Zak deduced that the room he'd been thrown into was not actually a cell, but rather a compartment in one of the containers attached to the Gravestone. Cold, cramped, miserable, and barely lit, it sure felt like a cell...but Zak was sharing it with stacks of duraplast containers, secured to the walls by magnetic locks. Somebody had been careless, because one had been broken open. From the rent had spilled a pile of fine, golden powder which glittered in the dim light of the glow panel. The smell was unfamiliar, and Zak wasn't desperate enough to taste it, but intuition told him that he knew what this stuff was.

It's what Dr. Z told me about. They used this to drug me and Tash.

And they...they've caught me again.

He thought days had passed, but couldn't be sure. He spent his time tossing and turning on the chilled metal, crawling and pacing, aimlessly feeling his surroundings. If he slept, it did him no good. He drifted, repeatedly and without warning, into chaotic nightmares and delirious episodes which left him screaming until he was lightheaded.

At some point these became less frequent, leaving him long, uninterrupted stretches to worry, to sulk, to cry...to dread. The only upside to Zak's predicament was that his captors didn't seem to be in any hurry to torture him. In fact, no one had even visited him, except when a bone guard cracked the door long enough to toss a ration pack inside.

Hunger, thirst, and the torment of silence withered Zak's strength. Eventually he reflected on his actions at Far Qasqi and asked himself—probably for the trillionth time in his life—whether he'd really gone in over his head this time.

If he had taken one risk too many.

If his luck had finally run out.

If he had finally gotten himself into a mess that neither Uncle Hoole, nor Tash, nor anyone else would be able to rescue him from.

Could be, he had to admit, shivering and hugging himself. At least I was able to land a few shots on Boba Fett, that fragger. At least I bought Tash a chance to get away.

Truthfully, he didn't know for sure if Tash had gotten away, or for that matter what had happened to Kyle, Jan, Wade, or any of the others. There had still been shooting out on the dock when the bone guards dragged him aboard the Gravestone. It could have gone any way...

Skrag it all, though, we're Arrandas. And they're the Bryar Force. Whatever happened, some of them must have made it through. And I'm not dead yet. If they don't get to me in time, I'll just have to find my own way out of this.

It was a bold, defiant thought, one Zak repeated to himself many times as the hours drifted by.

If only he could believe it as much as he wanted to.

Eventually, he couldn't believe much of anything as he lay half-curled up, his stomach groaning, as the unforgiving floor leached the last of the heat from his body. Around him, Zak could feel the bulkheads straining and creaking, hear the hum of the enormous engines changing pitch. There was something else he heard, too. Something half-familiar...

Clack-clack-CLACK-CLACK-clack-clack-CLACK-CLACK!

Chills raced along Zak's spine like the frigid feet of Hothian snowmice. The sound was of something walking along the corridor outside his prison...

CLACK-CLACK-clack-clack!

Something walking closer...

CLACK-CLACK-clack-clack!

Something that stopped right outside the door...the door that then opened with a dilapidated hiss.

Facing away from the entry, Zak didn't dare move. He didn't dare imagine. It wasn't true, it was impossible. That thing that had almost caught them on the Hospital Platform...that droid that seemed like it was more than a droid...there was no way it could be here.

A prolonging squealing sound reached his ears, sending goosebumps across his body. It was like someone dragging fingernails or claws across a databoard. Though it was agonizing to listen to, Zak's head simply refused to turn. Gradually the squealing sound was coming from every direction—as a series of thin, glinting tendrils slithered and squirmed over the floor all around him.

A warbling hiss from the doorway was his last warning, and finally broke the last layer of Zak's denial...before the tentacles lashed inward all at once, wrapping and knotting around him. Zak screamed and thrashed, futilely clawing at the floor as he was dragged out of the compartment.

In Zak's weakened state, it took him no time at all to exhaust himself until he passed out. The first thing he felt upon awakening was a stinging pain in his neck—the pinprick of a needle. Though it set him to renew his struggle, he quickly gave up, finding himself still imprisoned in the web of steel bands. However, he now in some nondescript room elsewhere aboard the Gravestone. Bone guards of multiple species stood guard in the corners, and Jaykay was holding him upright from behind.

"Good evening, young human," said the figure directly ahead, closing up a medkit. "I realize you have not been well-cared-for during the trip, but we can't let you get too much of your strength back. Nevertheless, I'll need you conscious and aware, so I administered a stimpack."

Zak's blood went as cold as the metal tentacles encircling him. "You...you're one of them. You were one of them all along."

"Indeed I was," replied Dr. Fale Rottwerm. Every feature of him was as Zak remembered: his voice, filtered as it was through the huge, bulbous helmet, was at once synthesized and gurgling, and lacked the clear intonations of either male or female. Multicolored lights blinked and flickered from the indicators and controls on his white plastoid suit.

"We did not meet during your time there—at least, not when you were in a lucid state," the doctor continued. "My main role was to assist Utric Sandov. I supplied him with the sufficient dosages of morpheon spice to keep you and your sister compliant during your unfurling."

The word unfurling made Zak want to throw up. He'd had nightmares, rememberings...but he held on to himself by his bleeding fingernails. For whatever reason, Rottwerm was talking to him while he was helpless—like they usually did. His captor might reveal useful information, something that would help make sense of things.

"Of course, you were found...unsuitable. Unlike young Tash Arranda, you lack the sufficient concentration of Monad Seeds to be prepared for true transcendence, and so you were rejected in favor of your sister."

"Where is she? What happened to her?" Zak blurted the words before he could stop himself.

Rottwerm made a slurping sound and replied, "I believe that she slipped away along with several of your friends, but it is no matter. You can safely abandon any hope of rescue. You see, we know all about your little hideout on Orion IV, Searchlight Station, and by now it has been reduced to a smoldering crater."

"No...that's not true," Zak breathed, his mind a whirlwind. "That's impossible."

