The shadows in Coronet's industrial sector lay longer than usual—Corellia's double moons wove intricate patterns of light and darkness among abandoned warehouses and ancient factory buildings. Alex trod the familiar path to his secret refuge, feeling the weight of his load on his back and the much heavier burden of the blaster under his jacket.
He no longer needed this place. Once, it had served as a teenage whim and a secret—a cherished sanctuary for a fourteen-year-old boy who dreamed of adventures and discoveries. Lately, he had only come here because too much good had accumulated here, requiring slow transfer. But today, he realized—much of this good was no longer needed. He had taken the data, rare tools, and homemade items. He had long since been quietly carrying out valuable equipment and selling it through his father or Garrek. Today, he decided to take out the last valuables, and dump the rest into the tunnel leading to the recycling plants located two levels below.
Somewhere in the distance, garbage processors hummed, turning the waste of civilization into useful materials. He heard the same sound three years ago... Alex winced, pushing away unwanted memories.
He stopped at the entrance to his workshop—an inconspicuous door in the wall of an old warehouse. Over the years, he had accumulated many valuables here: ancient technology, homemade devices, copies of important data, reserves of rare materials. All of this needed to be moved to a safer place before entering the institute.
He activated the castle scanner, and the door opened silently. The workshop greeted him with the familiar hum of ventilation and the soft glow of work lamps. Shelves overflowed with equipment, tables drowned under schematics and components. He had spent hundreds of hours here.
Alex began to methodically pack the most valuable items. Crystals, crystalline matrices, light threads, the calculator unit, modification schematics—all were placed in special containers. He would transport most of it to a new location near the institute, the rest home.
The work was nearing completion when he heard footsteps outside. Several sentient beings were approaching the workshop, trying to move silently, but not succeeding too well. Alex froze, listening. The steps stopped at the door.
At that moment, the past crashed down on him like an avalanche. Three years ago... He was just a curious teenager then, driven by curiosity to go where he shouldn't have. He hid and watched a young man being killed as a lesson, and then...
His hands trembled. His heart pounded so loudly that it seemed it could be heard from outside. His breathing faltered, black spots swam before his eyes. Panic attack—he recognized the symptoms. His body remembered that horror, that helplessness, that feeling that he could be next.
"This is the place," someone's voice whispered outside the door. "Saw the guy go in."
"Rich boy from a good family," another added. "Probably has money."
Alex cautiously peeked through a crack in the wall. Five men surrounded the entrance to the workshop. Their clothes were cheap, their weapons old, their movements nervous—common street thugs. But that didn't make them any less dangerous.
Memories washed over him in waves. The sound of a shot. The smell of burnt flesh and a body falling like a sack of dirt. And then—silence. A body dragged to the recycler. The thud of a falling body hitting the tunnel walls. He couldn't move then, couldn't scream, couldn't even look away.
His hands shook more and more. Alex fumbled in his pocket and found a small capsule—a stimulant from a military first-aid kit, which he had acquired from a smuggler just in case. They said this stuff could raise the dead. He never thought he'd have to use it.
The capsule crunched between his teeth, the bitter chemical taste burning his tongue. The effect was almost instantaneous—the trembling in his hands stopped, his heart rate slowed, his thoughts became clear and sharp. The fear hadn't disappeared, but now it was under control, transformed into a cold, rational assessment of danger.
"Calm down," he told himself. "You prepared for this. You have a weapon. You're not that helpless boy who hid behind scrap metal."
But questions swarmed his mind. How did they find me? And when? Just when I was ready to leave this place forever. Perhaps someone saw me coming here? Perhaps one of my clients followed me? Or was it just a coincidence—they simply noticed a well-dressed youth in an abandoned area?
"Hey, kid!" one of the robbers shouted. "We know you're in there. Come out, and no one gets hurt."
"I need to try to negotiate," Alex decided. "If I get hurt here, no one will even find me. My body will disappear in the same recycler as the victim three years ago. My parents will never know what happened to me. No one will look for me in this industrial dump."
