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Qwi discovered a small musical keypad lying half-hidden in a pile of printouts and handwritten notes. Beside the keypad stood the milky eye of a powerless computer terminal.

She switched the terminal on, but the screen demanded her password before it would allow her access to her own files. So much for that.

Qwi picked up the musical keypad and cradled it. The instrument felt familiar and yet alien. She touched a few of the keys and listened to the soft, high notes that issued from it. She remembered standing in the shattered debris of the Cathedral of Winds, picking up a fragment of one of the windpipes and blowing a slow, mournful melody through it. The winged Vors had snatched the flute from her, insisting that there be no more music until the cathedral itself was rebuilt.…

But this keypad held her own music. Qwi vaguely recalled using it, but she couldn’t quite picture for what. A flickering image came to mind, like a slick, wet fruit that slipped from her fingers every time she tried to grasp it—setting the keypad down, suspecting she might never come back.… She winced, drew a breath, and tapped her fingers together, trying to think.

Han Solo! Yes, she had left everything untouched as she attempted to rescue Han and escape with the Sun Crusher.

She let her long blue fingers dance across the musical keys. Her mind remembered no particular sequence, but her body knew. Her hands moved by habit, tapping out a quick loop of melody. She smiled—it seemed so familiar to her.

When she finished the sequence of notes, her computer screen winked, PASSWORD ACCEPTED. She blinked her indigo eyes, astonished at what she had done.

ERROR, the computer printed. MAIN DATABASE UNAVAILABLE … SEARCHING FOR BACKUPS. FILES DAMAGED.

Qwi suspected Tol Sivron might have destroyed the computer core before fleeing in the Death Star prototype. But she must have left something stored within the temporary memory of her own terminal.

RECOVERED FILES FOLLOW, the screen said.

Qwi looked through a window into her own journals, her personal notes. Her heart pounded as she scanned words she herself had typed—but it was not herself. It was another Qwi Xux, a Qwi from the past who had been brainwashed by Imperials, a Qwi who had been twisted as a child and forced to perform to the utter limits of her mental abilities.

Taking shallow breaths, she read her daily accounts with growing uneasiness: the experiments she had performed, simulations she had run on the computer, meetings she had attended, endless progress reports she had filed for Director Sivron. Though she remembered none of it, it appalled her to realize that she had done nothing but work. Her only joy had come from completed experiments—her only moments of excitement, when tests proved her designs to be reliable.

“Was this all my life was?” Qwi asked. She scrolled down, scanning day after identical clay. “How … empty!” she muttered.

“Excuse me?” Threepio said. “Did you ask for assistance?”

“Oh, Threepio.” She shook her head and found tears stinging her eyes.

She heard footsteps in the outer corridor and turned as Wedge entered the lab. His face was smudged with grime, his uniform rumpled. He looked sweaty and exhausted, but she rushed to him and hugged him. He squeezed her shoulders, then ran his fingers through her feathery pearlescent hair.

“Is it bad?” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t be here when you first entered the lab. I had an emergency.”

Qwi shook her head. “No, I had to face this myself anyway.”

“Find anything useful?” He stepped away from her, becoming the general again. “We need to know how many scientists were at the Installation. Most got away on the Death Star, but any information you have …”

Qwi stiffened and looked back at her computer terminal. “I’m not sure I can help you.” Her voice carried a desolate, lost quality. “I’ve been looking over my daily life. It doesn’t look like I knew any of the other scientists. I … I had no friends here.” She looked at him, widening her depthless eyes.

“More than ten years