At the time, it was the best way he could think of to make the pain go away. At the time, it was the only way he could think of to make the pain go away. And it was so simple too…it should have been marketed as a miracle drug, not an illegal narcotic. In Zark Ekan’s mind, it was just one more thing the galaxy had gotten wrong.

The first time Zark had tried Severa he had felt better than he had ever felt in his entire lifetimes, better than he could ever remember feeling. The first time Zark had tried Severa, he had felt better than he had during his time spent with her…but she was the past.

And to Zark, Severa was the present and the future and everything else in between.

As he slowly succumbed to the effects of the drug, the former Jedi Knight seemed to disconnect himself from his place on the timeline of his life. He went forward, back, all over. He watched himself spring out of his cursed mother’s womb and jumped forward to watch himself die. All the time, he was still back on Astral Astoria, half unconscious, barely able to speak.

So he didn’t speak, he just watched. He watched, and slowly he resettled on his own timeline some months ago. He watched.


It had been months since Zark Ekan had come back from the dead. Months since he had resided inside the body of a Jedi Master named Silus. Months since he had invaded the body of Zarko the Mad. Months since he had felt sane. Zark Ekan had thought himself to be a free man, given a second chance. Zark Ekan had, obviously, thought wrong.

He was on a shuttle from the Force knows where to the Astral Astoria, some big space station that had popped up in the middle of the Corporate Sector a while back. Zark never stayed in one place for very long. None of the places he had been seemed…right. None of them seemed safe. He saw shadows everywhere he went, leaping out at him from the corner. He wanted peace. He knew he’d never find it.

He hoped to find something at least close to it.

But right now, Zark was not thinking about peace. He was not thinking about shadows. He was not thinking about a place to call home. He was thinking about the Astral Astoria, and the immense problem the security there provided. Zark had always been able to either ditch the security checks on every planet he visited or had managed to use the Force to help avoid a situation, but he couldn’t see this happening on the Astoria.

He needed a lightsaber to pass through security. Zark wasn’t quite sure why, but he needed it to happen.

And so he had come up with a solution. It wasn’t the best answer, and if he had been given more time to ponder it, even in his current state, Zark would have realized it to be one of the stupidest ideas he had ever had. But he hadn’t been given more time. He had been given one night. And…well…it had seemed like a good idea at the time.


Zark slipped from his drug induced flashback long enough to register that there was something going on around him. There was screaming, loud bangs, and flashes of light. Oh well, Zark thought to himself. It was not his problem, now was it? He slipped back under.


The shuttle was a nice one. His room was spacious, and gave him the room to work in. He had paid quite a bit of credits for it, he remembered, although he couldn’t quite remember how exactly he had procured said credits. Most likely illegally, Zark imagined to himself. It didn’t matter. That was in the past. Everything was in the past.

Every time he settled down for the brief periods of time he was on a planet, Zark started a completely new life. New job, new home, new friends, new enemies. Some of the lives he led weren’t too bad, and they would have allowed him to live out the rest of his life in peace if one thing or another hadn’t gotten into his head to make him leave. Some of the lives he led, however, were lives that were better forgotten than remembered.

So he did. He forgot everything. Everything he could. But some things stuck. Like her…

Shaking his head, Zark went back to work. The crew of the shuttle had been very kind and generous, allowing him to use any of the tools they had that he might need for his little project. They expected he would reveal to them what it was once they reached the Astral Astoria. There was a going pool on what it was exactly.

They would be disappointed, even more if they actually did find out what it was. In that case, they would be disappointed and likely dead.

He was almost done. All that was left was the crystals and the actual…procedure…itself. Holding the crystals in front of him, he marveled at their beauty. The crystals had always fascinating Zark, just like everything else about the lightsaber. He had spent days just studying his lightsaber, memorizing what every piece did and where it went. At one time, he had held the unofficial record for fastest lightsaber ever assembled at the Jedi Order. There was no official record, for the Knights and Masters frowned upon competition amongst the Padawans. In secret, many of the Knights had tried to best his time. None had succeeded.

Most of that, Zark had forgotten by now. It had taken him hours and a lot of wasted scrap metal in order to reeducate his mind on how to construct a lightsaber. But Zark had always been a fast learner, and not even death and resurrection could take that away from him. If he had not been so busy working, he might have taken some solace in that fact. But he hadn’t the time. He worked on.

The crystals were in place now. One for the regular lightsaber, and one for…for it. All that was left now was the procedure. It wasn’t his favorite part of the idea, not by a long shot. But at the time, Zark knew in his mind that it had to be done. Looking back on it, he realized it was probably one of the stupidest things he had ever done, but that didn’t matter to him that night. All that mattered was to have a lightsaber nobody would ever notice.

