel soldiers and dead bodies wrapped in cloth really weren't anything to be scared of. Ever since Alderaan's destruction, the life of the Arranda family had been an endless series of nightmares. Tash had taken solace in the Force and fantastic tales of the Jedi. But Zak had found that one of the best ways of coping was, ironically, to scare other people whenever he got the chance. Even with the danger and urgency of his current predicament, once he'd seen that unoccupied bed, he simply couldn't help himself.

He heard Rosh give a relieved, under-his-breath curse when they finally left the morgue and came out into another hallway. This one forked into three paths, and Zak started toward the left one.

He stopped, though, when Rosh tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hey, hold on. That's the wrong way. We're supposed to go right."

"That's not what you said before. You said left after the..."

"No, I said right."

"You did? But..." Zak paused, frowning at the juncture around them, revisiting his memory of the holomap. "Wait, shouldn't there only be two paths here?"

"Uh... Err... No, there was always three! I'm sure of it! So we need to go right."

Rosh planted his fists on his hips and smiled reassuringly, but even in the dim light, Zak could see the brittle movements of his face and knew that his friend was full of tusker poop. "No, it shouldn't be forking like this. Not into three. I think I might have had us turn left too soon. We should probably go back. I'll bet there was another morgue we needed to—"

"No! No, it's all right!" cried Rosh, already moving again. "I remember the way, and we needed to go here, so let's go!"

"Rosh, wait! Wait!"

Obviously, though, he didn't. Rosh Penin had a lot of heart, but he was stubborn and hated being wrong so much that it made him stupid. Zak seethed and followed him down the right (and perhaps wrong) hallway. His nervous friend's quick steps turned to a jog, then a run which carried him through several turns as Zak struggled to keep him within sight.

Stang it, what's the matter with him?! Did I really scare him that badly back in the morgue? Good going, Zak! The weight of guilt pulsed in his chest as his heart rate rose. Then something even more troubling occurred to him: they had gone through several intersections, and he had no idea if they were part of the route they had gotten from the holomap!

"Rosh, wait!" he wheezed again, but the other boy didn't hear him, disappearing as he made yet another turn. Frustration impelled Zak to put on a new burst of speed. When he rounded the corner, though, he saw that the corridor—which had narrowed considerably—went only a couple of meters before splitting into a six-way junction.

And Rosh was dithering there in the archway. "Hey, Zak?" he said, turning around. "I think we might be—"

Zak managed to slow down a little, but it was no use. He ran right into Rosh, sending him stumbling out into the intersection, where he ran into someone else who was passing through from another branch.

The two boys flailed and righted themselves, Rosh rotely stammering apologies. Zak assumed that they had happened across a guard, and his first thought was to grab his friend by the sleeve and make a break for it. But what he saw standing before them froze his feet to the floor like a cryo-grenade had gone off.

It was a... big thing. Bipedal, but bent over sharply at the waist so that shadows covered its body. But as it slowly unfolded, Zak saw that its ungainly limbs—more than twice as thick as his own—were encased in ovoid plates of some hard white material, maybe plastoid or plasteel. The huge, barrel-shaped torso which seemed to weigh it down had several readouts where big, square lights blinked, flickered, or glowed steadily—blue, white, green, red, yellow. A clear carbo-plas panel sheathed a control box with unlabeled switches, toggles, and buttons, all of which looked oversized. The electronic sounds from this apparatus as well as the low mechanical whirring which accompanied the thing's movements made Zak think of a droid... but when it finally rose to its full height with a wet, heavy sigh, he realized his mistake.

It made a gurgling sound like some alien creature clearing its throat, then spoke in Basic. "Ah-urr-glnnn... Excuse me, young sentients. I did not see you approach. I am encumbered, as I'm sure you can see."

Rosh stared up at the creature with mouth agape. Surprise and fear wiped nearly all trace of intelligence from his visage. "Oh, I, eh, uh, er, I'm, we're really sorry, sir! We were just, uh, uh, er, uh, erm..."

