Chapter Text
She dreamed of the antiques shop.
Standing at the overflowing table in the back of the shop, she had been drinking caf and was polishing an artefact that was laid out before her. The scene was so familiar, comforting, as she indulged in a moment so integral to her daily routine. It was quiet. No buzz of visitors attended to by Luthen in the front of the shop. She did not know where he was, nor did it seem to really matter at that moment. The caf was warm and pleasantly bitter, and she was nearly done applying a subtle shine to the item on the table before her. It was a dagger – a Nautolan bleeder, nearly 6000 years old. Its sheath sat beside the dagger on a small, rectangular cloth.
Then, a humming began.
Puzzled, she looked around, setting aside the polishing cloth in her hand. It was familiar. With both hands she reached under the table and pulled, unfolding the comms station hidden underneath. It was muscle memory at this point, as it was her habit to check in with the network multiple times throughout the day.
Taking a step back to leave room for the now expanded workstation, she examined the switchboard. There, in the top right corner, a little red light was flashing, each blink giving off a little hum as if it was radiating energy.
She reached for the earpiece that was built into the switchboard to listen to the incoming message when elsewhere, at the bottom right corner, another light came to life, also red and blinking softly.
Strange, she thought. Had there always been a signaling light on that spot on the board?
Kleya put the earpiece on and laid her hand on a large, round dial, slowly turning it clockwise to try and adjust it to the incoming message’s frequency. At this point, a third light had appeared, a few hand-widths to the left of the dial. What was going on?
A crackling in her earpiece told her she had reached the right frequency. She closed her eyes to concentrate, trying to hear anything through the channel. It was silent, only the crackling of the dubious connection being audible. Frustrated, she was about to remove the earpiece, when she noticed something on the channel.
It was something soft, barely audible, somewhere seemingly far off in the distance. Her forehead wrinkled, eyes still closed, straining to hear. The sound grew louder, slowly, steadily. A voice. Then, seemingly a second one. What were they saying?
Suddenly, they stopped. Kleya was puzzled – annoyed that she had felt so close to grasping at something tangible in the channel.
Then the screaming started.
Kleya nearly stumbled in shock as a cacophony of voices started screaming in unison on the other side of the channel. A terrifying choir, voices of women, men, and children, high and low-pitched, some louder and more prominent than others, assaulting her sense of hearing. The shock of her unexpected familiarity with this sound sent shivers down her spine. Memories of hiding in the storage compartment of a rusty old shuttle, trying to flee from the source of her terror… by the luck of the stars never having her own voice join the terrified screams of an entire planet on the brink of annihilation…
Kleya ripped the earpiece off, panting, and opened her eyes, her other hand white from gripping onto the switchboard for support. A wave of blinking red lights covered the comms station before her, blaring in alarm. The humming had swelled to a droning as she took several steps back in alarm, her back hitting the edge of the counter behind her. A glass vial rattled and rolled off the surface, shattering into hundreds of pieces as it fell to the floor. Each light was flashing in a different frequency, so that the sea of red beams was painful to look at.
Overwhelmed, she leapt forward, slamming the switchboard shut and pushing it back under the table, trying to drown the droning of the lights along with it. The board slammed back under the table and with it, mercifully, all the noise stopped.
She stood before the table, breathing heavily, her ears adjusting to the welcome silence. Kleya closed her eyes, thankful, running her hands over her hair in an attempt to regain her control. Whatever that was, it was over. Everything was alright. Surely, it could not have been real – those screams belonged to a planet far, far away, to people long dead and forgotten, to a time so distant in the past, its memory shared by so few, if any, in the galaxy…
A dripping.
Another unexpected sound in the familiar sanctuary of the shop. Confused, Kleya opened her eyes again, looking around. More dripping. There was something on the dark ground beneath the table. Another drop. Something dripping from the table onto the ground. Her eyes wandered upwards, following the course of the drops up from the bottom.
Blood.
The viscous, dark red liquid had pooled on the table, as drops of it slowly trickled down the edge of the table onto the ground. She took a step closer to inspect it. There, on the table, the previously polished dagger was covered in blood, its blade and handle sticky with the substance, blood seemingly seeping out of the weapon in a slow but steady flood.
All of a sudden, the screaming started again – she did not know from where as her head whipped from side to side, trying to locate where it was coming from. The screaming swelled in noise, unbearable, as she brought her hands to her ears, trying to drown the sound out. Was it just her imagination, or could she now hear a man joining the crowd, another familiar voice?
