Character
The diner on Nar Shaddaa looked like it had been assembled from bruised metal, old neon, and bad decisions, which meant it fit the moon perfectly. Blair sat across from the woman known only by the code name Bullet, the booth between them cluttered with untouched tea and the kind of silence that only existed when two people were deciding how much truth could survive being spoken aloud. Bullet was careful in the way wounded people often were careful, shoulders held too still, eyes trained to catch movement before it became danger. When she finally spoke her real name, it landed like a dropped blade.
jOEY W
. Her twin sister was
sAMI W
., and together they had once been pieces of a machine built by a tyrant named
Ecks
. Not soldiers. Not disciples. Tools. Former Jedi assassins shaped into obedient shadows, then discarded when they grew inconvenient. Blair felt the story widen inside her chest, bigger than politics, bigger than scandal. It was mass graves hidden behind a dictator's smile. It was a massacre with a living spine. And then Bullet said the thing that made Blair go cold all the way through: Ecks was not alone. He was with
Sarkana deWinter
, their instructor, their adapted mother, the woman who had helped raise them inside that cruelty and now stood beside him as if blood and betrayal were interchangeable. Blair did not interrupt. She just listened, every word sinking into the place where fear and duty wrestled for control. By the time Joey finished, Blair understood that this was no ordinary expose. This was a war disguised as a story.
She left the diner with the data shard hidden against her ribs and her pulse hammering so hard it felt like it might write headlines in her blood. The streets of Nar Shaddaa glowed in bruised color, speeders slicing through rain, strangers passing like ghosts who had learned not to care. Blair should have felt triumphant. Instead, she felt the terrible gravity of consequence. This was the kind of story that could make her name ring through the galaxy. It could also make her a target, and not the polite kind. Ecks was the sort of man who did not simply silence witnesses; he erased entire circles around them. And Sarkana DeWinter was worse in a different way, because mothers, even twisted ones, knew where to find soft spots no stranger could see. Blair stopped beneath a flickering ad-panel and stared at her reflection in the glass for one tired second. She had wanted a major story. Now she had one, and it came with blood on the margins.
jOEY W
. Her twin sister was
sAMI W
., and together they had once been pieces of a machine built by a tyrant named
Ecks
. Not soldiers. Not disciples. Tools. Former Jedi assassins shaped into obedient shadows, then discarded when they grew inconvenient. Blair felt the story widen inside her chest, bigger than politics, bigger than scandal. It was mass graves hidden behind a dictator's smile. It was a massacre with a living spine. And then Bullet said the thing that made Blair go cold all the way through: Ecks was not alone. He was with
Sarkana deWinter
, their instructor, their adapted mother, the woman who had helped raise them inside that cruelty and now stood beside him as if blood and betrayal were interchangeable. Blair did not interrupt. She just listened, every word sinking into the place where fear and duty wrestled for control. By the time Joey finished, Blair understood that this was no ordinary expose. This was a war disguised as a story.She left the diner with the data shard hidden against her ribs and her pulse hammering so hard it felt like it might write headlines in her blood. The streets of Nar Shaddaa glowed in bruised color, speeders slicing through rain, strangers passing like ghosts who had learned not to care. Blair should have felt triumphant. Instead, she felt the terrible gravity of consequence. This was the kind of story that could make her name ring through the galaxy. It could also make her a target, and not the polite kind. Ecks was the sort of man who did not simply silence witnesses; he erased entire circles around them. And Sarkana DeWinter was worse in a different way, because mothers, even twisted ones, knew where to find soft spots no stranger could see. Blair stopped beneath a flickering ad-panel and stared at her reflection in the glass for one tired second. She had wanted a major story. Now she had one, and it came with blood on the margins.