"Yes? You were...?" The voice sounded filtered and artificial, like the vocalizer used by a droid or by a space suit. It was deep and resonating, but slurred, and it breathed audibly when it was done speaking. Zak could not quite tell if the voice was male or female, which added to his confusion.

"Why were you running in the hallway, young humans? Is there something wrong, perhaps?"

"I... Eugh... Um..."

Rosh's coherency was obviously not up to the task before them, but Zak was having plenty trouble getting his own wits back. Whoever or whatever this was, the same tough material that protected its body and limbs also enclosed its head. The helmet, if that's what it was, had a bulbous shape, sloping up toward the back while, farther down, twin fist-sized orbs of what looked like black glass protruded from the sides, with a much smaller one implanted on the front between them. They somewhat resembled the sensors of an Imperial probe droid.

"Who... are you?" Zak blurted before he realized it.

The being regarded him, shifting ponderously on wide, metal-covered feet. Its legs looked spindly, and it was hard to see how they supported the massive weight of its... or his... body. "My name is Dr. Fale Rottwerm. I am Chief Surgeon on this platform. But... who are you? And why were you running in the halls of the Medical Wing?"

Zak lipped his lips and swallowed, trying to think, but his heart still pounded, and as he continued to stare at Fale Rottwerm, so did his head. This doctor's grotesque, lumbering appearance, the evident fusion of organic and machine, that raspy breathing... It reminded him of nothing so much as the evil lord Darth Vader, the right hand man of Emperor Palpatine. The Arrandas had narrowly escaped his clutches on Kiva and Dantooine and, out of all the evil and monstrous sentients they had encountered, the Dark Lord of the Sith had unquestionably been the most dangerous.

In spite of the superficial similarities, though, this Dr. Rottwerm bore little resemblance to Lord Vader. It was hard to imagine him threatening anyone; if he made a sudden movement, or was hit by something harder than a stumbling Rosh Penin, Zak thought the doctor would fall over and be unable to get back up. And the Arrandas had encountered many stranger and more unnatural forms of life in their adventures, so why was Zak's skin crawling like it was? Was he remembering something? Had Dr. Rottwerm been in league with Utric Sandov and Deena Demarakesh?

He looked at the floor, away from the bizarre helmet with those bulging black eyes of glass. Trying to remember was hopeless.

"Please do not be afraid... young humans," burbled Doctor Rottwerm. He took a very slow, careful step back from them. "I realize my appearance may be... disturbing, but it cannot be helped. Even in the Rebel Alliance, many beings have not encountered a Mon Calamari, and many more have not encountered one in a state such as mine. Many years ago, my people rose up against the Empire, which had occupied our oceanic world."

He gestured to himself. His hands, Zak noted then, were also sheathed in white plasticine material. The gloves vaguely resembled the flipper-hands of a Mon Calamari, but looked extremely inflexible.

How can he do surgery with those? thought Zak. Maybe being "chief" just means he tells the actual surgeons what to do.

"I was struck by an incendiary grenade. The burns and other injuries that I sustained rendered me unable to survive without mechanical assistance. In time I designed this suit in order to regain mobility and continue service in the Rebellion."

"I, uh... Oh. That's... really something," Zak said. "You must be a... a very brave Rebel."

Suddenly he found himself able to look the doctor in the face again, despite the uncanniness of Rottwerm's appearance. His overwhelming dread and fear fell away to be replaced by pity and even a bit of anger on this man's behalf. Alderaan had been destroyed, taking Zak and Tash's family with it. This was another such story of evil inflicted by the Empire.

"There is no need to flatter me. I have only been doing my job," replied Dr. Rottwerm. "Now, would you please explain what you young humans are doing here?"

Zak's mouth opened, but Rosh took over, having apparently gotten his wits back. "Uh, we're supposed to be here, doctor, sir! We're trying to get to Special Sentient Needs because, uh, erm, the guard there lost his spare comlink. He dropped it back in the Commons, but he knows us, so we're just returning it to him. We couldn't find an adult who would."