Breathing audibly, the doctor carefully bent his waist at a sharp angle to lean in toward his prisoner. "Shaparo Bridger and his meddling accomplices are all dead, the information they gathered destroyed. Your few friends who survived my trap at Far Qasqi will never find you."

Zak blinked tears away, loathing them. "Yes—yes they will, they will..."

But Dr. Rottwerm spoke over him. "In any case, our plans will soon be complete. After the symphony of flesh, Mother will awaken, and then nothing else will matter."

Before either he could go on or Zak's terror could deepen, a low boom resonated through the bulkheads. A tinny, disembodied voice announced, "Final docking sequence complete. All crew, proceed with standard procedures."

"Madam Doctor, we should go now," said one of the bone guards.

"Indeed we should," said the cyborg, nodding awkwardly.

He says he's a woman, Zak recalled. Thinks he's a woman. Maybe he only thinks he's a Mon Cal, too. He'd noticed that Rottwerm's helmet always directly faced whoever he was talking to. The doctor never canted his head to orient the bulbous lenses where a Mon Calamari's eyes would be; it was more as if the central sensor dot on the front was actually seeing for him. It tracked with what Zak had managed to overhear about his abuser, Utric Sandov: that "he" was actually a human woman who had been surgically altered.

They left the room in a kind of procession. Jaykay set Zak down on his feet and withdrew some of its tentacles—only to jerkily force him to walk along ahead like some kind of puppet beside the doctor. He shut eyes for a moment and wetted his lips, trying to sort everything out. The chaotic events around Tash's rescue replayed disjointedly in in his mind. He prayed to all the stars that Rosh had taken his advice and was now safely hidden at Brint-wo.

"We don't—I mean, you—I, I don't understand," he stammered. "You saw me on the Hospital Platform, but you didn't do anything to stop me. Why would you let me go? We escaped with Tash and everything!"

Even with the Mon right there, openly in league with this depraved cult, Zak had a hard time identifying him with the slow-witted, doddering cyborg he and Rosh had run into those weeks earlier.

"I was in no position to stop you on my own," explained Dr. Rottwerm. "In fact, I was making preparations to leave the platform when you arrived. Deena Demarakesh's failure to report back from Nar Shaddaa had already alarmed us, and then I was alerted to the Moldy Crow's approach. When I went to confer with Sandov, I found that his medication had lost its potency, leading to his unfortunate demise. As a result, I was forced to rapidly take charge of things. I ordered Superintendent Versch to prepare your sister for discharge from Special Sentient Needs—and Jaykay to be on the alert."

Behind them, the crab-like droid emitted a bone-chilling hiss, its free tendrils shifting restlessly. The doctor went on, "Sadly, the latter is...somewhat unreliable. You may have perceived that it is as much a living creature as a droid. A relic of the Clone Wars, in fact, that I found and attempted to perfect."

With a wheezing breath and what seemed to be a pained effort, the oversized helmet pivoted toward Zak. "Of course, I did not want you to escape with your sister, but I judged her an acceptable loss, and given my encumbrances, I had no choice but to leave you to Versch and Jaykay. Whether you succeeded or failed, it would make no difference in the end. Either way, I could count on Katarn and his friends to return to their hideout—unaware that one of my little mechanical helpers had stowed aboard his ship—and lead us right to it.

"Finally, before leaving Utric Sandov's office, I made sure to leave a piece of evidence there which would point to the Gravestone's stop at Far Qasqi—and later alerted ship security to prepare for an attack."

Once again Zak was stunned (and there was no comfort in the confirmation that MIMIC, contrary to his fears, was in fact not a traitor). If Rottwerm was telling the truth, then this one man had completely outwitted the Bryar Force twice over; it was a complete Double-Jabba. Not only had he tricked them into revealing Searchlight so it could be destroyed, but he had lured their field agents into an ambush. For the first time since being taken, Zak felt real anger ignite in his veins.

"Where's Boba Fett?" he snarled. That snooga-chuffer—if he hadn't been there, Jan and Quagga's teams surely would have gotten aboard the Gravestone and made off with its navigational data.

"Not that it concerns you," Dr. Rottwerm said thickly, as though something were obstructing his throat, "but you won't be seeing the bounty hunter again. Take whatever comfort you may from that."

The group finally emerged into the bulk freighter's main unloading section. The huge loading ramp was extended, and guards as well as workers were plodding down its length, shepherding binary loadlifters that gripped crates and gear in their hydraulic electrogrip arms. Rows of hoversleds idled toward the back.

Everything vibrated with a bass, mechanical hum, and Zak saw why as he was forced to descend the ramp. Coming to the platform below, he saw that the Gravestone had come to rest in a rectangular cradle studded with extended docking arms and claws, and that the entire massive contraption was sinking underground like an elevator. Before it rose out of sight, he glimpsed an unappealing landscape of reddish, burnt-looking rock, and a horizon lined with jagged, needle-like spires. Craning his neck up, he was startled to see an enormous aquatic orb centered in the sallow, tan sky. This was a moon, he realized, orbiting a beautiful oceanic world. Undulating roars of unseen sublight engines came and went. Those sound like starfighters flying past, Zak thought.

With a thunderous sound the Gravestone's docking cradle settled into place, linking up with a cavernous chamber extending into an underground facility of some kind. Loadlifters and hoversleds plodded in, many carrying crates which looked the same as the ones in Zak's impromptu cell; it must have been the morpheon spice which Dr. Rottwerm had mentioned.

The grim procession of lumbering cyborg, ensnared teenager, clackering crab-droid, and ten escorting bone guards, began down the center. Looking about, Zak noticed various beings coming up to assist with the cargo: technicians and workers as well as soldiers, some wearing mismatched armor, but others in half-familiar military uniforms.

Rebel uniforms. And that symbol that he kept seeing on the freight doors to the left and right, it was unmistakably the Alliance Starbird—once proud scarlet, now chipped and faded to the dull hue of dry blood.

