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Dedra jerks awake to the hiss of the door sliding open. For a split second, she thinks she hears the ominous clanking of Ferrix— feels the acrid burn of blaster fire in her nostrils. Her adrenaline surges as she scans her bedroom for something, anything, to defend herself with—
She remembers Syril just as he steps into her field of vision; he’s dressed in athletic clothing and glistening with sweat, his hair curling with damp. The tension in her body— coiled in her limbs ready to strike— slowly ebbs as she remembers he’s spent the night. That she’s allowed him to be here.
“Where were you?” she bites out, furrowing her eyebrows as she wills her racing pulse under control.
“I went for a run,” he answers, his tone defensive. He pulls up the hem of his shirt to wipe the beading moisture from his face, and her eyes automatically drift down to the lean plane of his abdomen. “I thought I could get back before you woke up. I’m sorry if I… worried you?” he continues, suspecting he’s transgressed but not understanding how.
Dedra huffs. Worried her? Hardly.
As he pads to the refresher, she stares after him, rotating this information in her mind. It’s still early; Dedra’s alarm has yet to go off for the day, and the purple light of Coruscant’s dawn is only beginning to assert itself over the artificial horizon. But this new data point— the fact that Syril wakes up earlier than she does to run, of all things, is enough of a deviation from what she believes she already knows about him that she finds herself re-evaluating her previous assumptions.
“You do this regularly?” she prods further. Willingly? her tone implies.
“Almost every day,” he shrugs, turning back to look at her. “When I can.”
The refresher door slides shut with a hiss, and Dedra is left pondering how this piece of knowledge fits into the picture she’s slowly piecing together of Syril Karn.
When she thinks about it more fully, Dedra realizes she shouldn’t find Syril’s taste for running particularly surprising.
He’d worked for the Security Inspection Team at Pre-Mor — a branch of their law enforcement arm. It’s a role which would have likely had fitness standards for their officers, even if they were truly as half-competent as Blevin, or Syril for that matter, made them out to be.
Though her own experience has told her that ‘fitness standards’ in any non-Imperial setting are often a loose suggestion at best, Syril, of course, would have ensured that he adhered to the letter of those requirements, if not exceeded them.
His running makes sense within that context, she muses. Syril’s lanky physique is not one that speaks to hours spent in the gym lifting weights or sparring with partners, though she doubts he neglects those pursuits completely. Instead, his lean, wiry strength speaks to disciplined endurance, to time spent running along the surface of the city for hours at a time.
She considers her own exercise habits. She certainly keeps herself fit enough, but her gym routine— if it could still be considered a ‘routine’ for how infrequently it occurs— had been devised around passing Enforcement’s yearly fitness assessments, and as such had not focused on anything other than the required efforts. Transferring to Investigations, where the only such demand was an annual physical, had only further served to reduce what little time she spent in the ISB’s fitness center.
For two years, this had posed little problem; her position as Supervisor came with no expectation of physical exertion, let alone combat.
Until Ferrix, she thinks with the hot flush of shame rising to her face.
That cursed, backwater planet had seized all her shortcomings— personal, tactical, physical— and laid them bare in the rust-red dirt for all to see.
“You could join me,” Syril offers one morning after she’s once again caught him returning to the apartment, flushed and breathless.
Should, her mind corrects. She knows they’re both thinking it, though neither says it out loud. If she finds herself in another situation like Ferrix— You need to be able to run away.
Not long after her return from the failed mission, she’d single-mindedly resumed the workouts she’d developed in Enforcement. She’d also immediately signed up for refresher modules on blaster usage and self-defense. But however much she’s determined to avoid a repeat of her mistakes on the Outer Rim, she’s still avoiding the simulation rooms and the track and any meter more than the exact number required by the ISB evaluations.
The discipline is something she’s long associated with the Kinderblock— with a single file line of girls in gray uniforms and barely an arm’s length between them— with countless laps around the building until her lungs burned and her legs gave out. And despite almost two decades serving the Empire drumming the importance of well-rounded physical fitness into her— the years of annual examinations with timed runs and exercise drills— running is something she still shies away from.
“I’ll consider it,” she replies. She’s already made up her mind.
She agrees to join him on two conditions: the first, that they start and end away from her apartment; the second, that they vary their routes often. She knows she’s being borderline paranoid— that realistically if they were to be the target of anything untoward, it would be far easier to follow them to and from their places of employment, just as Syril had done to her months before. But she’s heard the stories— written the reports— of Imperial troops ambushed by rebels off-base while going for a run, and while Coruscant cannot reasonably be considered hostile to an Imperial presence, she’s learned an overabundance of caution is often still warranted.
