Private Unknown Pathogens

[Jacen Nimdok]

Jedi Temple, Coruscant

The Halls of Healing lived up to their name—long, winding corridors in sterile white or off-gray, illuminated at every turn by bright blue light. As Nimdok entered the wing, flanked by two burly guards and led forward by a silvery medical droid, he was struck by a feeling of foreboding, as if he was walking into someone else’s dream.

After all that had happened within the past few hours, he didn’t think this night could get any more surreal. He didn’t want to believe it could get worse, but the Force was indicating otherwise—that, and the fact that a routine mediscan had apparently warranted moving him from a prison cell to the Halls wasn't a good sign. There was no specifying what was wrong with him, just “unknown pathogens have been detected in your system”.

As the droid took a left at a crossroads, its treads whirring, Nimdok asked, “Where is Kai? Is he here?”

“I am unfamiliar with any patient by that name,” the droid replied.

“The Sithspawn who was brought in with me,” Nimdok insisted. “The one the Jedi were chasing.” The one I had to carry in here. The one whose blood is still on my clothes. The one whose illness I probably caught.

“That one is being held in another area,” the droid said vaguely, still rolling along.

Nimdok halted, forcing the guards behind him to stop. “I want to see him.”

“I am afraid that is not possible—”

“Have I not shown my willingness to cooperate?” Nimdok gestured. “It will only take a few minutes.”

The droid reluctantly diverted its course, leading him to a locked door in an out-of-the-way section. Nimdok didn’t have to stretch out with the Force to sense Kai on the other side. There was no hiding a Dark Side presence in the midst of a sanctuary of the Light, even if this one was subdued and faint. But he was unprepared for the smell that hit him the moment the droid opened the door. A stench of decay, putrid and miasmic. Nimdok staggered backwards, every instinct screaming at him to flee from this pestilence.

He fought to regain some measure of composure. Peering inside the room, he saw only silhouettes. The lights had been dimmed considerably, the brightest glow coming from medical readouts. As he fell back on the Force, he sensed that Kai was awake. Pain rolled off him in waves, emanating outward like ripples in a pond. When Nimdok traced its source, his eyes widened.

Turning to the droid, he muttered, "For the sake of my sanity, please tell me you know what's going on here."

The droid gave a shrug. "Unknown pathogens were detected in his system."

Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

You can't outrun your fears, his mentor had told him.

They always catch up to you.

Such was the case with Dagon and Kai. Shortly after the confrontation with Ishida, the raven-haired Jedi had come to learn Kai had been brought to the Halls of Healing and down the halls Dagon was pacing to the Doppelganger's healing chamber. Endless days and sleepless nights washed away the fear with an unhealthy dose of fatigue. Another stay awake pill and he'd overdose, but that's not the worst scenario. It was Yula Perl finding out.

She was the one occasionally capable of holding back his freight train of energy, pulling him out of the self-battering spiral one way or the other; much like he'd been the one to struggle with keeping her off the spice. It was ironic, really. For all his purpose and virtues he preached, Dagon wasn't any different. Only his vice was. Duty, or rather extreme overtime of duty to the detriment of his body. He'd kept the stay awake pills hidden away from her but he had no need to do so on Coruscant. She was not here and having easier access to them meant he used them more often. It meant forty hours awake.

Were both just really two sides of the same coin?

Dagon couldn't or didn't want to answer that question, let alone ask it. After all, he cared for her more than he cared for himself.

“You took a beating back there. Seems like you take ‘em a lot.” Yula glanced to his chest, her gaze lacking the admiration it held earlier. “Keep going that way, and one of these days a shot of bacta and some rest won’t be enough.”

Savior complex, Yula had called it a hundred times and more.

The lingering presence of the Dark Side, like a pestilence in the House of the Light, furrowed his brow and cleared away his own pestilent thoughts. It was no one else than Kai. Their odd connection easily discernible among the infinite threads of the Force, it flared in familiarity and in intense pain like a thousand banshees wailing in his ears.

