The Republic has fallen.
In the final days of the Clone Wars, Chancellor Palpatine died under mysterious circumstances. With the Senate struggling to retain a sense of unity, it was the perfect time for the Separatists to strike. And strike they did...
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In recent years, Ahsoka had grown better at calming the impulse that rose up inside her in quiet moments, urging her to pace or fidget to release some pent-up energy until the time came for action. But against work as long and dry as coding, and then sitting through updates the computer console had to cycle through after every series of commands, the desire to move was as seductive as a siren's song.
With a hum, she extended her arms above her head and linked her fingers together – and yes, she informed the impulse patiently, stretching counts as moving. Slowly, she swayed side to side in the plush desk chair to get the cricks out of her back, keeping her attention on her breath until she was ready to expand her awareness to the rest of her body.
It was the closest she'd come to meditation in months, even if it was only meant to give her a sense of which muscle groups were tense and sore from sitting still too long, and which felt the same simply because she was out of shape. The conclusion she reached was expected, but that didn't make it any less disheartening; she wondered if she might be able to pass her old training exercises off as practice for some sort of exotic dance. Filling her days with nothing but security work and HoloNet browsing would put her at a serious disadvantage if things came to a fight.
The flicker of the holoscreen's chrono display as one minute phased into the next drew her gaze. A few absentminded calculations later, Ahsoka realized it was nearly three hours past the time she'd started working at. She was eating into her free time with the terminal.
Once she'd saved her code and closed the diagnostics page, she shifted her hand down to tap the icon that would take her to a popular news channel – the sooner she got a sense of galactic affairs and the Rebellion's progress, the better. But she stopped when she spotted another just beside it, labeled only as ieX80R.
Ahsoka's eye markings rose when she recognized it as an online database linked to his HoloNet account. Surprising, considering the phenomenal amount of storage on the terminal and various datapads Lux had, which were automatically synced the second a change was made. Even more so when he seemed so concerned about the security of his hardware. Then there was the odd name and placement, when everything else on his home screen was so neatly organized and labeled.
Her finger drifted closer to the icon, the temptation to select it gripping her. There were more than a few unsavory things a person could be stashing in a covert database such as this, but a feeling deeper than intuition told her none of the usual guesses were the case here. Nothing so far had been normal about Lux.
What was the harm in checking, just quickly? She could scrub the computer's memory core of any indication she had been through the database easily, and yet...
Ahsoka's experiences with Zakhan Noreino had been thankfully brief thus far, but it was no stretch of the imagination to think he was monitoring his family's rooms. Or perhaps Lux was – if he was so scared of outside influences messing with his terminal, it was within reason to install extra measures to protect it. If she lost her precarious standing with him so soon, it would be impossible to win it back.