"This...this was a Rebel base!" Zak said, gawking, as they neared a smaller door in the end of the elongated chamber.

"We were Trespassers here." Fale Rottwerm's ambiguous, sexless voice nevertheless had a suddenly dreamy quality to it. "We knew not upon whose nightmares we trod. The folly of the Technicians."

"Uhm—bwuh?"

"The one who led us here, the Locutor—he interpreted to us what had happened. The truth of our existence. We serve our Mother Cycsila now, in order to transcend."

"Huh?"

The doctor went on as though he were speaking to himself. "I followed her instructions and have, so I hope, perfected the process." Waddling along on legs that still seemed too thin for his barrel-shaped torso case, he displayed his thick, plastoid-shielded arms. "My first project was myself, Utric Sandov a second, Hellanah Glittersky a third, but the perfection—you will meet them soon enough, but they are the one fit for the symphony of flesh. Not you."

Zak had no idea what these terms meant, and to be honest he wasn't particularly interested in being enlightened about them...but it looked like he wouldn't have much choice in the matter.

The doctor fell silent as they entered one of the main corridors of the base. Everywhere Zak looked, there were signs of neglect and disrepair. Glowbulbs and light banks that flickered or were completely dark. Doors that stood half-open. Exposed machinery, wires that spat sparks or pipes that issued steam in agonized wheezes. Annoying maintenance alarms chirped and beeped incessantly. There were droids here and there, maintenance or astromech units, but four out of five stood deactivated, perhaps permanently—to say nothing of the occasional piles and scatterings of junk and other refuse. Foul smells wafted from ventilation grilles or maintenance hatches—some mechanical, others organic.

Another sign of the facility's poor state was its apparently thriving population of vermin. Here and there Zak spied a gaggle of dust-mice darting from one vent to another, or a lone garbage crow nibbling on some piece of trash. Had he not known better, he'd have believed he'd caught one of these creatures staring at him with beady little eyes, watching him pass with a calmness that animals rarely displayed. To his astonishment, a fully-grown mynock flew overhead once or twice

"MADAM DOCTOR ROTTWERM! WHAT...IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!"

Zak jerked in alarm, only to yelp as Jaykay's fetters bit into his wrists, arms, and knees, keeping him in place. Blinking pained tears away, he saw the group had halted.

The source of the bone-chilling, ghostly bellow was still a ways off up the hall—half-striding, half-shambling, with one artificial leg clanking like firing of a piston. Actually, his whole body clanked, from the plates of dark, ill-fitting armor to the weapons and other odd devices draped about him like tribal talismans, to the thick, metal-shod cane grasped by one hand, wherewith its owner stabbed the floor with savage enthusiasm. A rag that may have one been a scarlet cape trailed from one of his shoulders.

Fale Rottwerm made a sort of frenzied gargling noise. When he spoke, though, he sounded as toneless as usual. "Brigadier General, greetings. I'm unsure as to why you would be confused, considering I sent another detailed report ahead of my arrival—and I understand it met with the Locutor's approval."

"Whether or no he is finished with you, I am not. It is time that someone reined you in." With a final shuffle, the hulking figure came face-to-helmet with the doctor.

Up close, he was an even nastier piece of work. His eyes were mismatched—one open wide, the other somehow shrunken—but the whites of them shone like glowbulbs from the dark skin of his scar-knotted face. His hair, mustache, and beard, were all wild and black, flecked with gray. Already tall, he looked like a juggernaut in his armored suit. Zak instinctively tried to shrink, even as the crab-droid kept its hold on him. There was something about this guy...

"Are you criticizing me," Dr. Rottwerm was warbling, "for delivering results that are too successful?"

"Your results lost us a pure vessel of the Quintessence!" the dark man barked. "A choice morsel for Cycsila!"

"One that was only ever a contingency, as the Locutor made quite clear. Thanks to my plan, Shaparo has been dealt with and—" The doctor paused, gargling again, and the barrel-shaped midsection of his suit rattled. "And none of his underlings who remain will be able to trouble us before the symphony."

"Utric Sandov's death did not transfer her authority to you, Madam Doctor. You have overstepped—and so did Krane, in agreeing to your plan. Your scientific work is critical, but that is your only value to our fraternity." He pointed a meaty, gloved finger directly at Zak. "For what purpose do you bring this back to us, having lost Tash Arranda? Your tests found that he does not have the amount of Monad Seeds desired!"

Hearing himself and his sister talked about like they were objects only added to Zak's unease, not to mention his morbid curiosity about all the odd terms they were using. Who was Cycsila and what were Monad Seeds? What was Quintessence? He gathered that this "Locutor" was someone higher than either the mad doctor or this shouting belligerent—possibly even the leader of the cult itself.

What made Zak gulp, though, was finally realizing he had seen this man before...in the dream he'd had a little before Tash emerged from her catatonic state. The many villains and monsters surrounding him in that patient room—this powerful dark-skinned human in armor with a prosthetic leg had been one of them.

I had a dream where I saw somebody who I hadn't met before! What the stang does it mean?

"He will serve his purpose to advance the cause of science," Dr. Rottwerm continued, "in the little time we have left. Again, with the Locutor's express permission.

He signaled, and they were on the move again. Without warning, Jaykay wrapped Zak up and went back to carrying him. The Brigadier General stomped his cane and hobbled to keep apace with Rottwerm, seeming to teeter back and forth under the weight of his gear. "This boy was inside the enemy's camp," he protested, fuming. "He should be turned over to the Locutor for interrogation."

Abruptly they came to a freight-sized turbolift. Several dust-mice zipped in with them and romped about in the corners, squeaking and chittering, as the lift descended. The diagram and controls were pretty bare, but Zak deduced that there were several levels to the facility, and they were going a good distance underground.

