Everything is Blue in this World

[Eralam]

Well, at least it wasn't another damned bar.

That was what Eralam kept telling himself as he loitered in a damp, dark alley in the rain-slicked streets of some town or another on Gyndine.

The shipyards traffic made it easy enough to slip in and out of the system unnoticed, and the fact that it was as of yet unclaimed by any major power made it a decent choice for a clandestine meeting. That was all well and good. As far as meeting spots went, it was one of the better ones the Shard had dealt with in recent memory, and hey, it wasn't in another damned bar. He'd been in too many dive bars as of late, and it was getting old.

Another fifteen minutes in this miserable alley, however, and he might reconsider that stance.

The rain had died down to a light mist, as opposed to the torrential downpour it had been a few minutes ago, so the old Iron Knight was willing to risk a smoke. He pulled the meerschaum pipe from his belt pouch and stuffed it with a measure of tobacco. The rich aroma was dampened somewhat by the smell of wet garbage, a problem that was soon rectified as he lit the thing with a spark that arced between two metal fingers. A haze of blue smoke quickly filled the alley, and as he screwed the pipe into the appropriate receptacle in his face, he contemplated the circumstances that had led to the meeting.

A few days earlier, a priority call had come up through the Network. Someone, or something, had flushed out a Shard operative. Rather than burning the operative, which could have potentially compromised an entire cell, the unknown actor had requested a meeting with a high level member of the Network. Though the motive unknown, Eralam suspected that silence would be traded for information.

That was fine by him. Though he'd never let the lower level cells know, it was fairly common practice to dangle an operative out as bait every now and again to see what would bite. Most of the time, the information was fairly harmless to the Network, and just knowing that someone was looking for it was good intel in and of itself.

In this instance, the operative hadn't been bait, but the Network was willing to play the usual game to see what would happen.

And so Eralam had traveled to the preordained meeting spot as requested. He had no backup, but he was armed with his usual Colt revolver and his eralam-bladed lightsaber. Either the mysterious being would show, or they wouldn't. All he could do now was wait.

[member="Braith Achlys"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

Weak.

Ever since her humiliation and exile, Braith had been barely dragging herself on. Her connection with the force had wavered, shrank if she was honest, and the days on end of what amounted to anorexia and self-inflicted injuries had reduced her to a shell of her former self. She remembered a day when, on a whim, she could have dealt with her then-peers without excessive concern, but that was a bygone-era now. So far had her life spiraled out of her control that she now relied on whisperings, rumors, and direct word of mouth to get what she needed - information.

Enter [member="Eralam"].

Braith, in her desperate search for either her lost significant other, [member="Corvus Raaf"], or a cure for the cancer that was plaguing her, had more than made her fair-share of enemies and friends alike, and many of both had eventually led her to what she had assumed was a Jedi Shard Knight, though had instead turned out to be something quite different. The Alua'an wasn't familiar with the silicate species, or how they were actually alive - being that they were basically silicone rocks - but the Shard had led her, by some request or demand (the exact situation was a bit of a blur to the sickly woman), into a larger information network. Through him - it, she, whatever - the witch had, by luck or misfortune, arranged a private meeting with a member of their network's upper echelon.

So, perhaps maybe ten minutes or so late, the leaner, grumpier, and ever-pale Alunrovaan wandered into the back alley-way behind some building on Gyndine. She wasn't familiar with the place, or the planet, due to the unique circumstances that placed her in an era far removed from her actual era of birth and early adulthood and thus kept her ignorant to such things, but she wasn't naive enough to wander into an alley unprotected and unawares. That didn't mean she was heavily armed, of course, with just her double-bladed lightsaber and a leather jacket for protection - normal clothing worn, obviously, beneath.

"You must be the informant." She said, presumptuous as ever.

 

[Eralam]

"That's one way of putting it," Eralam drawled, his tone as dry as a bucket of sand on Tatooine.

There was something wrong. The woman was gaunt, almost skeleton thin. The Shard was terrible at reading expressions, but there was something about hers that suggested a quiet sort of despair. She had the hopeless, haunted look that he'd come to associate with religious aesthetics and the terminally ill.

She was dying. Not in the vague, every breath taken is a breath closer to the reaper sort of way either. Her expiration date was nigh, though it was hard to take a guess on exactly when that would be. Her Force aura had the subtle psychic stench that suggested her own body was trying to kill her. On top of that, it practically reeked with Loss with a capital L.

