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“Have I come at a bad time?”

Kaj stood frozen on the worn duracrete of the walkway, knowing there was no escape. For him, perhaps, but for the two people with him, who had no Force abilities, there could be only one outcome.

He remembered the night his parents had decided to send him away. Stormtroopers had come to the village of Imrai, and with them a single Inquisitor. He recalled his parents’ fear that his tiny, nascent display of Force sensitivity—a sensitivity that had first shown itself as an instinct for what was wrong or right with a food crop and an uncanny ability to empathize with and heal sick animals—would be noticed.

As clear as the scene on this dirty street was his memory of the moment he had seen his first Inquisitor. He and his mother and father had just exited the trading post in the village center, having bartered a portion of their fruit crop for machinery. His mother had looked up, seen the disturbance at the fringes of the village, and clutched his arm.

“Bey,” she’d said—his father’s name. Just that, no more, but the quiet terror in her voice had chilled Kaj’s insides to absolute zero.

He had looked up just in time to catch the glance they exchanged over his head, had seen the naked fear in his mother’s eyes, and the blaze of rage in his father’s that quickly dimmed to despair.

Now he looked at Rhinann and Dejah and saw that same exchange of glances flash between them as he felt their fear.

No. They would not suffer because of him. He simply would not allow it to happen.

He turned to Dejah. “They’re coming from two directions. There are two behind us, one straight ahead.”

“Oh, demons of chaos!” moaned the Elomin. “We’re cut off. We can’t get back to the—”

“We can’t go back to the studio anyway,” Dejah told him tersely. “They’d follow us.”

“You can,” Kaj said. “I can’t. It’s me they want.”

He glanced down the street, taking in the people, vehicles, storefronts, cross-alleys—the entire scene. He could see them all with incredible clarity, as if he had a hundred eyes and the multitasking brains of a Cerean. The Inquisitor ahead of them was high up and half a block away, but moving ever closer. The two behind were at street level and would come around the corner any moment.

“See that café three doors up across the street?” he asked.

Rhinann and Dejah nodded, following his gaze.

“It’s really crowded. Go in there and mix. Between all the confusion and me, they won’t notice you.”

Rhinann was in motion before he’d finished speaking, but Dejah hung back, dread straining her crimson features. She put a hand on Kaj’s arm. “Let me stay with you, Kaj,” she begged. “I can use my abilities—”

He grinned fiercely. “I’m not gonna let them get that close. Now go! Please,” he added.

She went.

Kaj flitted into the street, blocking himself from the eyes of the two Inquisitors behind by the simple expedient of falling into pace with a slow-moving hovertruck. If he was lucky, he could remain hidden in its lee until he bypassed the third Inquisitor’s lofty position. He clamped down hard on his thoughts, his emotions, his impulse to use the Force. The words of the Jedi mantra cycled in his head:

There is no emotion; there is peace.

He checked his passive awareness of the third Inquisitor. Like a rock in a stream, the Inquisitor’s taozin amulet parted the water of Kaj’s regard, leaving a strange, warped shimmer in the world. He was almost past it, walking calmly in the shadow of the hovertruck and feeling a quivering elation, when someone stepped out of the doorway of the café.

It was the Twi’lek, Laranth Tarak. Surprised, Kaj stopped walking.

Laranth saw him, recognized him, and stepped out into the street, her brow furrowed with concern.

“Kajin, what are you doing out here alone? Where’s Jax?”

“I’m not alone. Dejah and Rhinann were with me, but there are—”

She cut him off. “I can feel them.” She glanced up and down the street. He saw her expression change as she glanced down the street behind him,