to the hull. He caught a peculiar ripple in the Force, an odd twinge, but it passed instantly. He looked around, saw nothing, and assumed it had something to do with the clones. He switched channels on his comlink and raised R-6.
“Ar-Six, I just placed a signal beacon on a ship that may try to leave the system.” He gave R-6 the signal frequency. “If that ship lifts off and you don’t hear from me, you inform the Order that I believe the escaped clones are aboard.”
R-6 beeped an affirmative, then added a bit more in droidspeak.
“Don’t worry,” Jaden said. “I’ll be careful.”
He augmented his speed with the Force and reached the door to the west stairwell just after Marr reached the east. The Cerean held his lightsaber in one hand, his blaster in the other. He opened the door and entered without looking back.
Jaden threw open the west door and entered the stairwell. The sound of alarms carried from far below. The flights of stairs formed a perimeter around a deep, square stairwell. He leaned over the railing and looked down. The angle did not allow him to see the stairs very clearly, but he heard doors opening and closing on several floors below him. He also heard the sounds of hurried footsteps, frightened whispers.
He activated his comlink and whispered to Marr, “I think there are civilians on the stairs. Be mindful.”
“I will,” Marr whispered in answer.
Nyss considered his options. He needed to get to Korr, but he needed Korr alone. He could not risk exposing the One Sith’s involvement unless he was certain of success. Indecision ate away the moments. It would do him little good to involve himself in a combat between Korr and the Prime.
“They are inside the building,” he whispered to Syll.
“If he dies, then it’s all for nothing.”
Nyss’s reply was sharp. “I know that. But if we’re discovered, it’s worse.”
To that, Syll did not reply.
Jaden started down the stairs—past the ninth floor, the eighth. On each floor, he opened the stairwell door and poked his head out into the hallway of the medical center proper, looking for anything unusual. The halls were empty but for the occasional furtive passage of a doctor or nurse. An alarm sounded. A voice over the speakers instructed all personnel and patients to remain in their rooms. When anyone saw Jaden, fear filled their eyes. He smiled and did his best to look harmless before returning to the stairwell. He continued in that fashion—the seventh floor, the sixth, listening for anything unusual, waiting, waiting.…
A sudden scream startled him; it was followed by shouts from three floors below, then the sound of an activating lightsaber, another, then another. Blaster shots, then more screams.
“My side, third floor, in the stairwell,” he said to Marr over his comlink, as he activated his lightsaber and leapt over the railing and down the shaft. He used the Force to slow his descent and grabbed the fourth-floor railing as he fell. The moment his free hand closed on it, he augmented his strength and pulled himself up, arresting his fall and flipping onto the stairway between the fourth and fifth floors.
He landed face-to-face with a startled nurse who had been trying to flee up the stairs to the fifth-floor landing. Two security guards lay dead on the fourth-floor landing behind her, the black holes in their chests still leaking smoke.
The woman opened her mouth to scream, but Jaden shoved her behind him before she could get a peep out.
“Get out of here,” he said, hearing footsteps coming up the stairs at a jog and feeling the dark side press against his consciousness.
One of the clones turned the corner of the stairs below him. He looked vaguely familiar to Jaden, but his long beard and shaggy hair made his features hard to discern. He wore a threadbare Imperial uniform a size too small, the whole covered in a gray cloak made from sewn blankets. The red blade of his lightsaber sizzled and sparked, its edges irregular.
The clone’s wild, bloodshot eyes widened when he saw Jaden. Jaden took advantage of the clone’s surprise. He drew on the Force, extended a hand, and struck the clone with a blast of concussive energy so strong it blew the clone back down the stairs and drove him into the floor. The clone lay there, dazed.
“Runner!” said a female voice.
Jaden took the stairs three at a time, bounded past the fallen clone, and saw two more—a woman, lithe and bald, and