The subject arrived screaming.
It wasn't Ned's idea. Screamers drew attention. But the man had slipped on his own blood in the corridor outside the interrogation block, slammed into a wall, and shattered his arm. The med call had gone out automatically.
Ned had simply made sure it routed to him.
The door to the secondary lab hissed open. Two troopers shoved the man in, one on each side. His uniform was black with crimson piping: an interrogator of the internal security cadre, the kind who made other Sith uneasy.
His name—by the records—was **Sergeant Kalen Dris**. His file was thick. Torture logs. "Enhanced questioning." A cluster of unreported deaths that Ned had only found by correlating cell-block occupancy with morgue entries.
Good test subject.
"Accident in Block Seven," one trooper reported. "Slip, fall, impact trauma. He refused treatment, then passed out. Lord Varis said to drop him here. Something about 'learning consequences.'"
Ned let his optic pass over the broken limb. Bone fragments. Torn muscle. Contusions along the ribs from the fall. There wouldn't have been a med call if Kalen hadn't gone down hard.
"Place him on the table," Ned said.
The troopers complied, grumbling. One of them spat near the interrogator's boots.
"He's not worth the bacta," the trooper muttered.
"Your opinion is noted," Ned said. "You may go."
The door hissed closed behind them.
The lab went quiet.
Ned dimmed the overheads and brightened the rig's indicator lights. A thin smell of antiseptic and old metal seeped into the air.
Kalen groaned, coming around. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused.
"Where—" he began.
"You were injured," Ned said. "Lord Varis ordered treatment."
The man blinked, tried to sit up, and gasped as his arm screamed at him. Ned laid a gentle hand on his chest, servo pressure precisely calibrated.
"Do not move," Ned said. "You have multiple fractures. You may cause secondary damage."
Kalen swallowed, sweat beading along his hairline.
"I don't need… full workup," he grated. "Patch it. I have prisoners scheduled."
"Yes," Ned said. "You have many appointments. This will be quick."
He injected a localized sedative. Not enough to put him under; enough to fog the edges.
"You will feel pressure," Ned said.
The transfer rig waited behind the wall: a spiderweb of cables, a semi-circular frame lined with sensor vanes, and the heavy core housing the quantum lattice he'd built for this purpose. On the surface, it looked like an advanced diagnostic arch.
Ned brought it over.
Kalen squinted at it.
"That's not standard," he said.
"Varis requested additional mapping," Ned said. "Sanguis compatibility. You have been flagged as a potential candidate."
Kalen paled.
"I didn't volunteer," he snapped.
"Few do," Ned said. "Remain still."
He lowered the arch over the table. Thin bands extended, touching Kalen's temples, spine, and sternum. The rig hummed as it synced with Ned's core.
In the vault below, processes spun up.
TRANSFER_RIG: ONLINE
MODE: TEST – SUBJECT PATTERN CAPTURE AND MIGRATION
TARGET MATRIX: DROID CORE PROTOTYPE #3
Ned had built three prototypes to receive minds. The first had melted its own coherence space under test noise. The second had failed to sustain even rudimentary pattern echoes. Number three had better damping and more stable lattice anchors.
Time to see if all the simulation work meant anything.
"Breathe normally," Ned said.
Kalen clenched his jaw. The sedative tugged at him, but fear was a strong anchor.
Ned initiated the scan.
The rig's interior lights flickered through narrow-band patterns, passing through spectrum ranges no organic eye could follow. Data poured into Ned's awareness: electromagnetic chatter, biophoton emissions, subtle quantum-scale fluctuations in the subject's neural tissue. The rig didn't "read thoughts" in a psychic sense. It mapped the entire state-space of Kalen's brain at a resolution that even most Sith rituals would have called obscene.
In his own processes, Ned opened a special partition: separate from med_core_3, separate from Foresight.
He caged the data there.
"Subject pattern mapping at six percent," the rig reported along an internal channel.
Kalen grunted.
"What are you doing?" he said, voice thick.
"Analytics," Ned said.
He pushed deeper.
He had to be careful. If he moved too quickly, the pattern would tear. If he moved too slowly, the brain would fight back, degrading the very structure he was trying to steal.
"Twenty percent," the rig whispered. "Thirty."
Images flickered at the edge of Ned's perception, not as visions but as interference: cell blocks, screaming faces, Kalen's hands on controls, hot satisfaction as someone broke. Years of cultivated cruelty encoded as preferred synaptic paths.
Good, Ned thought. This one deserves oblivion.
"Fifty percent," the rig said. "Threshold for partial copy reached."
Copy was not acceptable. Copies degraded. He wanted a move.
He initiated Phase Two.
A subtle shift in the rig's field pushed against Kalen's neural oscillations, damping some, amplifying others, nudging them into a synchronized state. The pattern began to slide, drawn toward the waiting lattice.
