Escape from Palpatraz

[Halajiin Rabeak]

Golden rays of sunshine reflecting from towering skyscrapers, glinting off of passing speeders, and filtering down through the windows of the classrooms at the Citadel had made focusing on lessons nearly impossible for Halajiin Rabeak, that morning. Instead of being sharp, involved, and occasionally joking as his Kyle Rayner identity had been so accustomed to, Hal found himself looking out the windows and daydreaming.


Ten years didn’t seem so long ago that he was sitting in class in high school, doing much the same as his teachers would drone on and on and on while he thought of the million other places he’d rather be. Life at the Citadel wasn’t bad, and he’d managed to make a few friends, but despite the complex’s massive structure, varied architecture, and the lovely gardens, it was still a prison.

A prison which most assuredly did not serve proper nerf cheeseburgers, golden-brown steak cut fries, or milkshakes. It was an injustice too far.

For over the last six months, Hal had observed guard patterns, spotted cameras, and taken stock of every security system he could identify within the Citadel, as he knew he would need to escape at some point. While opportunities had come along, he’d held back from taking them as he had a more grand scheme in mind. Such a scheme required a test run, and on such a beautiful, sunny afternoon, Hal knew the time had come to put it into action. He needed to get to the library.


The idea of escaping via the library was one which would seem ludicrous to most cadets, but most cadets did not have a nearly full, first-hand knowledge of the layout of the Citadel - Hal being the exception for having walked its halls and passages over a century before when it was still known as the Jedi Temple. It was because of such knowledge that he did not seek out the obvious points of exit, instead deciding on a far less conspicuous - though labyrinthian - route. Besides, he was in the library often enough after classes for his typical study and work sessions that no one would bat an eye at seeing him there.


But today he bypassed his usual table, instead weaving through rows of shelves of datapads and memorybanks. All the good stuff was locked away, naturally, but there was still a great deal of Empire-approved materials available to the Cadets and Imperial personnel alike stationed in the Citadel. Past the reference material, beyond the history section, and then around the bend to the self-help section, the yellow-furred Nehantite made his way. A subtle grin played upon his muzzle at how aptly named that section was, as he fully intended to help himself out of the library, and the citadel itself, via the old access door there.

Under cover of looking for material on overcoming lustful impulses, Hal had gazed beyond the walls themselves to study the locking mechanisms, and security monitors held within, and determined that this door had never been attached to the main security system, it was simply closed with a physical locking latch. Telekinesis having been hidden from all around him, for fear of it giving away his true identity, Hal glanced back over his shoulder before using his most powerful gift to locate and release the lock, then gently pushed upon the door before disappearing inside. It closed behind him, though the latch was not re-set, lest he need to return to the Citadel by the very means he used to escape.

[Onika Zepparah]

Libraries were perfect for people like Onika when they wanted to be left alone. They were quiet, both by design and by the iron-fisted fiat of librarians the galaxy over. They were full of blind corners and cul-de-sacs at the ends of stacks that no one had accessed since the last Sith War. And best of all, they were avoided by all but the loneliest and most unthreatening of students until exams rolled around, and by the same token teachers couldn't very well tell her off for loitering at the library.

The moment her final class of the day had ended (Imperial Governance and Political Theory), Onika had ducked Cadet Redsun's watchful eyes, sidestepped a spirited conversation between Cadets Wan and Par'Vizal, slipped behind a screen made of the lumbering Cadets Jolee, Catanna, and Moll, and broken free unnoticed down one of the lesser-used corridors that ran past storage rooms and custodial closets to the opposite end of the education complex. No one seemed to notice as she stepped through the massive library doors and walked with purpose toward a towering bank of shelves.

She followed them to the far wall until the silence surrounded her like a forest. Then she leaned against the wall, her heart pounding and her head swimming, and tried to focus on her breathing.

It had been a lively lecture for a government class. The psychology of rebellion. Some of the cadets had a lot to say. Jeryd, Khoovi, Jensen when pressed - he must have had some sort of history concerning the Rebellion, judging from the color surrounding him when he spoke. And then Gorm Jolee and Tyrell Catanna had gotten into it - it was rare enough for them to show enthusiasm for a lecture of any kind when there wasn't a promise of hitting something soon. But something about the idea of protecting the Empire from threats domestic seemed to appeal to them greatly, and each began suggesting signs of sedition they'd observed among their classmates, their sub-adult group fellows, and girls who had refused their advances, until the hapless Lieutenant Lavine, in a much-belated attempt to regain control of the classroom, turned to the one student who hadn't yet said anything at all and asked Onika what she thought.

