Questions

[Munin]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

It made sense, in a way.

The things she was remembering were probably repressed in some way, pushed deep into her subconscious as a way of protecting herself. Munin wasn't a master psychologist or anything, but he'd read enough medical books to at least toss out a haphazard theory. He wouldn't tell her that of course, mostly because he didn't want her to think he was trying to diagnose her or anything, yet the concept was firmly embedded in his mind, and he made a mental note to perhaps...probe a bit more later.

"I see." He said quietly as he pointed the flash light towards the end of the hall.

Munin was no stranger to repressed memories. He himself had...issues with his past, though they weren't really his own fault. The orphanage that he and Huginn had been a part of had experimented on them as kids, or so he figured. There was no real evidence save for the small cybernetics embedded throughout his body, but given that he hadn't put them there...well there was really only one explanation. He frowned for a moment.

Should he share that with her? Was it too much? For a moment he looked at her. He doubted that she would turn on him, in truth she didn't seem at all the type. His past had mostly been kept a secret, though he'd told Spark nearly a day after first meeting her. Perhaps just a small token.

"Memories are tricky." Munin said quietly. "I know from experience."

They shared that at least.

After another turn they found what they were looking for, or so it seemed. A wall placard read "Archives", beside it sat a heavy security door that looked to be completely sealed shut.

 

[Kuzo]

"It's not that these are tricky.... just that.... I never expected....." she sighed, clearly frustrated with herself.

"They didn't seem relevant. How could they have? But now....."

She paused, ostensibly focused on the keypad of the security door. Of course it wouldn't be the same as the door upstairs, but she tried the code again anyway. There was no surprise on her face when it didn't work and she just shrugged.

"What connection does my father have to this facility?" She mused, barely realizing she was speaking aloud as her hand hovered over the keypad.

Simon Ven closed the bedroom door behind him very softly. A girl, just barely a teenager, all dark hair and hazel eyes, looked up at him from the kitchen table.

"She's resting now," he said softly, sitting beside his daughter. Irajah put her head down on her crossed arms, stifling a sob. He reached over, stroking her hair absently, a distance in his eyes.

"She's not going to be okay, is she?"

He frowned, looking down at the top of her head. His hand stopped moving for a moment as he drew in one, long, ragged breath. With the exception of one, complicated thing, he had promised that he would never lie to his daughter. He didn't start now.

"No, Irajah. She's very, very sick."

"It's not fair," came the whispered reply. "You're a doctor. You should be able to help her." She turned her face in to her hands. He understood that she wasn't really accusing him. But the hopelessness had to go somewhere.

"This is out of my hands to fix," he said softly. "But there is something I can do, to help make her more comfortable-" Slowly, as if considering each word before they hit the open air. He paused, hesitant now, before pushing on. "And maybe, I think, you can help too."

Irajah slowly looked up at him. Her dark hair stuck to her cheeks where tears had tracked down, but they hovered just at the corners of her eyes now. Angrily, she dashed them away with the back of her hand.

"I can help? I'll do anything to help mom."

Slowly, Simon nodded. He shouldn't- couldn't- tell her everything. But it was time to tell her part of the truth, at least. And a lie. Yes. A lie was necessary. For all of them.

"No. It wouldn't....."

She trailed off before reaching up again. Her hand shaking.

I-N-A-R-A

She closed her eyes, as if that would change anything. The positive *bip* from the keypad actually made her flinch.

[member="Munin"]

 

[Munin]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

Munin watched her for a few moments, her hand shaking, her eyes closed, her entire body seemingly frozen in place.

Part of him wanted to say something, but he didn't know what. He was neither a psychologist nor a councilor, and on his best days he was as emotionally closed off as a chair. He had never really been in a situation like this. There had been a few times with Spark, but that was different, he loved her...cared for her, Irajah...at best she was an acquaintance. Munin could hardly go up to her and hug her, even patting her on the back seemed like a terrible thing to do at this point in time.

So he simply stood there in silence.

There was nothing he could do to help her, nothing he could say. The only option that he had open to him would be providing her with the closure that she so desperately sought, giving her an out to the memories that she was clearly having. She didn't even need to speak out loud for him to notice, it was obvious. The way she simply stood in place, typed the command key, and then seemed half-traumatized after doing it. He didn't need to be a genius to figure that out.

"Let's..." He began very slowly, not wanting to startle. "Let's go inside."