The stimulant helped—emotions receded, his mind became crystal clear. "I wonder what's in this stuff?" he thought. But right now, it could save him. He could think logically, plan, evaluate options.
"What do you want?" he shouted back, simultaneously checking the blaster's charge.
"Money, valuables, everything you have," the same voice replied. "We need to support the guys, look how they lack credits... Right, guys?" The voice cackled. "Come on out!"
"I have about a thousand credits on me," Alex said loudly, so everyone could hear. "Take it and leave."
Laughter followed—rough, contemptuous.
"A thousand? Are you kidding me! Such a boy from a rich family, with expensive equipment, and only a thousand?"
"That's all I have in cash." He said it in a hurry. And immediately realized his mistake. He almost slapped himself in frustration for his stupidity. He had just let them know that wasn't all.
"Then you'll show us where the rest is hidden. And tell us what kind of toys you have there."
Alex realized negotiations were futile. These sentient beings weren't going to settle for a little. They wanted everything—money, equipment, and then to get rid of the witness. He had seen it in the eyes of people like them three years ago, when he watched that murder.
The stimulant turned fear into cold rage. They think he's helpless? That they can just rob him, like any other rich boy? They are mistaken. He is not a victim. No.
"Alright," he said. "I'm coming out. Just don't shoot."
Alex slowly opened the door, peeking out a little. Five men stood in a semicircle, one holding a blaster. Their faces were hard, their eyes cold. He recognized that look—the look of people who had already decided to kill.
Memories tried to overwhelm him again, but the stimulant kept them under control. He saw the scene as if from the outside—a seventeen-year-old youth surrounded by armed robbers. Statistically, his chances were close to zero. But statistics didn't account for months of training, for cold determination, for chemical clarity of thought.
"Smart boy," their leader, a tall man with a scar on his cheek, sneered. "Now show us where the money is."
Alex took out a chip and showed it.
"That's all. A thousand credits. I have no more."
"Liar," the leader stood, not taking his eyes off Alex. "This equipment costs a fortune. Where's the rest?"
"The equipment is homemade," Alex tried to speak calmly. "Assembled from old parts. It's not of particular value."
"We'll see."
Alex threw the chip at their feet. The movement was calculated—to make them relax, to believe in his submission. The stimulant sharpened all his senses to the limit. Time seemed to slow down. Alex saw every movement, every gesture, every change in the robbers' postures. The robber at the door was distracted, looking at the chip. The leader with the blaster also looked away for a second. The other three held their weapons, but weren't aiming precisely—they didn't expect resistance from a seventeen-year-old boy.
A mistake. The last mistake in their lives.
Alex drew his blaster in one smooth motion. All those hours of training with Rick, all those exercises for speed and accuracy—it all merged into one perfect movement.
Zzt!—the first shot hit the leader in the chest, burning through flesh and bone. The man collapsed without even a cry.
Zzt!—the second beam caught the robber at the door, who tried to turn at the sound of the shot. Plasma entered the back of his head and burned through half his skull.
The other three tried to react. One began to raise his blaster, another lunged to the side, the third froze in shock. But time was against them.
Zzt!—the third shot hit the robber trying to dodge in the back, burning through his spine. He fell face down, twitching his legs convulsively.
Zzt!—the fourth beam pierced the chest of the one who had almost managed to aim his weapon. Plasma burned out his heart, and the man collapsed as if struck down.
Zzt!—the fifth and final shot hit the last survivor, who stood unable to move from terror. The beam entered his forehead precisely, instantly ending his life.
A few seconds later, it was all over. Five bodies lay on the floor, and Alex stood with a smoking blaster in his hand, feeling the adrenaline and stimulant surge through his blood.
He felt no remorse. No horror at what he had done. Only cold satisfaction from a job well done. Chemical calm from the military stimulant. These men wanted to kill him, and he killed them first. Fair. Logical. Necessary.
