Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 14_ Traitor - Matthew Woodring Stover [60]
He had built himself.
“If that’s the game,” he said, “I can end it right now. I know who I am, Vergere. No matter what you do to me. No matter what new torture you put me through. If I never touch the Force again. It doesn’t matter. I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” he said solidly into the darkness. “I’m a Jedi.”
A long, long silence, in which he seemed to hear the entire room drawing a slow, slow breath.
“Indeed?” She sounded sad. Disappointed. Resigned to a melancholy fate. “Then the game is over.”
“Really?” he said warily. “It is?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “And you lose.”
The room burst to light; after so long in the dark, Jacen felt like he was being jabbed in the eye with a piece of the sun. He flinched, shading his eyes with an upraised arm. Slowly his eyes cleared; the room was larger than he had thought—a ten-meter ceiling, walls decorated with the same floral mosaics, lit by blazing glow globes the size of the Falcon’s cockpit, hanging suspended by tripled chains of verdigris-caked bronze that swung gently above its tiled floor—
And it was full of Yuuzhan Vong.
He turned to Vergere. Beyond a ring of warriors, she stood companionably beside a medium-sized male who wore a long, loose-fitting robeskin of black.
They spoke, but Jacen could not hear them. His ears roared like a forest fire. The Yuuzhan Vong male spoke again, more sharply, but Jacen did not understand. Could not understand. Had no need to understand.
Jacen had seen this male before.
He had seen this male on Duro, with Leia’s lightsaber behind his belt. He had seen this male on the worldship at Myrkr. He knew this male’s name, and he tried to say it.
Tried to say—
But before he could even open his mouth—
A hot tidal surge of red billowed through him, and washed away the world.
Jacen did not swim in the red tide, he floated: drifting, spinning in the eddies, tumbling in the surf. The red tide ebbed, waves washing out, and he bobbed to the surface. The red tide drained from his head, leaving him gasping on the floor.
His hands hurt.
He looked at them, but he couldn’t quite see them, or he couldn’t quite make sense of what he saw; his eyes wouldn’t quite focus. He let his right hand fall to the chilly mosaic tile of the floor, wondering blankly that the outwash of the red tide had left the floor so cold, and so dry. A savor of scorched meat hung in the air, as though his father had jury-rigged the autochef again. But Dad couldn’t have jury-rigged the autochef. There was no autochef. And Dad wasn’t here, couldn’t be here, would never be here—and the smell … Nothing made sense. How had he fallen to this floor? What caused this roil of smoke and dust? A curving wall of rubble choked off three-quarters of the chamber—where had that come from?
Answers were beyond him.
But his hands still hurt. He raised his left hand and frowned his vision clear.
A circle in the middle of his palm—a disk about the size of a power cell—was blackened, cracked, oozing thick dark blood. Wisps of smoke coiled upward from the cracks.
Oh, he thought. I guess that explains the smell.
“How … how does it feel, Jacen Solo—” The voice was thin, ragged and harsh, rasping, broken by coughs. The voice was familiar. The voice was Vergere’s. “—to once more … touch the Force?”
She lay crumpled on the floor a few meters away, just within a ragged archway lipped with jagged stone, as though some incomprehensibly powerful creature had trampled her as it crashed through the wall. Broken stone littered the floor. Her clothing was shredded, smoldering, red embers sliding along torn edges, and burned flesh beneath it still smoked.
“Vergere!” He was at her side without knowing how he got there. “How—what happened?” A sickening conviction clotted in his guts. “Did I—?” His voice trailed off.
He remembered—
Through a fever-dream