What else was he supposed to say. "Whatever you're looking for, answers, questions...It'll be in there."

Much more probably.

There was still no telling what they would really find in the Archives, but Munin knew there was no way they could keep standing out here waiting for the next flash of memory to suddenly hit her and cause her to break down.

 

[Kuzo]

The door to the archives got stuck open halfway, a sad, impotent whirring the only sign that the gears were trying their hardest. Fortunately, it was plenty of room for the pair to slip through. Wordlessly, Irajah glanced around. She grabbed a metal stool, wedging it in to the door opening. Just in case. It was mostly reflexive- her mind was clearly elsewhere.

The Archives were a mess. They paused for a moment, surveying the computer carnage.

"What happened here?" she murmured, though she wasn't really looking for an answer.

Someone had clearly tried to trash the place. Tables and stools had been thrown in to databanks. Most of the screens had been smashed. She bent down, frowning as gloved hands brushed over dark, rust coloured stains on the floor. Blood? Maybe. Impossible to tell.

For all of the destruction, it looked... haphazard. It looked.... like an action taken out of anger, rather than from a systematic desire to destroy all of the information here.

"Do you think the data is intact?" She asked, looking around to find him. Of course, the question was unnecessary- [member="Munin"] was already finding a place to plug in.

 

[Munin]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

"Probably." He said with a shrug.

"Most people think that if they destroy the screen of a terminal they somehow destroy the data inside of it." That was a very, very foolish assumption. Munin searched through the different terminals. A few had been ripped from their spot, others had simply been smashed to bits, and still others contained simply no screen save for broken shards of glass. He frowned for a minute, and then finally found a terminal that was still somewhat intact.

The screen was gone, but all the ports were still there. From his bag he pulled out his datapad and plugged it in, folding open his machine and letting the system power on. "Most of the time Data isn't stored on the actual terminal, rather it's thrown on a server and simply accessed. With a facility like this I can't imagine they wouldn't take that precaution."

Unless the entire place had been run by idiots.

"Ah." Munin said as his screen lit up and immediately asked him for log-in credentials. "See? All good."

Computers could last a surprisingly long time if they were left untouched, especially in an environment such as this. There was no moisture down here to ruin drives, no plants invading parts, and no wind or sound to push this around. It was really the perfect place to store equipment, likely why the Archives had been built down here in the first place. He shifted slightly and typed in a few key command, trigerring the run of a program that would slide into the database.

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah nodded absently. As [member="Munin"] worked, she moved carefully around the archives. Stepping gingerly, her gaze swept the room, but didn't really see anything to occupy her thoughts. Right now, it was just waiting until he got in to the system. After a single sweep, she settled in behind him. She kept her distance- she didn't want to hover- but she wanted to know as soon as he found something.

Hazel eyes settled on a point somewhere beyond the walls, a small frown forming on her face.

Some things you never forget.

"I think," her father said slowly, as if trying out the words for the first time, "That you have the ability to.... learn something that can help her."

The teenager just blinked at him for a long minute, then nodded.

"I need you to understand something, Irajah," Simon Ven said, his tone serious. "I'm going to teach you something that I learned... back-" there was a slight pause, "when I was a Jedi."

Irajah's eyes got very big for a moment, and then she nodded again, most slowly this time. Her father never wanted to talk about it his with the Jedi. Forbid anyone from asking him about it for that matter. Her mother was not only content to leave it at that, but seemed uncomfortable on a rare occasions it had come up. She felt a thrill of excitement- and hope.

Simon continued, his gaze focusing unerringly on his daughter.

"I'm going to teach you," he repeated, "but we cannot-tell-your-mother. She would never let us help her if she knew it was with the Force- do you understand?"

Not really. Not at all actually. But she wasn't about to mess this up.

"Of course. I won't tell mama. I promise. When can we start?"

He sighed, his expression troubled.

"Right now."

The sound of a quiet beeping brought her back to the presence. Munin had found something.

 

[Munin]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

He sifted through the data quickly. At first it was nothing but a scroll of numbers and different crypt-keys, not really surprising with a place like this. There was always a chance that whatever they stumbled on would just be a random jumble of ones and zeroes that they couldn't decode, but as more and more of the data began to form in Munin's own programs noted the subtle patters that existed within the Archives own storage system. It took only a few more minutes more, and then slowly everything started to be properly arranged.

A minute more passed, and then a beep sounded out.