A third condition is never spoken. Syril infers it anyway: she will only accompany him if they run at night. He’s noticed the lethargic way she responds to her morning alarm, the way she lazes indulgently in bed on her day off, delaying rising until absolutely necessary. While he may prefer a morning run, Dedra certainly would not.
“How far do you usually go?” he asks one evening as he taps away on his datapad. He has a map of their sector of the city pulled up.
How far? With the exception of the fitness assessments, she’s never really given much thought about covering a set distance. She tells him so. And when he asks how fast she typically completed the runs on those tests, she tells him that too, watching as he takes these pieces of information and snaps them into place in his own, incomplete puzzle of her.
They don’t venture far the first night— around four klicks amounting to a little less than twenty minutes of running. He deliberately runs slower than he’s capable of doing; she can tell from the ease of his breathing, the spring with which he lifts his knees. She’s in too much discomfort to be as angry about this as she wants to be. Though it had been simple enough at the start to keep up with him, as they reach the ten-minute mark Dedra becomes increasingly aware that they are skirting the limit of her current ability. Her breathing becomes ragged and shallow.
“Do you want to stop?” Syril asks.
She doesn’t quite have the breath to answer— doesn’t even want to risk turning her head to look at him for fear the extra exertion will upset the delicate balance between her breathing and whatever bodily coordination she has left. She shakes her head defiantly. She won’t give up that easily.
When it ends, finally, she’s too relieved to notice their surroundings. Hands on her knees, gulping air trying to catch her breath, all she can hear is the rush of blood and the throbbing of her own heartbeat in her ears.
Syril, by contrast, looks entirely too composed: hair still securely slicked back, the slightest tinge of color beginning to rise to his cheeks. They’ve paused in the middle of a dingy flyover; an impulse to shove him into the guardrails claws its way to the forefront of her mind, and she pushes it back into the abyss of her subconscious.
Why have they stopped here?
She straightens, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear and follows Syril’s gaze.
Framed neatly in the opening between the rail and the support columns are the moons rising over the skyline.
It’s strange, she thinks. She’s seen the moonrise over Coruscant countless times. With four moons, it’s hardly a rare occurrence; at certain times of year, moonrise is even directly visible from her apartment. But tonight, they seem— enormous, dwarfing the many spires of the ecumenopolis as they crest over the horizon. They’re so close she thinks she can make out the megastructures of the terraformed regions.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Syril says, lost in the view. There’s a sense of wonder in his voice that pulls at something deep in her chest.
She lets her eyes linger on the barely noticeable flush on his cheeks, the way his hair catches the moonlight as his curls strain to break free of his pomade. The moons aren't what's drawing her fascination tonight.
“It is.”
She pays for their little excursion the next day, as her body voices its displeasure with her planned activity. Though she has increased her training regimen, her muscles are unfamiliar with the repetitive impact running requires. Subjected to her typical work routine, she tries to keep the discomfort off her face as she strides through the halls on aching legs.
She joins him again the following week.
Without meaning to, it becomes routine, their runs together. At first, she only joins him on her day off. But one day a week soon becomes two, and then three. The distance they run slowly increases from five klicks to ten or more.
Syril keeps his morning runs initially. But eventually, as Dedra’s endurance and speed increases, Syril shifts his schedule from morning to evenings. His runs become theirs.
Though Coruscant is never truly deserted at any hour, she notices he always makes sure to avoid the more congested areas and well-trafficked thoroughfares that would make it more difficult to maintain a steady pace. Whether it’s because he’s noticed her aversion to crowds after Ferrix or because he shares it, she doesn’t know— doesn’t care enough to ask.
Always, Syril ends their runs at some point of interest. Sometimes, it’s a late-night cafhouse where they share hot drinks and something sweet. Other times, he presents Coruscant in a way she wouldn’t normally see: the skeletal forms of Senate plaza lit-up but deserted in the middle of night. A public park tucked away near his office, filled with lush, bioluminescent flora. A corner of an old residential district kept so dark, they can just about make out the milky haze of the galaxy’s arms.
“It’s just— I think running’s the best way to explore any city,” he explains one day, when she’s asked about his seemingly never ending list of locales, collected and organized like his own personal cabinet of curiosities. “You never know what you’ll find.”
