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"Nothing to say?" the Inquisitor asked.
In fairness, that would be difficult between screams. He waved a hand at the shock rods, and they retracted, halting the crackling flow of current. Silence fell, broken only by the Jedi's ragged breathing. He locked his gaze on the floor, as though to anchor himself, and gradually it slowed to something calmer. Some faint illusion of control, stubborn and irrational.
That illusion grew thinner each day. Three weeks was a long time, as Tarkin had pointedly reminded him earlier, but the Inquisitor had put it to good use. Stretch anyone—Jedi or otherwise—beyond their limit for long enough, physically and mentally, and individual cracks and strains would inevitably surface. What he had lacked until recently had been a wide enough opening to sink his nails into.
He stepped in front of the Jedi, disrupting his line of sight, and the Jedi's eyes fixed on his, bleary with pain. "If you're so reluctant to discuss the present, perhaps we can revisit our earlier conversation. Order 66."
The Jedi tensed in his restraints, shoulders hunched as though to ward off a physical blow, and the Inquisitor circled around him, prolonging that dread for several more seconds before finally halting on the Jedi's right. The Inquisitor leaned in close, crowding into his space.
"Did you know that the clone commanders of Jedi battalions recorded the execution of Order 66?"
The Jedi bit the inside of his lower lip, pulling his mouth into a thinly curved frown. Pain to mask pain—and utterly transparent. All those hours spent in the Jedi’s company, twisting and prodding, had given the Inquisitor ample opportunity to become fluent in the nuances of his body language.
"In fact," he continued, "much of that footage survives to this day."
A flinch.
"I received the holofootage for Kaller yesterday," the Inquisitor said conversationally, withdrawing the portable holoprojector from his belt pouch. “I’m sure you remember those final moments quite well.”
The Jedi turned his head away, his breaths coming deep and slow, but there was nothing calm about the curl of his fists at his side and the roiling emotion the Inquisitor could sense just below the surface of those stubborn shields.
"What interested me, however, was this."
He set the holoprojector down in the center of the room and switched it on. Its pale light filled the room with a stolen moment of quiet celebration, mere seconds before the bloodshed.
The image hung suspended, fixed and frozen: three figures around a roaring fire. A woman with light brown skin, dark hair pulled into braids, dressed in the unmistakable robes of a Jedi. Further back, laughing at something one of them had just said, a clone trooper in white and red. Between them, a small adolescent in padawan robes, leaning back, eyes soft with wonder as he studied the glinting cube in his hands.
A Jedi holocron.
Slowly, reluctantly—as though compelled—the Jedi turned his face to the hologram. There was a glassy distance to his stare that narrowed when it focused on the clone trooper. A swell of fury rippled through the Force, strong enough to leak though his shields. But his gaze turned to the woman, his master, and the anger faltered, replaced by a tangled mess of grief and longing—and shame.
The Inquisitor walked through the holocron, past the Jedi's former master, and pointed to the boy—and the holocron he held in his hands. "Your master gave you something very precious before she died. Precious and dangerous."
Something flickered in the Jedi's eyes, enough to tell him that he knew precisely what his master had entrusted to him. The Inquisitor advanced, stopping barely more than a foot in front of him. "Where is the holocron, Caleb?"
"My name is Kanan Jarrus," the Jedi said, but his defiance had an edge of desperation to it, as though he were trying to remind himself. "And I have no idea what you're talking about."
The Inquisitor took a moment to calculate his next angle of attack. He flexed his hand briefly, as though to activate the shock rods again, but the Jedi, whose stare had drifted back to his master, didn't seem to notice.
"Ah, yes. Kanan Jarrus—the brave, heroic rebel," he said, words laced with contempt. "You can pretend that Caleb Dume was someone else, but we both know who abandoned your master to die."
He flicked a hand at the holoprojector, and the still recording sprang to life. Light and sound filled the room: the crackle of the fire, the muted laughter of nearby troopers. The Jedi stared at the moving shapes, eyes wide as his gaze darted between the clone and his master. His mouth tightened with dread at the click of a blaster's safety being disengaged.
"Execute Order 66!"
"No," the Jedi whispered hoarsely.
Events unfolded as they had the first five times the Inquisitor had studied the footage. This time, his attention was on the Jedi, whose his breathing turned rapid and shallow, on the verge of hyperventilating. Lightsabers hummed and sawed and blasters fired, and the Jedi flinched with each burst of fire. Shouts sounded in every direction from the clones, as officers barked orders.
Through that chaos, Billaba's voice rang out.
"Styles, no!"