He tied a tourniquet right above his wrist, making it as tight as he possibly could. The circulation was completely cut off, and already he began to feel his right hand numbing. Good. Now it was time to wait. He waited, and waited, and waited. For hours, it seemed. His hand had, by this time, turned completely white. He smacked it. No feeling whatsoever. He smacked it harder. Nothing. Using the Force, he amplified his strength as he slammed down on it, putting a rather large dent into the table. Absolutely nothing.

It was time.

Standing in the center of his quarters, he braced himself. Activating the normal lightsaber with his left hand, he marveled at the beauty of the purple blade. It saddened him to know that he would be flushing out down the toilet and out into space with the waste and garbage of the shuttle. He tried not to think about it, or what he was about to do.

Zark swung, and off came his right hand. He nodded appreciatively at how precise the cut had been. He had trained himself to become ambidextrous. And then he passed out, tumbling in a heap to the floor of his quarters.


Zark let out a soft, almost inaudible yelp of imaginary pain to go along with the flashback, stumbling once more temporarily out of his reverie. Whatever had been happening before seemed to have stopped now. There were still raised voices all around, but the flashes and the booming had stopped. He slipped back.


Opening his eyes, the intense pain in his right hand…where his right had used to be…almost put him under again. As Zark had expected, the lightsaber slice had not only severed his right hand completely, but it had also cauterized the wound even as it created it. The blood flow hadn’t even started, so he was in no danger of dying of blood loss.

Zark checked the chronometer. He had only been out for a half hour. Good.

Stumbling over to the small corner of the room he had prepared for this part of the project, Zark brought the…other device…with him. His right hand lay forgotten on the floor of his quarters. He would deal with it later. Right now, it was time to take care of his unnervingly low supply of hands.

Zark activated the medical droid…top half of a medical droid…he had brought along with him. He rested his right...stump on the surface in front of the droid, placing the device across from it. The droid injected him with a painkiller, numbing the intense burning sensation in his right stump and bringing instant relief.

The droid proceeded to serve its purpose.


Someone was talking to him, or about him. Zark heard his name, which was odd, considering he had never told those who supplied him what his name was. He didn’t know who it was exactly, only that he was the subject of conversation, and possibly involved in it as well. Oh well, it could wait. He slipped back under…


It was done. The lightsaber, hand, and even the medical droid had been flushed out with the garbage. It had taken him some time, since he had to disassemble the medical droid enough to actually fit it down the toilet, but it was done. Zark washed his hands…hands. Plural. Two, to be precise.

He held up the prosthetic to his face. He bent his fingers, they responded. It was exactly like before. Only something was there…something was different. Slowly, his left hand shaking, he pushed in the skin on his wrist, right below the right side of the palm. He closed his eyes.

It was the strangest feeling in the world. Something that, despite Zark’s experience, he had never felt before, or even heard about anyone else experiencing. His prosthetic right hand was gone, and the golden lightsaber hummed to life. He waved it around a bit. It responded all too eagerly. It felt kind of awkward. It would definitely take some getting used to. But it was done.

He pressed the skin again, and the lightsaber retracted. The strange feeling returned, and faded. Once more, his right hand appeared right before his eyes. No different than before he had sliced it off. Perfect.


He slipped back once more, this time more permanently. Something was definitely going on, and it involved him. His senses slowly returned, and he tilted his head upward. Something was definitely going on.

Silus pushed his empty glass aside, unknowingly flipping it and sending it rolling. It collided with a mess of its brothers, making a clattering sound. This was the signal to the barkeep.

"'nother drink would be nice," Silus said. His hand searched to find the spare credit that he knew had to be on his person.

"You aren't getting any more drinks tonight."

"You've said that before," he grinned. The bartender shook his head, looked at the glasses piled next to Silus.

"We're not allowed to serve you this many. Sith, if anyone finds out I served you this many..."

"Sith, yeah, I know them," Silus said and moved his hand. It worked before.

"You want to serve me more drinks," the Jedi said.

The bartender looked Silus over and grimaced. "What do you think you are, some kind of Jedi?"

"Presumably." Silus beamed.

"You're drunk, that's what you are."

"Drunk! I'm not drunk! You wouldn't dare call me drunk if I was sober!"

The bartender picked Silus from his seat, polite and roughly. "Come on, let me help you to the door," he said, helping Silus take a few steps. He looked at the glasses piled over the table. "What were you trying to do, kill yourself?"

"Nah," said Silus, staring at his feet, "I was trying to make all the shavit go away."