"Your thinking has always been too rigid, Gerrera." Dr. Rottwerm said, staring straight ahead. "You think everything has to be run in a strict hierarchy like a military, but that has never been how our fraternity operated. Nor is it how scientific progress is achieved. Besides that, I have always reserved the leftovers for myself—and this one may provide valuable data in perfecting the transcendence operation."

"What purpose does developing your methods serve when the symphony draws near?" asked Gerrera, who had been pacing and fuming since they entered the lift.

"In the name of science, all development is justified," replied Rottwerm as the doors opened. The dust-mice hurried out ahead of them, one narrowly dodging the fall of a bone guard's bony boot. They proceeded through several more corridors. Branches were marked as leading to a barracks, sanitation, armory, and so on. Two signs directly ahead read "MECHANICAL" and "LABORATORY". Zak idly noticed that this level seemed exactly as dirty and ill-kept as the higher one.

Perhaps having the same thought, Dr. Rottwerm spoke again. "I'm surprised you have enough time on your hands to come and badger me, Brigadier General. Have all our comrades arrived yet? Are your men ensuring that they are kept safe and comfortable while they wait?

"Pinnacle Base is secure and fully operational," insisted the big man.

"Then why have I heard reports to the effect that it is falling apart? That you are losing guards and workers to animal attacks? That the facility itself has been malfunctioning? Your chief mechanic—"

"I have redoubled his discipline, and he assures me there will be no further incidents. Everything has been taken care of since the report you read."

Dr. Rottwerm took a long, slurping breath and rotated his helmet toward the Brigadier General. "That's good—because I will need to make full use of the power grid for today's experiment."

"Hrmmrmmrrrrr..."

The man called Gerrera mumbled ominously to himself as he hobbled along. They passed several security doors which opened diagonally in response to a red key carried by the doctor. Soon after, a fork in the hall presented itself with the same signs as before...and sure enough, they started heading for the one marked "LABORATORY".

"I will be observing this experiment, Madam Doctor," Gerrera said at last.

Rottwerm was silent a moment, likely displeased, but answered, "As you wish."

"H-hold on!" Zak cried, shaking within Jaykay's snarled grip. "There's no way I'm going along with this! I-I'm sick of scientists poking and injecting me, trying to take my brains out—"

He yelped in surprise as the bio-droid dropped him flat to the metal floor. The tentacles squealed and slithered around him, some of them withdrawing, and Zak scrabbled and tried to crawl away, but he still had a dozen or so knotted around various parts of his body. As he renewed his protests, Jaykay continued to walk—this time shoving and rolling him across the floor.

"You may not be a suitable morsel for our Mother, but you will have your uses, young human sentient," garbled the doctor. "Monad Seeds are not themselves essential to transcendence. We will see how a lesser one like yourself responds to the full procedure."

Several of Jaykay's tentacles extended ahead, rippling and swaying—and snapping at the occasional vermin which ventured too close. Zak glimpsed a dust-mouse trying to crawl past, only for a blurring, needle-thin tendril to flash down and cut it in half. All the while he squirmed, grunted, and sputtered as he was grated over rough metal and through strewn trash. Even as fresh panic coursed through his veins, he finally pieced together several of the things he heard.

Trying to keep the mad doctor in his sight, he yelled, "You're not doin' this! I'm not gonna be turned into a—into a freak like Utric Sandov! You...you're really a human, too—aren't you?! And I'd bet every credit I've got, you're a man under that stupid helmet!"

Rottwerm did not answer him at first. Zak knew the difference between a regular silence and the dangerous kind. "Man is a relative term," the doctor said. "As is human. None can truly say. It is a...false universe that we live in. You will see the proof of that soon, young sentient."

The tentacles pressed Zak flat, hard, and he screamed out against the tension as they nearly bit through his skin. He saw Jaykay walking over him, felt its metallic belly brush over him once...

Clack-clack-CLACK-CLACK!

...and then he was being dragged along behind like a Tionese tonnika-dummy tied to the back of a speeder bus. Sharp clangs stung his ears as other tentacles slashed against the floor on either side of him, and he flinched away.

"Get that pest!" one of the bone guards yelled, followed by a blaster discharging.

The next thing Zak knew, another security door closed, this one mostly transparisteel—blocking a flapping mynock which slammed into the window hard enough to rattle it. Its dumb eyes seemed fixed on Zak's, its moist sucker pulsing as if trying to chew through the barrier. A thick, transparent ooze slid toward the floor from its puckering member.

"Really, Gerrera, this situation is repulsive," Dr. Rottwerm chided.

Rather than listening to the dark man's reply, Zak tried to take in his new surroundings as Jaykay dragged into the middle of the next room.

In its own way it was new, but it was also sickeningly familiar. From the Imperial laboratories on D'vouran, Gobindi, and Kiva to Cornelius Evazan's hideout on Necropolis and the redoubt of Treun Lorn in Kashyyyk's Myyydril Caverns, not to mention half a dozen other awful places...no matter the planet, an Arranda knew the abode of a mad scientist when he saw one. This was the sterile kind, kept meticulously, obsessively clean, unspotted, and well-lit. The many shelves lining the walls supported racks of specimen cases, test tubes, mysterious devices, and wicked-looking tools which glittered in the light of the glow panels. There was no sign of vermin, either; it was hard to believe they were still inside Pinnacle Base at all.

As for the test tubes and other containers...besides ambiguous liquids, Zak saw metal frames cradling hearts and other organs that pulsed and quivered as though still alive. Eyeballs floating about like fish in self-stirring jars of preservative fluid. Thick cylinders filled with chunkier varieties of chemical soup. Brains, hands, legs, other limbs from a dozen species or more...

Pretty standard stuff, really. If not for his being a prisoner here, surrounded by insane cultists, being dragged away to Force-only-knew-what sort of horrible fate, Zak would have gotten bored pretty quickly.