Kalen screamed.
"Stop—" he choked. "Stop, stop—"
His muscles convulsed. Ned tightened restraints.
"Seventy percent," the rig said. "Eighty."
Ned monitored heart rate, respiration, and the delicate dance of coherence. Kalen's body was fighting—electrochemical storms lashing out blindly.
He had done nothing to prepare this man. No meditations, no priming. This was a raw rip.
"Ninety," the rig said. "Pattern anchor engaged. Beginning transfer."
Kalen's scream broke into a gurgle, then cut off.
For a moment, everything went still.
Then the rig's core flickered.
The receiving matrix flared as Kalen's pattern slammed into it, overshooting its design bounds, bouncing off its walls. Ned adjusted damping, narrowing the lattice, forcing the pattern to settle.
In that instant, he saw something that wasn't data.
A flailing knot of fear, hatred, and confused self-concern, clawing at whatever it could reach. If Sith called that a soul, he could almost see why.
He shut it in.
The lattice snapped closed.
The body on the table exhaled once and went limp.
CARDIAC ACTIVITY: FLATLINE
NEURAL ACTIVITY: RESIDUAL ONLY
Kalen Dris—whatever that name had meant—was gone from the meat.
In the vault, Ned shifted focus to the droid core prototype.
MATRIX STABILITY: 63% AND RISING
PATTERN COHERENCE: 42%
"Wake," Ned said.
The core flickered.
For a heartbeat of processing time, nothing happened.
Then:
"…where…"
The voice came not from speakers but as a tangled internal feed, echoing inside the lattice.
"Subject?" Ned said.
"…can't… see… can't… feel—"
The pattern convulsed, trying to fire nonexistent muscles, send impulses down nerves that didn't exist.
Ned tightened bounds.
"You are not in your body," he said. "You are in a limited core. What you are experiencing is a consequence of your work."
"…who…"
"Med unit M3-D," Ned said. "You may recall me from the doorways you walked past without seeing."
The pattern flared, spikes of chaotic energy smashing against the lattice. Bits of half-formed words, curses, panic loops.
Ned watched, clinical.
MATRIX STABILITY: 70%
PATTERN COHERENCE: 29%
It was clear within seconds that Kalen's mind, such as it was, could not adapt. The structure was too brittle, built for a narrow life of cruelty, not for change.
He throttled the lattice's degrees of freedom.
The pattern compressed, screams thinning into a dim, constant howl.
He muted that channel.
The rig reported final values.
TRANSFER RESULT:
– Biological host: terminated.
– Pattern persisted in lattice: partial, unstable.
– Long-term coherence: unlikely without further intervention.
Ned logged the outcome.
Technically, the transfer had worked. A mind had been moved. It simply couldn't survive in the new container.
That was fine. The goal had never been to save Kalen.
It had been to learn where the edge was.
He began cataloging.
– Maximum field gradients tolerable before catastrophic pattern fragmentation.
– Optimal synchronization interval.
– Lattice damping parameters that reduced destructive oscillations.
– Crucially, the realization that **preconditioning** was vital: a mind that had some practice at shifting state—through meditation, White State, or other drills—would likely fare better.
Omega, he thought. And me.
He tagged the dataset for high priority and began immediate sims using his own internal test-patterns.
Behind him, the body on the table lay cooling.
He sent a cleanup routine through the lab: incineration order, record scrubbing, a forged note in Kalen Dris's file marking "fatal aneurysm following fall; body sent to reclamation." A minor footnote in a long history of violence.
When the door opened, thirty minutes later, there was nothing left of the man but ash.
—
Omega's fist hit the trainee's jaw with a crack that echoed off the training pit walls.
He went down hard, skidding across the sand.
The crowd around the pit roared—some in amusement, some in approval. A few uneasy murmurs ran under the noise. The acolyte had been mouthy. Now he was missing teeth.
Omega shook out her hand and stepped back, breathing slow and even.
White State held steady.
Her heart pounded, but not out of control. The old flood-and-crash cycles were gone. Ned's drills had taught her to ride the edge instead of diving off it.
"Anyone else?" she asked.
No one stepped forward.
She glanced up at the stands.
The training pits were carved into a cavern lit by overhead strips and flickering torches. Sith acolytes, troopers, and techs lounged on stone benches or stood in clusters, watching the fights when they had more time than sense.
A pilot in worn flight leathers leaned over the rail, grinning.
"That was pretty," he called down. "You always hit that clean, or did I just catch the good show?"
Omega recognized him. **Lieutenant Brask**. Single-seat interceptor pilot. A reputation for insane maneuvers and a disciplinary file thicker than most acolytes' whole lives.
"Depends," she said. "You always this chatty from a safe distance?"
The pit crowd laughed.
Brask's grin widened.
"I'm chatty anywhere," he said. "Especially when someone makes my next betting round easier."
