The city burned.

Vader surveyed the wreckage dispassionately from where he stood, at the very top of the governor's palace. And it was truly the top: he had situated himself at the uppermost edge of the roof, from where he could see the entire city laid out before him. For the governor's palace had been built, quite intentionally, to but situated almost directly in the center of the city. It was the only urban area on the entire planet; half the planet, the cleared out area, had been devoted to growing various vegetables, grains, and fruits while the other half lay wild, a mass of forest and swamps. This city was the planet's main trading port as well as business hub, communications center, and administrative network.

Well, no longer.

He doused his saber, the beam dimming with its characteristic hiss. From below came the incessant moan of the rabid things that had attacked him. He assessed them clinically from his spot atop the roof. He had jumped there using a Force-enhanced leap, in the process bursting through a gaudy and likely very expensive Chandrilan glass window. It had been the only way to escape the creatures that had torn through his men like flimsiplast. He was the only one remaining of the force he had brought to the planet. The others had fallen, dragged down by those beings with no hesitation, no fear, and seemingly no motivation.

This was no rebellious mob. This was something else entirely.

He pushed aside the stuttered attempt of an explanation that the governor had given him before the mob had torn him apart. Rising from the dead - what stupidity. He knew from personal experience that a return from the dead was nearly impossible, and certainly not something achievable by ordinary beings. But a disease of some kind… that was far more likely. Yet what could it be? He thought back to the information he had received on the planet. The pastoral world was mostly human, but it had a sizable minority of alien populations. Rodians, Twi'leks, a colony of Mon Calamari in the swamps, even a few Devaronians and Togrutas, as well as an imported population of Wookiees and a counterbalancing group of Trandoshan laborers, had all made their home there according to the reports he had been given. Many of their number were amongst the mob coalescing beneath him.

Whatever madness had infected them, though, had rendered them all the same: an unruly, mindless herd bent on nothing more than destruction and hunger. Even their appearances had blurred together, so that while most retained their general distinguishing features - the shape of their head, the number of limbs, the height of their body - they all had the same grayish skin, shot through with black where the infection, whatever it was, had seeped through their circulatory systems, or the closest thing to it that they possessed. The same sightless eyes, staring at and through him; the same animalistic grunting as they shambled below him.

But even that was not as disconcerting as the next observation.

He could not feel them with the Force.

In fact, once he swept his senses out, he could feel almost no sentient life on the planet at all, no presence at all in the Force, save for a few scattered lights, most dim, some a bit brighter. It was not a Force void, for even that would have some sensation, some sense of emptiness. As far as he could tell, these beings did not exist within the Force at all.

He gripped the hilt of his saber. It was like being blinded or deafened, the loss of an entire sense. He could hear them, see them, yet to stretch out and feel nothing at all - it was disquieting. This was no natural disease, no genetic mutation or evolutionary offshoot of some preexisting microbe lying undiscovered until now. Someone had devised a method to utterly hide a being's presence in the Force. And that idea alone was enough to make the Dark Side boil.

This was far more dangerous than any rebellion. A group of beings - any beings - that could disappear from the Force itself - it struck at the heart of the Sith.

He would get to the bottom of this.

Vader pushed the moaning mass of beings below him from his mind, assessing his next steps. There was little chance of them reaching him; the disease appeared to have rendered all its victims practically non-sentient, depriving them of conscience or intelligence. And if that was the case for the rest of its inhabitants - and by all accounts it was - then the city itself was lost; he must leave it. He swept his gaze to the landing pad next to the governor's palace, noting with only the slightest irritation the burning wreckage that had been his shuttle. Torn apart, most likely, by the horde of creatures, in order to get to the crew and pilot left on board. As he gazed at it and the swarming figures below, he saw some familiar uniforms among them: Imperial uniforms.

The governor's terrified explanation came to mind once more, but he shook the thought away. The governor had been an irrational fool. His men had not died. Rather, this all pointed to what he had already theorized: disease, acute, fast-spreading, and incurable. Most likely spread by bite or blood, he reflected, remembering the horde's tendency to use their mouths over their limbs. He supposed he ought to be thankful it was not airborne, else he might have been changed too: the respirator did not filter out microorganisms.

Idly, Vader let his gaze fall over the torn leather sleeve on his left arm. He had been careless in that first, sudden burst of the diseased, and allowed one of them to bite him. The pain, even dulled as it was by the prosthetic neuroreceptors, had been enough to snap him out of his surprise and cut down his attacker. More importantly, all it had managed to do was clamp down on metal and cloth; no part of it had found actual flesh. Nevertheless, he did a quick scan of his own body; there was a miniscule chance that, perhaps, whatever disease-causing organism had been transmitted along the metal and synthskin to his actual flesh. It took longer than he might have liked - he was no longer in the habit of checking his health - but he sensed nothing amiss. Perhaps there was an advantage to having all prosthetic limbs.

He cast that thought away and turned towards the south. His comlink had been rendered useless by the death of his men, and he tossed it aside without a second glance. If the power grid was being shut down, which was likely, then he would have no way of communicating with the Exactor either. But there was a military base outside the city; just about every notable planet had one, and those were expected to be self-sufficient and ready to communicate with any passing Imperial commander. He would make his way there, traversing the routes with the least amount of wreckage and, if all went well, finding some speeder or transport to make his way off-planet.