A long moment passed in which there was no sound except the mechanical workings of Dr. Rottwerm's suit and his labored, rancid-sounding breaths. Zak forced himself to nod instead of incredulously looking at Rosh. He didn't know what sort of lie they should have gone with instead, but this still sounded like a terrible one to him.

Sure enough, Rottwerm called Rosh's bluff. "Is that so? Which guard does this comlink belong to?"

Zak tensed his muscles, getting ready to run... but Rosh, not missing a beat, said, "Mister Bavo, sir."

Another agonizing pause...

"I see. Well, in that case, I'll tell you the way to Special Sentient Needs."

Zak's jaw dropped, but he quickly closed it.

"Take that hallway. Follow it when it branches to the right," said the Mon Calamari, pointing with a long, tubular arm. "After the medical offices you will reach the main entrance to Special Sentient Needs. Private Bavo should be on patrol inside at this moment. If you cannot find him, look for Superintendent Versch, and he will contact him for you."

Zak was too surprised to speak, and Rosh again filled in for him. "Okay, got it! Thank you so much, doctor, sir! We'll be on our way now and get right back to the Commons when we're done. And we're so sorry for running into you, it won't happen again—"

"Just one thing, young humans."

The boys stopped halfway to the indicated hallway.

"Please do not refer to me as 'sir' again. The suit may obscure my form, but I am in fact a female."

"You've got it, Dr. Rotterm, ma'am," Rosh chirped, grinning.

"Thank you. Please have a good day, but do not run in the corridors again..."

But the two boys were already walking as fast as they could down the gloomy corridor, leaving the Mon Calamari's voice to fade behind them. Zak checked back over his shoulder seven times to make sure they weren't being followed, then snapped at Rosh. "That was a really nerf-brained thing of you to do, you know. Running off like you did and getting us lost."

"We didn't get lost. I was right."

"But you didn't know you were right, you bojo. If it wasn't for that doctor back there, we'd have gotten even more lost."

Rosh threw up his hands. "Whatever you say. But let the holorecord show, I did fast-talk him without any help from you. Dr. Rottwerm, huh? Never saw him before. Gave me the absolute creeps. Lucky he turned out to be as gullible as an Ithorian card-player."

Zak frowned and glanced back over his shoulder again. "Didn't she tell us she's a woman?"

"With a build like that? And that deep voice? I don't think so, pal."

Zak decided to let it go. "How did you know the guard's name?"

"I asked around a little while ago," Rosh explained, shrugging. "Thought maybe I'd try and bribe him into letting me see Tash."

Tash. Right. That's what matters here, thought Zak, and restrained the impulse to start running again. After a moment he remembered the comlink in his pocket—and, finally, the reason he'd borrowed it from the Moldy Crow. He switched it on and held it to his ear, making sure the volume was set to low.

As if on cue, Kyle Katarn's gravelly voice came over the channel. "Dirtfarmer, checking in. We just stepped onto the administration level. Status in the hangar?"

Jan Ors's voice answered, cool and casual. "Everything's quiet down here, boss. Nobody poking around the ship, and no trouble from our passenger either."

"Copy that. We're en route to the first package now. Over and out."

"Hey," said Rosh, "is that that Kyle Katarn guy? The Rebel agent who saved you? Can I talk to him?"

Zak silenced him with a wave of his hand. "Yeah, I was only checking in on him. Now be quiet. Someone might hear you."

Realizing someone might hear the comlink as well, Zak switched its output to the tiny wireless earphone and put it in. As they went on through the Medical Wing, the Bryar Force's chatter continued to trickle into his ear in a staticky whisper. Kyle was narrating his team's progress every step of the way. Zak began to worry about whether they would reach Utric Sandov's office too soon, but pushed those thoughts aside.

As the Mon Calamari doctor had promised, their route took them between several blocks of offices. Most seemed deserted. Of the many long windows, those that were not totally dark had pale lights shining inside, casting slitted shadows through blinds. Once or twice they glimpsed a spindly humanoid silhouette moving about and picked up the pace.

"Here we are, Zak," said Rosh finally, trotting to a stop before the door to Special Sentient Needs.

