Saes stopped before him, loomed over him, his eyes burning.

Feeding tendrils hung from the Anzat's cheeks, their ends a vicious nail of keratin. For a moment, it seemed as if the Anzat's head floated free in space, detached from any body, but Jaden realized that the creature wore a mimetic suit and had thrown back the mask and hood. The rest of his body simply blended in with the background, even up close.

Wrung out from his battle with the clone, Jaden raised his mental defenses too slowly and the Anzat projected his will into Jaden's mind.

Be still.

The words bounced around in Jaden's mind, found purchase in the ancient reptilian structures in the deepest part of his brain. His higher functions screamed for him to act, to defend himself, but the Anzat's mental projection lodged like a leech on Jaden's brain stem, froze his voluntary muscles and chained his will. He felt as if he might be dreaming, his mind in the grip of a nightmare, his body too paralyzed to react.

The Anzat's eyes flashed, the nostrils on his slightly upturned nose flared. He leaned in close, his face only a centimeter from Jaden's, but not quite touching, as if denying himself for a moment some treat he'd longed for. The Anzat's eyes impaled Jaden. He fought against the Anzat's hold on his mind, trying to dislodge the mind leech, but his mind, depleted from the battle with the clone, could not get free.

The Anzat sensed his failed struggle and smiled.

"I am Kell Douro," the Anzat said, his voice thick with an accent that Jaden could not place. "You are my salvation, Jaden Korr."

The Anzat took Jaden by the shoulders and the cables of the alien's appendages burrowed into Jaden's nostrils, the sharp point of the tip slashing sensitive tissues. Pain exploded in his mind, setting off a spark shower of agony before his eyes, but he could not move.

Kell inhaled deeply as he drove his feeders into the blood-slickened tunnels of Jaden's nostrils. He shuddered each time they pierced a membrane or slashed tissue. The lines of their daen nosi swirled around them, their motion rapid, chaotic, a reflection of Kell's own excitement. They became so tangled he had trouble distinguishing the silver of his own lines from the red and green that denoted Jaden's potential futures. His legs weakened at the thought of consuming the Jedi's soup, of understanding at last, after centuries of seeking, the map of the universe and his purpose in it.

He watched his lines enmesh Jaden's, strangle them, wipe out whatever future the Jedi might have had. His feeders pierced a membrane and squirmed for the Jedi's brain, his soup. Jaden's body shuddered.

Kell stared at the daen nosi, expecting to see Jaden's green and red end, overcome by the silver net of Kell's future.

Instead he saw Jaden's lines endure, saw his own lines knotted off and consumed by the dull gray strands of another. The three sets of lines resolved into a noticeable pattern. Behind the pattern, within the pattern, Kell saw the meaning of life, his purpose.

A blaster barrel pressed up against his temple. He felt it only distantly, thickly.

"Thank you," he said.

At first Jaden did not think he was seeing clearly, thought, perhaps, that his mind had retreated into dreams while he died. He saw Khedryn materialize beside the Anzat. Blood dripped from Khedryn's shattered nose, and his eyes were so swollen Jaden was surprised he could see at all. He held the BlasTech E-11 in his hands, the blaster they had seen in the armory off the barracks. He had its barrel pressed against the Anzat's head.

The Anzat's feeders started to retract from Jaden's nose.

"Thank you?" Khedryn said, stress raising his voice an octave higher than usual. "Frag you."

He squeezed the trigger and turned the Anzat's head into a fine red mist. The Anzat's body fell to the floor, blood pouring from the neck stump. The feeder appendages, severed from the nearly vaporized head, still dangled from Jaden's nose. Jaden sagged, wobbled. Khedryn steadied him.

"Are you all right? Jaden?"

Khedryn's voice sounded from far away. But it was drawing closer and Jaden was returning to himself.

"I am all right," he said to Khedryn. "Thank you."

Khedryn smiled. "That is a thank-you I'll accept."

Wincing, Jaden jerked the feeders out of his nose and dropped them on the Anzat's body. Nausea seized him and he vomited onto the floor. Khedryn put a hand on his shoulder and nodded at the Anzat's corpse.

"That thing got to me before it got you. What is it?"

Jaden wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and straightened on shaky legs.

"An Anzat. I think he followed us from Fhost, but I'm not sure."

"You sure you're all right?"

Jaden took in the ruin of Khedryn's face.

"I should be asking that of you."

Khedryn took Jaden's arm and helped support him. "I've been beaten worse than this, Jedi." He looked down into Mother, at the slain clone and the grizzly contents of her gullet.

"What happened here? Are those the doctors and stormies? Stang."

"Yes," Jaden said, and deliberately did not look into Mother. "I'll explain the rest on the way out. We must hurry. There are more surviving clones, Khedryn. They want a ship and we cannot allow that. We need to get back to Flotsam. Now."

Khedryn cleared his throat, spit blood and phlegm onto the floor. "If they take my ship anywhere, I will hunt them across the 'verse."

"Yes," Jaden said, and activated his purple-bladed saber. He could barely hold it in his wounded hand. "We will."

"Where did you get that lightsaber?" Khedryn asked.

"Long story."

Together they hurried back through the facility, both holding weapons built decades earlier-Khedryn a stormtrooper-issued blaster, Jaden a lightsaber he'd built as a boy. They retraced their steps past one scene of slaughter to another. The facility seemed less ominous to Jaden now, but it still felt haunted by ghosts.

Jaden told Khedryn what he'd learned from the clone: that other clones had survived on the moon for decades, that they wanted desperately to get off, that they were mad and dangerous.

"Did they have any children?"

Khedryn's question slowed Jaden's steps. He had not considered that. "I… don't know."

By the time they neared the West Entry, Jaden had recovered some of his strength. He did not have the time or capacity to interpret all he'd learned-about the facility and himself-but he would, later.

"Did you get the answer you wanted?" Khedryn asked as he pulled up his helmet and sealed the neck ring.

"I don't know," Jaden admitted. He deactivated his lightsaber and started to pull up his helmet, realized that his suit was so damaged from combat with the clone that sealing it was pointless.

Seeing that, Khedryn said, "You will be cold."

"I'll abide," Jaden said.

Relin was going to die, was going to add another failure to the long line of failures that composed his life as a Jedi. The rage went out of him as if drained through a hole in his heel. Despair replaced it, black and empty.

Saes held out a hand, and his lightsaber flew from the deck to his palm. He ignited it. In its hum, Relin heard his death pronounced.

"You understand now, at the end," Saes said. He removed the remains of his mask and regarded Relin with yellow eyes that looked almost sympathetic. "That pleases me."

Relin dwelled in the bottomless void of his despondence. And in the void, in its endlessness, he saw his purpose fulfilled.