Chapter Text
“This is a waste of time. Dilapidated buildings, some broken machines… Don’t think anyone could make use of that. Us included.”
Poe Dameron, Resistance pilot and operative, scanned the area once more from their vantage point. The young Togrutan crouching next to him was right. There was nothing here but ghosts of the past.
“It looks rather like an old Imperial research station.“
“Which has been abandoned for decades, yeah. No First Order here, I bet my ass.”
A cheerful female voice chimed in via comm. “Riku, you better be careful with such ideas around our Commander Dameron.”
When the man she’d addressed caught up with the implications of her joke after a few moments, he looked mortified and eyed his commanding officer with concern.
“Watch it, Testor. What did I do to deserve this? I even gave you my fruit ration this morning!” Poe replied, amusement colouring his voice. “What’s the situation up there?”
“No hostiles. Skies clear as day. Well, apart from the thick dust in the air. That volcano nearby is pretty active, it’s a miracle that station hasn’t been swallowed up ages ago.”
That sounded worrying. “We should be done soon. No FO activity down here so far. Get ready for extraction on my sign.”
“Roger that.”
“Let’s go in for a quick look and then wrap this up.”
Riku threw his hands up. “Thank the Force.”
They searched the decrepit laboratories, but everything was covered by a thick layer of ash. Poe was about to call off the mission, when he checked the areal scanner’s display again. That was ... unusual. “There is something down there messing with the sensors. I keep picking up all sorts of interference.”
“You think they’re hiding in the kriffing cellar?”
“Well, something probably is. Not necessarily our enemies.”
Carefully, blasters at the ready, they descended the stairs. No life signs. In fact, nothing that would indicate sentient presence after the Empire’s fall. Which made the noise on his sensors particularly mysterious. They could hardly originate from a couple of broken bacta tanks, operating tables, or –
“They place the morgue right inside the med bay? Now that’s efficacy at its best.”
“And really morbid.” Yet, something was drawing him in, sparking his curiosity. Poe approached the coffins near the opposite wall. One of them stood out, though he could not put his finger on the reason. He swept aside some of the greyish dust. A faint glow was emanating from within the coffin. Startled, he took a step back. What in Malachor…?
“Ensign, get over here now.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“You found what?” Jessika “Testor” Pava did not sound happy about the turn of events at all.
Poe’s exasperated sigh crackled over the comm system. “Some kind of active stasis chamber containing a human female – ”
“So seeing that she was alive you removed her and brought her with you?
“The chamber was too heavy to be moved. She wouldn’t have been safe there. The next time that volcano erupts, the lab will be buried by lava.”
“True, but… Are you out of your mind? Do you want to spend the next weeks in quarantine?”
“Jess, we could have been contaminated by all sorts of weaponized biological substances in that Imp lab. Dr. Kalonia will give us a thorough check anyway.”
This seemed to placate his fellow pilot. “So, what does she look like?”
“Despite her weak life signs, she’s been preserved perfectly. Quite a bit of muscle wasting, that’s to expected, but a healthy look on the whole. She has an awful lot of scars all over her body, though. Apparently, she has had a tough life so far.”
“A warrior, then? Any idea how longs she’s been in there? And for what purpose?”
“She might have been a test subject, but the device she was kept in didn’t look like Imperial technology. It had a rather ancient vibe, to be honest.”
“Well, if she actually makes it, Kalonia will be intrigued and turn your mystery woman into her test subject.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Darkness. It kept her mind in its suffocating grip, as if she had never known anything else. Another reminder of her failure, as undeniable as the coldness of space. There was no escape from it, even though she still felt her own pulse, like a defiant drumming against impenetrable walls. Apathy is death. She was not yet ready to give up. Fighting was her life. There might once have been a time when she would have willingly given her life – but that was before everything fell apart with a single nod. The welcoming embrace of the Force would never come. Not for someone like her. Betrayal. Of that, she held intimate knowledge in her heart. It had long scarred over, locking up her memories, her identity. Few things existed that she could still be sure of. Pain and Hunger were amongst them, though they had lessened over time. Her fate had been woven into the fabric of the Force, keeping her in punishing limbo. She had long been slowly fading into the background noise of the cosmos, losing all sensation and coherent thought as her wounds had scabbed over. Only a trickle of the once familiar, warm flow remained. What would become of her once it had run dry? Had she yet to pass the threshold of a path promising new territories and new blood? Had she refused to answer the call of new mysteries in the dark? There was no wisdom to be gained in this deafening silence. In the beginning, there had been countless echoes passions swirling around her in drifting eddies to keep her company. Almost as if she could reach out and hold onto them to feel alive again. Perhaps the vanishing of all things would turn out to be the relief, the assurance of redemption she didn’t deserve. But expectations are fragile things.
Invisible, ruthless hands gripped the threads of the Force - and pulled. A billion voices cried out in terror… An almost alluringly familiar agony flooded her mind, spread through her limbs. She was on fire alongside them, screaming in unison. Then they were silenced all at once. She, however, did not perish. The unforgiving flames burnt away her shackles, ripping open her scars. Blood kept pouring from every vein in a constant flood until it engulfed her completely, drowning her weaknesses, connecting her to the throbbing heart of the universe. It is but the eye of the storm. The time has come to rejoin the chorus of all living things. Light broke through her crimson haze. Awaken, Exile.