One night, they take a transport cross-planet before starting their route in the inky darkness of the drowsing city. As they settle into their rhythms next to each other, Dedra probes him about their location; Syril remains tight-lipped throughout. Eventually, they come to a stop, and she notices the pink tendrils of sunlight clawing their way over the horizon.
He turns to her, grinning, “I know you don’t like running in the morning.” He turns back to the skyline. “But I thought you’d like to see the sunrise,” he finishes reverently.
Syril has a particular fondness for the sky. Knowing what she’s learned about where he grew up, she can’t say she blames him. She’d barely seen it in the Kinderblock either.
“Dedra— do you— like running?” he asks one day, after a particularly hard effort that leaves her doubled over cursing at him, her breath ragged and high in her chest. On this particular evening, he’d gradually increased their speed without warning until she’d felt as if she was sprinting to keep up.
It’s a question she hadn’t considered; Dedra does not consider ‘like’ relevant to whether she continues or not. Running is sensible. Running is useful. That’s all that should matter. Still, she mulls it over.
She dislikes that she’s now constantly hungry, her appetite having increased proportionally with her newfound endurance. What before was an instinct she found easy to ignore, is now a presence clawing at her stomach, distracting her until it’s sated.
She likes the relaxed, heavy feeling of her limbs after a long run and the clarity of mind that comes with it. There’s a crystalline sharpness to her concentration, a pureness of thought that even stim pills cannot induce. The constant din of background noise has been muted. Patterns emerge more easily from the tangled web of data in her sector reports.
She dislikes that this effect dissipates with each run she misses. That her anxiety and irritation can come flooding back with so little disruption to her daily routine.
She likes the steadying presence of Syril running next to her, confident in his element. She likes the easy rhythm of their breathing, their footfalls.
She runs on his left, always. She doesn’t know why.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answers finally. “Just— just warn me next time.”
“I will. I promise.” Syril smiles and turns to walk back towards the nearest transport station. Dedra straightens and falls into step next to him.
Evening has slipped well into night when she hears the expected chirp of an incoming transmission. She stalks over to the sofa and switches on the console. Syil’s face flickers to life on the screen as she takes a seat.
“You’re settling in?” she asks, studying him. His hair is loosening from its pomade at this point in the day, curling at the temples. Is it longer?
Though their communication is regular, it’s been ages since she’s actually seen his face. Live transmissions are meant to be infrequent; static messages are easier to conceal. They can’t risk creating a pattern that could be traced back to her— to the ISB. But he had requested an audience, and she had granted it.
He cocks an eyebrow. “It’s good to see you too.”
“Have they made con—”
“You’d like it here,” he interrupts. “It’s a beautiful place to run.”
“Syril...” she warns. He knows these communications are monitored. Or at least they're supposed to be. It’s not worth the risk either way. Whatever they are to each other—were?— cannot be permanently committed to the ISB archives.
“Sorry.” He looks away self-consciously before continuing with what he’d meant to report.
It’s been several months since they’ve last run together. Since he’d left Coruscant for Ghorman. But even in his absence, for reasons she doesn’t understand herself, she’s kept up the habit.
Perhaps it’s because of how it settles her thoughts. Perhaps it’s because it helps her sleep. Or perhaps it’s because to Dedra, running is Syril, steadying and constant.
He’d given her a datachip before he’d left. On it, was every single running route he’d ever taken her on over the course of just under two years. Every route catalogued and sortable by start location, end location, distance, elevation, points of interest, and more. Of course they are. It is exactly because of this level of dedication and attention to detail that Syril is on Ghorman now.
He looks over his shoulder nervously. “I need to go.”
She nods. “Good work.” And then, quieter: “Be safe.”
The connection flickers off.
Alone again in her apartment with no further work needing to be done, Dedra rises from the sofa and strides over to the bedroom, peeling off her blouse as she goes. The athletic clothes she’s purposely left out on the bed wait expectantly.
She changes methodically, pulling her hair back up into a more secure ponytail as she finishes. A memory of Syril, half-dressed and searching for his socks comes unbidden. He’d sworn he’d put them out, and no, he couldn’t just wear another pair because these were his specific running socks and yes, he does have more than one pair of those, but not at the moment because they hadn’t yet done the laundry from this week and—
The corners of her mouth twitch upward as she remembers his look of startled surprise as he’d stuck his hands into his pockets in frustration— and pulled out the missing socks he’d absentmindedly put there. She pulls on her own before walking over to the entry and pulling her running shoes out from the concealed cabinet by the door. She steps into them as she hits the panel to exit.