Silus stood outside the doorway, putting a ragged dogend to his lips, thinking, Any moment now.

"Are you a Jedi?" a voice asked.

"Could be," Silus answered, "could be."

"You have a lightsaber," the voice pointed out. Female... definitely female.

Silus looked down. "Yes... that's what it is."

"Well? Are you a Jedi?"

"Yes, I'm a Jedi, so you can call me hero. I'm a fracking savior of the galaxy, defender of every damnable beast in this galaxy."

"Would you like a light?" she asked.

"No," Silus shook his head. The cigarette lit, smoke trailing "If I needed that, I wouldn't much of a Jedi, eh?"

Right about...

He felt the woman's eyes on him, watching. Staring. It was an odd feeling. It probably was trouble. But not yet, and that was good enough. He took a long pull from the dogend and flung it to the ground, crushing it into durasteel with his boot.

Now.

In one smooth movement, he toppled over and threw up into the gutter.

"It's what's inside that counts," he mumbled and collapsed into beautiful, unaware darkness. Unconsciousness was a wonderful thing, more familiar to him than any lover of his past. Of any of his future, probably. It was an embrace, welcoming him into a temporary hide-away from everything that no drug or any amounts of alcohol could hope to accomplish.

The thought came to him that he probably spent more of his life unconscious than he did having sex.

Time slipped by like water through a sieve, Silus blissfully unaware of eveything that was happening around him.

Something was certainly amiss on the 111th floor; for one thing, this particular section of the bar district, usually teeming with the most colourful and diverse members of society imaginable, was remarkably empty and devoid of life for this time of night, although this was possibly due to the serious renovations that some of the more dilapidated establishments in the area were undergoing. These same businesses were also the ones that thrived the most at this late hour, as they were much cheaper and thus more affordable for the lesser privileged (or rather, lesser honest) residents of the Astoria … not to mention, they were also far more willing to allow for various shady enterprises to set up shop and carry out their unlawful ventures underneath their roofs.

Although The Red Escape did not fall into the same category as these other inns, it too was temporarily closed for a major overhaul, to help accommodate its newest owners. This restaurant, however, was far from being empty tonight -- or quiet, for that matter. The strictly secured private chambers located towards the rear of the bar appeared now to be haunted by a poltergeist of some sort, as all manners of furniture, ornaments -- just about anything and everything moveable in the general vicinity, really -- darted about the room in mid-air, seemingly of their own accord. The source of this strange possession of sorts came in the form of a petite young brunette who sat curled up on an armchair near the center of the room, her expression one of utter dullness and vapidity as she lazily coordinated the objects to twist this way and that, before arranging them to haphazardly collide against either the walls or one another.

"But, Ms. Loraan, I hardly think that sheer boredom alone is a valid excuse for sheltering a former Jedi here in our secondary base. Miss Siren would not approve—"

"La, dee, freakin' da !" came the all too uninterested response, as Taja pivoted sideways on her hips to reposition herself awkwardly on the large navy blue lounger, her legs folded and crossed over one of its arms while her back leaned heavily against the other. She tilted her chin upwards and stared directly upwards, and after a few seconds of silent scrutiny she shook her head and exhaled loudly, as though there existed in the ceiling some great and mysterious cause for rueful contemplation. "I thought you were supposed to be on my side ? And in any case, Eve isn't here right now," she muttered, her voice laced thickly with disdain. She turned her head until her slim, brown-haired protege was within her field of vision. "I like what you've done with your hair, by the way. Have you showed it off to Gackt yet ? He'll be so pawing all over you."

"Thank you, and no, I have not," Vasuki replied firmly as he deftly side-stepped away from the path of a poorly aimed flying lamp. It was a wonder just how he managed to retain his cool composure in the face of such, well … Taja. There didn't seem to be any other more appropriate term to describe the Sith Mistress. "But I'd like to remind you that--"

The man was again promptly cut off mid-sentence, this time by an insistent beeping that seemed to originate from Taja's waist. After a few moments spent blinking, she fumbled with the gadget attached to her belt and raised it to her face, then flipped on a switch on its side. A woman's cold, expressionless voice filtered through.

"Oh, hey Selene. What's that ? Oh, is that right. Well, bring him in, then. He can make a new friend," the Sith spoke into the device in short bursts, her eyes widening curiously with every sentence the low-ranking Severe operative uttered from the other side. After a minute or two of this back-and-forth, Taja casually discarded the comm. over her shoulder and looked to Vasuki. By now, the floating furniture and other miscellaneous items had slowed in their courses and come to an abrupt halt, but still remained suspended in the air, motionless in their orbits. "Yuki, be a darling and go keep an eye on Zarky over there, will you ?" she asked, and with a curt nod he made his way into the small adjoining room where the fallen Jedi Knight lay drifting in and out of consciousness, no questions asked.

