Trapped (3 page)

A
kind face leans over him, and blond hair brushes his forehead. Her lips skim his cheek, and she smiles. She smells like zinthorn blossoms. Sleep now, she says in her soft, musical voice. He feels safe. He feels at home.

X-7 jerked the speeder back in its lane, a split second before ramming into a blue airspeeder.

“Watch it, you kreetle!” shouted the Trandoshan at the wheel, shaking a clawed fist at X-7's jet-black speeder.

“Focus,” X-7 murmured, weaving through the dense Coruscant traffic. One trillion people swarmed the surface of this planet-sized city, and at the moment, it seemed all of them were crowding the skylanes of Quadrant 472. Trast speeder trucks and Zzip Astral-8s and SoroSuubs of every shape and color jockeyed for position as they whizzed past the skyscrapers, burrowing into the city like gravel-maggots infesting a rotting muja fruit. X-7 didn't possess the normal human inclination to prefer one environment over another. The mountains of Julio, the plains of Loped VII, the breathtaking cliffs of Kenosha, the bare, craggy surface of a lifeless moon—they were all the same to him. But if he
had
had a preference, this would be its opposite. The crystalline spires glowing in the blazing red sunset, the millions of windows glinting in the dying light, the layers upon layers of
people
covering every inch of the surface, buildings stretching untold kilometers into the sky—it was supposed to be the pride of the galaxy. It gave X-7 a headache.

Navigating the skylanes demanded his full attention. But how was he supposed to concentrate with these wretched
memories
floating around in his head?

“I dare you!” the boy cries.

“No, I dare
you
!” he shouts back.

The boy laughs and steers his speeder bike straight for the edge of the ravine. He surges forward at top speed, then pulls up at the very last minute. The momentum carries him across. He waves from the other side. “Your turn now, you sprigging coward!”

He is afraid. But he is also determined. He leans forward. Pushes the throttle. Wind thunders in his ears. The ground opens beneath him, and he is flying—

“Enough!” X-7 shouted. Blind with rage, he rammed the speeder into the bright red sport speeder in front of him, knocking the sport into a wild spin across four levels of traffic. The sport crashed into a zip speeder, which smashed into two Flash speeders. Crushed and twisted durasteel spiraled through the air; drivers moaned and cried; sirens screamed. And X-7 quietly steered his heavily armored Serous into a narrow alleyway, fleeing the chaos he'd caused.

The needless destruction made him feel better. And that was the problem.

Feeling
angry.

Feeling
better.

Feeling
anything at all. It wasn't right. He wasn't built for it. He was a
tool,
not a person. How many times had his commander burned that message into his brain? The Commander, who had taken X-7's flesh-and-blood form and molded it into something better, something
perfect.
Scooped out his mind, purging it of memories, of emotions, of
weakness,
and turning his will to durasteel.

All these years, X-7 would have
felt
grateful, if he could have felt anything at all.

But now everything was going wrong. It had started with the
feelings.
Frustration, impatience, rage. They'd clouded his mind; that was why he hadn't been able to complete his mission, he told himself. It was why Skywalker still lived. And the more often Skywalker foiled him, the angrier he grew.

Then, as if the feelings had wedged open a long-sealed vault, the memories had arrived. Not even memories—just flashes, really. Nothing he could grab hold of or understand. A too-familiar scent. A few notes of a long-forgotten song. A voice. And now, it was even worse, these incomplete moments, confusing stories from someone else's life. As nonsensical as a dream.

Dreaming. Something else X-7 wasn't supposed to be capable of.

He was broken.

He must be broken, because that was the only possible explanation for his not wanting to be fixed. For his suddenly having
wants,
which were as alien as the
feelings.
For his disobeying a direct order from his commander to return for retraining.

It was why instead he was here, guiding his speeder into the alley behind the Commander's building, with an armory of weapons on the seat beside him.

He didn't
want
retraining. He
wanted
answers.

The thirty-story building was home to several third-rate Imperial officers, those deemed unworthy of space in the more desirable Imperial headquarters. On the plus side, being this far from the Emperor meant less chance of running into Lord Vader in the hallway. On the other hand, placement in this quadrant was often the first stop to a far less appealing posting: the Outer Rim perhaps. Or to being “promoted” to commandant on a prison moon, forced to live out the rest of one's life eating diluted gruel, administering executions, and waiting to die.

X-7's research had revealed that this was likely to be his master's fate—although the Commander himself hadn't yet figured that out.

The building was stocked with a full complement of stormtroopers in addition to the handful of Imperial has-beens and never-weres. But again, they were hardly the cream of the crop. With a little stealth and some cheap false docs, X-7 could have waltzed into the Commander's office without notice.

He chose not to.

The docs brought him into the building and onto the turbolift. But when he reached the sixty-second floor,he stepped out with his dart shooter in hand. It was small enough to be concealed in his palm; the guards never knew what was coming. He aimed for the small pocket of flesh just below their helmets and above their body armor—a little-known but fatal weakness. One stormtrooper, two, three, toppled to the floor with a satisfying clatter. Three more dropped, leaving only one on his feet. On a whim, X-7 decided to give him a chance to fire. Lasers shot from the blaster, peppering the wall of the turbolift as X-7 dodged the beams. The stormtrooper charged, and X-7 leapt out of the way, firing a blaster as he soared through the air.

The stormtrooper screamed and dropped to the floor beside his friends.