She doesn’t know exactly how far she’ll run tonight.
He’s meant to visit Coruscant every six months or so to report to her. Since by all outward appearances these visits are those of a doting son to his aging mother, he and Dedra are afforded little more than hours together, always under the watchful eye of the ISB.
On the record, anyway.
Off the record, they find a way. Stolen moments in the hallways before and after his debriefings, an exchange of information, meaningful only to themselves: a time, a route.
Tonight, after Syril’s finished at headquarters and returned to a tiny flat on Level 91, she leaves her own at the appointed time, makes her way to the start of the route and starts running.
She doesn’t know exactly when she’ll encounter him, but after a few klicks she makes out his lithe form coming toward her in the distance. At the next junction, he turns left, and she turns right, following him.
She doesn’t acknowledge him— barely lets her eyes trace the familiar curve of his shoulders, his hips— just increases her pace to match his and falls into an easy rhythm by his side, on his left as always.
She’s missed this: the steady cadence of their footsteps, the synchrony of their breathing. They may not be able truly run together anymore, at least not until the completion of the Ghorman mission, but they can do this: Syril starting at one end and Dedra at the other, meeting somewhere in the middle. It lasts for only minutes— one block, maybe two— before they separate again, each continuing along their separate routes as apparent strangers.
It’s not enough. A tiny moment of familiarity and togetherness eked out of months of isolation. But this too, becomes as routine as it can. It’ll have to do, at least for now.
Victory— can it be called that?— is pyrrhic. Dedra returns from Ghorman with a knot in her chest and the taste of ashes in her mouth.
He should be here, she thinks as she steps into her apartment.
It’s been more than two years since Syril has lived here and evidence of his presence had been thoroughly scrubbed from her— their— home before he’d left. And yet, she can’t help but see his lanky form out of the corner of her eye, lurking in the shadows.
Syril, returning from a run in the early hours of the morning.
Syril, standing in the kitchen preparing dinner.
Syril, curled sleeping in the tangle of bedclothes.
She’s afraid to sleep. Afraid of the way her adrenaline surges as she closes her eyes, making her heart race and her limbs tremble. The nightmares, by this point, are expected.
She dreams of smoke, and metal, and grabbing hands pulling her into red dust— of fingers around her throat, hot and suffocating— of blank eyes and blood dripping through auburn curls.
The wake of Ferrix, she thinks, had been easier.
A renewal of the hunt for Axis is driven more by desperation than anything else. Dedra’s reluctant to go home where Syril creeps in the recesses of her exhausted mind. Fearful of letting her imagination idle lest it start to wander, to dream— she needs something more engaging than sector reports on which to focus.
Heert, in his ascension, had taken every one of the files she’d spent two years carefully collecting. He’d made it clear her input wasn’t welcome. So, locked in her office in the dead of night, she begins from scratch with what she remembers.
Her return to running is driven by inexplicable compulsion.
One night, she makes her way back to the start of one of Syril’s longer routes— one of the many they used to run when their days off aligned. She takes a deep breath. Starts moving.
The sensation is... unpleasant at first. It’s been too long since she’s bothered to exercise, and she’s gone a month or more without true, restful sleep. But as she forces her way through the first few klicks, lungs burning and limbs leaden, something inside her breaks. A bitter, curling, awful heat moves upward and outward with each step, each breath.
She’s not certain how long she runs. Two hours? Perhaps more, perhaps less. She lets muscle memory carry her through the darkened capital. Though Coruscant is a city perpetually awake, at this time of night, there’s not enough people to care about a lone figure methodically wending its way across the maze of walkways, overpasses and plazas.
Finally, she stops, turning her eyes toward the sky expectantly.
But tonight, there’s nothing— just the typical blackness that settles heavily on the city like a haze.
By the time she returns to her apartment, she’s physically spent. As she makes her way to the shower, her legs protest from the combination of too much activity and too little rest. Salt, whether from sweat or tears, has crystallized around the edges of her face, leaving a gritty, white residue. But the sharp, searing pain of her grief has been worn away to a dull ache. The frantic whirring of her mind has steadied, if only temporarily. The hot water carries away a weight.
