The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano, Book Ten

Chapter Forty-Nine: Visions Become Reality

KAYA TI AREEKO

It was dark, and cold, and the air was heavy with a smell like death. And Kaya Ti couldn't breathe.

Every desperate heave of her ribcage carried a breath of air into her lungs, but it felt... tainted. It tasted toxic, and scorched her throat as it went down.

Something was wrong. Breathing wasn't supposed to hurt like this.

Her parched lips opened and closed uselessly, and tears stung at her eyes, even as they were clenched shut in some halfhearted attempt to protect them.

But from what? What was happening to her?

"Take my hand!"

Kaya recognized that voice, and she stirred, her hand closing subconsciously around a square piece of metal, finely chiseled with geometric designs she had not the focus to follow. It took her a moment to realize her fingers were slick with blood.

"Please, you have to take my hand!"

She saw Ahsoka's face in her mind's eye then, the tall Togruta woman's normally calm features stretched and pulled into an almost unnatural depiction of panic as she scrambled for handholds in the rock.

But the sky was wrong. It was beneath her, and her arms were extended up. How was that possible? Had something happened to the gravity?

"Kaya."

She recognized the voice as Ahsoka's in a flash, and the sharp, ragged echo of a sob that followed it nearly broke Kaya's heart. She fought to open her eyes, desperate to get to her Master.

"You have to take my hand."

Finally, Kaya managed to force her eyes open. But she realized then that it had been a futile exercise. Under her bleary, exhausted gaze, the scene before her blurred and shifted, hues of grey and black and silver fading into one another until Kaya didn't even know what she was looking at anymore.

And then, as a flash of golden lightning lit up the cloudy grey image, she saw a familiar yellow-green Rodian with cybernetic implants being dragged away by figures that, even through the thinning veil of sleep, were unmistakably Pyke soldiers.

I have to warn Ahsoka, she thought.

But she still couldn't breathe.

AHSOKA TANO

Someone was shaking her.

"Ahsoka, Tseebo's gone."

Ahsoka sat bolt upright in bed, her two lightsabers flying into her hands almost before she had made the conscious thought to call them there. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she realized it was only Kaya, and relaxed. Hooking one lightsaber back on her belt, she pressed down on the top half of her chest plate, searching for the secret pocket in her tunic beneath it. She was relieved to feel the shape of the datachip Tseebo had given her the night before, encrypted with the information he had managed to decode thus far.

"What...? But we would have sensed it! Could he have been sleepwalking?" It sounded stupid even to her, but she had learned during her time as Anakin Skywalker's Padawan that even the least likely possibility deserved consideration.

"No. There's no trace of him. The Pykes are semi-telepathic – they can do some of the things a Force user can. They could have gotten into our minds as we slept; convinced us they weren't a threat. I'm sure they've done it before."