She didn't even remember what she'd stammered out, and right now she didn't care. She slumped down to the floor, eyes squeezed shut, and simply felt the colors in the air stirring all around her, until they faded from a bright panicky orange to a steady, calming blue. And then she slipped her datapad into her lap and scrolled to the image she'd been working on piecemeal over the past few days, a Zabrak male her age with a crown of backswept horns and an impish grin, painted in tender shades of caf and butterscotch with startling yellow eyes.

She wanted to see him. Maybe she could? Maybe if she focused on his image instead of her breathing, she could--

No sooner had her senses opened up again than they were jostled, like leaves floating on the far side of a pool from a rock that has just been thrown in. She floundered for a moment, losing her tenuous grip on the Force until she could re-orient herself, and by then the disturbance was gone, save for a distant curling mist of... green. Frowning, she dismissed the painting from her datapad and crept along the back wall of the library toward the epicenter.

When she reached it she found a door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. At first glance the door appeared perfectly secure, which was why Onika didn't stop at a first glance. Her second revealed a miniature hydrospanner expertly positioned between the lock and latch to keep it from sliding home.

Someone had figured out the locks. She'd been trying to find her way past them since she got here. How had they done it? She saw no evidence the panel had been forced by either a hacking spike or a hotwired datapad, and if they'd stolen an ID card, they wouldn't need to leave the door jammed. Why, anyone could come along and...

...slip her slender fingers into the crack just so, and work them in, painfully, until she had enough leverage to force the door aside against the whining servos. Before she'd thought about it a moment longer, she'd slipped through the narrow gap, and snatched the hydrospanner off the floor so she could carefully place it exactly as she'd found it. The door hissed back into place, stopped open, but just barely.

Leaving her shut in the restricted section with someone who knew their way around Imperial security. Heart pounding, she stepped silently away from the door. As long as she was here, she might as well have a look around.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

If one thing could be said for the Empire, it was that their frugality was legendary. If something didn't need updating or a good polish, it was left as it was, and such was the vista which lay before Hal on the other side of the door. How many times in his early training had he ducked out on Master Trevarius through this very same exit? His paw rubbed along the cool, duraplast banister which spiraled down with the staircase to the floor below.

"Hello, old friend," he allowed himself a whisper before hopping up to park his backside upon the rail, then rode it all the way down, his boots clomping to the expanded steel mesh of the floor below a bit louder than he'd have liked. How quickly he'd forgotten that he used to go around barefoot, back in the day. Remaining crouched in the position which had absorbed most of his shock from landing, Hal paused to listen, making sure no one had heard his follly and was coming to investigate. Ten seconds of pure silence followed, aside from the hum of power lines and the droning of the air conditioning system's ducts.

Even if someone did hear you, you've only made it one floor. How much trouble can you get in for one floor? His higher reasoning reminded himself.

But one floor was hardly Hal's goal, so he righted himself and continued upon his once-familiar path. A good thirty paces would take him to the access shaft he needed, yet by the time he got to fifteen he stopped again. Semi-round ears ticking back, he could hear the door being pulled open, and immediately his heart began to race. Who could have discovered him so quickly? Had he missed a silent alarm somehow? There was no time to panic, only time for action, and he ducked behind a column of pipes off the general walkway, to hide and catch his improbable tail by surprise.

[Onika Zepparah]

So it turned out, for all the marble halls and glittering spires that made the Imperial Citadel look like a mythic temple descended from the gods, it had the same rusty underbelly as every other stratoscraper in the city. The moment the access door clicked almost shut behind her, Onika found herself in a tantalizingly familiar warren of durasteel scaffolding, rumbling pipes, and blinking switchboxes. She'd slinked her way through passageways like these everywhere from her father's penthouse to Tarkin Memorial to her old stomping grounds in the Chiba District slums, and the biggest difference between them was the quality of slime that collected in the corners of the walkways. This place was... well, probably the cleanest of its kind she'd ever been in.

But that wasn't what had her heart pounding and her mind racing. Maintenance passageways didn't just service one building - they linked entire sectors. If you knew what you were doing, you could travel for miles in any direction - even down - without ever setting foot on a public street or lift. Even if you found a chained-off gate, that just meant there was a crawlspace to unearth, or a loose corner of fencing, or even an abandoned junkworm burrow that would get you across it. If there was any way to disappear from the watchful eyes of the Knights...

But someone else was already trying, weren't they? The air in here was thick with intrigue, though Onika didn't rightly know if she was sensing that through the Force or just projecting her own paranoia. She had an hour before her next class, before anyone would know she was missing. That was plenty of time to explore, to start forming plans of escape for that inevitable day when life as a cadet became intolerable. She couldn't let this opportunity go to waste.

