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He’d have been able to see nothing at all, but the sun had begun to rise on Belkadan, turning deep black night into a misty gray morning that mimicked the foggy sensation in his brain. He estimated he’d been in Yuuzhan Vong control for at least four hours. More than enough time for them to backtrack me to the ExGal facility, the ship, Artoo, and Uncle Luke. What was I thinking?

The vision had seemed so real to him, with all the bits and pieces feeling right as they fell together. He didn’t want to think he’d deceived himself, using a dream as a pretext to do something his uncle didn’t want him to do. The fact that doing just that would be the sort of thing expected of someone his age gnawed at him. That makes me just like everyone else, but I’m not. I’m special, I’m more responsible.

Another cough shook him, sharpening the pain that had dulled in his shoulders. Jacen allowed himself a little smile. Of course, every sixteen-year-old who’s been convinced he’s not like his peers probably thinks this same thing after he’s proved he isn’t so unlike his peers as he thinks he is. He sighed. Even being trained in the Force couldn’t insulate him from making mistakes. You can put powerful engines on a sloop racer, but if the chassis doesn’t have structural integrity, the whole thing falls apart.

And that’s what Uncle Luke tried to tell me by reminding me I’ve not had enough experience. He shifted his shoulders to pull at the bonds on his wrists. Lesson one from this experience: Realize just how much you don’t know. Lesson two: Make sure to learn from lesson one.

Jacen reached inside to touch the Force and call it to himself, but the pain in his shoulders and hips nibbled away at his concentration. A third cough didn’t help the situation. Jacen did his best to try to let the pain bleed away with Jedi pain-suppression techniques, but as he calmed frayed nerves, the bonds on his wrists tightened. They twisted his arms more, grinding his shoulder sockets, making the pain spike.

Jacen gasped and hung there for a second. A cold chill sent a shudder through him, pulsing more pain from his joints. In response the bonds on his arms eased a bit, but Jacen hardly took comfort in that fact.

The device to which he had been attached clearly could sense how much pain he was in. Intellectually he knew this was actually very easy. Sensors could monitor the amount of activity going on in the parts of his brain dealing with pain. Electronics could even measure the output of the pain receptors in his shoulders—much in the same way they read neural signals and allowed Luke’s artificial hand to function normally. He was even aware of machines that inflicted pain, like those used on his parents by Darth Vader on Bespin.

What surprised him was that there seemed no active purpose for keeping him in pain. No one was interrogating him. The pain wasn’t sufficient to break him down, just to keep him in a distracted state. While that was preventing him from accessing the Force, somehow he didn’t think the Yuuzhan Vong knew enough about the Jedi to realize how useful this would be.

A raspy clicking entered the chamber, causing Jacen to raise his head. In through the building’s threshold came a small gray creature. It walked on six legs and sidled left and then right. It had four other appendages, all raised like flags at a parade. Two of these limbs were stout and two very fine. The creature also seemed to have compound eyes, three of them, hanging in a cluster from a single central stalk, which was segmented and capable of movement. Because it was just coming in through the doorway, which faced east, the rising sun backlit the creature, making it difficult for Jacen to see much more in the way of detail, but what he’d seen already did not please him.

He felt panic rising in him, but he forced it away. On a shelf next to the door he saw his lightsaber and tried to reach out for it. He knew he couldn’t ignite it, but if he could pull it toward him and smash the dark end into this creeper, he’d feel much better.