X-7 had hoped a little exercise might leave him calmer for his encounter with the Commander. Killing was always a good pressure release. But not this time.

No matter,
X-7 thought.
I'll have likely more to do on the way out.

He blasted the lock on the Commander's office door. Soresh leapt out of his chair, reaching for a switch above his desk. “What the—”

X-7 streaked across the room and slapped a hand over the Commander's mouth. He pressed a blaster to the Commander's temple. “Your security team has been taken care of,” he informed the Commander. “All the same, I'd prefer you not to press your silent alarm. Please.”

Very slowly, the Commander lowered his arm.

“Sit down,” X-7 ordered him.

It was strange giving orders to his master: No satisfaction in it. But he had no intention of hurting the Commander. He just wanted answers. And he'd run out of options.

“When I invited you to return home, X-7, this isn't quite what I meant,” the Commander said lightly.

“I want to know who I am,” X-7 said. He stayed behind his master, partly because it was the strategically stronger position, but mostly because it was easier not having to see his face.

“You are X-7, agent to the Emperor,” the Commander said. “The Empire's most skillful assassin...until recently, that is.”

As always, the reminder of his failure pained him. “Who I
was,
” X-7 said gruffly. “Before
this.
”

The Commander shook his head. “You're smarter than that. Whoever that person was, he's dead. Your brain is no longer equipped for human emotions, human memories. Trying to dredge them up again would probably drive you to madness.” He paused. “Perhaps it's already begun? If that's what's going on here, X-7, if you're starting to
feel
things, I can help you—”

“No!” Only the truth would help him. Finding out who he was, the whole story, was the only way to decipher the flashes—and make them go away. If he could find that person he'd once been, he could purge all traces of him, once and for all. He could be pure. The Commander couldn't do that for him. X-7 needed to do it for himself.

Wanted
to do it.

That was the only reason for this, he told himself. It wasn't some foolish effort to regain his past. It was a
mission,
the only way he could heal himself and continue to serve his commander. That was all that mattered,
feelings
or not.

“You're determined?” the Commander asked. “Nothing I say can convince you this is a disastrous idea?”

“Nothing,” X-7 confirmed.

The Commander sighed. “I can't tell you who you were, because even I don't know,” he said. “But I can tell you how to find out.”

X-7 felt his lips curling upward; he felt something warm radiate across his chest.

It was repulsive, humiliating, but inescapable: He felt happy.

Footsteps pounded down the hallway, approaching the office. Reinforcements were on their way. Quickly, the Commander gave him a series of passwords that would let him dig deep into the bowels of the Imperial computer system. X-7 took the information, along with several files pertaining to Project Omega's methods for selecting and training its candidates. Then, without a word to the Commander, he ran full speed at the huge window overlooking the city. A shower of transparisteel exploded as he dropped into the sky.

Soresh peered out the window. No bloody figure lay sprawled on the ground sixty-two stories below. Not that he could see clearly through the layers of clogged skylanes. But Soresh was almost certain that X-7 wasn't down there. He'd have had liquid cable, or grappling hooks, or an airspeeder on autopilot waiting beneath the window,
some
kind of backup plan. He was too smart not to. Soresh should know: X-7 was his creation.

The stormtroopers blasted through the door, their weapons drawn. “Sir! Sir! Is everything all right in here?”

Soresh rolled his eyes. The incompetence was breathtaking. He made a mental note to take down all their ID numbers. They'd be dodging energy spiders in the Spice Mines of Kessel by the end of the week. “It is
now,
” he snapped. “What took you so long?”

“It was a sneak attack, sir,” the lead stormtrooper said. “They took down your entire security detail.”

“They?” Soresh arched an eyebrow. “I think you mean
‘he.'
One man took down seven of your most finely trained men?” At least he wouldn't have to go to the trouble of punishing them for their failures. That was one bright note to the dark day. And perhaps their replacements would be
competent.
Although he doubted it. The Empire was having a harder and harder time finding good people—just one of the reasons that Soresh had such high hopes for Project Omega. When men's minds were properly molded, there was no place for incompetence, no room for error. When you built a man from the ground up, he became incapable of disobedience or failure.

Or at least, that was the way it was supposed to work.

“Dismissed,” he told the stormtroopers, waving them out of the office. Pathetic.

Of course things would have been easier if the stormtroopers had done their job and taken X-7 into custody. But Soresh hadn't been afraid. X-7 would not have hurt him. It was the prime directive of his programming: His commander's life was supreme. Soresh could only imagine how much pain defying his orders must be causing X-7. Attempting to
injure
his master? The pain would have been unbearable.

And perhaps it was better this way. The information Soresh had provided would send X-7 on a fruitless chase across the galaxy. He would find no answers to his questions; no answers could be found. All participants in Project Omega had their former identities completely wiped from the system, and had their faces surgically altered to ensure no awkward encounters with people from their past. X-7 was chasing a ghost. And when he realized that, he would eventually return to the fold, to his commander, to Soresh. He would be repaired. And if that didn't work, he would be terminated.

It was hardly the most pressing of problems.

Soresh's comlink buzzed. He drew in a sharp breath. It was an incoming transmission from Lord Vader.

Now
he was afraid. Soresh told himself that Darth Vader couldn't have heard about X-7's misbehavior. But if he had—if word had leaked out—it could put the future of Project Omega in jeopardy. And if Vader was taking a personal interest for some reason...well, everyone knew what happened to those who found themselves on Vader's bad side. And it seemed all he had were bad sides.