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He’s trapped.

She broke off her efforts to track Bane and instead concentrated on using Sith sorcery to mask her own presence as she raced down the stairs. There was no need for her to be silent; with the alarms echoing throughout the prison, there was little chance he would hear her footsteps.

She burst into the lower chamber only to be disappointed yet again. Another pile of dead guards were gathered around the remains of a table, but Bane was nowhere to be found. She had been tracking an echo of his power, and somehow she had missed the real thing.

That’s impossible. Unless …

Bane knew she was here! He had tricked her, leaving his imprint on this room to lure her here while he made his escape. But she knew he couldn’t have gone far.

She turned to head back up the stairs, then paused for a moment to examine the bodies. One looked as if he had been killed by Bane’s bare hands. One was stabbed with a vibroblade. Two others had been shot with a blaster at close range.

Curious, Zannah made her way back to the room above. The bodies here were, quite simply, broken. Limbs twisted at grotesque angles, the bones beneath the skin shattered and splintered.

There was nothing remarkable about how they had died; she had seen Bane use similar tactics many times in the past. Zannah was interested, however, in what was missing. There were no lightsaber wounds.

Bane had been unarmed when he took on these foes. It was possible he had found and reclaimed his lightsaber since then. But if he hadn’t—if he was wandering the halls of the prison without it—he was vulnerable. As powerful as Bane was, Zannah believed she was his equal. And without his lightsaber he had virtually no hope of defeating her.

Closing her eyes and blocking out the earsplitting sound of the alarms, she reached out with the Force once more. This time she ignored the powerful dark side imprint Bane had left on the guard rooms. It took only a few seconds for her to pick up his trail again. As she suspected, he was still inside the prison.

I’m coming, Master. And only one of us will leave here alive.

Set knew he was close. He had left the darkness of the unlit tunnels behind as he had gone deeper and deeper into the Stone Prison, drawn forward by the call of Darth Andeddu’s Holocron.

The section of the complex he was in now was lit, though it still seemed deserted. He had expected to run into somebody: a patrol, a guard wandering the halls. Whoever had taken Zannah’s Master must have done it with a small team: twenty, maybe thirty people at most.

Despite this, he was bracing for an encounter soon. He had reached a long hall with a closed wooden door at the end. He was certain the Holocron was inside the room beyond, and he fully expected it to be guarded by at least half a dozen armed soldiers.

Gathering himself, he drew his lightsaber and raced down the hallway, leaping toward the door. He hit it square with both feet, knocking the door open as he flew into the room.

Much to Set’s surprise, there were no guards waiting for him. The only witnesses to his grand entrance were an old wooden desk and chair. He felt a second of panic when he didn’t see the Holocron anywhere in the small office; then he noticed the safe built into the wall.

There was a combination pad, but Set ignored it. Using his lightsaber, he simply cut several long horizontal and vertical slices in the door. The glowing blade carved through the thick metal with ease, reducing the front of the safe to several heavy chunks that fell to the floor.

The Holocron was the only thing inside. Set reached out slowly, trembling slightly as he wrapped his fingers around the obsidian pyramid. He drew it reverently from the safe, cradling it with both hands.

He nearly dropped his prize when alarm bells began to ring throughout the prison.

Whirling to the door he whipped out his lightsaber, his left hand still clutching the Holocron. He dropped into a fighting stance, bracing himself to meet the reinforcements he expected to burst into the room.

For several seconds he didn’t move, listening