Ishani Dinn
Jacen Nimdok
The shadow man sighed as Miri just pulled out a datapad and a pendant, which she put around her neck. She could obviously see and hear him, which kind of surprised him. Usually, only Slip could interact with him, but now Miri could as well. Whatever the case, the shadow man was just glad that she had listened to him and decided to wait there. The shadow man gave a thumbs up, and in the other room, Slip gave a small thumbs up. The shadow man leaned against the wall, watching Miri play her game. A set of instructions feeded to him from Slip.
Ease her into it
The shadow man looked at her intently.
"Miri, what do you remember of your mother?" He asked her, mouth never opening, and yet the words still came from him. It was more than likely that she remembered nothing of her mother, but there could still be bits and pieces that she remembered.
Meanwhile, Slip furiously typed on the datapad. He was on the final leg of the reprogramming. All he needed to do was to break through the last security protocol, and then string together the final piece of code. All he needed was a little bit more time. Once he finished, Bithia would require a "hard reset", which would allow for the changes to finalize and take allow your system and her spirit to accept the changes. The only problem was, it would require more energy than Bithia currently had stored up. What was the way that they said was the way that she nourished herself? It was... some sort of vampire like thing, if he remembered correctly. Though what she feed off of, Slip couldn't remember. All he knew was that she would require at least some extra charge before doing the reset, otherwise it wouldn't work all the way.
Then, Bithia released Nimdok from her grasp. Looking at the code, something had... Changed inside of her. Slip had no idea what, if only he could touch her soul through the Force, if only he could see what was going on in her mind, on the other side of his work, then he would have a better idea on what was happening inside there.
But then, she reached back, obviously intent on pulling out the programming needle. Slip needed to act fast, or she might damage her core processes if she pulled Slip out of her backbrain right now, as he was very deep within her systems. Her hand closed around the needle, and Slip reacted accordingly. He grabbed her hand, holding the programming needle in place.
"Bithia, please, don't. I can make you be with Nimdok and Miri, once again. I can fix you. But if you remove it, I won't be able to reunite you with your family." He told her.
"I know what it's like to be alone, to be forced to be something you wish you weren't, to be broken. I never had someone there to fix me, to try to make me better, to just have someone there for me. I never had anyone to look out for me." He told her.
"But you do. You have Nimdok, and Miri. I never was able to escape my cage, but you can. The Lord of Doubt gave you a second chance, but ripped you from your son. Only you can decide how you want to go forward." Slip continued, trying to reach her.
"Please, I can fix-" But then Slip stopped, mid-sentence, gasping. He had finally managed to connect with her spirit through the Force. Slip had no idea how, because she was completely void in the Force, which he guessed had to do with some sort of Force cancelling thing she had inside of her. But she obviously wasn't completely immune against the Force.
He could see into her mind. All the memories buzzing past her. He could feel the suffocating darkness and repressive silence she had been trapped in. But then, the hideous and terrifying face emerged from the darkness, speaking to her in a gravelly, scratchy voice, that was both painful to listen to and strangely addicting and soothing. He felt all of the emotions she had felt towards the face, feeling them flow through him. And suddenly, he found himself hating the person who's face it belonged to, feeling her pain and hatred for the man pulling her out.
Then, she was spat out into existence. More memories flooded him. The two other biots preparing to head off for their missions, with one going with another woman, who Slip presumed was the one Red named Thetis. He saw her journey across the stars, tracking down Nimdok and Miri. He could see that something was preventing her from having any sort of conception of right and wrong. That was it; that was what he needed to change. He needed to break that sequence of code, and then restring it to make it to where she could understand what sort of consequences her actions had.
But then, more hit him, her current emotions, her want to be with Nimdok and Miri, and her need to, being ordered by The Lord of Doubt. He saw that she didn't hate The Lord of Doubt, but was in fact grateful for a second chance, another chance to be with her family, but she still felt like Arrius Messala deserves a horrible punishment, which he truly did.. He could feel how it was to be trapped in an unfeeling body. It was... a strange feeling. But he could tell that she still had emotions. He felt... sympathy, for her.
