Star Wars_ Rebel Force 05_ Trapped - Alex Wheeler [29]
The enemy took a few cautious steps toward him, the fire poker lowered to his side.
He nodded. "Fine. Explanations. You start."
X-7 could tell when a man's defenses were dropped. It was a predator's instinct, knowing exactly when to strike. "My pleasure," he said. Then raised the blaster, squeezed the trigger, and—
Somehow, the enemy wasn't there anymore. The blasterfire blew a hole in the wall. A cold blade pressed against X-7's neck. Warm blood trickled down his skin. The enemy was behind him.
The enemy had proven faster than him. Stronger than him. Smarter than him.
There was a chance he could dislodge the knife, knock the enemy off balance, disarm him, all before the knife plunged deeper and sliced an artery.
X-7 closed his eyes, let the blaster drop to the ground, and waited for the end. He had been bested, and it was no less than he deserved.
But the pressure of the knife dropped away. " Now perhaps you're ready to explain what you're doing here."
X-7 whirled around, ready to strike, but the enemy caught his arm before a blow could fall.
"Talk," Lune Divinian said.
It was his only viable option. He wouldn't risk hand-to-hand combat again, not until he found a way to regain the advantage. "Did you really think I would fall for it?" X-7
snarled. "Believe a man like you could be my brother? "
The man visibly recoiled. "My brother is dead."
"Your adopted brother, you mean," X-7 said, correcting him.
It was like the man's face turned to durasteel. His expression went completely blank.
"What do you know about it?"
There was something strangely familiar about the dull eyes, the toneless voice, but it took X-7 a moment to pin it down. Then he realized that it was the same blank and pitiless gaze he saw in the mirror. This was the only man he'd ever met who was able to shut himself down as completely as X-7.
Just as he was the only man X-7 had ever met who could so evenly match him, strength for strength, move to move.
Is it possible…?
"I know everything about it," X-7 said, "but that's just what you intended, isn't it?
Planted the information for me to find, invented this ridiculous story. You probably didn't even have a brother. This person, this Trever—"
Lune Divinian struck him across the face. Hard.
X-7 forced himself not to respond.
"You don't say his name," Lune said. "Ever."
It didn't make sense. If this was all a trap and Lune was behind it, then wouldn't he be welcoming X-7 with open arms? Certainly he could be lying, trying to put X-7 off balance, confuse him. But X-7 had never met the man who could successfully lie to him. People were too emotional, too invested in their own words. X-7 was separate from all that, separate from humanity. The distance allowed him to see behind people's masks, into the rotting truth that lay beneath. And he didn't think that Lune was lying.
He thought Lune was telling the truth, but didn't know. Wasn't certain.
Before, he would have been. Uncertainty wasn't a part of his programming.
Of course, neither was memory. Or curiosity. Or anger.
But X-7 wasn't the man he had once been.
It was proving to be a problem.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Div let X-7 think it took him some convincing. He looked through X-7's evidence, challenging his story at every turn. Refused to accept that Trever might be alive, standing in front of him.
And then, on the third day, he did. And in the process, X-7 accepted it, too.
Now Div couldn't decide where to rest his eyes. Not on the familiar threadbare couch, a hole on its armrest torn long ago by Trever's rambunctious pet bull worrt. Not on the door to the kitchen, where Astri had so often appeared with a pot of some foul-smelling concoction. She had always tried to recreate her father's recipes, but more times than not, her efforts had resulted in an inedible sludge. Clive had eaten it anyway, a smile fixed on his face. (Apparently love wasn't just blind; it was taste bud-deprived.) But at Trever's suggestion, Div had devised a better system: dumping the sludge into their napkins, then using the Force to float it out