The Jedi strained mindlessly at his bonds, more than a decade too late. Billaba reached for the Force and stretched out an arm toward the clone troopers who'd peeled off after her padawan—only to stiffen and jerk at the volley of blaster fire that pounded into her exposed back.
The Inquisitor paused the recording at that instant, just before her grip slackened and her lightsaber blade retracted. In the sudden quiet, the Jedi's frantic breathing was loud and stark—a more welcome sound than any of his earlier screams. The Inquisitor made a show of studying Billaba, circling around her, before turning back to the Jedi.
"You were worse than useless," he mused. "You were the distraction that killed her."
The Jedi barely seemed to hear him, staring at the shimmering form of his master as though transfixed, her pain mirrored on his face. It bled into the Force, tiny shudders of grief and loss.
"You were as frightened of your power then as you are now, and your master knew that. That is why she told you to run. That's what makes you weak."
When he'd first watched the holofootage, the Inquisitor had been surprised by just how fluidly the padawan had moved in comparison to the Jedi now. But even in the heat of battle, there had been an element of restraint. He'd witnessed that same hesitation, that same meek, slavish devotion to control in the Jedi Knights he'd hunted down over the years. All of them, unwilling to use the Force to its full potential.
The padawan might or might not have survived, had he remained to fight. Likely not. But the Jedi in front of him now was the very image of wasted talent. He knew he should be pleased, because it had limited the damage the Jedi could do to the Empire, but instead the Inquisitor found that it irritated him.
He had thrown himself into his training, his service to the Empire, for more than a decade, while this Jedi—who had spent that same span running from his power—was very nearly his equal.
Ultimately, however, it wasn't his concern. When he was finished with the Jedi, Mustafar would take care of that.
Of more immediate concern was the holocron. Very few of his peers would have recognized it, but the Inquisitor had made a point of studying the Jedi extensively. Holocons were an unlikely marriage of technology and the Force. The volume and format of information a single holocron could store was virtually limitless, so it was both dangerous in what it represented—the preservation of Jedi knowledge and culture—and valuable for what information could be extracted from it.
He wondered, not for the first time, why Billaba had entrusted it to her apprentice. The Jedi had regarded holocrons as precious, with the vast majority kept under tight guard within the confines of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. It stretched credibility that a Jedi Master would carry one onto the front lines of the Clone Wars, much less gift it to a padawan not even a full year into his apprenticeship.
But the why could come later, if the Jedi even knew.
"Where is the holocron?" he asked once more.
The Jedi didn't seem to hear him. The Inquisitor studied him for a moment, noting that his gaze had turned distant, unfocused. He lifted a hand and slowly pressed against the surface of the Jedi's thoughts, finding only token resistance.
Intrigued, he dug deeper. Fragments of memory twisted in and out of view—the forest and plains of Kaller, filled with the shouts and sounds of battle; a young boy moving through combat forms with his master beneath a trio of moons; white-armored troopers searching the cold, rainy streets of some alien city.
The Jedi seemed to belatedly notice the intrusion, walls slamming into place, but the Inquisitor countered with the frozen image of his dying master that had left the Jedi reeling to begin with. He felt as much as heard his strangled gasp, and he pressed harder.
"Tell me," he said aloud, trying to aim that chaotic jumble of memory at something useful, "where is the holocron now? What are you hiding?"
The disorienting spin quieted, sharpening to a single moment: a young Caleb Dume, cross-legged on a bed in an unfamiliar ship, clutching the holocron in a white-knuckled grip. It could not have been long after his master's death; he still bore the braid that marked him as a Jedi padawan.
There was a clarity to everything that distinguished it from a mere memory; some intersection of vision, past, and present—and the Jedi, trapped within it.
“Caleb,” the Inquisitor said, softening his voice.
The boy looked up from the cube, blue-green eyes startled—and wary. Recognition flickered, then disappeared, and the boy shook his head. “Who are you?”
He approached slowly, arms clasped non-threateningly behind his back, but the boy scooted back on the bunk, right up against the wall. “Tell me about the holocron.”
“Why?” the boy asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “You’re not a Jedi.”
"No? I am a Force user, just like you. How else would I be speaking to you now?" He gestured vaguely at their surroundings, wondering just how deep within his past the Jedi had retreated, and whether he—as Caleb Dume—could even recognize that this was not real.
The boy said nothing for a while, chewing at his lip. Then he tossed the holocron to him. The Inquisitor caught it in surprise, marveling that even within the confines of a vision-memory, he could sense its power, the density of all that knowledge locked within its six walls.
"If you're a Jedi," the boy said, "you'll be able to open it."