One feature stood out as he was taken deeper into Rottwerm's laboratory: where the walls didn't support racks and cabinets and the like, they were covered in elaborate diagrams. At first glance these were simply medical or pseudo-medical—anatomical displays of various creatures (or parts of them), chemical formulae, and so on. As Zak was driven past more and more, however, he started recognizing shapes and designs...

Recognizing things he had seen on the walls and ceiling when Sandov and Demarakesh had been...

Maybe they weren't all medical diagrams. He kept seeing wide, sprawling ones like murals, filled with bulb-eyed figures in flowing robes who had tentacles instead of arms or legs. Zak had never seen such creatures before, except when the image caster showed them, and...

And in my dream, he realized. They'd been in the patient room with Gog and Necrosis and the drog beetles and everyone else. Who or what were they? The true leaders of the Transcendent? Some cabal of eldritch superintelligences, pulling the strings from behind the scenes...or from a subterranean lair which never saw the light of day?

A short corridor leading to another security door had the biggest mural of them all. It showed throngs of the strange cephalopods in a chaotic frenzy: pulling off their robes, flying or leaping or running in fear, biting or tearing each other limb from limb...but that orgy of violence was spread around the border. In the mural's center was a huge ring made of rectangles and blocks, inlaid with geometrical designs not unlike the blueprints of a circuitboard or a droid's memory core or a hyperdrive engine. And inside the ring was...

Another geometrical diagram, but this one was different. It didn't seem mechanical.

Zak had no chance to puzzle it out, because then Jaykay picked him up and carried him through another door—to their destination.

The room was a tiered metallic bowl. Some six or seven meters below, its floor was dominated by a weird machine as big as a landspeeder. Dr. Rottwerm and Gerrera started down the wide staircase, the former aided by one of the bone guards. A small humanoid figure seemed to be waiting for them. Zak strained his eyes as he tried to guess at the room's purpose, but that machine was making his blood run cold—and before he could make any progress, Jaykay threw him down the stairs. Merciless metal battered and bruised him as he tumbled like a doll. At some point he bumped his head, flooding dark mist into his mind...

It was the throbbing in the back of his skull that woke him a moment later. Summoning all his strength, he lifted his head (he was spread-eagled on his back) and willed the room to stop spinning.

The bio-droid (still crouched next to Gerrera at the top of the stairs) had released Zak, but his captors were not leaving him alone. The bone guards were spread around the bowl's floor...and the figure Zak had glimpsed before being thrown was drawing near, coaxed by Dr. Rottwerm.

"Yes, thank you," the doctor was saying. "Say hello, Ezra."

Drool crept along the line of Zak's slack jaw as he stared. It was a kid. Eleven, maybe twelve standard years old. Perhaps human, but abnormally pale like an Echani, Umbaran, or other near species. The bare feet were bloody, callused and cracked, his fingernails ragged and coated brownish red. For clothing, there was only a loose white gown, and he...or she...

Zac realized that he couldn't quite tell. The kid was not only bald but completely hairless, and though his face (Zak was going to assume his for the moment) was in the main quite smooth and young and in its own way ordinary, a dark scar curled from the top of his head all the way down to his brow, and his cheeks and jawline were lined and haggard, like those of an elderly human. His eyes were...

Dead.

Just dead. Empty blue-gray like carbon-finished durasteel. Deep and bottomless, like the clear sky of some unfortunate, far-flung world that never birthed intelligent life. Those eyes, that face...Zak thought they were familiar, and he strained to remember if this child had been in his dream too.

"Hi. I'm Ezra," the kid said. It was a perfunctory murmur, the way someone would talk in his sleep.

"I'm...Zak," Zak said stupidly.

Fale Rottwerm rested a plasteel-sheathed flipper-hand on the child's shoulder. Despite the electronic filtering of his helmet, his next words exuded pride. "Ezra was one of our earliest catches—from Kolaador, before Crix Madine's imperfect conditioning failed him. They represents the pinnacle of my work: a near-perfect, transcendent being—free of species, since they is free from the categories of male and female. Even your meddling sister does not carry as many Monad Seeds as they does. Rendered docile by prolonged morpheon treatments, primed by many unfurlings, they is set to be the center of the symphony of flesh. Their savor, my handiwork, will finally sate our Mother Cycsila so that she may awaken—and everything shall then be fulfilled."

"Rrrrm-hrmmm!" Brigadier General Gerrera agreed from the room's apex.

Zak Arranda stared. To say that his heart was broken would be inadequate. To say that he wished to empty his guts onto the floor would fall a million parsecs short of describing what he felt at that moment.

Even with his head throbbing, his stomach curling with emptiness, his whole body bruised and torn and withered, he pieced it together. It wasn't hard; after all, Shaparo had laid out everything that happened, leading up to the horrible episode on the Hospital Platform.

Kolaador.

Crix Madine.

That was the beginning, the epicenter—as far as anyone knew—and it had all happened a year ago.

This kid had been in these people's clutches for an entire standard year, and...

Shaparo had those same steely blue-gray eyes, wide and deep and empty.

Shaparo, whose son had been one of Madine's victims at Kolaador.

Shaparo Bridger, whose son had disappeared, leaving him with nothing to lose, impelling him to form the Bryar Force and wage all-out war against the invisible enemy that was corrupting the Rebel Alliance...

This was his son, Ezra Bridger.

It was indescribable.

Unbearable.

Another kid. Another poor, innocent kid, Zak thought, for lack of any better words. Ezra seemed a bit more collected than Tash had been during her catatonia, but that somehow seemed even worse. He was aware, not locked away inside himself, but his eyes were still dead.

Dead.