After a further ten minutes or so, a thin, sullen-faced blonde woman entered, with what appeared to be a drunken passed-out man in tow. She deposited the limp body at Taja's feet, handed her the Jedi's inactive lightsaber, bowed lowly, then departed just as quickly as she had arrived. The Sith couldn't help but make a face; these newer recruits seemed to be getting increasingly uptight by the day. The expression quickly changed to one of excitement though, as her focus shifted to her latest plaything, lying frozen on the floor. She hopped off her chair and moved to sit astride him, her fingers now wrapped around a small vial containing a fine white powder. Uncapping it, she held the open container directly beneath his nose, the particles diffusing through into his respiratory system as he rhythmically inhaled.

She smiled cheerfully. "Hey there, lover boy."

It was him. V something. Vasko? Visuko? It was something like that. Zark had never been good with names. It was one of the few quirks that had survived resurrection. Still intoxicated by Severe, he half heartedly invaded the young man’s mind. It was sloppy, and had he been completely alert he could have done it much quicker and more efficiently.

Vasuki.

That was it. Vasuki. He was with her. If he hadn’t been, Zark probably would have killed him some time ago. He had never liked the man very much. Something about him…it just didn’t sit right with the former Jedi. It was probably the fact that Vasuki thought it would be a good idea to just have Zark killed.

Try to hide your thoughts, Zark thought to himself, Just once. Try. It might provide more of a challenge.

His eyes drifted across the room to find out what was going on. It was her and…who was that? Zark couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter anyway. None of it mattered. Not when he had Severe. The drug still influenced him, desperately trying not to let go of its hold on his mind.

Once again, he lost his place.

What was he supposed to do? That choice had never been clear for Zark Ekan, even before his life had taken a drastic turn downhill. Even during his time at the Jedi Order, making that decision on a day to day basis had never come easy. There were so many boundaries, so many limits of a Jedi.

After he had fallen, it had turned into a matter of lack of options instead of boundaries. But at this particular moment of his life...er, death…he was more lost than ever. Zark had always managed to find the correct choice to make, or had just picked one, hoping for the best. But right now, he was utterly at a loss.

The Jedi Silus battled Zarko the Mad. Zarko the Corrupt. Zarko the Vile. Zarko…was he really much different than Zark had been? The man did not seek power, yet power sought itself through him. He did not wish for evil, yet evil sprung from nothing inside of him. He had no reason to kill, yet killing had turned into a second nature for him.

Zark and Zarko were alike, as much as he hated to admit it.

And then there was Silus. Silus had succeeded where even Zark had failed. He had done the seemingly impossible. Silus was neither a good guy nor a bad guy. Silus was just Silus. Zark longed for that type of characterization, even more than he longed for death…again.

It was kind of funny, when Zark thought about it more. Silus had succeeded where Zark Ekan had failed. While Zark had no desire to be good and no desire to be evil, as you would think such people would feel, Silus had a very deep desire to be good, he was just incredibly bad at it.

So Silus and Zarko fought on, and all Zark could do was watch.

Zark slid back out, surveying his surroundings as well as he could. Vasuki was carrying out his orders without trying to look like unimportant. But he was. That was so obvious to Zark. Vasuki was unimportant, just as he was. In the long run, most people were. The only difference between them and Zark was that most of them still refused to accept it.

“Fool,” Zark whispered.

Vasuki thought he was talking to himself, hallucinating probably. Zark wondered how the young man would have felt if he had realized the former Jedi was speaking to him. Once more, Zark’s eyes drifted to the unfamiliar presence that had recently been added to the room.

Unfamiliar presence? No, he supposed it wasn’t.

It didn’t matter. His place was lost.

What had he done? What had Silus done?! Zark did not know. He had opened something…a conduit? A path, and that was all Zark knew. On the other side, the unknown…and on this side, nothing. Making the right decision had never come easy to the former Jedi. But he had always been able to just pick one and follow it blindly.

He leapt into the abyss.

It had been a feeling Zark had experienced so many more times than he felt comfortable with at all. The presence of another’s mind, another’s entity, grouped with his own. This had, however, been the first time he was on the recessive end of the deal. He didn’t like it. Not one bit. So he did what came natural, what would come natural to any animal.