And once there… he clenched a fist in anticipation… someone, perhaps many someones, would pay.

It was a high drop from the rooftop to the ground, but that was no matter when one had the Force on one's side, even if it was deadened on this planet. Without another glance behind him, Vader leaped off, his black-caped form moving towards the fading light.

The speeder jolted under her clumsy hands.

Leia clung to its wheel, the wind whipping into her eyes over the open cockpit, blinding her.

And she could barely even see where she was going in the first place!

She didn't even know how much time had passed. It had taken so long just for her to pick herself off the floor - or at least it felt like a long time had passed - and now she was racing past who knew what. Everything was a blur and the only thing she comprehended was that she could not see the sun and that the sky was turning that gray-blue color that usually meant night was coming.

Trees flew by her. Fields too, then buildings, growing taller and taller. Leia couldn't see over the speeder edge - just to hit the pedals, she would have to sink all the way down and push it, and then she couldn't see anything else so she had to raise herself back up before she hit something, but if she wanted to see clearly she had to push herself over the dashboard or the door, and then she couldn't hold onto the steering wheel or touch any of the levers, so she was bouncing up and down, and it was cold and her arm hurt so badly and she kept bracing herself to crash, she was going to crash -!

Without thinking, she jerked the wheel to the right and yelped as she saw a massive gray something - building or ship or maybe even an alien, she'd never know - fly by her left side. She hadn't even seen that! If she hadn't moved like she had she would have hit -

Something rang in her head, an overwhelming feeling that sizzled down her arms telling her to move again - and then her body jerked of its own accord, and she spun the wheel again until that same mind spot yelled stop! Her arm throbbed with every movement and she could feel wetness on her wound and the torn bits of cloth beneath her white overdress flapping wetly -

And then it came one last time, the overwhelming feeling telling her she had to STOP NOW.

Leia gasped and sank down, down towards the bottom of the speeder, one foot reaching the brake.

The speeder came to a sudden halt that made metal screech and jolted her off her already-precarious position on the seat. Her legs buckled as they banged against the speeder floor, sending pain shooting up her feet and ankles and shins. At the same time the bottom of the dashboard came flying at her - Leia threw her arms out in front of her face and yelped as she smacked against the hard surface.

Everything went quiet.

Leia, pain stabbing needles all over her body, whimpered as she lay at the bottom of the speeder.

Get out, her mind whispered.

She twitched at that. Her head swam with any attempt to think. Her legs ached. Her arms were sore and bruised. It was easier by far to ignore that niggling thought telling her to run. She just wanted to lie there until her parents could find her. They knew where she was, right? They were coming to save her, weren't they?

That little mind space pressed at her again: get out .

But she hurt so much.

It was even stronger now. Get out, NOW .

But why -

An unearthly howl made her jolt upright and almost hit her head on the seat.

It was the same howl she had heard on the ship - the same sound of the ones that had attacked her - had hurt her - had killed - had killed -

NOW!

Terrified out of inaction, Leia clawed at the leather seat until she was up - and immediately started choking as acrid smoke burned her eyes and filled her lungs. The speeder was aflame and her mind was yelling at her to get out get out get out NOW -

The howl was right in her ear.

Leia threw herself backwards and felt something swipe right where her head had been. She couldn't see and she couldn't hear anything except crackling and screaming but that was all she needed. She threw herself atop the chair and scrambled across the whole length, away from the screeching, only to slam into the speeder door. Not even bothering to open it, Leia heaved herself over the open top and plummeted down to the side. She fell all the way to the ground with an oomph and a thud that rattled her spine.

Even that was not enough to stop her. There were more shrieks, all down the - the - the streets, she realized, she could see streets . Wiping her eyes of smoke, she spun about frantically, seeing alleys and buildings and streets, but all of it, all of it was on fire or smoking or blocked by giant piles of - of rock and rubble and -

There. She came to a halt as suddenly as if someone had grabbed her. An open door beckoned to her.

And all around it, the monsters. All of them turning, even in the growing darkness, to look at her with their wet, hungry, deadened eyes.

Leia ran.

She pumped her legs as hard as she could even though they ached and her side was splitting open and she couldn't breathe and everything tasted of ash and still she ran -

Until finally she reached the building and slammed the door behind her, and did not stop running up the steps, up and up and up, until she finally, finally found one empty room and locked herself in it.

Luke hoped that things would get quieter as night fell.

At home, night was never silent, but it was not loud. The winds that blew over sand and home were soothing, in their own way. The homestead would be powered down, allowing him to hear the hum of the perimeter alarms. There'd be the movement and mutterings of his aunt and uncle settling into sleep and the scritch of Tatooine's tiny rodents, appearing only when the suns had gone down, to crab at the cooling sands.

Here, it did not grow quiet.

