from waist-high to ceiling had once been painted the color of aged ivory. The floor and lower walls used to be the green of wander-kelp. What was left of both paint jobs flaked in patches rimmed with mildew.
The binder chair that held him was in better condition. The clamps at his wrists were cold and hard and had no weakness he could touch; those at his ankles sliced pale gouges into the leather of his boots. The chest plate barely let him breathe.
No windows. One glowstrip cast soft yellow from the joining of wall and ceiling. The other one was dead.
The door was behind him. Twisting to watch it hurt too much. The durasteel table in the center of the room was dented and speckled with rust-he thought it was rust. Hoped it was.
On the far side of it was a wooden chair, its bow back stripped from wear.
His vest and shirt were tattered at the shoulder where the first bolt had struck. The skin beneath was scorched and swollen with a black bruise. Set on stun, the bolt had barely penetrated his skin, but the concussive force of the steam-burst still hit like a club. It had picked him up and spun him. The pounding in his skull implied that at least one shot had caught the side of his head. He didn't remember.
He didn't remember anything between that first shot and waking up in this binder chair.
He waited.
He waited a long time.
He was thirsty. Uneasy pressure in his bladder somehow made his head hurt worse.
Studying the room and assessing his injuries could occupy only so much of his time. Much of the rest of it, he spent replaying Flor's death.
He knew she was dead. She had to be. She couldn't have lived more than a minute or two after the militia stunned him; without his Force-hold to pinch off that brachial artery, she would have bled out in seconds. She would have lain on that filthy sidewalk staring up at city-dimmed stars while the last of her consciousness darkened, faded, and finally winked out.
Again and again he heard that wet splattering thwop. Again and again he carried her back under cover. And stopped her bleeding. And tried to speak with her. And was shot by men he'd thought were coming to help.
Her death had gotten inside him, down below his ribs. It ate at him: a tiny pool of infection that grew through the hours in that room until it became a throbbing abscess. Pain and nausea and sweats. Chills.
A fever of the mind.
Not because he was responsible for her death. It ate at him because he wasn't.
He'd had no idea she was about to walk into a blaster bolt. The Force never offered the faintest hint of a clue. No trace of a bad feeling-or rather: no hint that all the bad feelings he'd had were about to add up to something much, much worse. Nothing. Nothing at all. That's what sickened him. What happens to a Jedi when he can no longer trust the Force?
Was this what broke Depa?
He shook that thought out of his skull. He drove his attention into his visual field, focusing on cataloging the smallest detail of his prison. Until he could see for himself, he told himself solidly, he owed her the presumption of innocence. Such doubts were unworthy of her. And of him. But they kept creeping back, no matter how hard he stared at the mildew-eaten paint on the wall.
I know you think I've gone mad. I haven't. What's happened to me is worse.
I've gone sane.
He knew her. He knew her. To the marrow of her bones. Her most secret heart. Her cherished dreams and faintest, foggiest hopes. She could not be involved in massacres of civilians. Of children.
nothing is more dangerous than a Jedi who's finally sane.
She couldn't.
But as seconds swelled to hours, the certainty in his head went hollow, then desperate. Like he was trying to talk himself into something he knew was wrong.
He felt the door behind him open. A damp breeze licked the back of his neck. Footsteps entered and clicked to one side, and he twisted to look: they belonged to a smallish human male, comfortably plump, wearing militia khakis that were improbably well starched, considering the heat and the damp. The man carried a snap-rim case covered in tanned animal hide. He brushed a wave of end-dampened hair the color of aluminum away from dark eyes, and offered Mace a pleasant smile. 'No, please.' He waved a hand toward the door. 'Feel free to have a look.' Twisting farther, Mace could see down the corridor behind his binder chair. At the far end stood a pair of steady-looking militiamen with blaster rifles aimed at his face.
Mace frowned. An unusual position for guards.
'Is this clear enough?' The man moved around Mace to the table, never crossing their line of fire, and opened his animal-hide bag. 'I'm told you have a bit of a concussion. Let's not make it fatal, shall we?' The Force showed him a dozen places on that soft body where a single blow would maim or kill. This man was no warrior. But energy spidered outward from him in all directions: an important man. Mace found no direct threat in him, only a cheery pragmatism.
'Not talkative? Don't blame you. Well. My name's Geptun. I'm chief of security for the capital district. My friends call me Lorz. You can call me Colonel Geptun.' He waited, still wearing that indifferently pleasant smile. After a few seconds, he sighed. 'Well. We know who I am. And we know who you're not.' He flipped open the lid of Mace's identikit. 'You're not Kinsal Trappano. I'm guessing not Corellian, either. Interesting history you don't have. Smuggler. Small-time pirate. Gunrunner. Et cetera and so forth.' He settled into the wooden chair, laced his fingers together, and propped his hands on his belly. He watched Mace with that pleasant smile. Silently. Waiting for him to say something.
Mace could have kept him waiting for days. Without Jedi training, no human truly understands what patience is. But Depa was out there. Somewhere. Doing something. The longer it took him to reach her, the more of it she might do. He decided to talk.