The Archives were sectioned off into different areas, mostly research type and researchers themselves. Munin didn't find that too surprising either, of course different researchers would catalog and move their own studies so they could be properly and more easily pulled up when one had to look back. For a moment Munin scrolled through the information, caching a few bits that he himself was interested in, and then he stumbled upon something else. His eyebrow perked, and slowly he looked over at Irajah.

For a moment he waited, though then he realized how silly he was being.

"Here." Munin offered her the datapad. "You'll want to look at this."

The data on the screen, Munin was fairly sure, was what Irajah was looking for, if the name on the file was any indication.

 

[Kuzo]

She hesitated for only a moment before peering over his shoulder. Even if there hadn't been a name, the image that floated on the screen would have jarred her. Thirty years younger than when he'd died, it was impossible to mistake her father for anyone else. Dark hair and dark eyes. Blue clan tattoos dotted the right side of his face in a line along the cheekbone, a series of ever smaller circles that she knew led all the way to his ear.

Irajah had already known that he was involved here, somehow. She couldn't pretend otherwise. But seeing his name on the screen caused her stomach to clench tight.

Doctor S. Ven
Senior Researcher

She skimmed over the scant information- date and planet of birth, employee number, desk assignment until-

Project list. There is was.

Solomon
White-Wing
Jericho
Chalice
Gideon

"Project Gideon," she breathed, barely realizing she had spoken outloud.

[member="Munin"]

 

[Munin]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

"Yeah." Munin said quietly.

He hadn't wanted to take first look, though unbeknownst to Irajah he had already copied nearly the entire Database within the Archive. Sneaky? Yes. Immoral? Perhaps. He was here for information, it didn't particularly matter to him what that information was or where it came from.

She would get what she wanted, and he would get what he wanted. A fair deal really. "I thought you would want to look first."

Whatever was in there Irajah at the very least deserved to look first, she deserved to see whatever had been hidden away within her life. It was a generosity that Munin hoped he would receive one day. He and Spark were already on the trail of the center of Orphanages that had raised him, and hopefully eventually he would be able to find his own 'project gideon' whatever it might be or wherever it might lead him in the end. He watched her for a moment, and then spoke again.

"Do you want to be alone?" Again, kindness.

Perhaps not what one might expect from an Information Broker, but he sympathized with her.

 

[Kuzo]

"No," she said, a little too quickly.

She didn't want to be alone. After those five, long months on a dead planet, she knew that she could do without being alone ever again. It wasn't specifically his presence that she needed. It didn't matter that it was [member="Munin"] in particular. But the idea of being alone in this room, reading this? No. It didn't suit at all.

Swallowing hard, she waited, her stomach a knot of fire, as he opened the file.

There, on the screen in front of them, floated the virus that infected Irajah's body.

She had done the scans, studied the virus- it was impossible to mistake the sheer size and complexity of it. She would know it anywhere. And now it had a name. Gideon. And a face.

The face of her father.

She skimmed only briefly over the technical information about the virus itself. After all, she already knew that. There were a number of video journal entries, and she reached over, tapping the last file.

"Project Gideon is everything we hoped it would be."

The tattooed face of Simon Ven, young, but tired and drawn, stared at them.

"The most recent batch of test subjects has proved to be more than satisfactory. Transmission times are perfect- swift without causing the viral load to collapse in on itself as in previous iterations. We are still unable to find a way to induce transmission to a host with Yuuzhan Vong grafts. But the number of individuals that would exempt from infection, well, the number is infinitesimal when considered on a galactic scale."

He sat back, rubbing at his temples and shuffling through a series of flimsies on the desk in front of him.

"I am prepared to put my final stamp of approval on Project Gideon. Consider this trial a complete success. Further tinkering will do nothing to further its purpose. We have had a ninety-nine percent success rate. Only subject seven-nine-oh has shown an immunity to the virus-"

There was more, but Irajah abruptly reached forward, freezing the recitation.

"I'm going to need copies," she said, her voice low and husky. "Of all of it."

 

[Munin]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

His own copies would of course remain tucked safely into his datapad, but that didn’t meant he couldn’t create more for Irajah. That was really the beauty of data in general, there wasn’t any cost of prohibition against copying, no issue at all. All he quite literally had to do was push two buttons and it was done.

”I can do that for you.” Munin said simply.