He halted in his hurry right next to the door where a somewhat familiar near-human and a droid stood. The man was not a New Jedi that was certain; all knew each other, at least by face if not by name.

"Are you the one who found Kai?" he asked plainly, throwing a momentary glance through the glass of the door. Hardly anything to be seen through the tinted window.

Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Nimdok had stepped away, letting the door slide closed again as he tried to work up the courage to actually enter the room in which Kai lay. In the meantime, he continued to grill the medical droid.

“Is he being quarantined? Should I be quarantined?”

“Not exactly. We have conducted lab tests, and it appears to be bloodborne. In addition, we do not think you are contagious to other species. The pathogens seem to be only attracted to certain physiologies.”

“You mean it targets Shi’ido?” Nimdok didn’t exactly advertise his species, but the mediscan no doubt made it obvious, and he knew Kai was some sort of hybrid mix between Shi'ido and Anzati. Sensing a sudden increase in Kai’s pain, he snapped, “Why hasn’t he been given medication?”

“Pain medication had no effect, even in increasingly higher dosages.”

“Couldn’t someone have at least put him in a healing trance? He’s literally rotting from the inside out!”

"Are you the one who found Kai?"​

At the sound of a new voice, Nimdok turned to face a young Jedi Knight. He squinted at the newcomer in bewilderment, wondering first why does this man look so much like Kai, then where else have I seen this guy before? He fished around in his memory, a flurry of half-remembered images rising to the bait. Yes… a younger version of this Jedi, with a fuller face due to unshed baby fat, had shown up at a crisis meeting or two way back during the days of the Elder Compact controversy. That didn’t mean Nimdok could put a name to the age-thinned, exhaustion-haggard face, however.

“Er, yes,” Nimdok replied. “Master Errik Nimdok, of the Silver Jedi Order. I’ve been looking for Kai for the past three years, and tonight—” He checked his chrono. “Well, last night—he literally fell into my airspeeder. Anyway, who are you?”

Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Ah, the name matched the face of his memories. Master Nimdok was one of the members of the Silver Jedi's Council, if he recalled correctly, and while he didn't remember meeting the man personally before, it explained why Nimdok seemed familiar.

“...I’ve been looking for Kai for the past three years, and tonight—” He checked his chrono. “Well, last night—he literally fell into my airspeeder. Anyway, who are you?”

Three years?! Dagon had encountered Kai less than three years ago, could Nimdok have been the Silver Jedi connected to Kai's creator Messala? The potential revelation sought to open an old, cold case. One which reminded him of that succubus central to Dagon and Kai's encounter - Amelia Ardahl, the memory of her eerily vexing; a tinge of faded out sexual attraction washed away by bloodboiling frustration over her fatal treachery. Kai had saved him from her deadly seduction and he in return had saved him. Sort of. Guilt rushed over him at the thought of the aftermath.

Fear had bound him helpless.

Fear had to be put to rest.

"Dag Kaze." he introduced himself, then to the med droid, "How's he lookin'?"

"Unknown, bloodborne pathogens were detected in his system."

The Jedi's eyes lingered over the droid, then with a curt nod departed into the room. The droid's words fell on deaf ears.

"Arthur, scan him."

"Certainly, Sir."

"Do I need to plug you into the system?"

"Not necessarily, Master Kaze."

"Some day I'll figure out how you've got access to absolutely everything."

"I am told I have great manners, Sir."

...and sarcasm, apparently.

There was reluctance in Dagon's approach to Kai, footsteps shackled by fear of the sight of someone who looked exactly liked him, or rather - his brother. Eyes widened and he blinked once, twice before realizing Kai's appearance was different. Not by much but at least there was some distinction between the two. Duty brushed away the surprise and he turned to Nimdok.

"Did he say anything when he landed into your speeder?" there was no chance in hell that actually happened. So why was Nimdok lying?

Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Dag Kaze was clearly eager to get a move on, turning his attention immediately to Kai. The medical droid lingered outside, but the two guards clung close as Nimdok followed Dag through the door.

There was that rotting Shi’ido smell again, alien to Dag, chillingly familiar to Nimdok. He steeled himself against it, stifling his revulsion. The room was dimly lit, and since he didn’t know the reason for it, he eased the brightness up slowly to a more middling range, neither too harsh nor too dark to see.

Kai lay curled up on his side. The position made him look smaller, shrunken. Dark splotches dotted his body, bruises that should have healed. The sheets beneath him had so many spots of blood on them, they had nearly turned black.

"Did he say anything when he landed into your speeder?"

Nimdok detected a note of incredulity in Dag’s voice. “Not at that moment, no,” he muttered with a raised eyebrow. “He was being chased by the Jedi. After I helped him get away—” He eyed the guards. “For which I am now under arrest—he was quite talkative.”

As much as he wanted to help Kai in any way he could, Nimdok did have his own skin to save. Assuming he survived the infection, that is. Dag was prying into a complicated mystery, sniffing at the evidence and pawing for more information like a bloodhound. But some information Nimdok simply would not divulge, mainly because it might incriminate him further. If Dag was smart, he might be able to piece together enough of the puzzle to find some sort of resolution, but he didn’t need to know every little detail of the events of last night.

“To make a long story short, I am familiar with the Sith Lord Messala, and I knew that he had abducted a newborn Bamarri. I was asked by Kai’s guardian to help find him. Kai had apparently been led to believe she was dead, and was quite eager to be reunited with her.” Nimdok sighed. “We had just begun to discuss why the Jedi were after him when things started to go south. He became ill, delirious, paranoid… and then the Jedi caught up to us, and it all fell apart.”

As Nimdok and Dag conversed a few feet away from the bed, Kai had not moved. In the Force, however, he was quite active, stretching toward both of them in kind. He recognized Dag’s presence right away, first embracing him and then shying away in shame and pain.

“He mentioned you,” Nimdok added, his tone a bit more gentle. He didn't know the extent of Kai's relationship to Dag, but he could detect unresolved business from a mile away. “Perhaps you should try to talk to him.”

Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Dagon's brow furrowed in suspicion; Nimdok clearly wasn't putting all his cards on the table. He was about to open his mouth and unleash a plethora of questions when Arthur's voice interrupted him through the earpiece:

<"My scans have finished, Sir. The situation, I must say, is quite delicate."> the Jedi arched an eyebrow, <"I've also taken courtesy to scan this Nimdok individual; both are infected on a DNA level, and while there is no contagion threat to concern you, Sir, I must say that this bacteria has been artificially altered."> to the point, Arthur, <"But more importantly - both Kai and Nimdok are terminal. Meaning that--">

"I know what it means, Arthur." Dagon replied coarsely; the news dried his throat and wrenched his guts. Guilt hammered his shoulders relentlessly, and it would not stop until his bones were dust. He considered informing Nimdok about the information, expecting that the Silver Jedi would in return offer more pieces of the puzzle he was withholding, but Dagon brushed away the thought seeing it as little more than some form of extortion.

Instead, he turned to the only person he could trust in the room.

Kai, who did this to you?, his mind softly drifted to the Sithspawn; telepathy had never been his specialty and it showed in the urgency of his question. Not surprising considering the two people in this room were on the fast track to death. Once more - a race against time.

Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Dag stared wordlessly at Kai, a rather obvious tell that a telepathic conversation was taking place. Nimdok quietly tapped into the discussion, though only on Dag’s end. He had learned the hard way how dangerous it was to establish a mental link with a being who consumed the minds of others.

Immediately he was hit by a flood of fragmented images. Kai was responding to Dag’s question by sharing his memories: dark alleyways in Coruscant’s underworld, many levels down; flashes of lightsaber-wielding pursuers; moving constantly between compromised hiding places. The flow of information gradually trickled down to something more manageable, honing in on a single moment in time.

