A/N: Sorry guys, this scheduling system of webnovel is so shit.I had went to eat dinner, and then came back to see the chapter still unpublished.
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The next few nights blurred together in a way only sleeplessness could achieve, memories smeared by adrenaline, oily with something I couldn't name.
I'd wake up gasping, heart hammering like I'd been yanked straight out of a sinking ship. Cold sweat. Disorientation. That raw, echoing absence like I'd lost something, or someone, and my body hadn't noticed until too late.
The first time, it was easy to dismiss. A bad night. Residual stress. Some leftover spice in the caf.
The third night? I stopped pretending.
I wouldn't call them visions. That would imply some kind of clarity. This was more like dreamless terror, as if something had glitched in the background logic of the universe and left a jagged warning shard lodged behind my ribs. And they always snapped me awake at the same time—somewhere between night and nightmare.
I'd learned to move without sound. Uncurling from Vasha's sleeping form like mist off a rooftop, slipping out before she stirred. She didn't know. Couldn't know. I didn't want her worrying unless there was something specific to worry about.
Problem was, I didn't know what that was yet.
So I did what I always did—built things as distraction, as armor, as confession.
The gauss gun had come a long way since that first prototype. Now it was modular, field-ready, and clever enough to kill a man six different ways depending on which barrel I slapped on. With the extended coil, it worked like a mid-range magnetic sniper. Snapping off the upper frame left a stockless scatter variant: slug-heavy, brutal, close-range.
I wasn't just designing for emergencies anymore. This was routine. Therapy, in its most weaponized form.
Each night, I'd work the hours down like I was sanding time itself. Coils, capacitor housing, barrel harmonics, tweak, test, adjust, iterate. I'd stopped counting shots, but the dented slab of durasteel propped against the back wall bore silent witness. Four craters, seven impacts, one near-miss that perforated the paint and ricocheted so loud I nearly bit through my knuckle not to scream.
Not how I preferred the morning to start, but... it kept the edges off.
I was supposed to be resting. Practising my telekinesis skills. Using the spear-axe to train myself, if not for the skills, then just for keeping my body fit. Not to mention, finding the answer to the questions that had plagued my mind over last few years, especially when I was so near to unraveling the thread of mystery. Poking around in whatever cosmic backdoor I'd stumbled into that day I'd peeled back reality like it was made of paper and starch.
But ignoring the problem didn't make it disappear.
If anything, it was worse now. Louder, in a wordless way. That cold splinter under the skin sensation didn't fade with the sunrise. It stuck. I'd be halfway through patching a motivator or organizing scrap when it would just spike—panic, directionless dread, like something invisible had moved inches from my skull.
Was it something I'd broken? Or saw something that I shouldn't have?
It has all began just after that day..
I'd felt fine before. Before I found those two "stars" locked inside my soul—one mine, bright and stable; one shattered, leaking Ezra's memories like cracked holos.
I'd never been warned that looking too close might spit out a signal flare. No Jedi master had told me not to press my proverbial face against the raw soul of the Force and breathe deeply. No fine-print clause in the Great Cosmic Agreement about "Don't Fiddle With The Living Force's Insides."
Maybe it wasn't even that.
Maybe it was the damn spear-axe. Ancient force relics imbued with memory-echoes or metaphysical triggers weren't an unlikely pair of concepts to be intertwined in a space-opera universe.
Then again…
It had started happening the day after the brutal beat down in non-real-reality. And the people in the visions didn't seem to be cultish type. Evil, yes, beyond a doubt. Especially with how that bastard kept targeting my reproductive jewels, or how the bastard of a teacher kept sending me back to fight again and again.
But it wasn't giving me any bad vibes or malevolent feelings persay...
Then was it the former?
Did that ping something?
Could be.
Someone strong enough to feel ripples between the stars. Someone like Vader. Or that crusted necromancer fossil Palpatine, sitting in his disgusting black throne and listening to the Force like it owed him rent.
Suddenly every reckless push into the metaphysical felt like a mistake. What if I hadn't pulled back in time? What if I'd broadcast myself to every force-user in the sector? Like, "Hi, hello, small Force anomaly here, hosting two consciousnesses in a fourteen-year-old body! Snacks provided!"
Was I paranoid? Maybe.
But also maybe not.
And if it was someone like Vader—
I buried the thought mid-sentence. Duct-taped it shut mentally and shoved it somewhere deep, behind the hyperdrive part bins and the memory of Ezra's parents screaming.
I'd made a decision: no more Force abilities for now.
Not Hyper-Perception, not Psychometry, and especially not touching that damn spear-axe again. If my metaphysical meddling had sent up a flare to every darksider in the sector, the last thing I needed was to keep broadcasting my location.
The gun gave me something tangible. A focus. It didn't matter if I couldn't lift crates with my mind or slow down blaster bolts like a comic book. This thing shredded metal on contact. That meant I had options. Not good ones, probably, but better than screaming and bleeding out.