Zak swallowed hard. Even as they stared at the door together, a piercing scream strained itself through the door's cracks from within the sub-ward. Many of the children kept there were war orphans, traumatized and disturbed from the war, or suffered from other ailments that made it difficult or even dangerous to keep them around "normal" beings.

A chill went down Zak's spine and made his hands feel clammy and cold. It wasn't the scream itself, not really. It was the place itself, and what he'd gone through in there, and what they'd done to Tash—

Rosh blew out a breath, hit the control panel, and squeezed through before the door had even finished opening. "C'mon, Core Kid. Tash needs us, and and that Katarn guy's counting on you. Let's go save the day already!"

Zak's chill faded and he entered the sub-ward, silently thanking the Force (or whoever there was to thank) that he didn't have to do this alone.

The halls of Special Sentient Needs looked little different from the greater ward outside, except darker, narrower. With no idea where to begin, the two boys simply tried to look systematically, corridor by corridor, one checking the cells on the left side and the other on the right. Each one had a thick durasteel door with a little window, covered by a rectangular plate that one could slide open in order to look inside.

Each one was harder to look inside than the last. Each time Zak grapsed the plate, he prayed from the deepest part of his soul that he'd see Tash there in the little padded room, but over and over it wasn't her. The kids weren't always human, and they were usually awake. Their heads would snap toward the door at the sound of the metal plate moving. Not a few started or jumped away, and some screamed in fear. Others were screaming incoherently before Zak got to the door, and he was relieved to be able to skip those; he would recognize his sister's voice at any pitch or volume. Some kids would rush at the door, snarling or crying to be let out—exactly the same way Zak had from his cell whenever he saw the guard. The most disturbing, though, were the ones who didn't react at all to Zak's appearance: huddled up in a corner, staring unblinking into a void that they alone could see.

Zak tried to stay detached and focused, but the rapid cycle of hope and disappointment, and the awful sights of these other children, beyond the scope of his mission, was taking a toll.

"Dirtfarmer, checking in," crackled the voice of Kyle Katarn in his ear. "Three junctions away from first package's office, over."

"This is taking forever," Rosh whined as they came to a junction. He leaned out, checking to the left and right. "You know, maybe we should have stopped in those offices back there. There might be a list where we could find out which cell Tash is in."

Zak was tempted to point out how many of Rosh's good ideas only came to him after the fact. "More likely, we'd only get lost again," he pointed out instead.

His friend grumbled, but they wasted no time starting on the next block of cells.

Kyle Katarn's voice again: "Moldy Crow, this is Dirtfarmer. We're right outside the package's office. Reception assured us he'd be in, but no one's answering the door... Please advise."

A moment passed before Jan Ors answered. "Unsure of the situation, Dirtfarmer. I've had eyes on the security cams, haven't seen the package or a single Bothan anywhere on the station... except the one with you."

Zak was confused until he remembered MIMIC, who would be disguised as Deena Demarakesh. In a way, the holodroid was partially capable of imitating Uncle Hoole's Shi'ido shapeshifting ability, which was pretty prime. Zak made a mental note to ask if he could check out MIMIC's components sometime.

"Is there a security feed for the inside of the office?" asked Kyle Katarn.

"Negative. And I'm not deep enough into the security grid to access that door from here."

"Then I guess we'll have to slice the lock," said a new voice—Wade Vox. "MIMIC should be able to handle that."

The comlink went silent for a moment, and Zak checked yet another cell. The swollen-headed, black-eyed Bith inside flattened himself against the door, gibbering piteously. Zak hastily slammed the plate back into place and broke away, loathing himself. He remembered how he and Tash and ended up in their own cells, maliciously branded as schizoids by Utric Sandov and his equally lascivious henchman, so that they could...

He passed over the rest of that. The question was, how many of the children in Special Sentient Needs actually had special needs, and how many were simply victims of malevolently false diagnoses? All of them were at the mercy of a degenerate Bothan molester. Didn't they all deserve to be free? To be safe? They had all trusted in the Rebellion to protect them. If the people in charge of it couldn't do that, then someone else needed to, but the Bryar Force was small, and Zak and Rosh were only kids...

