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The children barely knew their numbers, though Threepio had been trying to get them to recognize the primary numerals. The lessons frequently frustrated the protocol droid, but the twins were bright. They had picked up more than Threepio had realized.

The rows of buttons looked like shiny colorful circles to Jacen and Jaina. They stared at them, not knowing which to push, but they did recognize some of the numbers.

Jaina spotted it first. “Number one,” she said.

Jacen pushed the button. “Number one,” he repeated.

The turbolift door closed, and the floor fell away as the elevator shot downward, humming as it accelerated. Jacen and Jaina looked at each other in momentary terror; then they giggled. The turbolift descent went on and on, until finally the platform came to a stop. The door whisked open.

Jacen and Jaina stood blinking. They stepped out into the shadowy bottom levels of the forbidden metropolitan wilderness. Around them they heard large startled creatures clattering through the fallen debris.

“It’s dark,” Jacen said.

Behind the twins the turbolift door slid shut as the elevator reset itself and returned to the upper floors, leaving Jacen and Jaina alone.

Chewbacca blasted through the exhibits like a land-speeder out of control. He howled and called out for the two lost children. Threepio scurried behind him, trying to keep up.

“I can’t see anything through these holograms,” Threepio said. Chewbacca sniffed for the twins. He charged through another opening.

All the shouting and chaos finally brought one of the Bothan zoo attendants. The Bothan fluffed up his white fur and flailed his arms as he tried to get Chewbacca to calm down. “Shhhh! You are disturbing our other patrons. This is a quiet place for enjoyment and education.”

Chewbacca roared at him. The Bothan, much smaller, stood on his pointed toes, trying to draw himself up in a laughably ineffective attempt at meeting Chewbacca’s eyes. “We never should have let Wookiees into the Holographic Zoo.”

Chewbacca grabbed the Bothan by the white chest hairs and hefted him off the ground. He let loose a string of growls, grunts, and howls.

Threepio rushed up to them. “Excuse me, if I might be allowed to translate,” the droid said, “my friend Chewbacca and I are currently searching for two small children who appear to be lost. Their names are Jacen and Jaina. They are two-and-a-half years old.”

Chewbacca roared again.

“Yes, yes, I was just getting to that. This is really something of an emergency. The children just ran off from us, and any assistance you could offer—”

Chewbacca used both hands to shake the Bothan attendant like a rag doll.

“—would be most appreciated,” Threepio finished.

But the Bothan had fainted.

Jacen and Jaina hiked through a forest of fallen girders, orange and yellow toadstools, and lumpy fungus growing in ancient garbage. Unseen feet skittered across fallen beams and webwork structures overhead.

The massive foundations of the buildings looked indestructible, overgrown with thick moss. Things moved in the shadows, but nothing came clear, even as the childrens’ eyes adjusted to the shadowy light. Drips of warm, bad-tasting water fell around them in a slow arrhythmic rain.

Jacen looked up, and the enormous buildings seemed to rise forever and ever. He could glimpse only a blurred slice of what might have been the sky.

“I want to go home,” Jaina said.

The wreckage of abandoned equipment lay in piles, rusted and corroded. The twins scrambled over crashed vehicles, the hulks of discarded battleships and fighting machines, deep debris left from the previous year’s civil warfare.

Jacen and Jaina came upon a half-collapsed wall that had once contained a computer screen. The terminal lay tilted on its side with the screen smashed inward, leaving broken teeth of transparisteel. But the twins recognized it as a data unit similar to the ones inside their own quarters.

Jacen stood in front of the broken panel and put his small hands on his hips, trying to look like his father. He addressed the computer screen—and he knew