Scarcely breathing, Onika carefully advanced down the spiral stairs, setting foot on each one so lightly that they didn't even vibrate. Her senses would tell her if she attracted someone's attention long before she put herself in danger.

She hoped.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

Closing his eyes would hardly make himself invisible, but Hal did it anyway, training his ears upon what sound could be made out which was not the tick-tacking of old gears and dials, or the rush of fluid through pipes, or the low whistle of air in ventilation shafts. But there was nothing to be heard. Whoever was following him was either very skilled at stealth, or could fly. In either case, his curiosity was piqued, and he dared to sneak a peek in different fashion.

Inaudibly, the Jedi Knight sent out a ping through the Force, pushing a thin wave of nitrogen through the air telekinetically, his senses following it as it rushed gently through the hall and up the stairs, mapping the outline of everything it came in contact with until he let the wave lose momentum. While not a live image, the three-dimensional still was enough to narrow down the list of subjects as to who his stalker may be, and a smile twitched at the corners of his muzzle, causing the fur there to bristle mildly.

It was a fellow cadet, female, likely a teenager, but beyond that he couldn't tell who. Using a second ping to actively follow her could give him away, if he were messing with the wrong person, so he opted for an alternative plan.

Hal remained stock-still behind the mass of pipes providing him cover, and listened instead, hearing the soft, slow padding of Imperial issue boots on the duracrete floor, and he waited until the footsteps were close, only a few paces away, before he dared to use his telekinesis once more. Locating the fabric on Onika's right shoulder, he quickly pushed it down twice in a small area, simulating being tapped on the shoulder from behind. As he heard her feet scuffle as she spun, he slipped out from his hiding place to stand, well, behind her now, and he simply smiled, waiting for Onika to turn back around.

[Onika Zepparah]

It wasn't that it was too quiet. It was the wrong kind of quiet. A watchful quiet. That preternatural awareness that Onika used to dismiss as a streeter's intuition was prickling at the back of her neck all the way down the spiral staircase. And then something made her hold her breath and freeze. A hint of green, the same green she'd seen lingering around the forced security door, broke over her face like a subtle puff of perfume. She hadn't even sensed it until it had already passed. Was it an accident? Or was her mystery slicer on to her already?

Slowly she made her way down the corridor, waiting for the telltale pressure that always let her know she had someone's attention. If she crossed into the slicer's line of vision, she'd know it, right? Or was there a way her senses could be fooled? What if he was sensing her through the Force? Could she sense that? What if she--

A burst of green on her right, and she felt a finger tap her shoulder. She didn't look. Instead she dove forward and tucked into a combat roll over the metal grating, landing catlike on one knee and fingertips, facing back the way she'd come. Her crimson eyes locked onto her attacker, and--

"What - Kyle?!"

She rose to her feet, but she looked ready to bolt in any direction.

"What the frell are you doing here?"

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Aw, no fair," Hal whined, his right paw smacking his side in frustration as he rolled his eyes. "You were supposed to turn and be all, 'Huh? What tapped me?' and I was gonna be all, 'I'm a ninja, ha ha ha!' and like, prank you and stuff."

Behind him, the Nehantite's tail flicked with mild annoyance as he composed himself enough to stuff his paws into his pockets and shrug. "I'm heading out, what's it look like I'm doing? Not like they give us day passes, so I'm making my own way. Better question is, what's a cadet like you doing following me? Easy to get lost in these passages if you don't know your way around, y'know. Hate to imagine what sort of trouble you'd be in if you took a wrong turn and we had to send a search party to find you."

A smile worked up his muzzle, and he reached up to smooth his oiled and combed headfur. "Heh, though I'd bet Vissica could sniff you out in a heartbeat, if she tried. Just gotta tell her you've got a can of sardines in your pocket, or something."

[Onika Zepparah]

Kyle. Kyle frelling Rayner had breached the Citadel walls before she did. She vented a sigh and gave him a withering look known to patronized teenagers across the galaxy.

"I can find my way around," she said, affronted. "Probably better than Darth Otter. Anyway, if you're planning on breaking out, you shouldn't have left the door propped open. If a cadet like me could find it, so can the Knights. Right?"

She tilted her head, studying him for any sign that his class clown veneer was cracking. Because there was more to Kyle than trading jabs with Redsun and giving long-winded smartass answers in class. Everyone knew he had his own quarters away from the rest of the cadets. Official word was he was a rehabilitated Jedi, and the Knights had separated him so they could keep a closer eye on him. But that story smelled, and Onika wasn't the only one to think so. Kyle knew things. Things a rube from the outer rim shouldn't know, even if he was trained by a wizard hermit on the run.