The capacitors hissed as they vented charge. Scalded copper smell filled the air, acrid and clean. A reminder that work had happened. Real work.
There were notes scribbled across three whiteboards now. One purely modular. One tracking recoil and damage profiles by round type. One labeled escape plans: transit routes, cash stashes, fallback shelters.
Was it overkill?
Absolutely.
Did it help me sleep?
Not remotely.
But it helped me function.
...
....
No.
One weapon wasn't enough.
Not when I couldn't predict what form the threat would take.
I'd started with obvious upgrades to our existing security. Better locks, reinforced door frames, motion sensors disguised as maintenance fixtures.
The ventilation system that ran through the entire depot was perfect for distributing knockout gas—medical-grade anesthetics that would drop anyone who wasn't wearing the small filter masks I'd hidden in our living area. The trigger was a concealed panel by our bed. One button, and any intruders would be taking an involuntary nap.
Installing it had taken three nights of careful work, running new ducts and hiding canisters in the walls. When Vasha asked about the drilling sounds, I told her I was upgrading the air filtration. Technically true.
"Much better airflow now," I'd said, gesturing at the nearly invisible vents I'd added to every room. She'd nodded and thanked me for thinking of her allergies—something I definitely hadn't been thinking about, but it was a convenient cover.
The real challenge was protecting her when I couldn't be there. I'd started accompanying her on client meetings—something that had initially amused her, then confused her as my reasons became increasingly thin.
"I thought I'd check out that new parts dealer while you're at Jon's," I'd say, even though we both knew I had no interest in Jon's boring hydraulics contracts.
"Oh, I need to grab some converters anyway," when she mentioned meeting a potential client in the merchant district.
The excuses were wearing thin, and her patience was wearing thinner.
"What's gotten into you?" she'd asked after I'd insisted on tagging along to what should have been a routine pickup. "You're acting like my bodyguard."
"Just curious about the business side," I'd lied, eyes scanning the crowd for threats that probably weren't there.
She'd given me a look that said she wasn't buying it, but hadn't pushed. Yet.
Yesterday, I'd tried to convince her to cancel a meeting with a new client altogether. A perfectly legitimate request for hyperdrive modifications, but something about it felt wrong.
Maybe it was the timing, maybe it was the overly generous payment offer, or maybe it was just my paranoia finding patterns where none existed.
"We don't really need new clients right now," I'd argued. "We're already backed up on current orders. And couldn't it be handled over holo?"
"Since when do you, of everyone, turn down work?" she'd asked, arms crossed. "Especially well-paying work?"
I'd mumbled something about security concerns, about how the Empire's crackdowns were making everyone jumpy, about how we should be more careful about who we let into the shop.
"Ezra," she'd said, voice gentle but firm, "what's really going on? You've been acting strange for over a week. Not sleeping, jumping at shadows, and now you're trying to keep me locked up like I'm made of glass."
I'd deflected, made excuses, changed the subject. But the look in her eyes—concern mixed with growing frustration—told me I was running out of time before she demanded real answers.
Answers I couldn't give without revealing everything.
Because how could I explain that I'd been having formless premonitions of doom? That every instinct I had was screaming that something terrible was about to happen to her? That I was pretty sure I'd accidentally announced my presence to every dark Force user in the galaxy by poking too deep into metaphysical reality?
I couldn't. So instead, I kept building defenses.
Pressure sensors under the floorboards, tied to a silent alarm that vibrated a device in my pocket. Motion detectors in the blind spots our cameras couldn't cover. Micro-charges along the main entrance—not enough to kill, just enough to create a distraction if we needed to escape.
The workshop had become an armory. Multiple configurations of the gauss gun, each optimized for different scenarios. Solid slugs for penetration, flechette rounds for area denial, ion charges for droids and electronics. Emergency beacons hidden throughout the building. Smoke grenades disguised as cleaning supplies.
I'd even started stashing credits around the city. Small amounts, nothing that would be missed from our accounts, but enough to live on if we had to run. I'd memorized transport schedules, identified ships with lax security, cataloged which captains could be bribed.
All of this felt reasonable. Logical. The responsible thing to do when you knew something bad was coming.
The fact that I couldn't articulate what that something was didn't make it less real.
"You look like shit," Vasha said one morning, finding me slumped over my workbench surrounded by half-assembled surveillance equipment.
I jerked awake, automatically scanning the room before focusing on her. She stood in the doorway wearing one of her oversized sleep shirts, hair mussed, looking at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"It's four in the morning," she said. "Again."
I offered what I hoped was a reassuring smile. "Couldn't sleep. Just tinkering."
"That's five nights this week." She moved closer, and I caught the scent of her shampoo mixed with the machine oil that never quite washed out of her skin. "Ezra, this isn't normal. Even for you."