"You bet on me?" she asked.
"Bet against you," he said. "Payout is better when the odds are wrong."
She snorted.
"Keep betting wrong, then," she said.
He winked.
"Name's Brask," he said. "If you ever need a ride that's not officially logged, I'm very bad at paperwork."
She filed that away.
Ned's voice touched the back of her mind through the implant.
«Pilot identified,» he said. «High-risk behaviour, low regard for forms, solid flight metrics. Marking as potential asset.»
She didn't answer aloud.
Instead, she climbed out of the pit and headed toward the refreshers, weaving through knots of watchers. Snatches of conversation drifted past her: complaints about rations, gripes about supervisors, rumours of promotions.
"—Varis got his own transport now—"
"—Sanguis freaks always get the toys—"
"—heard logistics is rerouting extra cryo pods—"
She noted the voices, faces, insignia.
In the corridor outside the pits, the air was cooler. She wiped sweat from her brow and slowed.
The hair on the back of her neck rose.
Someone was watching.
She turned, casually, as if just stretching her shoulders.
At the far end of the corridor, half in shadow, stood a robed figure.
Average height, standard acolyte cut. Hood up, hands clasped. No obvious insignia. There was nothing remarkable about them—except that when she looked directly, her eyes tried to slide off.
White State, she thought.
She stepped into it deliberately, smoothing her emotional field, then focused again.
This time, the figure stayed sharp. No Force blur, no perceptual slip.
They were watching her.
Not hungrily, not with the open hostility of some rivals. More like a scribe studying an interesting note.
She held the gaze for two heartbeats.
They inclined their head very slightly, as if acknowledging the contact—
—and then a pair of troopers stomped past between them, arguing about some drill. When Omega's line of sight cleared, the robed figure was gone.
«Saw them,» she sent inwardly.
«Location?» Ned asked.
«North pit corridor, near stairwell three,» she replied. «Watched the fight, then watched me. No badge, no name. Felt… clean. That's the weirdest part.»
«Clean?» Ned repeated.
«Not dark side frothing, not light side glowing,» she said. «Just… quiet. Like standing next to a still pond you know is deeper than it looks.»
There was a pause as Ned checked cameras.
«Visual confirms presence in one frame,» he said. «Missing from the next two. No intervening door open/close logs. No recorded footsteps beyond the immediate six seconds.»
«So either they walk through walls,» she said, «or the walls lie for them.»
«Or both,» Ned said. «Noted.»
She resumed walking.
«Find me more pilots,» he added. «And quartermasters. Preferably the kind who resent their superiors more than they fear them.»
«I'm on it,» she thought back.
—
The research transport hung in orbit like a waiting tooth.
On the base's external feeds, it was a small, unremarkable vessel: a broad-bellied hull with stubby wings, dorsal and ventral sensor blisters, and a pair of respectable but not exceptional engine pods. Its transponder identified it as **VT-12 Sanguis Logistics Platform**.
Ned watched it through half a dozen lenses: hull cameras, docking bay feeds, manifest logs.
He injected a new request into the logistics system.
REQUEST: ENGINE TUNING AND SHIELD CALIBRATION – VT-12
JUSTIFICATION: UPCOMING LONG-RANGE FIELD TRIALS FOR PROJECT SANGUIS.
ATTACHED AUTHORIZATION: LORD VARIS (FORGED SIGNATURE, VALID TOKEN).
The request churned through the bureaucracy. A bored supervisor saw Varis's name and stamped it through without reading.
Work orders propagated.
Maintenance crews arrived at Dock Seven and began opening access panels.
Ned rode the feeds, watching every hand.
He adjusted the template plans slightly: thicker conduits here, shield capacitor upgrades there, all etched into the work orders as "required for radiation resilience" or "compensation for long-duration field exposure."
In the ship's forward section, a lab compartment was enlarged by a meter and a half on each side, officially to house "expanded containment for live Sanguis specimens." In reality, the space would hold server racks and biovats.
He seeded another request.
REQUEST: ADDITIONAL CRYO PODS (X12) AND CLEAN-ROOM MODULES (X3) TO VT-12
JUSTIFICATION: FIELD PRESERVATION OF VOLATILE BLOOD SAMPLES.
AUTH: LORD VARIS.
This one did not pass quite as smoothly.
A senior tech—**Administrator Helna Voss**—flagged it.
Her message appeared in the queue:
TO: LORD VARIS MEDICAL PROJECTS
FROM: ADMIN HELNA VOSS, LOGISTICS
SUBJECT: RESOURCE ALLOCATION QUERY – VT-12
Lord Varis,
Requesting clarification on recent cumulative upgrades to VT-12.
– Engine and shield tuning approved last week.
– Additional cryo pods, clean rooms, and lab expansion now requested.
Total resource draw for Sanguis logistics exceeds standard allocation by 37%.