And here he was, breaking past security and playing it off as a joke? Right, and Onika had some lovely beachfront property on Mustafar to sell you.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

Another shrug, and Hal began to casually stride forward. Perhaps toward Onika, perhaps simply continuing on the path he had begun before being pursued.

"Who says I'm terribly worried about the Knights?" he replied with a wistful smile. "They still don't know how I evaded a firing like on Phindarr, or how I got past an entire battalion of troops searching for me there. Sure, I'll get in a bit of trouble, but just as a show."

By then he stood virtually toe-to-toe with Onika, just smiling, tail swaying lightly behind himself. Slowly he leaned in a whispered, "Besides, what's more knightly: doing what you're told like a common trooper, or showing a bit of initiative and letting them see what you're made of?"

A wink of his visibly damaged, pink left eye, and Hal pushed on past his fellow cadet, calling back over his shoulder. "You coming along, or are you gonna run back and tattle on me, Madam Zepparah? Righteousness may come from being a spoilsport, but divinty can be found in a double nerfburger with cheese, hot fries, and a cold, thick, rich, creamy buiberry milkshake!"

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika's cherry-red glare followed Hal down the corridor. A moment later, so did the rest of her, taking three hurried steps every time he took two.

"I'm not a narc," she protested. "But if you've got a way out of here, are you really gonna blow it on cheeseburgers?"

Though, even as she said it, her stomach growled. She hadn't had a buiberry shake in ages. But that wasn't the point.

Her eyes blistered against the back of Hal's head for a few moments, then she just settled into pace behind him, fists clenched at her sides. "So how did you get past a battalion, anyway?"

[Halajiin Rabeak]

With a glimmer of a smile, Hal stopped and turned to face his new escape companion, presuming she had made up her mind to follow him, at least. "Yes, I'm gonna blow it on a cheeseburger," he replied with a nod. "I intend to return, and I've built up enough good will that, yes, I can burn some on a simple lunch run, and still be in good enough graces when I get back that it won't matter too terribly much. You, I'm not so sure about, but if you think it's worth the risk, by all means come along. Sometimes you can break the rules and it's okay. Well, okay enough, at least. If I wanted to escape, I promise you I could have done it on my first day here, and the Knights know that all too well."

Turning back to the path ahead, Hal carried on. "As far as the battalion goes, I climbed a tree."

He could feel burning hot daggers being stared into his back, and he simply looked over his shoulder with a shrug. "It was a really tall tree."

[Onika Zepparah]

"Right."

How tall did trees get, anyway? There were a couple in the domed gardens near school that had to be fifteen meters. Onika had tried climbing one once, only to be shouted down by a furious groundskeeper who apparently thought a nine-year-old girl was a mortal threat to an organism literally made of construction material. Trees, in Onika's judgment, were nothing special, and neither were the rest of Kyle's outlandish boasts.

"So if the Knights can't keep you here, why are you here? It's not like they're paying us. Speaking of that, how exactly are you planning to pay for a cheeseburger and shake?"

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Don't forget steak fries," Hal cautioned, as if there was some vital, cosmic importance about including steak fries along with a good cheeseburger and a milkshake.

"I'm here because I choose to be, at the moment," he carried on. "There are things to learn, and things to get. Also, sometimes they need someone to remind them that there's a way to accomplish a goal without killing. That they should serve peace, not domination. In my own way, I feel I've done well at that, so far. As far as money goes, though..."

Hal fished a yellow-furred paw into his pocket and withdrew a chitcard. An official, Imperial Knights expense account chitcard. "I figured I'd bill it to the Knights. Repayment for services rendered, and the like. You think I'd go out in uniform if I didn't have to prove I'm with the Knights? Seriously, these pants chafe my tailbase like nobody's business."

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika lifted her eyebrows at the sight of the credit chit. That... that was pretty impressive, actually. She didn't believe for a moment he'd get away with it, but she had to admire the nerve.

Unless... well. There was that one theory going around the ranks of cadets. One that explained why Kyle had his own quarters, why Kyle had skills and knowledge none of the other cadets did, how he got away with pushing the envelope so hard in class, and why he was a decade older than most of them. Onika had her own suspicions, but she wasn't ready to cast a verdict yet.

"You really had this planned out, didn't you?" she said, allowing a note of admiration to creep into her voice. She slowed to a halt behind the mongoose, just a few paces back, and swept her eyes over the path ahead.

