⚭ First of Ren ⚭
The worst part had been the waiting.
Not only for the prisoners, but for the Ssi-Ruu as well.
Uncertainty could kill a man given enough time, though political types often proved harder to break than they ever gave themselves credit for. Three weeks was long enough for questions to become routines and routines to become prisons of their own.
Three weeks trapped within a structure that seemed to exist outside the galaxy they knew. There were no familiar skylines beyond transparisteel. No stars any of them would recognise. No traffic lanes. No worlds. No signs of civilisation beyond endless duracrete, rusting metal and corridors that disappeared into darkness.
Three weeks without explanation. No interrogation. No demands. No requests for codes or intelligence. Not even questions about the Republic, the Senate, the Sith or Outbound Flight.
Only silence.
The Ssi-Ruu brought food. They brought water. They avoided eye contact. Then they left.
Every time it was the same routine.
The warriors who had stormed Outbound Flight with blasters and blades now moved through the facility with the caution of trespassers. Their voices remained low. Their celebrations had long since died. Even their patrols felt reluctant, as though they wished to be anywhere else.
The facility itself offered few answers.
The cells were clearly not designed as prisons. Military in purpose. Ancient in construction.
The walls carried scars where machinery had once been mounted. Thick power conduits vanished into the floors and ceilings. Faded markings lingered beneath centuries of paint and corrosion. Beyond the main chamber lay sealed blast doors that looked older than some governments.
Whatever this place had once been, it had once been important. Now it felt like a tomb wrapped in a constant silence. A silence that lived in the walls. In the empty corridors. In the spaces between footsteps.
Sometimes you would find yourself listening for sounds that never came.
Then there was the figure.
A dark-armoured warrior who existed at the edge of perception. It was never close, never for long. One day standing atop a ruined wall overlooking the compound. The next motionless upon a distant gantry.
Always watching. Always silent. Like a statue someone had forgotten to remove.
The Ssi-Ruu treated him with a fear that bordered on reverence.
Yet the figure never spoke. They never questioned them, never acknowledged them.
Which somehow felt worse.
Hatred could be understood. Indifference could not.
Then one morning the routine shattered without warning.
The lights dimmed slightly. Not enough to plunge the corridors into darkness but just enough to make the shadows deeper.
The facility felt different.
It felt awake.
For the first time in weeks Dominic would hear movement beyond the sealed doors that wasn’t the familiar scuttling of Ssi-Ruu patrols.
These footsteps were measured and disciplined. They were moving with a purpose.
Dozens of them.
They moved somewhere beyond the walls, distant but unmistakable. For several minutes the sound continued and then it stopped just like it had started. Not gradually. Instantly. As though every individual had halted at precisely the same moment.
Silence returned and the door to his cell opened.
Fully opened. No food tray. No guards. No Ssi-Ruu.
Only the armoured figure standing in the corridor beyond, stood motionless, just watching him through a mask that concealed any expression, any emotion and Any trace of humanity.
For several moments neither moved before with a single deliberate motion the figure stepped aside.
An invitation or an order. Perhaps it was both.
When the voice finally came, Dominic would recognise it instantly.
The voice from the shuttle, the one that came from the darkness between the stars.
The voice that had made monsters afraid.
"He is ready to see you."
Nothing more. No explanation offered, no name, no reason.
The figure simply waited.
And for the first time in three weeks, the waiting was over.
Dominic Praxon