He didn't think she was human. There were enough subtle differences to suggest that, though it was entirely possible whatever was killing the woman was throwing him off.

All this information was processed in a few seconds. Eralam had to make a judgment call on whether or not she could be trusted with the sort of information he provided, and often his first impression was a good indicator. This was going to be a tough call. If she was truly desperate, there was no telling what she might do with the intel. Or what she might do if she didn't get it, for that matter.

"It's probably better to think of me as a gatekeeper," he continued. His voice was slow, calm, laconic. "It's my job to figure out what you need, and whether or not I can give it to you."

[member="Braith Achlys"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

In another surreal moment of over-analysis, Braith noted how strange it was to be in the position of need - to go from the woman in a primitive culture that had been worshiped as a deity to not much more than a common beggar, albeit with some strength to combat that appearance. She cocked her head to the left, her rather plain expression littered with curiosity. She hadn't expected the person she'd be meeting to be this type of a dealer, nor had she expected this web of intelligence to be so different from the others she had been involved in or breached. The One Sith seemed to deal more with information trading when she had inhabited the mind of the Sith Lord that led them, and the Republic was more or less spies and saboteurs. This... droid? Well he was certainly not the sort of information broker she'd expected, nor did he seem to be much of a spy - much less a saboteur - but it appeared he had at least the chance of knowing what she might not, and considering her only real goal now was to not die alone, that was considerably more worth the meeting than getting some Sith or Republic spy to do some lengthy search for her.

At least she hoped so.

"I only want two things - the latter of my requests only if the former is beyond you." She said, coughing rather lightly after a pause. "If you know the whereabouts of Corvus Raaf, living or otherwise, whatever remains of my life will be indebted to you. If you don't, then perhaps some method of ridding my body of the cancer that wracks it." Braith explained. Though she used the same descriptive language she'd been taught to - it was sort of the kind of thing you'd expect from nobility or other upper-class people, and the slight accent to her words suggested that was the case - Braith was trying to make a concerted effort to keep her spoken words down to a minimum. Every time she said something it created an irritating tickle at the back of her throat, the reason she'd paused to cough earlier, and every wheeze felt like sandpaper in her lungs. She hoped the man knew where Corvus was, so at least she could do what she had promised and died by her side, but a sinking feeling told her to hope for a cure or treatment for the illness instead.

[member="Eralam"]

 

[Eralam]

Well then.

"Missing persons cases are inherently tricky. Even with a relatively low profile subject, there are dozens of tips almost from the word go. Most of them are junk. People say they saw the subject in a restaurant or on the street or something and call in a tip. Most of them mean well enough. Others want a crack at any reward money. It's enough to strain the resources of local law enforcement to the breaking point. Multiply that by about a billion for the freaking Grandmaster of the Jedi."

The Shard let out an electronic sigh and took a few more puffs from the pipe. It gave him something to do while he considered the situation.

"I can't make any promises on either front. It's a big galaxy, with a lot of places to disappear. We can compile what intel we do have and try to see if we can narrow down the search area, maybe get lucky."

He spread his hands wide in a conciliatory gesture.

"Honestly, the cancer might actually be easier. It's been a few centuries since there was anything like an epidemic of the stuff, but after the Clone Wars, there was a lot of novel research done. A bunch of clones went deserter, and had the resources to nail down a bunch of medical research. Apparently, the cloners on Kamino cut corners, and even after they figured out how to stop aging in double time, they ended up sprouting tumors all over the place. They figured out how to fix it eventually, and, uh, we may have access to the research. If we can adapt it to your physiology, there's a chance you might pull through."

This woman, he decided, was worth helping, if for no other reason than because she already knew too much. The Network wasn't in the business of killing everyone who tumbled onto its existence. Eralam had seen to that personally. It wasn't the best policy from a fieldcraft perspective, but the Shard figured it was easier to go unnoticed if bodies weren't vanishing all over the galaxy. Most of the Network operated in contained cells. At best, the majority of the folks who discovered Network agents thought they were running into self contained Shard communities. Genuine threats were dealt with, but those who proved relatively harmless were scared or bribed into silence.

"There is a price. If we fix you, you owe us. One favor, no questions asked. Can't say when we'll call in the marker, but I promise it won't be anything too onerous, nothing that will violate any oaths or commitments. The information is on the house. I doubt we'll be able to give you anything too concrete anyway."