The Inquisitor didn't have an easy counter for that, so he glanced down at the holocron again. He wouldn't ordinarily have bothered, but the holocron had a solidness to it within the vision, as if a fixed point, or anchored through the Force to reality. He focused on it, trying to will those walls to part, to coax some spark of power from it.
Nothing.
Disappointment flashed briefly on the boy's face, then he stretched his arm out. The holocron flew back into his hand, landing gently in the center of his palm.
"I knew it."
The Inquisitor smothered an irritated scowl, rearranging his expression into one of faint concern. "Perhaps it no longer works, with so many Jedi now gone."
His words had the intended effect. The boy's gaze dropped, shoulders hunching. "It doesn't matter, anyway. Obi-Wan—" He glanced at the cube, then away. "It doesn't matter."
"Kenobi?" he asked, interest piqued. Every Inquisitor knew of Kenobi, though he was presumed long dead by now. "What about him?"
A frown. The boy's brow furrowed. "Nothing. I'm not telling you anything."
It was difficult to tell whether that was the boy speaking, or the Jedi. The more dormant he could keep the Jedi, the greater his odds of learning something useful. The Inquisitor didn't try to move any closer; he just kept his voice gentle. "Have you been able to open the holocron? The information it holds could be important."
"Important how?" The boy pulled his legs up, hugging them to his chest. He rotated the holocron in his hands, and the Inquisitor could sense the conflicting tug of suspicion and hope as the boy studied him.
"Surely you realize that you—we—are not the only surviving Jedi." In the future, perhaps, but more than a hundred Jedi had escaped the initial Purge. "The others have likely regrouped at a predetermined location—a safehouse. The holocron could tell us where that is."
"If you don't know where it is, how would anyone else?" the boy asked.
His tone was skeptical, but he'd hesitated just long enough before speaking. Encouraged, the Inquisitor took a few steps forward. Wary eyes tracked his movement, but the boy didn't retreat. "Not everyone will know. I don't. You don't. But enough do. And if we can find them…"
His suggestion was met with silence, but he could sense the boy wavering. "Why should I trust you? How did you find me?"
"I knew your master, Billaba—"
The Inquisitor realized almost instantly that it was the wrong thing to say. Forcing the Jedi to relive Billaba's death had given him this opening, but her name was also a tenuous connection to the present, and invoking it now caused the entire room around him to ripple and the lighting to turn harsh and bright.
The boy gasped, eyes widening. "I know you."
He bounded away, leaping past him for the door, but when he tried the controls, they were suddenly dark and blackened, as though burned through. He turned back, hands trembling as they grasped for the lightsaber at his belt.
"Leave me alone!"
The Inquisitor's surroundings dissolved into chaos, and he found himself chasing the Jedi again down paths of memory. He gritted his teeth and strained against the Jedi's defenses, focusing once more on the image of the holocron as memories glided past.
The stream halted abruptly, and when he reoriented himself, the Inquisitor saw that he'd ended up in a different vision-memory. Another room, but with the thin, plaster walls of a building on a planet. A single cheap, flickering light dangled from overhead, illuminating a sparse room furnished with only a bed and a small, weathered cabinet.
The door creaked open, and the room filled with the sounds of distant conversation and music, broken by the occasional drunken shout. In walked Caleb Dume, perhaps two or three years older, and considerably taller. He wore civilian garb—plain, dark pants and a tan shirt, partially covered by a stained, deep-pocketed apron that he quickly unlaced and tossed into one corner. The short padawan cut had given way to the Jedi's short hair-tail, though slightly longer than in the present.
"Happy Empire Day," a human male slurred, staggering past the room.
"Hey, that's not the way to the—" the teen shook his head, shrugging. "Forget it. Not my shift anymore." He kicked the door shut, and the outside noise vanished a little too completely given how thin the walls were. A small reminder that this wasn't quite a memory.
The teen walked over to his discarded apron and fished a flask from one of its pockets. Then he flopped onto the bed and raised it to the ceiling. "Yeah, sure, happy Empire Day. At least the tips are decent for once."
He took a heavy swig of something presumably alcoholic, and the Inquisitor contented himself with watching, wondering if the Jedi had already adopted the Kanan Jarrus persona. He would've already abandoned his real name, but Jarrus had become something more permanent for him in the future.
Perhaps a minute passed, then the teen straightened on the bed, glancing at the cabinet again. His fingers tapped against the outside of the canteen, then he screwed the lid back on and tossed it in the direction of the apron.
