Private Orphans of Nar Shadda

[Riven Korr]

He looks away for a moment

A shadow moves at the mouth of the alley.

Riven straightens, adrenaline punching through the haze. He steps forward before Kaia can stop him, hand slipping to the knife tucked against his spine.

"About time," he calls.

The figure pauses. Too small. Too clean.

Not their dealer.

A kid. Maybe sixteen. Courier jacket still crisp, eyes darting like prey that learned the city early.

"Wrong place," the kid mutters. "Wrong people."

Riven grabs him by the collar anyway, slamming him back against the wall. "You run messages for Krail?"

The kid nods fast. Terrified.

 

[Kaia Korr]

Kaia moves then, quick and silent, fingers wrapping around Riven's wrist. "Riv. Stop."

 

[Riven Korr]

"He knows something."

 

[Kaia Korr]

"He knows how to die," she hisses. "Let him go."

 

[Riven Korr]

Riven's breathing is ragged. His grip tightens. For a second, power surges through him, intoxicating and simple.

Then he sees the fear on the kid's face.

Too familiar. Too young.

He shoves the courier away. Hard.

The kid bolts without looking back.

 

[Kaia Korr]

Kaia releases his wrist slowly, like he's a live wire.

"That's what I mean," she says. "You're losing it."

 

[Riven Korr]

Riven drags a hand down his face. Shame seeps in where the high cracks.

"You think you're better than me," he mutters.

 

[Kaia Korr]

"I think I want more," she answers.

The deal never happens.

Krail ghosts them. Again.

By the time the alley empties and the steam dies down, they're left with nothing but withdrawal and each other. The worst combination.

Kaia starts walking first. Toward the upper ramps. Toward light and sound and the distant pulse of music bleeding from the entertainment district.

 

[Riven Korr]

Riven follows, silent now.

They pass a wide entrance trimmed in gold and shadow. The Gilded Veil hums like a living thing, dancers slipping inside like secrets. Kaia slows without meaning to.

Riven notices.

"You thinking of selling yourself now?" he says, bitter.

 

[Kaia Korr]

She turns on him, eyes flashing. "Don't."

 

[Riven Korr]

"You already are," he snaps. "Just differently."

 

[Kaia Korr]

Her hand twitches. For a heartbeat, she imagines leaving him right there. Letting the city teach him what it taught her.

Instead, she steps past the Veil and keeps walking.

Riven catches up, anger simmering, fear buried underneath it all.

Neither of them sees the figure watching from inside the club.
Neither knows they've just been noticed.

 

[Kaia Korr]

OPEN TONGUE — SECTOR 8


The sign for the Open Tongue blossoms in a wet smear of light: a stylized jaw, tongue like a ribbon. The scent hits first — sweet brine, roasted flesh, citrus peel caramelized down to ash. People here eat like they mean it: small, deliberate motions of hands cupped around shells, lips pressing and pulling, the near-silent ceremony of sucking juice clean from bone.

"Back door's usually where the discard machines are," Kaia says without looking at him. Her voice is flat because if she sounds needy he'll smell it and twist it into his righteous anger. "They toss the brasher stuff at midnight. We wait. We take advantage."

 

[Riven Korr]

Riven nods like he agrees. Or like he's heard the plan. It's hard to tell which one.

The crowd is a pressure of bodies and fabrics: corporate silks with embedded fiber, cheap synthleathers, draped gowns that wink with tiny motes of reactive light. Service drones drift on silent rails, wrists flicking, plates whispering. Window booths hold people who eat like they're alone in the galaxy.

 

[Kaia Korr]

Kaia slides to the service alley, boots clinking on grated metal. The disposal chute sits like a hulking mouth behind a locked gate. Its conveyer hums — a soft industrial heartbeat of grinding, compacting, and chemical wash. She watches the staff through a slit in a service door. Busy hands. Focused faces. A runner dumps a tray of shells into a temporary bin; a gloved hand taps a wristpad and the lid slides shut.

 

[Riven Korr]

Riven says he'll wait. He says he'll watch the dark. He presses the promise into the air like a cigarette stub. She doesn't believe him, not because he lies often — because he leaves often.

 

[Kaia Korr]

"Don't be gone long," she says.

 

[Riven Korr]

He grins, all broken teeth and sincerity. "I'll be back before you miss me."

 

[Kaia Korr]

She wants to tell him that she already misses him.

 

[Riven Korr]

Inside the Open Tongue the world is slick and ceremonial.


Riven moves like someone learning the city again — all shadow and practiced indifference. The floor is warmed and gives slightly underfoot; the ambient sound is not music but the soft wetness of mouths at work. He tells himself it's for scraps, that he'll be back with roasted claws or a half-cleaned paunch for Kaia and the machines. That's the story he sells himself.


But the truth sits like a hard jewel in his chest: crowds, closeness, bodies unaware — perfect pickings.


He slips through booths, a ghost between velvet and chrome. Hands graze his sleeve; patrons think it's the heat. A server smiles with blue teeth, then moves on. The rich smell of sauces hangs in the air, so dense it almost forms a film on his tongue. Some dishes are sensual in the grotesque way of Nar Shaddaa — meat evacuated of shame, shells that keep secrets. People here enjoy the ritual of vacuuming flavor; it's performance, fetish, devotion.


Riven watches the patrons the way a predator watches the herd. He sizes them up — credstraps, holo-tabs, how their hands rest on pockets. The ideal mark moves slowly, arrogant, cuff flashing a corporate sigil. He waits.


A child of fortune, a spacer with lacquered nails, leans back and laughs, jaw open wide. Riven's fingers are already in motion, a practiced sleight taught under truck lights and in the silence after warning sirens. His hand slides into the man's coat like water. He feels the weight of a credstick there, the cool rectangle against his palm. He doesn't look up. Keep the face blank. Keep the flow calm.

Something brushes the back of his neck — a server passing too close, steam from the kitchen, a whisk. Heat snaps him back. He freezes, a statue in a room of living things.

The credstick is lighter than it looks in his palm. Not a fortune, but enough. Enough to buy them two nights off the drains, a line to steady his teeth. He tucks it in the inside of his jacket, careful, methodical.

He moves for the shadow near the kitchen door and vanishes.