But now he had to deal with practical matters. Five corpses in an industrial sector, blaster marks, possible witnesses. The police would start an investigation, would look for the killer. He had to think everything through carefully.
Alex hid the blaster and quickly examined the bodies. No documents, only cheap weapons and a little change. Ordinary street thugs, whom no one would miss. But that didn't solve the problem.
He remembered the place where he had witnessed the murder three years ago. A garbage processing shaft two levels below. A machine that turned waste into useful materials, without asking questions about their origin. Back then, that place filled him with dread. But under the influence of the pill, it seemed like just a convenient solution to a logistical problem.
The next hour Alex spent in intense work. The stimulant sustained his strength, suppressing fatigue and disgust. He moved the bodies to the recycler one by one, using a cargo cart from the workshop.
First, he took the leader—the heaviest. The dead body proved surprisingly uncooperative, as if resisting even in death. Alex coolly loaded the corpse onto the cart, ignoring the blood soaking through its clothes. In his mind, cleared of unnecessary emotions by the stimulant, it was just meat—biological material requiring disposal.
The second corpse—the one who had lost half his head—left a bloody trail. Alex methodically wiped it with a rag found in the workshop. Every movement was calculated, every action logical. No emotions, no doubts. Just cold efficiency.
The machine worked automatically; the processing shaft didn't distinguish organic matter from scrap metal. Bodies disappeared into the metal maw, turning into a faceless mass of recycled materials. Alex watched the process with the same scientific interest with which he disassembled machinery. How many kilograms of biomass in an average human body? How long does complete processing take? How effectively does the machine grind bones?
Third, fourth, fifth... Each corpse became just another task. Load onto the cart, transport to the processing tunnel, drop into the machine's maw, return for the next. Monotonous work requiring only physical effort. His mind remained crystal clear, analyzing every detail, remembering every nuance.
When the last body disappeared into the recycler, Alex felt a strange satisfaction. Not from killing—but from solving a complex logistical problem. Five corpses that could have become evidence had turned into anonymous biomass. The problem was solved efficiently and without unnecessary noise.
He disassembled the robbers' weapons and threw them in there as well. He washed the blood off the plascrete from a fire hydrant. He meticulously destroyed any traces of his presence. By morning, there was no trace of the incident left.
Returning to the workshop, Alex finished packing the equipment. The work was mechanical, but his hands began to tremble again. The stimulant was gradually wearing off, and with it went the chemical calm and clarity of thought.
The comedown began suddenly. First, just weakness in his legs, then nausea. Alex managed to reach an old chair in the corner of the workshop before he started shaking. From the returning fear and the chemical reaction of his body to the stimulant leaving his blood.
He sat in the chair, holding his head in his hands, feeling the reality of what had happened slowly seep into his consciousness. He had killed five people. Five. And the scariest part was—he didn't regret it.
The nausea intensified. Alex barely made it to the trash can before he vomited. Then again. And again. His body was getting rid of the stimulant's remnants, and with it—artificial confidence and cold logic.
But even in this state, even feeling broken and empty, he understood—he had done the right thing. Those people made their choice when they decided to rob and kill him. He simply responded to their choice with his own.
In his consciousness, as if in a mirror, two personalities were reflected. One—a seventeen-year-old youth, shuddering at what he had done and spewing bile into a trash can. The other—a cold-blooded killer under the stimulant, who methodically disposed of corpses and analyzed the efficiency of his actions. And both were equally real, equally parts of him.
He understood that he had changed. The boy who had watched the murder in horror three years ago no longer existed. In his place was a young man ready to make difficult choices and live with their consequences.
Dawn was breaking. Alex closed the workshop and headed home. In a month, he would go to the institute, begin studying space engineering, take the first steps toward realizing his plans.
The five robbers would never rob anyone again. Five families might never know what happened to their relatives. But that was not his problem. He gave them a choice, and they chose wrong. He repeated this to himself again and again.