He adapted, he mutated, he survived. The never ending struggle for mere survival. He became dominant. Zarko became recessive. And now Zark was faced with a choice. Another Force damned choice. He could live in a constant battle for control with Zarko the Mad, one that, if he ever lost momentarily, would surely spell doom for him and a second chance for one who did not deserve it. Or he could end it.

The choice was obvious, and yet…there it was. So tantalizingly close. The consciousness of Zarko the Mad. End it now, that was the right choice, the only choice, Zark knew. He had to end it now. And yet…no, he shouldn’t. It was not right, it was not just, it was certainly not a fucking good idea.

He did anyway.

And in viewing the consciousness of Zarko the Mad in full, he had damned himself more than unfortunate circumstances ever could. The human mind has a quirk where it finds the good qualities in people, even when their evil qualities overshadow the good so much that the good cease to matter very much. Looking upon Zarko, his life, his history, everything that made him an individual, death did not exclude him from this.

Zark saw in Zarko the Mad the capacity to become a human being once more, and not only that, but a good man.

And he killed him anyway.

“Zarko…” Zark whispered to himself, his words once again dismissed by Vasuki as drug induced, and this time they were, “Silus…”

I'm being dragged.

That was the first thought to enter Silus's mind. He let out a low groan.

Where am I? He opened his eyes to slits, then immediately shut them.

Bad idea. Fracking light.

He could feel the ground sliding under him, slipping away.

I'm being dragged, he thought again. Moments passed by, seemingly forever.

Oh well.


"Hey there, lover boy."

Silus drifted into consciousness again, risked opening his eyes.

Who...

Oh no, I didn't...

Eventually, the blur focused.

Well, if I did, I certainly won't complain, Silus thought with a weak smile.

"Did I... did we... ?" He asked. The woman smiled.

"You don't remember?"

"Ah," Silus mumbled, staring down. "What are you..."

"Just a surprise," she smiled. That smile was almost intoxicating.

Silus's head swam, like through a dense fog. It was a struggle to stay on a thought.

Better make the most of it, something, probably him, reasoned.

"Want to go violate the Jedi Code?" he asked. Someone chuckled.

You're an idiot, did you know that? Silus asked himself.

His head fell to the side. The fog was closing in around him, now, before he could even wonder what was going on.

Before it all closed in around him, Silus's last thought was a face. A familiar face.

Zark... frak...



The world faded away again, slipping away again. A part of Silus, a small part, wondered if he could fight it. It wondered if even should fight it.

Zarko the... Sane? Mad? Zarko the Mad. That was his name.

No, he thought again, not anymore. Zarko is dead. He... no, I killed him. He only made it easy.

Zarko... is Zark now.

Zark means trouble. Frak.

Something bad is going to happen. No, something bad has already happened.

I just haven't realized what yet.

Vasuki's eyes narrowed into thin slits and flashed darkly as the Knight before him once again regained awareness of his surroundings for what seemed to be the thousandth time. It was immediately obvious, however, that this instance was no different from those many others and would likely last a few minutes at the most. His frown deepened as he felt the Jedi's mind infringe upon the outermost boundaries of his own psyche, sifting through his thoughts in search of relevant information while hardly making an effort to disguise the fact. During his tenure at Severe, he had come to gradually realize his slight affinity to the Force and consequently worked towards honing some of these potential talents under Taja's guidance, but his skills were still limited to mere persuasion and assertiveness within the confines of the boardroom. In a setting such as this, and when faced with a Force adept of Zark's caliber, he had absolutely no defense against any mental prying the Jedi wished to undertake … and this irked him to no end.

"Fool."

A fuse somewhere in the recesses of Vasuki's outwardly placid mind sparked, and with a few brisk steps the man moved towards a long bureau that was pushed against one of the walls. Wrenching open one of the topmost drawers, he extracted a closed syringe from amongst the carefully arranged pile as well as another glass vial, the cap of which was of a different color from the one Taja possessed and contained a clear liquid instead of powder. He pulled out the plunger a little way and was about to remove the seal from the container when a sudden noise from behind him caused his fingers to freeze their movements. It was the familiar and derogatory sound a disappointed mother might make, one reprimanding her wayward child for having gone against her wishes a few too many times. Once he had finally turned around fully, Vasuki suppressed a sigh and looked up wearily at the Sith Master, standing by the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Yuki, honey, you really should know better than that. You don't want our guest to OD and end up dead, do you ?" she asked, and Vasuki's facial muscles seemed to twitch in response. She rolled her eyes. "Alright, well, never mind that then. In any case, he's already out cold." Taja nodded past her protege's shoulder, and sure enough, when he looked in that direction he was greeted with the all-too agreeable image of the Knight lying perfectly still and appearing sound asleep on the makeshift bed. Smirking, the Sith was about to rise from where she stood leaning against the door's frame when a muted whisper drifted across the room.