Dedra crawls into bed, her mind blissfully quiet. For the first time since returning from Ghorman, her exhaustion overwhelms her despair and she falls into the deepest sleep she’s experienced in weeks.
She doesn’t dream.
Another night, weeks later, she makes a wrong turn.
It’s a stupid mistake; this particular route doesn’t go anywhere she’s not familiar with in daylight. But Dedra hasn’t been paying proper attention, mentally picking through the scraps of Axis she’s pieced together so far.
She turns right instead of left—
—and is confronted with a wall of faces staring at her— into her.
Startled, Dedra stops. And nearly retches from the realization.
Thousands of faces painted— no, etched— into the duracrete. Unfamiliar flowing, rounded characters underline each face.
It’s a wall of the dead. The missing. The Ghor.
If Syril’s face is among them, she doesn’t dare stay long enough to look.
Dedra flees as fast as her legs allow, her heart hammering furiously in her ears.
She's reluctant to run outside after that.
It’s well after hours when Dedra heads down to the ISB’s fitness center. She doesn’t want to take the chance of running into anyone. Especially her colleagues.
Though her working relationship with her peers could previously only have been described as ‘cordial’ under the most optimistic lenses, since returning from Ghorman, she senses there’s been a shift toward actively hostile. Judging eyes following her as she walks down corridors, a low hum of whispers they think she can’t hear when she walks into meeting rooms, requests for information delayed or ‘misplaced’. She wonders, with a sharp pang of anguish, if Syril would tell her she’s being paranoid.
She’d never been particularly forthcoming with Syril about the politics of her work-life; when he’d been at the Bureau of Standards, there’d been almost no point. And after he’d been assigned to Ghorman, she’d kept him in the dark for his own safety. It wouldn’t do for him know more about the ISB than would be expected for his position.
Not that it mattered in the end.
As she had predicted, the fitness center is deserted at this hour, the overhead lights flickering on with her presence. Though there’s no view to the outside, somehow the harsh, white, artificial glare seems sharper in the dead of night. She makes her way over to the wall of running simulation rooms, selects one, and steps inside.
The simulator has hundreds of options, starting with Aldera and proceeding alphabetically through a list of the galaxy’s scenic runs. It’s simplest to start from the top, so she does.
The plain walls of the simulation room melt away and suddenly she finds herself along a lakefront path, flanked by the pale, glistening spires of Alderaan’s capital city. She can almost smell the scent of the flowering trees that line the waterfront, can hear the recorded hum of the air traffic that moves steadily alongside the buildings.
Slowly, surely, she starts to run.
Syril had never been to Alderaan. The thought comes automatically, instinctive; she feels something hot welling up in her chest. She speeds up until it’s replaced with a burning in her lungs and limbs. She can’t give her mind any quarter to think—
The simulator seamlessly adjusts.
When she finishes, drained and numb, she showers and returns upstairs to begin the hunt once more.
Without access to her old files, the search for Axis progresses slowly. Heert’s refusal to bring her in has meant that any new leads have been hard to come by— collected infrequently and stingily from what she hears in meetings.
One night, she remembers the data packets she had been sent accidentally while working on Ghorman— irrelevant at the time, but saved just in case. She begins to pick through them methodically, hoping for information that will finally, finally prove useful.
She finds nothing.
Defeated, she heads downstairs, returns to the fitness center and chooses the next city down on the list. This becomes a tolerable routine.
It’s some months before she reaches it.
Palmo.
She considers skipping it. Knows she should. She’s surprised it’s even still in the database given that any information on Ghorman— and especially anything depicting how Ghorman used to be— had been swiftly and effectively erased. But, she supposes, an isolated scenic run simulation on a piece of Imperial fitness equipment probably isn’t a high priority on anyone’s list of information to censor.
As her finger hovers over the next city down on the list, Syril’s voice slithers out of her subconscious. You’d like it here. It’s a beautiful place to run.
Almost one year on, the rawness of losing him has tempered somewhat. Greedy and insatiable, Dedra’s curiosity wins.
She presses start.
The walls of the simulator shimmer to life and she finds herself on the rampart that surrounds the old city. To her left sprawls the deep azure water of the bay, the ancient port long ago retrofitted to serve airships instead of watercraft. Behind her, rise Ghorman’s mountains, lush and verdant. The long expanse of the defensive wall stretches before her, its worn stones glinting in the sunlight.