The screaming only grew louder. She needed to get out of here. Kleya took a decisive step forward, her hands still on her ears, when she felt her boot slip on the expanding pool of blood on the floor. She gasped, shocked, trying to stretch her hands outwards to steady her fall when –
Kleya opened her eyes.
She was not at the shop. It took her a second to orientate herself, blinking her eyes repeatedly, to remember the predicament she was in. Kleya could have almost laughed as she was unsure where she would rather be in that moment – the shop filled with screams, or this place.
She was no longer lying on the floor, the last place she remembered being. Instead, she was sat in a chair in the middle of a square room illuminated by white light. She was facing a large, rectangular panel of darkly colored glass, her reflection staring back at her. To her left and right were identical glass panels – she could not see out through the other side, but if she had to guess, they were one-way only. She was visible from all sides. Turning her head, she saw a set of white, trapezoid doors just behind her, shut tightly.
Someone must have come in and moved her while she was unconscious. She noticed that her wrists were now cuffed to the armrests of her chair, metal on metal. Kleya stretched her back in relief – the wounded shoulder still burned incessantly, but for the first time since noticing the injury back on the shuttle, the strain on her shoulder blades was gone, the skin no longer stretched tight.
Curious, Kleya kicked her feet – to her surprise, they were free. It was a welcome feeling to be able to move them again. She could at least feel the blood in her fingers and toes now, as they were no longer numb. As she was moving her legs, the chair did not budge. She could not see for herself, but she assumed that it was bolted to the ground.
Her reflection stared back at her as she looked into the dark glass pane in front of her. Was someone returning her gaze at that very moment? Although it was not a perfect mirror, she could still make out the features of her face in the reflection.
Kleya had dark circles under her eyes and appeared to look exhausted – just how she felt. There seemed to be a long, thin cut above her right eyebrow, but the memory of how she got it eluded her. Perhaps when she hit the floor after being shot at the safe house? It did not hurt, at least. Strands of loose, brown hair framed her face as some of it spilled down her back while half of it remained in the bun she had put it up in hours, if not days ago. She no longer had a sense of how much time had passed since she parted ways with Luthen. Everything had been a blur since then – his capture, her retreat to the safe house, her mission at Lina Soh Hospital, the signaling back at the safe house. Her own capture, then blackness. The shuttle ride, her transfer to the ISB, and then another gap of uncertainty.
How long had she been out? Who had put her in the chair? What else had she missed? Was she being missed?
She shifted in the chair, wincing slightly as she had forgotten about the blaster burn on her side.
It was obvious to her what type of room she was in. There was purpose to the fact that she felt the uncanniness of being observed, unable to see through the surrounding glass. Her back being to the door, she would be kept on edge as to if and when someone would enter. They kept her waiting for her fate.
She closed her eyes so as to not need to look at herself in the glass. Despite having been knocked out at least twice now, she still felt tired, unrested. Although her legs were free and her arms no longer bound behind her back, she still felt uncomfortable. The chair was hard, its backrest just low enough to offer her shoulders some, but not restful, support. Dozing with her chin on her chest would not be comfortable either.
The sudden hissing of doors alerted her to a visitor.
She took a moment before opening her eyes. Kleya was back to acting now, something she had been doing all her life. Aware that she had been uncontrolled ever since her capture, overwhelmed by her injuries and the strange cast of characters she was confronted with, she tried to exert as much influence over her image as possible now. Not as a desperate, scared prisoner, but the composure of someone who was bored, unimpressed by the ISB.
After a few beats, she opened her eyes. Via the reflection in the glass, she could see that Supervisor Heert had entered once again, a shorter man in a gray overall in tow, holding a small, metallic box in his hand.
“I see you have settled in nicely Miss Marki,” he said as he stepped into her field of vision, a smile curling around his lips. He spoke casually, as if visiting a friend. Yet she could detect a hint of irony in his voice, as he was obviously aware of the power imbalances at hand.
She did not respond with anything but a narrowing of her eyes, her focus trained on him and not the other man. He had set his box down on the ground and opened it, just out of her field of vision for her to see what was inside of it.
“Or not,” Heert said with a shrug and locked around with a sigh, as if examining the décor of the room.
Once more, she did not grant him the satisfaction of answering. Instead, she turned her head away, staring straight ahead into the eyes of her own reflection.
“I see,” Heert continued. To her satisfaction, the amusement in his voice had faded. “Well, I have kindly brought Doctor Hapal here with me to have a look at your injuries.”