"Zarko…" he muttered quietly, and Vasuki had to almost strain to hear. "Silus…"

Taja quirked her brow. The man's eyes were still closed, but the hallucinogenic properties of the drugs, administered several hours ago, were beginning to slowly wear off and degenerate into a state of sopor -- a common after-effect of Severa.

"Do you think he wants to get with Silus ?" she mused. Vasuki had to exercise most of his self-restraint to prevent himself from scoffing aloud. "I mean, the two of them think about each other enough …" Her voice trailed off as she made her way over to where the Jedi Knight lay incapacitated. His eyelids fluttered open but all that was visible were the whites of his eyes as he subconsciously fought against the drug-induced euphoria and all its accompanying delusions, drifting somewhere between the worlds of sleep and awake. Leaning down, she pressed his eyes closed with the tips of her fingers and planted a quick kiss on his forehead. Almost at once, a darting pain shot through Zark's skull. It embedded itself in the farthest reaches of his mental coil, and within a fraction of a second, began to bore inward deeper and deeper.

Flipping her hair over her shoulder, Taja beamed at the slightly bewildered Vasuki and exited silently to return to the main lounge. The Jedi Master Silus' body was positioned awkwardly on the side of the room immediately opposite her, his back pinned against the wall and his arms hanging limply above his head, as though they were fastened in place by means of some unseen shackle. As she approached him, all the furniture that had so far been hovering motionlessly in the air fell to the ground simultaneously, causing a deafening crash to resound throughout the bar as splinters of wood and glass shards ricocheted off the marbled floors, each small and gradual leap quietening the strange and raucous cacophony. The sudden uproar seemed to jolt Silus out of his blissful reverie, and as he came to the Sith cupped his chin between her fingers. "Trust a man to fall asleep right afterwards," she pouted, tilting his face upwards to face her. "How typical. Anyway, you plan on staying awake for more than thirty seconds, this time ?"

Meanwhile, the searing pain inside Zark's mind escalated to such levels that he felt the need to cry out loud, but his mouth felt as though it had been sewn shut, and his eyes were suddenly incapable of opening. And there, within the innermost caverns of his mind's core, the ache began to take form and shape, twisting and contorting this way and that until it had assumed the ethereal manifestation of a human being -- a man, to be precise. A man he recognized instantly, who had haunted him for longer than he cared to remember, a man who plagued his nightmares both in the realms of consciousness and not. The same man whose very existence reflected everything that he loathed, everything that he feared, everything that he had grown to regret … a man, whose appearance was the very reflection of himself.

He couldn’t move!

Zark realized that he was not in the conscious world, and after the sudden invasion he desperately attempted to bring himself out of his slumber. The unconsciousness would not break, however, and, like a cornered rat, he receded momentarily to the far reaches of his mind, shrinking away from the monstrosity that he believed had been unleashed.

Had his mind been governed by the laws of common sense at the time, he would’ve realized that that would give…it…complete control over his mind and body, but Zark was not, at that moment, a sensible thinking individual. All he needed to know was that he had to get away from…it…as far as he could. That foolish Sith knew not what she had done! She had released something even she could not begin to comprehend.

She had released the Devil, and he hungered.

Away! Away! the thoughts resonated throughout his mind.

All that was received in response was laughter. Deep, booming laughter. It sent him cowering even farther into the darkness of the edge of his mind. It taunted him, it scared him, it haunted him. And the worst part about it was…it was his own. It was his own laughter.

Stop it!

He lashed out, slamming his mind as hard as he could against the intruding entity. Entity…could it really be called that? No, it was more a manifestation of complete darkness. More than that, Zark had realized during the brief time he had allowed it to reign in the physical realm, it was a manifestation of death.

Death.

Having gone through it once before, Zark had long thought himself to be immune to the fears that walked hand in hand with it, and yet he feared this…manifestation…more than he had ever feared anything in either of his lives. He feared this…mirror image of himself more than he feared the Darkside itself. The Darkside was distant. It lurked in the shadows. This was real.

Too real.

He pleaded to any god willing enough to listen for consciousness, if only so he could plunge his lightsaber through his chest and end it once more. Suicide was a far more pleasant alternative to having to deal with, once more, the sights of the victims that would fall at the edge of the mirror’s…his blade. And oh! How so many would fall.

The change in scenery startled Zark, for while unconscious one did not expect to see much of anything. The black shifted into…black. No, this was not black. It was the same color, but this was physical, this was present, this was more.

This was darkness.

And standing before him stood his greatest fear.