He stood and then crouched beside the cabinet, bending to withdraw a small, canvas bag from the very back of the bottom drawer. Inside was the Jedi's lightsaber, split into the separate components he used to disguise its purpose, and the familiar shape of the holocron. He put the lightsaber back, and then hesitated, turning the holocron over and over in his hands before finally rising to his feet and returning to the bed.
He glanced uneasily at the door, then folded his legs and closed his eyes. The holocron rose until it hung suspended in the air, then it split apart into several small pieces, revealing a dual holoplatform and data core at its center.
The Inquisitor stared intently as a blue-tinged hologram flickered to life, resolving into the form of the galaxy's most infamous Jedi: Obi-Wan Kenobi.
"This is Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. I regret to report that both our Jedi Order and the Republic have fallen, with the dark shadow of the Empire rising to take their place. This message is a warning and a reminder for any surviving Jedi: trust in the Force. Do not—"
The hologram paused, mid-message, and the Inquisitor bit back an impatient hiss.
"Why do I bother?" the teen said, studying Kenobi with a flat expression. "Trust in the Force. Is that a euphemism for run away and hide? Because it looks like we've both done a pretty good job of that. Unless you're dead, too."
The Inquisitor could sense a great deal of latent resentment and anger in the teen in front of him. It was a pity he had managed to evade capture for so long, though not necessarily surprising. The Inquisition's forces had been small, those first few years, with their efforts largely focused on hunting down surviving Jedi Knights. Recruitment had been opportunistic, rather than proactive.
He waited a few moments longer, until the teen looked away from the hologram with a scowl.
"Are you certain?" he asked.
The teen jumped, hand going to his hip—but the lightsaber was still tucked away in the cabinet, disassembled. The holocron retracted into its resting cube form, and he grabbed it mid-air, eyes not leaving the Inquisitor.
"Who are you?" he demanded, fear ringing brightly in the Force. His gaze flicked to the closed door, then back. "Where did you come from?"
"I'm here to help," the Inquisitor said. He considered the teen for a moment, then went to the corner where he'd tossed the flask earlier. He picked it up and lobbed it in his direction.
The teen caught it in his free hand, frowning slightly. "With booze?" He jerked a nod in the direction of the door. "In case you missed it, I work at a tavern. It's not really a problem."
Nevertheless, the gesture had had the intended effect. The teen took a sip from the flask before setting it down beside him, fear giving way to curiosity. "You didn't answer either of my questions."
"Does it matter?" the Inquisitor asked. "I'm someone who understands your…predicament." To demonstrate, he tugged on the holocron, which the teen immediately released, eyes widening. It flew into his open palm and he brandished it, then threw it back onto the bed. "You were not the only Jedi to survive. Like you, I also seek answers."
The teen looked between him and the holocron, crossing his arms. "You don't look much like a Jedi."
"Nor do you," the Inquisitor pointed out.
His frown deepened. "That's because I'm not."
"Would you like to be?" he asked, genuinely curious. At some point, something had pushed him from transient laborer to dissident Jedi.
"Be hunted down by the Empire, you mean? No thanks."
He sensed that the teen wasn't being entirely honest. No doubt he feared the Empire, and feared discovery, but—there had been a jolt of hope, of longing, when the Inquisitor had revealed his own grasp of the Force.
"You would prefer to live like this?" He made a show of studying the barren room. "Alone?"
Alone. It was precisely the right word to use. He could see it echo and reverberate through the teen, who looked away, pain flashing over his face. He gave a tiny shrug. "I'm alive. I've—survived. I don't need your help."
"Precisely. You survived. It was the will of the Force that you escaped, that you have this holocron. Wouldn't you like to know why?" The Inquisitor took a calculated risk and moved closer, halting mere feet from the bed. He gestured at the holocron. "May I?"
The teen bit his lip, seemingly torn. Finally, he nodded, handing him the holocron.
The Inquisitor held it out in front of him, so that it was eye level with the Jedi. He burned to know what Kenobi had said, but he suspected he would find little in the way of actionable intelligence. Kenobi wasn't the threat—the holocron's contents were.
"You are too focused on Kenobi's message. Look closer. Concentrate."
The teen shot him a glance, then took a breath and closed his eyes. The holocron rose from the Inquisitor's hand, and twisted apart again as he watched. He waited, anticipation growing, as the holoprojector hummed to life. Kenobi flashed briefly, but the Jedi frowned and he vanished. Instead, something else lit up the room, a pattern of dots that was difficult to make out with the lights on.
The Inquisitor beckoned at the lighting controls and the room dimmed to near darkness. The teen's eyes snapped open, and he stared at the projection—a star map, the Inquisitor could see now, though of what, he wasn't certain, especially without any context.