The shorter man shuffled into her view. She side-eyed him without moving her head, skeptical of him. The man was holding a small vat of what looked like ointment in his gloved hands. He wore spectacles that sat on the very tip of his nose, his thin eyebrows furrowed as he inspected her shoulder. His blonde hair was combed over his head but it did little to overshadow the fact that he was balding.
“Hm hm hm!” the doctor hummed and clicked his tongue. “Blaster burns. Only so much you can do about ‘em.”
He dipped the fingers of his right hand into the vat, stirring them in the ointment. She instinctively recoiled a little as he guided his hands towards her injured shoulder.
“Might sting a little,” he said and chuckled.
The ointment was cold as it touched her burned skin. A piece of her clothing was charred away in the spot where the blaster had hit her. There was stinging indeed, and the doctor was rather careless with his application, but she managed to show no reaction to it whatsoever, aided by the fact that she had endured so much more pain in the past day.
The doctor was humming to himself as he worked. He dipped his fingers in the ointment again to apply a second coating before turning his attention to the second blaster burn on her side. She could feel Heert’s prying eyes on her. He was standing in the corner of the room, just far enough that she would have needed to cock her head to see him. While she was playing her game to win over a morsel of control, so was he.
“Right, there we are,” the doctor said as he straightened his back and examined his work. She did not like the way he was looking at her, painfully aware of the restraints on her wrists that prevented her retreat.
“Anything else, sir?” the doctor asked as he turned to face the Supervisor.
“No, doctor Hapal, this will suffice,” Heert responded with a nod of his head. “You may leave now.”
The doctor obeyed, bending down to retrieve his belongings and he left her field of vision. Once more, the doors hissed behind her as the sound of footsteps retreated outside.
She was alone with Supervisor Heert now. He remained in the corner, while she continued staring straight ahead. A game of stalemate between the two of them. But Heert had the upper hand, and he knew that she knew it too.
“I would be nicer to Doctor Hapal if I were you, Miss Marki,” he finally said, his tone almost bored. “He might not want to be as generous the next time you require him.”
She could read between his lines without taking her eyes off her reflection. He was threatening her. Admittedly, it puzzled her that she had been given some medical treatment to begin with. It was obvious to her that they were going to start asking her a few uncomfortable questions at some point, but it unnerved her that they were taking their time. That Heert was toying with her.
On the other hand, it was reassuring her that her plan seemed to be working thus far. They could have killed her at any point by now. Instead, they seemed intent on keeping her around – the seatbelts in the shuttle, the medical treatment. They kept her intact – for now.
Footsteps. Supervisor Heert moved into her field of vision, stepping right in front of her. He kneeled, their faces now level. Kleya could have either met his gaze or looked away – she chose the former, preferring it over the other option’s insinuation of weakness. His brown eyes scanned her face, relishing at the fact that she was forced to look at him now.
“You see, I remember where I have seen you before now, Miss Marki. It was at Sculdun’s party – two years ago, perhaps? You seemed awfully close to Lonni Jung that evening.”
She did not answer, holding his gaze defiantly.
“At the time, I had thought you two were flirting. I was surprised, I admit it. He kept to himself, Lonni, but what I did know about him was that he loved his wife very much. He had only recently become a father. But I ascribed it to the wonderful array of cocktails that were being served that evening.”
He smiled, reveling in his story.
“I do not know what you two were talking about that evening, but alas, I have a better idea of it now than back then. Say, what do you think his wife would think of all of it?”
She continued to hold his gaze, controlling her breathing to not betray any of her emotions.
“Oh, I do not mean the flirting,” Heert continued. “I mean, what would she think if she learned that you shot him?”
He was guessing, Kleya thought to herself. While he was wrong about the details, he was not far off. Luthen had tied up this loose end. Lonni’s death was regrettable, but necessary. At the time, at least. Perhaps the existence of another knowing soul out there would have reassured her now, but she knew that he would not have gotten far if he fled. Although Luthen was dead, he would have been compromised. As would Yavin.
“Well, while I doubt you two will ever meet, perhaps it will reassure you to know that she is not exactly in a position to enact her revenge on your little operation. It would be hard for her, all the way from Narkina-5.”
That revelation stung. She flared her nostrils – it did not escape Heert, who smiled.
“And the poor, poor child… Well, it will grow up in an Imperial kinder-block. The unfortunate thing is young enough to likely never remember that it had a traitor as a father,” he mused.
