millions of tendrils squirming into the gray matter of the clone’s brain, wiping out who he had been and replacing him with Jaden.
He waited, hoping, while the alarms wailed, the lights flickered, and somewhere deep in the station the dark side gave birth to something he did not understand.
Needing something familiar, desperate for it, he tried his comlink again.
“Khedryn, do you copy? Khedryn?”
Static and no hope. He stared down at the Jaden-clone, hoping he was no longer the Jaden-clone.
If things worked, Marr did not know what he would say to Jaden. Would Jaden remember the clone? Had Jaden even seen the clone? Marr did not know.
More important, Marr did not know if he had done the right thing. After all, the clone had apparently wanted to do exactly what Marr had, had been willing to kill to do it. Hadn’t Marr done the clone’s work for him? Why had they wanted to … replace Jaden?
He pushed the thought from his mind and another one took its place.
What if the device had not worked? What if the mind contained in the body remained that of the clone?
Then Marr would fight him and die. He looked at his wounded hand, the blood seeping into the cloth. He barely felt the pain. The pain in his heart overwhelmed it.
He stood, hurried to Jaden’s body, and picked it up. It was limp, already cooling. Trying to keep grief over Jaden’s death at bay with hope for a rebirth, he carried it a ways down the corridor, where he stripped it of its blaster, robes, and lightsaber.
He returned to Jaden’s new body—he allowed himself to think that way—and felt for a pulse. It was there still, strong. He stripped off the clone’s robe, replaced it with Jaden’s, put Jaden’s lightsaber on the belt. He strapped on the holster with its blaster, took the clone’s blade—he took solace in the fact that its hilt was different from Jaden’s—and cast it aside along with the Rakatan device.
Then he watched, and waited. Long moments passed. Distant explosions shook the station.
Growing nervous, he withdrew a bit from Jaden and sank into the shadows on the far side of the room. There he watched, as seconds stretched into eternities.
After a time, Jaden stirred. His eyes opened and he put a hand to his head, touched the wound that Marr had put there with the Rakatan spike.
Marr considered calling out, thought better of it, and decided to simply watch. As he did, an arm took him from behind, closed around his throat, and choked off his windpipe.
“Make no sound,” someone said in a whisper. “Or you die.”
Marr felt the hilt of a lightsaber pressed against his back. His attacker would need only to activate it and the blade would impale him.
“What did you do to him?” the voice whispered, and the arm let up enough on Marr’s throat to allow him speech.
“I don’t know,” Marr said. It was the truth. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” the voice breathed, his fetid breath hot on Marr’s cheek. “To leave here.”
Before them, a mere thirty meters, Jaden stood on wobbly legs. His expression looked dazed.
“Who are you?” Marr asked. It had to be one of the escaped clones.
“My name is Soldier.” He reached around Marr’s waist and took his lightsaber.
Jaden started moving down the corridor, away from Soldier and Marr. After he had moved some distance off, Soldier, still holding Marr about the throat, softly called out, “Grace.”
A redheaded girl, maybe nine years old, stepped from the shadows. Her sickness deformed her face, the flesh bulging in one cheek, swollen around one eye.
“It’s going to be all right,” Soldier said to the girl. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Just let me go,” Marr said. “All I want to do is help Jaden. I won’t even tell him I saw you.”
“You keep secrets from your Master?” Soldier asked.
Marr nodded, his eyes going to where he had hidden Jaden’s “old” body. “If necessary,” he said softly.
“Do you know how to get back to the lifts?” Soldier asked. He squeezed Marr’s throat. “Don’t lie.”
“Yes,” Marr said. He nodded at Jaden. “He is going in the right direction.”
“Then we follow him,” Soldier said, and they did, as Jaden stumbled through the hallways of the Rakatan station. Marr watched him from the darkness, wondering if he’d done the right thing.
Eventually Jaden came to a large doorway. Marr felt the presence behind it, the wash of dark-side energy pouring through the vertical slit of the doorway. Jaden must have felt