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“A human for you, Eve,” Brakiss said. “See what you can do with him. I want to know why he’s really here, so don’t kill him.”

“Deal with him yourself,” the droid said in an hypnotic female voice. “I hate easy targets.”

“Hurting him is easy. Keeping him alive is hard, and keeping him sane will be even harder. I trust your devious mind can find ways to do both.”

The droid walked toward Cole on thin legs. She tilted her head and peered into his face. Her eyes were gold slits, and her metal smelled of blaster scorches.

“I am Eve-Ninedeninetwo. I have headed cyborg operations and retraining at this facility since my prototype, Eve-Ninedenine, was purchased by a Tatooine crime lord. I am said to be twice as ruthless as she. I tell you this as a warning, and with the thought that you might want to confess whatever it is my master wishes to know now, before I discover the limits of human pain.”

In spite of himself, Cole shuddered. So far, though, he didn’t see any R2 units in here, nor did he see Threepio. “I told your master why I’m here.” He glanced at Brakiss, whose eyes glittered as cruelly as the droid’s did. “I found some detonators in some droids that came from this facility, and I thought he might want to know about it.”

“An altruist,” Brakiss said dryly. “Who conveniently forgets that he sent his droids out into the nether reaches of my facility.”

Eve rubbed her clawlike hands together. “I would prefer to have the droids.”

That confirmed, at least, that they hadn’t caught Threepio or Artoo so far.

“I didn’t see the signs,” Cole said.

“This story has its limitations, Fardreamer,” Brakiss said. He was standing alone in the doorway. The assassin droids remained in the hall. “Tell me how useful you are to Skywalker, and I might let you go.”

Cole shrugged. “I’m just his mechanic.”

“A man who can go off on his own, with some of the most important droids in the galaxy? Skywalker must trust his servants, then.”

A boxy droid with a cylindrical head was having its feet heated and reshaped. The droid’s scream was a high-pitched whistle that eeped intermittently. Off in a side room, there was a loud splash, accompanied by a droid begging in unmodulated mechanical tones.

“No,” Cole said. “He just expects us to have initiative.”

“I see,” Brakiss said. “And no one else could have come here? No one else could have sent a message to me?”

“I thought the matter rather delicate,” Cole said. “It wouldn’t do to broadcast that droids all over the galaxy weren’t safe.”

“No, it wouldn’t do at all,” Brakiss said. He shoved Cole toward Eve. Her claws grabbed his arms so tightly that it cut off the circulation.

“Remember,” Brakiss said. “Alive, and sane.”

“I won’t forget,” she said.

The assassin droids had disappeared. This had to be quite the terrifying place, even for droids.

He would only get one chance. “Did you know,” he said to Eve in a husky, satisfied voice, “that you have your claws wrapped around my pleasure centers?”

She swiveled her head in startlement.

“No,” Brakiss said, but it was already too late. She had loosened her grip.

Cole pulled his arms free, and ran for the door. He bumped Brakiss as he did so, and grabbed Brakiss’s blaster.

The assassin droids outside were gone as if they had never been. If he could only remember—

A bolt of electricity wrapped itself around him, sending a tingly jolting feeling through him. His body jerked, and flailed, and jerked, and his breath locked in his throat. His eyes were bugging out of his head, and he couldn’t breathe …

… couldn’t …

… breathe …

—and then the bolt released him. He fell to the floor, flopping like a fish, wishing he could stop, but completely unable to. Finally his muscles stopped jerking and he lay still, his muscles as useless as water.

Brakiss kicked him, turning him over. There was no one else near him. Eve remained in her torture chamber, in the same position she had been in before. Cole saw no stun equipment, nothing that could have caused that thoroughly unpleasant experience.

“Don’t cross me again, boy,” Brakiss