The clawing was the worst: the nails of dozens of those… things… against the walls. It raked at Luke's nerves in a way nothing else had. He could hear the constant crack of fingers snapping across permacrete, no pattern or rhythm to it, just a sudden sharp noise that would startle him with the loudness. Or there'd be a metallic screech, as if the walls were giving way. Each time it happened he would sit, panicking, sure that they were coming through, breaking in with their slavering teeth and wild eyes -

He buried his head beneath his pack.

The moans, too, interspersed with growls or rasps or a faint choking sound, were endless. And the patter of footsteps, never ceasing, a constant pacing around the entire building. The warehouse itself was so big that the sounds bounced constantly off the walls, making everything seem even louder than it was. At home, during the night, cuddled up in his bed, he would sometimes listen to the squeak of a droid's antenna or the a vaporator creaking in the wind and wonder what it was like to live in a town, an actual place full of people.

He had never thought of what so many people would sound like. He had not thought of what it would be like if they never slept.

They kept on groaning, and not even his pack could muffle the noise.

Why were they after him?

Was it because they… knew? Knew he had run away from home? Knew he had disobeyed his aunt and uncle when they said he could not go with his classmates on a trip off-planet? Were they trying to catch him? He had only meant to be gone a few hours, maybe a day, he had never been anywhere before . He had not meant to be bad. It didn't make much sense to him that they'd be so angry for something like that, but he couldn't think of any other reason.

And besides… Uncle Owen was always saying stuff like that. There'll be hell to pay, he'd grumble, at everything: not just Luke when he lost a tool, but at a droid when it stopped working, at a vaporator when it broke down, at the sand for getting into the house when it was least convenient. They all knew he just liked to grump, and Aunt Beru would even make fun of him for it. She liked to say that there were three things that were constant in their life: the heat, the sands, and Uncle Owen's complaining.

But what if he was right, this time? What if… what if Luke had been bad? So bad that this was what happened?

Had he caused this?

Luke sat up, blinking in the darkness. He had hidden himself in a tiny close of a room within the warehouse, thinking wildly that if he was sleeping, he had better put as many walls between the monsters outside as he could. Yet somehow the groans penetrated all the walls. And the monsters didn't go away, even though there were no windows. They couldn't even see him, yet they refused to walk away, refused to leave.

Maybe they were just on the other side.

Maybe they could smell him.

Luke scrambled about until he found the thin sheet he was using as a blanket. Trapped inside the room, he had tried to take his mind off things by searching the boxes around him. He had found some ration bars and water canteens - filled ones, which he had never seen before - and taken those, especially the water. He wanted as many of those as he could. The water within was warm, but he was used to that. What he wasn't used to was water that was clear and sparkling, and he had had a few pleasurable moments just staring at that crystal clear water, forgetting about the danger he was in. The water at home was always muddy-looking. It even tasted different: more clean, he realized. He wasn't sure he liked that.

He had also found the blanket, and some clothing, though it was all too big for him. But he buried himself beneath it, because the warehouse was cold, much colder than he was used to. He still had all his clothes and even his boots on and it felt weird to be sleeping like that, in his work clothes, on the floor, with his pack as his pillow.

And the screeches.

Luke squeezed his eyes shut. Go away, go away, go away -

Something yowled and he heard the big warehouse door rattle.

Luke gasped and burrowed himself into his blankets. As if drawn by the call, more and more of the horrible monsters were screaming, their cries piercing his ears. Luke tossed blankets and clothes over himself, yelling at them in his head: Go away! Go away, go away, please! Go away -

He wished he could go away. Go all the way back to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. He wished he had never jumped on the ship and come here. It had only been for fun, just to see something that wasn't the same farm and the same sand dunes and the same town with his same old friends -

Go away. Just go away. Go away. He imagined himself flying far, far away, shrinking down and down and down, then speeding like a grain of sand back to Tatooine, all the way back. More than anything, he wanted to go back home.

Something growled, but it sounded more distant. The clawing quieted.

Go away. He was even smaller than a sand grain. He was a tiny crystal on its surface, a miniscule shard of that crystal. Go away.

The shrieks settled back into the same ceaseless moans.

Luke, lost in his own head, heard none of it. He was a little, little speck, no, even tinier than that, a piece on the speck itself, the bits that would fall off whenever Aunt Beru swept too hard because she hated how the sand dirtied her floor, and which only Luke would spot and clean up to make her happy. Smaller than that, too… what was smaller than a piece of a sand crystal? Aunt Beru had said once that everything was made up of something else. So whatever made up a side of a crystal.

The moans drifted off, becoming just a ceaseless drone of whimpers and shuffling.

It was not quiet, not like it was on the moisture farm.

But it was, finally, a bit more bearable.

Luke, still curled up, whispered himself to sleep.

Completely forgot to mention in the first chapter's notes that the title was inspired by zombie(ish?) movie Twenty-Eight Days Later.

In Legends canon, the Exactor was Vader's flagship for a little while between the end of the Clone Wars and the beginning of A New Hope (where his flagship was the Devastator). I just wanted to mention that in case anyone thinks I'm misspelling Executor for the entirety of the story, which I am not! It sure FELT like I was misspelling it because the ship names are so similar, but it was very intentional.