The Jedi reached out a finger toward one of those points of light, and the projection zoomed in on it, until a planet filled their view. The Inquisitor's eyes narrowed in recognition—Lothal.
"Lothal," the teen said, a note of uncertainty in his voice. "How do I know that? Why does it feel so familiar?"
"Forget about Lothal," he said firmly, hoping to stave off anything that might jolt the Jedi back to awareness. "Concentrate. Why these planets? What is the holocron trying to show you?"
Forehead wrinkling with effort, the teen waited, as though listening—then he froze, eyes snapping to the Inquisitor's. The star map vanished, and the holoprojector went still, only a faint, pulsating blue at its center to illuminate the room.
"Get out of my head," he snapped, and this time, it was clearly the Jedi speaking.
Just as before, the world around him twisted and swirled, and the Inquisitor was left trying to maintain his slim hold on the Jedi as he grasped for memories of the holocron. He caught mere flashes: Caleb Dume over the years, progressing into adulthood, fishing out the holocron only to tuck it away, out of view. The Twi'lek rebel, the pilot, eyes wide with wonder as the holocron unfolded, one more frustratingly brief view of the star map, and then something else, something old—
Before he could so much as focus on that particular glimpse of the holocron, he found himself finally thrown out of the Jedi's mind with enough force to make his own head ring. He grimaced, blinking under the dim lighting of the interrogation room, and then turned his attention to the Jedi, who was breathing heavily an arm's length away, a sheen of sweat on his forehead—stare still locked on the hologram.
The holocron could be anywhere. It could be on the rebel ship, it could be on Lothal, it could be tucked away on any number of planets the Jedi had visited. And he needed to know much more about what the Jedi had learned, now that it was clear he had dipped into its reservoir of knowledge.
"It seems that we have a great deal more to discuss," he said, shutting down the holoprojector. The holorecording lingered in the air for a split second, then dimmed to nothing. "But I've learned enough for now."
The Jedi continued staring at the empty space where his master had been for several seconds longer, then shook his head, looking dazed. "I haven't told you anything—"
The Inquisitor narrowed his eyes in thought. It was quite possible the Jedi might not remember their encounters in the vision, or if he did, only fragments. "No? You told me about the message from Kenobi. The star charts."
The Jedi shook his head again, uncertainty clouding his expression. "I didn't—"
"I was fascinated to learn that you still keep it on your rebel ship," the Inquisitor said, watching his reaction carefully.
A spike of fear, clear and distinctive. Good, that told him everything he needed to know.
"You were very helpful," he said, enjoying the play of fear and doubt across the Jedi's face. "I think you've earned a brief respite."
With a flick of his wrist, the restraints holding the Jedi in place snapped open, dropping him to his knees. The Inquisitor collected the holoprojector, then crouched in front of the Jedi, whose mouth tightened when he saw the device in his hands.
The Inquisitor made a thoughtful noise. "This may be the only surviving holofootage of your master in all the galaxy."
The Jedi looked away, fists trembling above either knee. The air in the room grew dense, charged, and the Inquisitor pressed on, seeking the tipping point.
"I could arrange a private viewing for you in your cell."
There it was. Fury lanced through the Force, and in the space of a blink, the holoprojector in his hand was raining from the ceiling in a shower of metal and plastic. It was the first time the Jedi had actively used the Force since his capture, and there had been nothing controlled about it—a wounded animal, lashing at the source of its pain.
That spark disappeared just as swiftly, leaving behind a hollow void of numb exhaustion.
The Inquisitor shrugged dismissively. "Not to worry. There are other copies."
He waited, but the Jedi said nothing. Many of their sessions ended with the Jedi slumped on the ground, too spent to muster a defiant parting shot. But his silence now had a different edge to it.
The Inquisitor caught the Jedi's chin, turning his face to his. His eyes, dull with pain and fatigue, were slow to focus on his. When they did, there was a flatness to his stare—a detachment—that was promising.
"No one is coming for you," he said quietly. "This is your future." He steered the Jedi's gaze to the table, and the shock rods, and then back to him. "Today. Tomorrow. Every day, until you tell me what I want to know."
He released the Jedi and stood, surveying him for just a moment longer. Then he buzzed the troopers in, and they pulled the Jedi to his feet, grabbing hold of either arm, though he offered no resistance.
"This was a good start," the Inquisitor said. Tarkin wouldn't be impressed when he reported in—his focus remained the rebel cells, and their leadership structure—but that would come, eventually. "We'll speak again tomorrow."