[member="Braith Achlys"]

 

[Ellie Mors]

She nodded, understanding the difficulty of finding one person out of quintillions in a galaxy so big - she'd done so with a blood trail, not once tracking her down. It was only fair to admit defeat at this point, it had been literal months since she'd even begun to get a grasp of what might have actually happened - whether she had actually left her, died, become one with the force, or otherwise been spirited away. All of the evidence had pointed towards her simply merging with the force, or perhaps emerging with the white current to stay hidden from her. Then again, there were ways into the realms of Chaos, of Netherworld, so she most certainly could have left the realm of the living. In the meantime, however, she would try to move on - at least for a while. It was going to hurt giving up on the woman that had essentially become everything she could have ever wanted in life, but it was necessary to continue living.

"I understand. I had hope for her being found.." She said, her voice trailing off as the shard gave her another option - a potential cure or treatment for the cancer that her genetics had caused her. This one, the cure, was far more optimistic than the rather blunt and straight-forward answer she was given about her missing lover. That wasn't to say she had any actual belief that a cure was actually possible, but it did raise her hopes a little, if only because someone who had been brutally honest to her had given her the answer - if Corvus, for example, had said it, she probably wouldn't have had any real hope, if only because of their former relationship. And, maybe because of her upbringing, the price he'd named wasn't really much of an issue for her, either. "A life for a life, if you save mine I owe it to you - or your network, I suppose." Braith replied in turn.

She wasn't certain if they would actually lead her to this potential cure, or if they would give it to her - or some mixture in between the two - but she was glad there was some form of a lead for her to follow. Trying to tread the annals of past Sith lords, Sith that had preserved their spirits in death and had 'met' many different people throughout the last several thousand years, had led to nothing - she was one of the extremely few members of her species in the galaxy that had even made it off of their planet, a number so small that it could populate a small city on a less developed world. It didn't help that their unique cancer was rather specific to their species, which general health care had noted and dismissed her for. She had contemplated simply shedding her body for a permanent, but new, host's, but being with Corvus for even a little while had changed how she thought of humans and other living beings in general. She wasn't a woman with a god-complex anymore, at any rate, nor did she treat others as objects to be used.

[member="Eralam"] (I thought I posted this the other day but totally forgot to actually press post!)

 

[Eralam]

"It's settled then."

Eralam tapped a finger against a random brick on the wall of the building next to them.

"Pearl, open up."

"Sure thing, Boss," came a weary sounding voice from an unseen speaker. And then a door appeared in the wall. There wasn't any hidden machination or anything. One second there was a blank patch of dirty brick, and the next second a security door.

"One of our operatives has a very unusual ability" he explained. "She creates illusions by bending light rather than by implanting images in the mind. It wears her out to keep it up for more than a few minutes, but it comes in handy."

After tapping in a code on a keypad, the door slid open and Eralam led the way inside. Immediately inside was clearly a security station, manned by a single astromech. If an R2 unit couldn't technically pant in exhaustion, no one had told this one.

"You okay, Pearl?"

"Yeah, sure Boss," the R2 replied. "The rain makes everything much, much harder. I'll be okay in a bit."

Eralam nodded.

"Ilum, you good to take over for a bit?"

The voice that seemingly came out of nowhere sounded distinctly masculine.

"I got her. Ain't nothing gettin' through that door."

Eralam nodded again, and gestured for his guest to follow him off down the corridor. They passed a few doors along the way, sealed tight, the contents hidden from view. A couple of them had extremely odd Force auras leaking out, but the Shard made no attempt to explain whatever strange secrets lurked behind them.

After a few moments, they arrived at a lab of some sort. It was bright, and smelled of disinfectant. A medic droid was trundling around the room organizing things and swearing quietly to itself.

"Oh, Sithspit," it said when they entered. "Dammit Boss, couldn't you have waited five minutes?"

Eralam cocked his head. His face was as expressionless as always, but his body language clearly conveyed impatience.

"We don't have time for your OCD crap, Luxum. Patient's here. You dig out the Clone Wars research?"

The medical droid, Luxum, had a synthflesh face that was some damn fool of an engineer had thought would allow it to comfort patience. It had instead skipped straight into uncanny valley. It was perfectly capable of glowering angrily, however.

"Yeah, sure, I only had to dig through 800 years of collected research."

Luxum turned towards Braith, its expression softening.

"You do not look good. Species?"

[member="Braith Achlys"] (Heh. Had that happen before.)