“Well met once more, Zark Ekan.”

“And…and what am I to call you?” he struggled to keep his voice from cracking.

“You know who I am. But yes…I can see how that might become confusing. Very well. You may call me Malum. Yes, Malum Ekan. That shall do. Or perhaps, Malum Askrima…”

With a snap-hiss! the lightsaber hummed to life, and he charged. But it was not Malum who did the attacking. With a fire in his eyes that had come all too often during the end of his first life, he assaulted with every muscle in his body the being who had seemingly resurrected himself in Zark’s mind.

Cssssh!

Saber met saber, as Zark’s golden, prosthetic saber clashed against Malum’s…red, prosthetic saber. Malum laughed, as if reading his thoughts and the manifestation likely was. Fear. Fear plagued him. Fear of that lightsaber, and what it represented…fear of what it foreshadowed…and most of all, fear of Malum him…itself.

“I may not be real, but I am more Zark Ekan than you shall ever be!”

“No!” Zark screamed, and continued with his offensive.

Malum did not even try to counter. He just parried and parried and parried. Zark, too caught up in his own rage, failed to realize that. Even if he had, he likely wouldn’t have thought on it. On and on he went, until finally he spotted a minor weakness in the manifestation’s technique. Out wide went Malum’s lightsaber, and in Zark came for the hill.



And then he awoke.

Standing bolt upright, completely alert, it took him but a few seconds to note the active lightsaber that replaced his prosthetic hand. The red…no, he had seen it wrong, the gold hue…no…staring down at the lightsaber in utter confusion, Zark’s eyes fell upon the blue hue of the lightsaber.

“Blue?” he whispered aloud.

The crystal he had place in there had been a very rare one. Perfectly golden in color, its beauty was unlike anything Zark had ever seen before. But the lightsaber that extended from his arm was not the golden one he had first ignited on that transport ship, but a deep blue blade. Crystals did not just change color…

For the first time, he noticed the presence of another living person in the room. Who was it again? Vasuki, the name came much quicker when he was not under the influence of Severa. His thoughts turned from frightened confusion to anger and hatred. He bore a fierce hatred toward the man, even when he wasn’t drugged.

Kill him.

It wasn’t even a cognitive thought. It was a simple fact. He should kill Vasuki. Realization dawned upon him that this was the first time he had activated the lightsaber since he had landed on the Astral Astoria, and thusly this was the first time any member of Severe had realized he carried the concealed weapon. If he were to let Vasuki live…he had never liked the man anyway.

Zark charged, bellowing an unintelligible war cry. He lifted the red lightsaber above his head and…red…halting suddenly in mid step, Zark stared at the blade…the red blade? What was going on? Crystals did not just change color! What was going on…what was…why had he so easily entertained the idea of killing the man before him.

The blue blade, a fact not lost upon Zark, deactivated with a snap-hiss!, and once again there was his prosthetic hand. Not even pausing to look upon the man he had come seconds away from brutally murdering, the former Jedi Knight simply walked past the man.

There, on the floor, lay the Jedi Silus.

"Trust a man to fall asleep right afterwards. How typical. Anyway, you plan on staying awake for more than thirty seconds, this time?"

Silus groaned. He felt a small trickle of blood from a gash in the side of his face; probably from a piece of glass that had come crashing by. There were shards and splinters everywhere.

"Very funny," he said and managed a thin smirk. His mind was fuzzy, something he attributed to whatever had thrown him unconscious.

Where, he thought, am I?

And what does this all have to do with Zark?

Silus leaned in closer, only centimeters away from his captor's face. "If I wanted to, I could tear through these bindings, rip through you and kill that little guard of yours before you could even blink..."

He moved against the bindings which tightened around his wrist. All it would take was a quick sharp spike from the Force and he could break free. But his grip on the Force was weak, as if he was trying to hold onto air.

Damn!

"... But," he began again, "because of my better nature, I have chosen not to." He glanced around. "I don't suppose you left me my lightsaber? No, no, no-one is that stupid."

Silus slumped back against the wall, stared at his captor. "So why am I here, hmm? Pick up many drunk Jedi often?" Silus narrowed his eyes, "I'm not some sort of sex slave, am I? If you sell me to the Hutts, I swear I will..."

The Jedi's voice drifted off. Someone had entered the room. Someone Silus wasn't expecting to see.

"Hello, Zark," he grimaced. "I should have known you'd be involved in this. So what did they do, drug you? Knock you over the head? Trip you up and ravage you?''

He eyed Zark's hand. When the hell did that happen?

Silus looked around, trying to find reason for all of this and, more importantly, a way out of the situation.

