The Luminara Street district was a dump. A real monument to rust and bad vibes. The shift change was just ending, and the place was still buzzing with a tired kind of energy. I got swept into a current of workers in stained coveralls, all shuffling toward the public transport hub.
The air was thick with the smell of sweat, ozone, and the greasy, fake-meat smell of street vendor food. I kept my head down, the helmet making me just another anonymous worker, and tried to look like I knew where I was going.
A pair of Imperial garrison troopers were posted on a corner, their white armor a stark, ugly contrast to all the grime. They were scanning the crowd, looking bored and dangerous. I felt the weight of the gauss pistol under my jacket like a lead brick.
One wrong move, one moment of looking lost or suspicious, and this whole desperate search would be over before it began. I shoved my hands in my pockets and kept moving, my heart doing a nervous tap-dance against my ribs.
Then I felt it.
It wasn't the Force doing its wise, mystical guide thing. This was weirder. It was a physical tug, straight in my gut. Like when you miss a step in the dark. I actually stumbled, my boot scuffing against the permacrete. My first thought was pure alarm. Great, now I'm having a stress-induced aneurysm. Perfect timing.
I ducked into the recessed doorway of a parts supplier, pretending to check a datapad I didn't have, and waited for the feeling to pass. It didn't. It just got more specific, more insistent. It was pulling me down a side alley to the left. That way.
Okay, so not an aneurysm. Weird. New. And honestly, the only lead I hadn't completely made up. The crowd was thinning out now, the workers filtering away, leaving the warehouses to their silence. The troopers were out of sight. It was just me and this creepy, invisible leash.
So I went with it, letting the feeling drag me along like a fish on a line. What else was I gonna do?I had no idea where Vasha could be in between this concrete jungle. If this was the Force showing me a way, then who am I to turn back.
I had already denied it once, not again...
The active, noisy warehouses gave way to silent, neglected ones. The permacrete was cracked here, weeds pushing through. Puddles of something that wasn't water shimmered under the dim industrial lights. The place felt dead.
Left. Left. Straight. Right.
The feeling in my gut got stronger, a tight, coiling knot, until it zeroed in on one particular warehouse: 12B-2. It looked exactly like all the others. A big, boring box of corrugated steel and misery.
But the feeling was a live wire here. This was the place.
I pressed a hand against the cold steel. It vibrated faintly with some distant machinery, but that was it. "Alright, you piece of junk," I muttered, my voice sounding hollow inside my helmet. "Talk to me."
I closed my eyes and tried to do my thing—reaching out with that weird sense, feeling for the hum of life, the buzz of a conscious mind, the low-grade anxiety of a person being somewhere they shouldn't be.
Inside... nothing.
Not quiet. Empty. The kind of silence that's heavy and absolute. It made the ears inside my helmet ring.
My stomach did a nosedive. No ambush was good, right? No blasters pointed at my face the second I walked in. But no Vasha was... the worst. It meant she wasn't here. Or she was, and she was...
I shut that down hard. Nope. Don't even start. Don't you dare. I looked up, scanning the exterior. The windows were a mile up, covered in about a hundred years of grime and carbon scoring. No fire escape. No convenient vents. No back door. Of course not. That would be too easy. So, front door it was. Time to walk right up and knock like a complete idiot.
I took a deep breath that did nothing to calm me down and rounded the corner. The street was dead. My own breathing was the loudest thing in the world, raspy and quick inside my helmet. Every sane part of my brain was screaming at me. This is a trap, you moron! It's the oldest trick in the book! Turn around! Go find a cop, a droid, a stray tooka cat—anyone!
But that gut feeling was still there, a stubborn anchor. And what if those few minutes of finding help were all she had left? The stupid, desperate part of me won the argument. It always does when it comes to her.
I got to the door. It was a big, heavy slab of metal. My hand was shaking so bad I had to slam it against the door panel just to steady myself. A last, pathetic attempt to feel what was waiting for me before I had to see it. The metal was ice-cold.
"Please be okay," I whispered. My throat was so dry it felt like it was cracking. "Just... be okay. Please."
I tried to focus, to push my senses into the lock mechanism. I'd done it a thousand times with cheaper models; feel the tumblers, nudge the right trigger, pop it open from the inside. But my brain was all static, a chaotic slideshow of every worst-case scenario. I couldn't feel a thing. My focus was completely shot.
Frustrated, out of ideas, I just leaned in and shoved my shoulder against the door.
It wasn't locked.
It slid inward with a long, metal groan that sounded way too loud in the silence, revealing a sliver of absolute darkness.
Of course it was unlocked. Why wouldn't it be? That's not creepy or anything. My panic, which had been a steady hum, suddenly spiked. Was it an invitation? An oversight? Or did they just not care about locking up afterward?
I raised the pistol, my heart trying to punch its way out of my chest. My thumb found the switch on my helmet, and the world flickered into the sickly green and black of night vision.