He would too. There was quite a bit to go through here, not just of what Irajah had found, but other things that were within this lab. He found it all...rather interested, not to mention that it was worth a fortune and a half to the right people.

The Information Broker was already imagining the possibilities, and they were surprisingly...well intentioned. Perhaps a few months ago he would have sold this research to the highest bidder, but now...after all he’d been through with Spark, his mind was more inclined towards the brighter side of life. There were plenty of medical companies in the galaxy, and some of them, like Arkuhn Medical would pay a premium for things like this.

”What do you want to do with this place?” He asked, it was her history after all. ”I brought charges. We can destroy it.”

The quiet suggestion was as much for his own good as hers.

If this laboratory and it’s Archive were destroyed, then no one else could have the data he now had.

 

[Kuzo]

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSVMgRr6pw[/media]

She stared at the darkened screen for a long time. His question hung in the air, unanswered- it wasn't clear if it was unheard as well at first. There was a faint tremor, as though the foundation of the building shifted ever so slightly.

*****

It didn't take long for the search team to clear out- they had other places to be, after all. Too much work and never enough hands. The ruined walls loomed in front of her. Slowly, she'd walked toward the building, hazel eyes unfocused.

It had been impossible to miss the signs of a lifetime of abuse and neglect on the child's body. The injuries from the actual bombing had been relatively minor, a miracle itself. But his history was written across his flesh, indelible and silently accusing. Accusing who?

Everyone.

She didn't go inside. The fury in her breast surprised her, but the surprise was distant and numb in comparison. She didn't know this boy. Her own history, her own family- while secret ridden- was full of love. She could not think of a time, even once, when one of the adults in her life had raised a hand to her. She knew of course that it happened. Someone couldn't work in a hospital without coming face to face with horrific abuse. And her own experience, surviving the devastation of her planet- she had thought that from now on, perhaps she'd be immune to these small injustices. But there was nothing small about this.

Both of her hands were on the wall. She didn't remember reaching up, but there they were. Arms outstretched, elbows locked, she leaned heavily on her hands, hanging her head. Her chest hurt, she could barely breathe. The feeling of tension singing through her body- of anger- of burning fury- felt as though it would tear her apart. She had held all of that, her own feelings about the loss of her people, so tamped down, so under control for the last few months. She couldn't afford it, she had convinced herself, these raw, rampant emotions.

In this moment, at least, Irajah didn't care.

*****

"Hey, Doc, you were right next to that building when it collapsed. But you don't have a scratch on you. Will of the Force, that was."

*****

When their eyes met, she felt a stab of fear unlike anything she'd felt today. The explosion, all of it, it didn't compare to the way his eyes rested on her.

She didn't think. Just reacted. Leaning forward, she put herself between Ghorua the Shark and the unconscious man. Taking her hand off of him, she planted both palms in the rubble. Bracing herself, her entire being was filled with nothing but the sensation of

NO

The word reverberated through her, fueled by fear and anger- anger at the situation they were in, anger at her own decision to not do everything in her power to save this man. And an older anger. Anger that, no matter how hard she tried to pretend it didn't, fueled every step of her life since the death of her planet. The calm control was a iron clad shell. But what it contained was something that mirrored the bloodlust in the Herglic's eyes. Survive. At all costs.

No. GO.

Afterward, she couldn't have told someone that she had done anything. It wasn't a conscious action. But the ground had started to shake, the fissure had opened up and suddenly, the threat was gone. She stayed still for a long moment, breathing heavily, her hands and arms shaking where they held her up. Rocking back on her heels, she frowned, reaching up to her face. Her fingertips came away from her nose, bloody. How had that happened?

​*****

Very slowly, she blinked. Her eyes refocused, but she didn't look at @Munin.

"Yes. But not like that." Her voice was low, surprisingly even and calm.

"Once we get up the shaft, you go on ahead. Meet me back at the ship. I'll be along shortly."

*****

She joined up with him about twenty minutes after he arrived at the ship. The sound of stone against stone, the barest feeling of movement had preceded her by some time. She didn't look him in the eye, just moved past him without a word. There was fresh blood on her sleeve, but from what wasn't clear.

It wasn't until he had the ship in the air, clearing the tops of the trees, that he could see where the facility had sat. Where it had been situated, there was now a yawning sinkhole. Raw duracrete and the sucking swamps swirled together, swallowing the remains.

In a few weeks, there would likely be no trace that the facility ever existed here. At least, no trace here, beneath the mire.