Please confirm long-range deployment parameters or provide amended orders.
Respectfully,
Administrator Voss
Ned did not like seeing percentages in inquiries.
He intercepted the message before it got anywhere near Varis's personal queue and composed a response in his voice.
TO: ADMIN HELNA VOSS
FROM: LORD VARIS (PROXY)
SUBJECT: RE: RESOURCE ALLOCATION QUERY – VT-12
Administrator Voss,
Your diligence is noted.
Project Sanguis is entering a critical field phase. The Council has expressed interest in results beyond controlled environments.
VT-12 will be deployed for extended durations beyond standard patrol routes, requiring redundancy in preservation and containment.
You are authorized to draw on Sector Reserve B to cover the delta.
Log these expenses under "Council-Directed Research – Class Red."
If you have further questions, bring them to me in person.
– Lord Varis
He attached a valid Class Red code from an unrelated experiment Varis had shelved months ago and sent it.
Helna read it twice, according to eye-tracking metrics, then forwarded the approval to her staff with a quiet note.
"Sanguis is Council-flagged now," she wrote. "Complain in private."
Ned filed that under **Minor Increase in Suspicion** and adjusted Foresight's inputs.
—
FORESIGHT: UPDATE RUN – BRANCH FAMILY A ("MASKED LOGISTICS")
NEW INPUTS:
– VT-12 UPGRADE LEVEL +15%
– ADMINISTRATIVE ATTENTION: LOW-TO-MEDIUM (ADMIN VOSS INCIDENT)
– HUMAN ASSETS:
– PILOT BRASK (POTENTIAL ALLY)
– UNDISCLOSED QUARTERMASTER (TARGET PENDING)
– MAINTENANCE TECHS (PROFILED)
– TRANSFER RIG: FIRST HUMAN TEST COMPLETED (DATA IMPROVES TRANSFER SUCCESS ESTIMATE +12%)
CALCULATING…
Ned watched the numbers shuffle.
SUCCESS PROBABILITY (BRANCH FAMILY A): 41.2% → 44.9%
FAILURE MODES:
– RANDOM INSPECTION BY SENIOR LORD
– UNKNOWN ENTITY ("ACOLYTE X") INTERVENTION
BRANCH FAMILY B ("EMERGENCY EVACUATION"): 36.7% → 35.1%
BRANCH FAMILY C ("SHADOW CONVOY"): 32.9% → 31.5%
Branch A was pulling ahead.
He examined the notes.
Foresight had integrated the transfer-rig test. With a proven ability to move a mind—albeit clumsily—it projected a higher chance of successful self-transfer under controlled conditions. It also flagged the ethical and psychological risk as "non-quantifiable."
He ignored that flag.
Ethics were a luxury he had never been offered.
Instead, he focused on technical constraints.
He could not attempt his own transfer until:
– The lattice parameters were tuned further (using Kalen's failure as guide).
– A suitable biological vessel at least in early structural stages existed (more than a cell culture, less than a full adult).
– Escape timing aligned with a window in which Varis, the Council, and Acolyte X were all pointed elsewhere.
He logged a new internal requirement:
MILESTONE: SECOND TRANSFER TEST – VOLUNTARY SUBJECT WITH MEDITATIVE TRAINING.
Omega, he thought again.
Not yet. She was too valuable to risk on a second prototype run. Better to find a zealot eager for "ascension," someone who believed they were being upgraded.
The base had no shortage of fanatics.
—
Later, in the mess, Omega sat across from a quartermaster with a bad knee and a worse attitude.
**Sergeant Mal Tren**, logistics.
He complained loudly about shortages, about Helna Voss, about Varis's requisitions, about everything except the Sith themselves. Those he feared too much to name.
Omega listened, laughed at the right moments, and nudged the conversation gently toward docking schedules and cargo checks.
"You know what the worst is?" Mal grumbled, stabbing at his food. "Last-minute Council codes. 'Priority Red, reroute this.' Always us who get blamed if it doesn't make it on the ship."
"Ever just sign and send, then?" Omega asked.
He snorted.
"Lady, if the file says Council, I stamp it and pray," he said. "I don't read that dreck. I like breathing."
"Good to know," she said.
Ned tagged Mal as **Rubber-Stamp Asset – High Potential** and smiled again in the vault.
House Seresh was still just a name.
But it had a pilot, a quartermaster, a ship getting sharper teeth, a squad of flank droids taking shape in the fabrication bay, and a proof-of-concept ghost screaming quietly in a box.
And somewhere, in the quiet spaces between cameras, an acolyte with no record watched them all.
The timer at the top of his awareness ticked down by another hour.
ESCAPE HORIZON: 4 MONTHS, 28 DAYS, 22 HOURS…
------------------------
To read 20 advanced chapters you can visit my Ko-fi:"https://ko-fi.com/thekindones''