"So what's your plan for getting by that laser grid?"

A dozen or so tiny emitters lay in a row beneath the floor grates shining invisible beams up through the gaps to hit receivers in the ceiling, squarely in the path of Hal's next step.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Laser what?" Hal asked, crimping his brow just before he saw it. His body jerked to a stop, his nose nearly brushing the mesh of sensors, and he looked around before gently easing back.

"Well, that's new," he muttered. Rubbing his chin, the Nehantite began to examine the frame for any kind of switch or convenient disarming system. Of course there was none, nor would any self-respecting security officer install one at a sensor point. Growling softly, the Nehantite knew he could simply cut the power, or push out the wall beside the grid and sneak around it, but both would be dead giveaways to the strength of his telekinesis in front of Onika. No, he had to find another way.

Immediately he began to kick himself for not watching more Escape Room videos on YouHolo. "Hang on, this might take a minute."

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika folded her arms and watched him stew, and she couldn't fight the grin curling up one side of her mouth. Hm, the way his tail jerked side-to-side, did that mean he was flustered? It reminded her of watching a stray lothcat in an alley chittering in frustration at a beetle moth fluttering just out of reach.

"Okay, give me that credit chit," she said, holding out an open palm. She saw the hesitation on his face and headed him off at the pass. "Come on. You want a burger or not?"

[Halajiin Rabeak]

Hal's pink eyes narrowed suspiciously, watching for any sign of trickery. Of all his fellow cadets, Onika had been one of the most difficult to get a bearing on, as she seemed to delight in being entirely unremarkable and unnoticed. Would she take his chitcard and run? Would she hold this over his head for the rest of his training? Would she fry the circuit printed on the card?

Who would win in a fight between a cybernetic shark with a stegosaurus tail, and fifteen ponies with knives for hooves?

The questions were endless, but his patience wasn't. Begrudgingly, he extended the chitcard, then pulled back momentarily. "You fry this sensor, and there's no happy meal at the end of this trip," he warned, then extended the chitcard once more.

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika shook her head, but her grin only deepened. "Frell no. This thing is way too valuable to wipe."

She swiftly pulled her datapad out of her messenger bag and keyed in a different passcode than she normally used to wake it up. It had taken a while to figure out how to load her favorite slicing tools onto the Citadel-issued 'pad, but she didn't spend all her free time drawing. It just took a few moments' work to isolate the security net among all the wireless signals pinging around the Citadel, and...

A circle appeared on the screen with the message, ready to receive authentication source. Onika pressed the credit chit against the circle, and the pad began processing.

"It's a maintenance tunnel, right? So the jumpsuits can't call security to shut down the grid every time they need through here. They carry badges, and the system recognizes they're authorized to be here."

The circle went green: authentication complete. Onika grinned in triumph.

"Whoever's supposed to have this credit chit also has at least as much security clearance as maintenance rat, which gives me the template to generate a security key, annnnd..."

She stepped past Hal and thrust her datapad into the laser grid, which winked out with a digital chime. Onika held the 'pad in place and stepped around it to the other side of the emitters.

"I like my burger with mushrooms."

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"That's because you're an uncultured heathen," Hall replied matter-of-factly as he quickly followed Onika through the grid, keeping his tail close. Plucking the card from her fingers, he pocketed it once more, for safekeeping.

"But, damn if you're not a clever uncultured heathen," he grinned. "Where'd you learn how to do that? I was gonna, um, I dunno, short it out or something. Good trick."

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika smoothly stowed her datapad back into her satchel and carried on beside him, watchful for any other hidden traps. The laser grid marked the Citadel perimeter, so all they really had to do now was find access to the surface. Preferably out of view of any CCHN cameras.

"A friend of mine back home is really good with computers," she said. "She showed me a few tricks like that." Her mind drifted back to Brekka, explaining in animated Shyriwook while wielding a slicing spike in each paw, moments before shutting down every single security grid in the Starlight Mall. They'd only had twenty minutes before the CPD spotted the blackout and sent a response, but the short-lived shopping spree was glorious. Onika still had that sunstone necklace.

Well... no, she didn't. It was back home in an old stim tin with the rest of her meager jewelry collection, if her mother hadn't already confiscated it. And she still didn't know if she'd ever see Brekka or any of her other friends again. Her smile dimmed.

"It might not work again," she said. "If they know we took this tunnel, and they know you have that chit, they'll put two and two together and close that loophole. You sure you don't want to escape today?"

She said it with a one-sided smirk that could have made it a joke, or wistful resignation, or a strangled plea.