But the connection was two-way. Bithia could see into
his mind, too. She would see a flash of bright light, feel burning pain, like everything was on fire, a sudden burst of energy, and then... Life. She would see the shattered pods, the scorch marks of an electrical fire, the burned walls that had once been immaculate and clean, but now scarred from an explosion. But what she would see most importantly, were the bodies of the other experiments. She would hear the screams of pain of the dying, the alarms going off, a soft, red light bathing the room. Next thing she knew, people in immaculate lab coats would rush into the room from some unseen, hidden room behind a splintered one-way transparisteel window. Their words were strange, but she would be able to pick up their tone of voices, as Slip had back then.
He shouldn't be alive.
The other experiments from his batch had died, Slip was the only survivor. He wasn't even made like the other experiments, either being created while still an embryo in the womb, or taken at a young age and experimented on. No, he had been made completely artificially, completely made from scratch, to create a perfect genetic code, but there had been many, many mistakes. He might be very powerful, yes, but he was extraordinarily unstable, and he could barely use most of that power and strength. Slip had always been different from the other experiments, in many, many ways.
Bithia would see Slip, alone in multiple environments, deserts, arctic regions, mountains, rainforests, even out in the middle of the ocean, by himself, being forced to survive with no outside help, being left on his own to see how well he could survive in a dire survival situation. Being out there, alone, with no one but his own broken mind, it did things to him. He could feel his mind slowly but surely falling faster and faster to the depths, driving him ever closer to madness.
Then, she would see small flickers of the battle between the experiments and the criminal syndicate that tried to pillage the labs. Death was everywhere, blaster bolts flew everywhere, explosions could be heard happening all around, and the fighting seemed to happen in every corridor, in every hallway.
Then would come the visions of after the battle. Bithia would be in Slip's perspective. They were huddled in a corner, bodies surrounding him, both pirate and experiment. He/She looked at their hands, which were shaking, unable to be stopped, they were covered in blood. A bloodied vibroblade lay near them. A dead pirate, with a look of shock still plastered on his face, looked at Slip through his dead, lifeless eyes. Sounds and voices echoed through his head. The voices spoke rapidly, overlapping each other, trying to convince him to cause more pain and death. The death cries of the pirates he had slaughtered still ringing in his mind. He just wanted to fall, deeper and deeper into the abyss, perhaps finding peace at the dead bottom... Perhaps if he were to die, then he might finally have peace...
Then, someone approached Slip, and helped him up. Bithia/Slip looked up at the person as they helped him walk down the hallway. A familiar mess of red hair matched the gaze of the piercing red eyes of the experiment. It was Red. Red merely gave Slip a small, reassuring smile.
"I might be injured, but that doesn't mean I can't help others." Red had told him when Slip asked why Red had helped him, despite showing multiple injuries. Red had always known who he was, someone that would help others, no matter the cost to himself. But Slip had never known who he was. He had never known what he was supposed to be.
Who was he?
"Bithia... I'm... I'm sorry. I didn't know." He told her, aloud, his voice strangely raspy and dry.
"We're not all that different. We're both not supposed to exist. Our very existence is an affront to nature. We should not be alive, at all. I understand. Do you... Do you want me to pull out the needle?" He asked her, tasting blood in his mouth. Connected with her through the Force had taken a toll on him. He felt woozy, his head swimming. He could taste blood in his mouth. He could barely hold himself up, feeling like he was about to pass out.
And because Slip had connected with Bithia through the Force, since Miri could sense him through the Force, she would now be able to sense the presence of another person in the room, one she wouldn't be able to recognize, as they had died before Miri gained her Force powers, but one that was vaguely familiar to her.
This was a weird day, even for Slip's standards. He saw what Red had meant when Red said to expect something entirely unexpected to happen, and Nimdok's dead wife returning from the grave in an indestructible droid body was
definitely something he didn't expect.
Nimdok's life was
way too complex and confusing. Seriously, how many people have both Arimanes and Nimdok had a romantic relationship with?!