Force, Zark, don't make me regret letting you go.

"If I wanted to, I could tear through these bindings, rip through you and kill that little guard of yours before you could even blink..."

The thinnest of frowns wrinkled Taja’s forehead, but it was hardly a result of what the Jedi Master had so confidently stated; if anything, she could scarcely discern any of the distorted words the man, intoxicated beyond the limits of regular human survival by both alcohol and countless hallucinogens, continued to spout incessantly -- but at the moment, she didn’t much care. While her eyes trained themselves diligently upon Silus’ silently struggling form, her mind wandered elsewhere, onto that of Zark’s … and her scowl deepened. The illusion of the Knight’s counterpart was merely a simple suggestion she had implanted within his psyche, curious to examine its effects, but it appeared that Zark himself had latched onto that harmless idea and was assigning it attributes that the Sith had never intended, nor expected.

His fractured mind was quickly engulfing the thought, unwittingly yet surely amalgamating it into its inner framework and allowing it to rapidly intensify with every passing second. Although he did not realize it, Zark was, on some subconscious level, willingly fueling the image of Malum (as he seemed to have dubbed it), and if left to its own devices the seed would irreversibly take root and the entity which he so feared would finally come into actual being -- and it would be the fault of none but Zark alone.

As suddenly as it had all started, the dark tendrils of his mind recoiled from the seed, and Taja’s face similarly relaxed. It meant that Zark was awake, since the merging process could only occur during sleep, whether voluntary or not. Just as she was about to return her attention to Silus, however, an acute flash of hatred seared through her senses, and her eyes widened.

Yuki !

In the adjoining room, Vasuki’s head snapped to the side, his psychic bond with Taja alerting him of the impending attack just in time for him to duck down and throw his entire weight away from the path of Zark’s assault, to crash heavily onto the ground instead. His hands scrambled blindly in search of anything even remotely useable as a weapon, all the while awaiting and dreading the burning laceration when the Jedi’s prosthetic lightsaber would make contact with his flesh … but it never happened. Empowered by the aftermath of an adrenaline surge, Vasuki’s fingers clasped around one end of an improvised baton, and he turned on his back and aimed haphazardly at the general area where the Knight had been standing.

What happened next was a blur, as the wood shattered on impact with the back of the Jedi’s legs and he collapsed onto his knees, still facing the two Masters. Before Zark could retaliate, the Sith once again lashed out mentally against him, and the equivalent of a thousand shrieking voices immediately drowned out his every cognitive faculty, the consequent pain keeping him pinned to the ground. Vasuki scrambled quickly to his feet and, grabbing the syringe he had been preparing earlier, stabbed the needle roughly into the side of Zark’s neck, injecting his bloodstream with a concentrated dose of Severa. Almost simultaneously, Taja backhanded Silus sharply across the skull, and the sudden force was enough to reduce the Jedi Master into a state of unconsciousness for the umpteenth time.

“Goddamn frelling Jedi,” she cursed, grimacing slightly as she rubbed her injured hand. The Sith exchanged a nod with Vasuki, who then proceeded to drag Zark’s fiercely writhing body back into the smaller room, the drug uninhibitedly taking control of his nervous system. Taja likewise followed suit, although her destination was a semi-concealed door set into the wall next to where Silus had been lying and, rather than hauling him along by hand, she called upon the Force to help slide him along the ground behind her, oblivious to any cuts and bruises he happened to procure along the way from the scattered debris.

Once the two of them were inside, she sealed and bolted the room behind her, and then propped up the Jedi’s insensible form upright against the far wall -- right beneath a pair of actual shackles embedded into the cement, quite unlike the invisible psychic strands she had employed earlier. The entire space was occupied in all corners by a grand assortment of metallic contraptions, all of which appeared blatantly painful and torturous; the place was, after all, Taja’s interrogation chambers for Severe, as well as her and Eve’s personal “playroom” … although it wasn’t clear yet just which of the two purposes it was going to serve for the Jedi Master.

As she secured Silus’ arms and legs in position, Taja’s thoughts roamed once more to Zark -- or more specifically, Malum. The combined effect of the heavy drug dosage, along with his own body’s violent reactions -- both to the substance and to the non-physical intruder entrenched within his mind -- had temporarily masked his psyche from being read, even by Taja. The more he fought against himself, the more the illusion took hold of his fleetingly comatose mind … and if it continued at this pace, the fabrication of Malum would no longer remain just a mere delusion, but would manifest itself as an altogether independent consciousness -- exactly what the fallen Jedi mistakenly feared it to be now.

Zark, sweetheart … you’re on your own.