It took Kleya all her willpower to not snap a remark at him. He knew that Lonni was affiliated with Luthen and her – or at the very least, he was a good guesser, trying to get under her skin. Either way, she did not want to confirm her suspicions. She felt sorry for his wife and child, if what Heert said was true, but it sounded like she could not help them now. Not when she herself seemed no better off in that moment.
Heert rose back to his feet, looking down at her now.
“Think of all the lives you destroyed, you and Rael, while you hid in your little shop. And for what? Just for him to end up dead and you here,” he said, disgust permeating his voice.
A pause. He seemed to deliberate on the deliciousness of his next words while she chose to continue staring ahead, focusing on keeping her guard up.
“He will not receive a burial, you know. Rael. Neither will Jung. They do not deserve it as traitors of the Empire,” Heert sneered.
Kleya curled her fingers into fists, the one morsel of emotion she allowed herself to express as anger coursed through her veins. Heert chuckled above her, but she could no longer see his face unless she looked up at him. All she felt was rage. It was a constant flame within her, low in moments of calm, raging when confronted by the injustice of the world she lived in. It had been lit the day she lost her family, her home-planet, her innocence. Luthen had taught her how to kindle the fire, let it fuel her actions, but also when to shield it from the winds of her own rage when calm was needed. She had allowed herself to feel this rage in the past few days; it enabled her to do what had needed to be done at Lina Soh Hospital. But she was far from done with her mission – she could not let it engulf her to the satisfaction of some ISB Supervisor trying to get under her skin.
The hissing of the doors behind her brought a welcome distraction to Heert’s taunting. She could see the silhouette of an ISB agent in a grey uniform in the reflection of the dark glass.
“What is it?” Heert demanded, straightening his back to assert his authority before the other person.
“Director Krennic has arrived, sir,” the ISB clerk, a woman with short, jet-black hair, said.
Heert swallowed, then nodded. “Very well. I shall be with him shortly.”
With that, the ISB clerk was dismissed, leaving the two of them alone again. There was a moment of silence. Director Krennic. The name was familiar to Kleya. A ruthless man, always on Luthen’s radar. They had interacted before, at Sculdun’s party. Although they had just succeeded in removing the comms device they had hidden in the Tinnian Codex in Sculdun’s collection, it was Krennic’s speaking to her that had terrified her the most. Almost as if he had known that she was out of place, a rebel he had sniffed out amid the glitz and glamour of the Empire’s aristocracy at the party. After the party, Luthen had joked that they should have killed Krennic at the party while they had the chance. They had laughed about it at the time, but they both knew that it would have been a serious opportunity.
How many had suffered since the day they chose not to end his terror when they had the chance?
“For your sake, Miss Marki, I hope that you get to join Rael soon,” Heert said solemnly. “It would be in your interest to cooperate with Director Krennic more than you have with me.”
He leaned down to her, looking straight into her eyes one last time. “Remember that I was being kind to you.”
She met his gaze. Kleya did not know much about this man. He was a bureaucrat, reveling in the authority and opportunities his position at the ISB had given him. He was someone who had tasted the blood of action, a man who could become dangerous when finally presented with the chance to live out the cruel fantasies he never knew he had.
Heert straightened his back again and with one last, disdainful look down at her, marched out of the room. The doors hissed, and she was alone again.
Alone. Kleya took a deep breath, shakily, after having kept her guard up against the barrage of Heert’s taunts for so long. She knew that the hardest part was yet to come: staying alive. Director Krennic had a reason to be here. It was his project that her very existence was threatening.
Luthen was dead. Lonni was dead. She was the last remaining person on the right side of history who knew what Krennic had been plotting the past few years. The one who knew why Ghorman had been massacred, why the Empire was hunting for Kyber crystals. About a certain Galen Erso and his apparent connection with all of it.
But they did not know. They could not be sure that she was the last link of this knowledge. Her charades at the safe house, her last-gasp plan, all of it was to install a crumb of doubt into their heads. That there was someone else out there, someone who knew of their dastardly plans, who was ready to spread them to the rest of the galaxy.
So long as they doubted, Kleya was still useful to them. Worth keeping alive. Just enough until they learned about the course Lonni’s information had taken.
Kleya knew the pact she had entered. The sliver of hope that she could stay alive long enough to pass her information along was infinitesimal. It was a race against the clock now. A race to determine what would happen first. Would someone be able to find her, follow the mayday cipher code she had strewn across the galaxy, to take the burden of knowledge from her?
Or would the Empire crush her first, and with it the knowledge of the weapon ready to obliterate the last of the rebellion?