Syril’s right. It is a beautiful—
Was a beautiful place.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, imagining she can smell the salt in the air.
It’s just another planet.
She begins to run.
She’d not seen much of the city when she’d been there, sticking mostly, if not entirely, to the secured space of the command center. What little glimpses she’d gotten of Palmo had been from the windows of the transport when she'd arrived.
She doesn’t remember departing. But there can’t have been much left to see.
The program continues along the fortification wall that rings the city, winding into the hills before turning its way down along the canals into the city proper.
She wonders if Syril had run this same route. The wall of the fortress seems likely. Perhaps, too, he’d explored the hills, running near the Ghorlectipod caves. Almost certainly, he’d run past the squat, gray rows of shops and residences that make up the majority of the city’s buildings. Each no more than a few stories and made of the same stone as the defensive wall, they are pristine in their antiquity. Dedra, used to the towering density of Coruscant, finds it hard to understand how anything designated a capital city could be so sparsely populated.
The program turns right down one street and begins to climb upward. Something about this path seems familiar, though she can’t pinpoint why. All the buildings look the same, she rationalizes, and then—
Her stomach sinks in panic. In the distance, rises the metallic dome of the Imperial office complex.
Without warning, the road before her dissolves and suddenly she’s perched at the edge of the central plaza. The program begins to descend the steps—
There’s smoke and screaming and the screeching of metal and Syril’s lifeless eyes staring back at her, a blaster shot in his temple—
She slams the stop button with her fist, and the plaza dissolves away. She drops to her knees, panting, trying not to retch. Her hands drift to her neck, as Syril’s voice echoes accusingly in her ears.
In the morning, Dedra reports the simulator to the relevant parties. She’s acknowledged with a cursory note confirming Palmo has been removed from the database and thanking her for being a responsible Imperial citizen.
She never returns to the fitness center to check.
Most of the old data packets she’s reviewed have been useless— routine reports that, while enlightening on the exact nature of Krennic’s energy project, contained no indications of suspicious rebel activity.
But one— of a spy interrogated on Jedha who’d been hired by a man in a Fondor Haulcraft full of precious artifacts destined for a shop in Coruscant— sparks something in her memory.
An incident, over four years ago over Segra Milo— that too, had involved a Fondor Haulcraft.
The list of suspects narrows significantly. She’s close.
Armed with new data and carefully curated routes, Dedra seeks to confirm what she’s learned with her own eyes. Reconnaissance, nothing more, nothing less, marks her return to running outside.
The first suspect turns out to be female. The second, not human. The third, has closed up shop and moved on from Coruscant, long enough ago to discount him.
But the fourth, a Luthen Rael, matches her profile.
It’s dark when she runs past his shop on the upper levels. Through the glow of the facade, Dedra eyes her prey hungrily— a non-descript looking older man with flowing hair dressed in purple robes.
Syril, I’ve found him, she thinks.
It’s easier to adapt to Narkina than she expects. She keeps her head down and her mouth shut. Takes note of the working pace and surrenders to it completely.
The endless, repetitive actions keep her body occupied and her mind blank. It’s too easy to let the rhythm of motion take over, to submerge herself in the predictable sounds of the work table and her own breathing. So she does.
It’s only once the movement stops and the lights go out that her memories of him leak their way back into her consciousness. She feels Syril’s fingers closing around her throat, hears his voice taunting her coldly—
Good luck, Dedra.
She hasn’t even been at Narkina a week when the entire facility lights up with frantic rumors one after the other; intel from new prisoners, gossip from guards:
A mining disaster on Jedha. Scarif boiled. Alderaan gone.
The news sounds so outlandish that many don’t believe it. But Dedra knows better— wonders hopefully if the evident success of the project will mean her freedom. What does her little data indiscretion matter, when the entire galaxy now knows?
It’s not too long after, that more, devastating news comes— a super weapon— Death Star— destroyed by rebels.
She’ll never get out now.
She’s lost track of how long she’s been here— one month, one year. She’d recognized early on that the numbers counting down on her sentence were a lie, but the days were so many that it’d felt of little consequence.
She’s lined up in the hall, hands on her head, preparing to begin yet another workday. Suddenly, the entire facility lurches so violently, women are thrown to the floor. The overseers look around with confusion. From her vantage point, Dedra can see the prisoners in the other wings have felt it too. Another, lurch—
We’re under attack, she realizes.
With a great shudder, the power goes out. There’s no time to think.
Dedra runs.