"I'm fine," I said automatically, the words as reflexive as breathing.
"You're not fine." She settled onto the stool beside me, close enough that our knees almost touched. "You're acting like we're under siege. All these 'upgrades,' the way you hover around me, how you jump every time someone knocks on the door. What aren't you telling me?"
The question hung between us, loaded with everything I couldn't say. I stared at my hands, mind racing through possible explanations, half-truths that might satisfy her without revealing the whole truth.
"The Empire's getting worse," I said finally. "Crime's up, security's down, and we're sitting on a lot of valuable equipment. I keep thinking about what would happen if someone decided we were an easy target."
"Security concerns," she repeated, voice flat. "That's your explanation for acting like a paranoid hermit?"
"I'm not paranoid," I said, too quickly. "I'm being careful. There's a difference."
She was quiet for a long moment, studying my face with those sharp eyes that saw too much. When she spoke again, her voice was softer but no less pointed.
"Ezra, I need you to be honest with me. H-O-N-E-S-T. What's really going on?"
I wanted to deflect again, to make another excuse or change the subject. But the exhaustion was catching up with me, and the weight of carrying this alone was becoming unbearable.
She deserved better than lies, even if I couldn't give her the whole truth.
"I've been having... feelings," I said, the words coming out reluctant and clumsy. "Bad ones. Like something's about to happen. Something involving you."
Her eyebrows rose. "Feelings?"
"Not visions or anything clear," I said quickly. "Just this sense of wrongness. Like there's a threat I can't see but should be preparing for. I know it sounds crazy—"
"It doesn't sound crazy," she interrupted. "It sounds like you're scared."
The simple truth of it hit harder than I expected. I was scared. Terrified, actually. Not of dying—no, that thought hadn't even crossed my mind. But terrified for her...
I don't know when, but my own death worried me less than that of her, of failing to protect the one person who'd given me a place to stay, a shelter over my head, flooded my life with love and kindness that was harder to find than a needle in haystack, especially in this galaxy.
"I can't shake the feeling that something's coming," I admitted. "And I can't protect you if I don't know what it is."
She was quiet for a moment, processing. Then she reached over and took my hand, her calloused fingers warm against mine.
"Okay," she said.
I blinked. "Okay?"
"I don't understand where these feelings are coming from, and I'm not sure I buy your gut instincts as a reliable threat assessment system," she said, a small smile tugging at her lips. "But I trust you. And if you're this worried, then maybe I should be more careful too."
Relief flooded through me, so intense it was almost painful. "You believe me?"
"I believe you believe it," she said carefully. "And I believe you care about keeping me safe. That's enough for now."
She picked up the multi-tool I'd made her, testing the weight again. "This shock function you mentioned—how do I activate it?"
I showed her the hidden switch, demonstrated the proper grip to avoid shocking herself, explained the voltage settings. She listened intently, asking practical questions about range and duration.
"Anything else I should know about?" she asked. "Any other 'upgrades' you've been working on that might affect me?"
I hesitated, then decided honesty was better than her discovering things on her own. I told her some of the things on lighter side, no need to get her worried about her own house being a booby-trapped dungeon.
She nodded slowly, her expression thoughtful as she turned the multi-tool over in her hand, committing its new function to memory. She placed it carefully back on the bench, her movements deliberate. The silence stretched, but it was softer now, no longer filled with the tension of things unsaid.
"And what about you?" she asked, her voice quiet. She reached out, her thumb gently brushing the dark circle under my eye. "You're running yourself into the ground, Ezra. When was the last time you slept through the night? Or ate a full meal without staring at the door like it's about to sprout fangs?"
I opened my mouth, the automatic I'm fine poised on my lips, a reflex as ingrained as breathing.
She didn't let me say it. "Don't. Just... don't. I see you." Her voice was firm but gentle, a command wrapped in concern. "I see the weight you're trying to carry alone. You can hand me all the tools and show me all the escape routes, but you're not showing me this." She tapped a finger gently against my temple. "You're ten. You shouldn't be... building fortresses in your sleep. You should be dreaming about starships and adventure holos."
The words hit with a surprising sting.
It was a kindness so profound it ached. And it just made me more determined to protect that.
"I just need to know you're safe," I said, the words feeling small and inadequate.
"We'll handle it," she corrected firmly. "Whatever this is, we face it together. That's what partners do."
The word 'partners' sent a warm flutter through my chest, cutting through the anxiety that had been my constant companion for days, just a tiny bit. Reminded me again of what I was protecting, or atleast trying to...
She squeezed my hand once more, then stood up. "Now come on. You need actual sleep, not whatever this half-conscious tinkering session was supposed to be."
I followed her back to the living area, if anything that just to relieve her of worries a bit. It was enough for me to worry about things...
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A/N: And so the paranoia festers...