I stepped inside. The space was cavernous, a vast, hollow darkness. My boots didn't even echo on the floor. I swept the pistol left and right. Nothing. The floor was bare metal, and it was weirdly clean. Like someone had recently scrubbed it down. A fresh wave of dread hit me, cold and slick. Who mops a disused warehouse? That's not a "spring cleaning" sign. That's a "we need to clean up a mess" sign.
Then I felt it. Not a smell, but a... weight. In the air. It pressed against my mind, thick and cloying. It was heavy and gross and horribly familiar. I'd felt it once before, back when that spice-head wrecked his speeder in the market. The screaming was bad, but the silence after was worse. And this feeling was all over that silence. The cold, empty weight of sudden, violent death. It was a stench in the Force.
No. No way. That's not—
"Vasha?" The name just fell out of my mouth, a desperate, choked sound.
Nothing. The warehouse just ate the sound.
The bad thoughts I'd been holding back crashed through the dam. This is your fault. You weren't paying attention. She's always saving you, and you can't even be bothered to— Despair wrapped around my throat, cold and tight.
My eyes, useless behind the night vision, scanned the floor. I saw a darker spot a few feet away and my breath hitched. I moved toward it, my legs feeling like they were made of lead. I knelt, swiping a gloved finger across the spot. It came away clean. Just a shadow, a trick of the light. Not blood. No blood. I scanned wider. No scorch marks from blaster fire. No signs of a struggle. That's good. That's a good thing, right? She could have walked out of here. They could have taken her somewhere else. She could be fine.
But that feeling was still there. That heavy, dead feeling. It was everywhere, soaking into the very metal of the place. My rationalizations felt flimsy and stupid against the oppressive weight of it.
"Okay. Screw this," I rasped, the sound alien to my own ears. "No more guessing. No more hoping."
Inquisitors be damned, Vader be damned, Palpatine be damned.
I had enough of playing safe, not using my Force abilities.
I dropped to my knees, yanking my right glove off with my teeth. The air was cold on my sweaty skin. I pressed my bare palm hard against the freezing floor. I had to know.
I tried to focus, to push my senses out, to read the echoes in the metal. But my brain was a mess, flashing to that market, to the silence, to this same awful emptiness. The death-stench was a static buzz, scrambling my focus.
Stop. Breathe. You know how to do this. It's just like reading a circuit. Find the signal in the noise.
I forced it, fighting through the nausea and the numb, prickling resistance. It was like trying to read with frostbitten fingers. The place was a void. The crates stacked against the far wall were too distant, their echoes too faint. My only shot was the floor itself. This big, stupid, cold metal floor was my only witness.
Come on, I begged silently, to the Force, to the universe, to whoever might be listening. Just show me. Tell me what happened.
I squeezed my eyes shut, digging through the layers of time, pushing past the dust and the silence, seeking the most recent imprint, the strongest emotional signature.
The death-feeling kept messing with me, pulling my focus to the void. I saw her, lying still. I saw her lekku limp on the cold floor. I saw—
"Stop it!" I hissed at myself, smacking my bare hand against the floor. The sharp jolt of pain helped clear my head for a second. "Focus, you idiot!"
I planted both palms flat, fingers splayed wide, as if I could physically grab the past and hold it still.
This time, I broke through.
Faint vibrations. Three, maybe four presences. Their minds felt cold, efficient, blank. Professional. No anger, no fear, just... a job. Then... a new ripple. Two people entering. One felt slimy, oozing a fake, car-salesman kind of friendliness. The other...
The other was a bolt of lightning. A familiar storm of stubbornness, sharp intelligence, and a thread of wariness that was so her. It was the echo of her presence, the ghost of her standing right here.
Vasha.
She was here. Right here. She was alive. She was breathing. She wasn't dead.
The relief was so violent and huge it was physical, a sucker-punch to the gut that left me gasping for air. The vision—the feeling—faded, the temporal layer withdrawing from my senses like a tide going out.
I tore my helmet off, the warehouse air hitting my face—it was cold and tasted of metal and oil, but it did nothing to relieve the suffocating pressure building in my throat. She'd been here. Alive. Just hours ago, she'd stood on this spot.
But then why did the place feel like a grave? Why did it reek of death?
The fear came roaring back, ice-cold and sharper than before. I wanted to yank my hands away from the floor, to run, to never know what happened next. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs, a wild animal trying to escape.
But I couldn't. I had to know. I NEEDED TO KNOW.
I took a shuddering breath that scraped my raw throat and pressed my palms harder into the grimy, cold floor. I had to see. Even if it was the last thing I ever did. Even if it broke me.
But feelings are easy. Visions are hard. I'd spent two years reading emotional echoes, diagnosing problems in machines by touch. I'd never needed true sight. Why bother with a blurry, unreliable movie when you can just feel exactly what's broken?
All that practice had honed my empathy, my connection to the immediate past. But proper, clear visions? They were a weaker, inferior skill for me—fuzzy, hard to hold onto, and exhausting.
It was all I had left. I poured every ounce of my will, my fear, my desperate hope into the cold metal, trying to see through the overwhelming silence.
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So I have decided to edge my dear readers.
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