Come on, Tash. Please let me find you. I can't take much more of this.

"Zak, get over here! Quick!"

With heart racing, Zak pelted over to the door where Rosh was practically jumping up and down. Feverishly he pressed his face to the window, and inside, as if his prayers had been answered...

"Tash! TASH!"

Zak's screams echoed down the halls, only to be lost in the cacophonous discord leaking from the chambers of the other traumatized younglings. He knew his voice had to have made it through the door, but something was wrong. Tash—

The girl there in the corner, curled up, knees drawn up to her chest, her face buried in her arms—it was Tash. He knew it was Tash, even in the gloom. Her blond hair was still tied in that same long braid, and the way she sat, the way she breathed, he knew it was her... but she didn't answer, didn't look up. Like so many of the other troubled younglings Zak had just seen, it was like she was somewhere else, lost in a universe of darkness.

"What's wrong with her? Hey, Tash! Tash!" added Rosh, pounding on the window.

"Sandov could have drugged her or something..."

Rosh broke away from the door and stared at him, his face reddening. "That Imperial Huttslime! If I get my hands on that Bothan, I'll beat the snot outta him."

"Forget it. Right now we need this door open." Zak examined the computer panel beside the door. It only had a cell number (60109), a readout, and a scanner for a keycard. When he slid the Blue Key through it, though, it buzzed unpleasantly and a message scrolled across the readout:

ACCESS DENIED. INCORRECT KEYCARD. ACCESS GRANTED ONLY TO SECURITY CLEARANCE RED OR BY REMOTE OVERRIDE FROM SUPERINTENDENT.

"Superintendent," Zak repeated. "That Mon Cal doctor mentioned him. Any idea who that is?"

Rosh shrugged his shoulders. "Nope. Too bad you lost that scramble key. Guess we need to find the Red Key now... Maybe Bavo has it. You know, that guard."

Zak thought it over. It was hard to think straight with his sister right there on the other side of that huge door, but he decided it would be a bad idea to tangle with another guard. Especially since Bavo would be an actual armed Rebel soldier, not a "resource officer" like the one in Refugee Commons, nor would he be sluggish or slow-witted like Dr. Rottwerm.

Zak shook his head. "No, I have a better idea. Remember those offices we went past right before we entered the sub-ward? The superintendent's office must be there. We can break in and get Tash's cell open."

Rosh ran a hand through his spikey black hair, his face a look of pure bewilderment. "We can? How?"

"I just need to get onto his computer, and I'll be able to unlock the cell from there. That's what remote override means."

"Oh, I knew that."

"Sure you did, you stoopa."

They double-checked the number over the panel, then hurried off. The first step Zak took away from Tash's cell door felt like a chunk being ripped from his heart, but he forgot the pain when the comlink in his ear went off again.

It was Jan Ors, and her voice was a lot tighter and more urgent than before. "Dirtfarmer, come in!"

Kyle answered calmly. "Moldy Crow, stand by. The office—"

"We've got a problem here. A big problem."

"Oh, kriff," Zak whispered to himself. She must have finally noticed he was gone!

"The office door is open, Moldy Crow. Stand by, we're heading in now—about to secure package."

For several seconds there was silence on the channel, except for footsteps presumably coming from Kyle's end. Zak felt that Jan Ors must have been holding her breath as he ran and Rosh ran, and the door leading back out into the main Medical Ward came into sight, and the screams of hurt and retarded younglings began to recede behind them.

The footsteps coming through the comlink ended and Wade Vox belted out an astounded curse.

"Dirtfarmer, what's your status?"

No answer. Zak and Rosh stumbled through the door together.

"Kyle, what's happening?!"

There was more cursing from Wade, somewhat muffled this time. When Kyle finally answered, Zak could hear the clench in the man's jaw, the grinding of teeth as he stifled confusion, dismay, and unspeakable revulsion.

"Stand by, Moldy Crow. We're all right. We've got to... We've got to see what we're looking at here."

CHAPTER COMPLETE

PASSWORD: MALIK