Another memory flicked through Zak's mind: another child, another victim, but not one of the Transcendent. Eppon, the boy created by Uncle Hoole's evil partner in science, Borborygmus Gog: a shapeshifting, flesh-absorbing monstrosity designed as a killing machine, the first soldier in Gog's army of terror. He'd first appeared in the laboratories of Project Starscream on Kiva, when Hoole went there in the hopes of ending the project once and for all. Eppon had seemed to be a harmless human baby, instantly earning Tash's affection—before murdering and absorbing several innocent Rebel operatives and revealing his true nature as a tool of destruction. And yet Tash never stopped caring about him. She believed—or to hear her tell it, instinctively recognized—that Eppon did not have to be a monster or a weapon. With the Force she was able to reach his tortured mind—and may have changed him for the better, had Gog not blown poor Eppon's head off.

Zak knew in this moment that Ezra Bridger was his Eppon. He couldn't say whether the Force had anything to do with it, but he had been brought face to face with a mirror, a living image of the Transcendent's depravity. Except, for whatever reason, this boy hadn't had the strength to endure his abuse and retain his sanity. Maybe this was what Zak would have been turned into, permanently, if he'd remained in Utric Sandov's clutches for an entire year. Then again, maybe it was the drug—morpheon, as Rottwerm had called it—and if he was gotten off it, he might have a chance to eventually heal.

It was impossible to tell, but right now that didn't matter.

Zak couldn't make sense of Dr. Rottwerm's ramblings, but he understood that poor Ezra was important to whatever they were planning. His ritualistic death—in the name of their deity, Cycsila—was of cardinal importance to them.

And just like it had been for Tash with Eppon, Zak Arranda recognized—decided—accepted—simply knew—that he had to save Ezra Bridger, come perdition or hard vacuum.

"But until then, you should watch from over there," said Dr. Rottwerm, pointing. Ezra nodded before meandering over to a corner of the room, where he sat against the wall and pulled his knees up to his chest.

Two bone guards were now standing on either side of Zak, but he paid them little mind. With Ezra out of his sight, his eyes had fallen on the device around which the room was centered.

Slowly but surely, his blood turned to liquid nitrogen, and he came to understand that, like it or not, Ezra Bridger wouldn't be his main concern for the immediate future.

The doctor took position at a large control panel and raised his voice. "As I said, young Ezra represents the pinnacle of my work. It was only possible through the use of my invention here."

Horrible, horrible understanding sank in as Zak took in the sight.

It was an assemblage of durasteel rings within rings, locked together in such a way as to spin along different axes, built as a sort of orb or frame around a very sturdy-looking chair—which was, of course, bedecked with manacles and restraints of every conceivable type. Zak thought of the aerotrim gyro-chair he had seen in the museum back on Gathus: a primitive piece of equipment used to train star pilots before artificial gravity was perfected. This contraption's rings, however, were much thicker, evidently to accommodate much more internal machinery than old-fashioned motors.

To accommodate the robotic arms, which grew inward from the rings like mechanical bristles, each one tipped with a different tool.

The bone guards picked Zak off the floor, hauled him over to the machine, and slammed him into the chair. Hinges swung. Manacles snapped shut and locked, spreading his limbs far apart. It was impossible to struggle.

The control panel beeped loudly as Dr. Rottwerm pressed a series of buttons. The machine came alive with a din of mechanical hums, grunts, and growls, a ravenous animal emerging from hibernation. With his head locked in place, Zak's eyes darted wildly at the dozens upon dozens of robot arms surrounding him. There were blades of every kind and shape: grinning saws and hooks, rectangular cleavers, huge choppers and little slicers and peelers. Other arms ended with grippers and probes, injector needles, energy cutters, sophisticated sensors...

MRRRNNNNNGG!

Without warning the rings moved, pitching Zak into a nauseating stationary tumble. It stopped with a jarring clank, leaving his face toward the ceiling.

Dr. Rottwerm spoke again an explanatory tone—perhaps for the observing Brigadier General rather than his victim. "Naturally, the first step in transcendence is the subtraction procedure. As you can see..."

KZRRRR-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK!

Zak's eyes bulged as several robotic limbs extended from the rings around him, then slid down to where he could barely see them.

A burning sensation at his waist made him yowl. He realized it was a low-power laser cutter. It was going to burn his pants off. And then the other arms were going to cut something else off.

The surgical machine drew in additional power with a hum that rapidly clawed its way up to a shriek. Zak screamed from his throat.

And then, as though an eye had been blinked, the room was plunged into complete darkness.

Before his eyes could adjust, there were flashes—sparks and electrical arcs fountaining from joints in the machine, from power coupling mounts, from exploding light banks overhead. Glass rained, tinkling and glittering. Burning chemical odors wafted through the room. Frantic shouts swirled together in a jumbled mess—Rottwerm, Gerrera, the bone guards. The only distinct voice was a prolonged wail that sounded like a baby. That had to be Ezra.

Obviously something had gone very wrong—or right, from Zak's perspective. The power had gone out. As his body shook from head to toe, he felt the electrically powered restraints moving. In fact, a few around one of his arms had fallen open!

Too frenzied with terror and adrenaline to actually think, Zak squirmed and struggled until he freed one hand, then blindly yanked at the manacles while chaos continued to swirl around him. The surgery chair wobbled like a raft, and Zak didn't realize he was out until it tipped too far, dumping him into the lower part of the device.

As he fell, something sliced through his pants and bit into his lower leg, but he couldn't scream on account of smashing his gut into some blunt metal thing. Retching and gagging, he groped at the rings and climbed between them, coming out onto the floor of the lab. Electrical discharges were still going off at random, throwing hard shadows in every direction.

A flash like lightning illumined the mountainous form of Gerrera at the top of the stairs—and Jaykay beside him, its tentacles a writhing, agitated blur. "HE WILL PAY! HE WILL PAY FOR THIS!" the Brigadier General was bellowing, shaking his cane overhead.

Zak blanched. His pant leg was getting wet. He had no idea what to do. There seemed to be only one way out of this room, but he didn't stand a chance of sneaking past that bio-droid.

Besides, what about Ezra?! I can't just leave him here!

Panicking, he looked around. The next thing he saw was a pair of bone-studded boots before something hit the back of his skull, plunging him into unconsciousness.

Though Zak was not castrated, he still awoke feeling worse than ever before.

He'd been bound again, tied to a normal chair this time. More cuts, more bruises, more raw spots...though the tightness around his one leg suggested he'd been bandaged up there. His head, though, felt like concussion grenades were popping off inside. Thinking about it made it hurt even more, so he tried to focus on something else—anything else.

And as his eyes cleared, he did have something to occupy his attention.

"LIES! INCOMPETENCE! DECEPTIONS!"

It was the ghostly voice of Gerrera—except so hoarse that it might give out at any second. He must have been bellowing for some time while Zak was unconscious.

Wherever they were, now, it was darker than Rottwerm's lab, and Zak's eyes had not cleared yet. However, he could hear someone else in the room: someone howling and blubbering and gibbering...

"I-I'm sorry! AAAAA! It wasn't—I didn't do it on p-purpose—AAAAA! T-there were m-mynocks in the r-reactor input shaft and—AAAAIEEEEE!"

"EVERY DAY, MORE LIES!" snarled Gerrera.

Overhead, a single light cast them in a pale orange glow. Zak's stomach turned when he saw what was going on. Rolling back and forth on the rocky floor of the chamber was a chubby, middle-aged human man. His wifebeater and work trousers were stained with grease...and also fresh blood. Over him stood the Brigadier General, beating him mercilessly with the metal cane, roaring out abuse.

After a few more blows and exchanges, the situation became clearer. This was the chief mechanic of the base who Rottwerm and Gerrera had talked about before—the man in charge of keeping everything maintained and running. When the doctor turned on his surgical machine, something had gone wrong and knocked out power to that part of the facility. Now the mechanic was paying the price for it.

Gerrera bent over and continued his accusations. "YOU DID IT ON PURPOSE! YOU...ARE A SABOTEUR!"

"I'm not, I'm not a saboteur!" wailed the mechanic, his fat arms shielding his face from Gerrera's spittle. "J-just leave me alone and I'll, I promise I'll get it fixed!"

Gerrera growled, using his cane to push himself erect, and circled his victim—hobbling like a Dantooinian graul with a wounded leg. "YOU LIE! TO KNOW THE TRUTH, THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY..." He licked his fat lips. "BOGLE IT!"

"NO! NOT BOGLE IT!" the mechanic shrieked. "DON'T LET HIM! I WON'T BE ABLE TO WORK!"

"BUT YOU WON'T DECEIVE US EVER AGAIN!"

The sheer howl that answered him made Zak's hair stand on end.

Gerrera paused, twisting to look at the end of the cave—this seemed to be a cave, anyway. It was too dark to see anything clearly, but the wall there...if Zak didn't know better, he'd swear the wall was moving. Crawling. Squirming, making strange, slopping sounds that he could barely hear over the chief mechanic's hysterics.

"It seems he doesn't want you now," grumbled Gerrera, regarding the other man. "But I want you to get back to work! Restore the power grid to full capacity. Your next shift will be forty hours, Rebus—now go!"

Rebus slunk away on his hands and knees. Greasy folds of black hair hung over his eyes. He gave Zak a terrible look—pitiful and pitying at the same time before he stood up with a groan and vanished into the shadows.

Zak looked back to Gerrera, who already seemed to have lost interest in the mechanic. In his hand he held a breath mask, linked to a metal container on his sagging belt, inhaling deeply with an expression of rapture. When he let go of the mask, it clicked back into its place, and he peered down at Zak. In the gloom of this cave...chamber...whatever it was, little of his face could be seen except the whites of his mismatched eyes.

"The doctor's machine needs repair," he grunted. "And you were in the enemy camp. With Shaparo. With Kyle Katarn. Everything you saw, you are going to tell."

"Go to hell, you kriffing korno."

Zak didn't talk that way very often, but for someone like this, on a day like this, he made an exception.

Gerrera didn't bat an eye.

Somehow that worried Zak even more than an enraged response. It made sense in a perverse sort of way, though. These cultists didn't see him, or for that matter Ezra, as people. So why would they get angry with him?

"I-I'm not telling you anything," he added,

"Not me," Gerrera clarified. "BOGLE IT."

Zak tilted his head, not understanding. Is it Huttese? Gran?

The big man said it again, slower. "Bor Gullet. The Locutor."

With that he stepped aside, fading into the shadows, leaving Zak with an unobstructed view of the cave wall. Something was emerging the darkness there.

Something big...

As big as Jabba, Zak thought in revulsion. A sliding, undulating blob of greasy girth, with a long, plateau-shaped blob on top suggesting a head. Its tiny, snail-like eyes were the color of spoiled blue milk. The croaking, groaning sounds it made sounded like Tash's stomach when she hadn't had anything to eat. Tentacles slid over the floor, meandering and curling, glistening in the orange light.

Zak yanked at his restraints, but it was useless. In seconds he had exhausted his strength. Meanwhile the tentacles flowed and swirled up the chair, winding around his limbs, leaving trails of cold slime as they went.

"Bor Gullet...can hear your thoughts," Gerrera yawped from the sidelines, invisible. "No lie...is safe! Do your friends have any other plans? Does anyone else suspect us? Bor Gullet...will know the truth."

This had to be it, Zak realized. This was one of those aliens from the mural, wasn't it? And it was the leader of the cult!

And it was going to go rooting through his mind.

Because he knew. He could feel it: an overwhelming presence that was not physical at all, an energy that was already beginning to press in on him, sink its claws into him...

Pained glee crept into Gerrera's next comment: "The unfortunate side-effect...is that one tends to lose one's mind."

Zak believed him. It seemed to be happening already, because he thought he could hear Tash, like she was standing in the mouth of this cave far behind, calling urgently to him...but that made no sense. She was many lightyears away, safe with Kyle Katarn. Oh, please let them be safe, he prayed.

Two of the tendrils found his forehead—their touch was gentle, featherlike. As the slime dripped into his eyes and down his spasming face, he felt something like white-hot needles in his skull while the rest of his body—starving, exhausted, ripped and torn—started to fall away, and he saw...

The barren surface of an asteroid stretching before him. Protected from the icy vacuum by a bulky spacesuit, secured to the ground by thick tractor boots, he trudged along after the Uncle Hoole, the Ithorian Fandomar, and several miners. Space rocks the size of mountain tumbled through the dark void overhead. Turning to his sister beside him, Zak said, "Look up, Tash," then smirked when heard her gasp over the comlink speaker. "There's no 'up' in space, laserbrain," she told him irritably.

He saw...

Mom in the kitchen wearing her favorite apron, her hair half-undone and messy, pressing squishy lumps of ground nerf meat into patties. Seven year-old Zak was stamping his feet, complaining of how hungry he was for a nerf burger, while Tash—curled up on the touch—looked up from her holobook to tell him to pipe down.

He saw...

The interior of a cargo ship on the planet Kiva. Zak and Tash were huddled together on the floor of the cockpit as Darth Vader loomed over them, his mere presence chilling them to the bone. His lightsaber snapped on with a threatening buzz, its blood-red blade coming to red before Zak's neck. Looking from the boy to his sister, the Dark Lord intoned, "Do you what this can do to human flesh? And do you understand that I have another, more terrible weapon at my disposal?"

He saw...

Glup Shitto, dirty and bloodied, trapped behind the force field. Waving his stubby little arms, he jumped up and down and screamed, "You have to go, it's too late for me! Find Doctor Kinesworthy! Only he knows how to stop—AAAAAAAA!" His scream was cut off as Necrosis's clawed hands flashed out of the shadows to silence him...

It's not happening, Zak thought as the scene blew away like a swirl of dust driven over the Dune Sea of Tatooine. It's Bor Gullet. It's like the thing in Gog's nightmare machine. It can read my thoughts! It's making me think...making me relive it! Turning my mind inside out!

Even as Zak realized it, he could feel himself unraveling, starting to lose clarity. The memories came on, one after another, faster and faster, but he was having trouble knowing whether they were memories at all. Maybe they were fantasies or dreams, things he'd made up. Maybe he wasn't Zak Arranda at all. Maybe he, everything he knew, was just...food or something...

But Tash NEEDS ME, SHE WANTS ME TO HANG ON!

It was true—a wonderful, beautiful truth, something that was true immediately, not as a general fact of their relationship, though Zak couldn't say how he knew. He tried to shout it; the words wouldn't exit his mouth, but they rang loud in his skull all the same, and one way or another he felt like he'd bought himself an extra moment or two.

Through the carnival of horrors which was Pinnacle Base, Zak had recognized a number of things and people from his dream weeks ago at Searchlight. What else had been in that dream? Hadn't Tash been a part of it too?

Hadn't she told him something? He tried to remember...

I can't help! This is something Yoda talked about! Look, Zak, just try to stay calm, laserbrain! They haven't got you yet, right!? You'll figure it out, little brother!

She mentioned Yoda, the Jedi Master on Dagobah. Well, what about him? He had said...

You need not be the best at everything to succeed at some things.

Ah, but that wasn't the only thing—and Zak couldn't see what good that would do him now. Yoda had also said...

The Force connects you. Together will you grow. The path chosen for you has been dark. But remember the cave. Even in the dark, the Force will always be with you.

Even through the numbing fog of Bor Gullet's influence, Zak felt new tears run down his face.

He'd learned on Dagobah that he did have the Force—when he fell into that cave full of hallucinations after the cannibals attacked him, he'd used it to find his way out again. He'd used those abilities a few times since, not always to great effect. It had gotten him into some real trouble on Hoth. After that, he'd not thought much about it at all, except much more recently than he was willing to admit...

Abruptly his thoughts aligned with Bor Gullet's groping, and he saw the inside of his cell on the Hospital Platform. The door sliding open in a flash, allowing Zak to run outside and find a computer, send a message asking for help.

The door had malfunctioned. Supposedly. That's what Zak had told everyone later. He'd only gotten lucky.

I think even you know better than that, little brother, Tash had told him, in that infuriating big-sister tone that she always used when she was right.

Because he did know better. Yoda himself had told them that they had the same gift. Zak probably wasn't as strongly attuned to the Force as Tash, but he did have the same gift. He'd just been hiding from it all this time because he was...afraid of misusing it? Afraid of screwing up? Was he still envious of Tash? Did he want to compete with her? Was he just stupid?

Whatever the reason, the result was the same: Zak had tried to bury his gift, to hide from the truth. He hadn't honed it like Tash had, and now it might cost him everything.

I'm sorry, Tash. I'm so sorry...

The truth was terrible, but Zak knew he couldn't wallow in it for long. Because if he gave up, he wouldn't be able to tell Tash any of this himself.

She wouldn't get the satisfaction of being right again.

And Zak was her little brother. He couldn't let that happen.

He didn't know much about the Force, but it was supposed to touch all things—including people's minds. Tash had used it to reach Eppon's, calming the living weapon when it had seemed beyond the reach of language. Zak imagined the Force as a shield, or a wall...a container that he could hide inside, something to hold out the pressure of Bor Gullet...an ocean of sewage trying to burst in and drown him...

Zak didn't know how to do it. He didn't really know if he could do it at all. The monster knew he was trying, though, it thrust invisible, burning needles into his temples and cheeks and ears and eyes. Zak heard his own screaming like a sound on another planet. He had no idea if he could bear this...

Stang it, though, I'm an Arranda. We're kriffing awesome at suffering.

CHAPTER COMPLETE

PASSWORD: SHADOWSPAWN