The scene was set in one such alley. Kai was fleeing, leaving a trail of blood from burn wounds that were slow to close. He turned a corner, only to be confronted by more pursuers. This one was a woman in full body armor; she had a lightsaber in one hand and a dartgun in the other. Skidding to a halt, Kai reached up, stretching his malleable body to grapple for the rooftops. There was a pinprick against his chest just before his feet left the ground; he didn’t stop moving as he found the dart and yanked it out of his flesh. The damned thing was barbed, the prongs still extending as he flung it away and ran across the rooftops.

He thought they knew he couldn’t be downed by tranquilizer darts or poison. That was why they were always turning ion weapons on him, because they had figured out electric currents stopped him from shifting. But there was no time to mull over the oddness of the dart. They were closing in on him, and there was only one direction he could go. A stomach-plunging drop over a metropolitan abyss...

“Alema Rhysode,” Nimdok muttered aloud, identifying the woman in armor. “She was the same Jedi who was chasing Kai when I found him. I... well, I was forced to knock her unconscious—”

He cut himself off, sensing a sudden spike in agitation from Kai. The Sithspawn clung to Dag, babbling deliriously.

<Ishida—Sardun—I didn’t mean to—>

Kai seemed to be trying to explain himself, only for all his excuses to fall apart under scrutiny, not good enough even to the fevered mind of a child. Eventually he devolved into anguished blubbering.

<I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t want to die. Please, I don’t want to die…>

Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

"Calm down, Kai. You're going to be fine, okay?" he immediately said through gritted teeth as the shared memory subsided, leaving him sweaty. There was never getting used to that, not with Kai's raw and untrained abilities; it always felt like a storm barging through your front door.

A Jedi using bioweapons??

He brushed a raven lock of hair matted with sweat from his brow. They were running out of time. Frustration and guilt clenched his fist and he barely contained it from punching something. Taking a deep breath, he turned to Nimdok.

"We need to find this Alema Rhysode. Fast." he hoarsely stated, then leaned closer onto the Silver Master with a sharp eye scrutinizing the man, "And you need to start talking more. Tell me everything." a deliberate pause, one learned from a thousand interrogations of criminals throughout the underworld, "Because what you and Kai have is going to kill you both." he whispered to the Master's ear, making sure Kai wouldn't hear.

Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Nimdok peered at the whispering Dag with a raised eyebrow. “I am aware of that,” he said dryly. “Don’t breathe on my ears, please.”

He had avoided addressing the matter of his impending demise, but seeing the sorry state Kai was in forced a confrontation with mortality. If this sickness killed Kai, it was likely all over for Nimdok too. Judging by how recent the memory of Rhysode was, they only had a few hours left. Strangely, he thought less about what it would be like to die, and more about how his death would affect others. His family, his friends, his students, even his enemies. Everything felt unfinished...

“Kai,” he addressed the doppelganger in the same fatherly tones he spoke to his children with. “We’re going to save you. For now you need to keep fighting. Let me put you in a healing trance. It’ll buy us some time…” And it would help to alleviate Kai’s suffering in the meantime.

Unlike with the other healers, Kai didn’t fight the trance—Nimdok suspected this had nothing to do with his own skills as a healer, and everything to do with the presence of Dag. Kai trusted the Knight implicitly—and that blind, childlike trust was probably the source of the frustration and guilt that was so obvious in Dag’s body language, to say nothing of how he felt in the Force. Dag wasn’t ready for anything resembling parental responsibility, that was for sure.

With Kai asleep, Nimdok gestured for Dag to follow him out of the room. “Now—” he began, only to pause and glance back at the two Temple guards who also emerged from the hospital room. He’d forgotten he was a prisoner under armed guard. Shrugging, he began again.

“Now, I’m afraid there’s not much to tell. My interactions with Alema Rhysode were fairly limited. I don’t know anything else about her, except that she’s one of your Knights. I think it’s safe to assume that she probably isn’t working alone, either. She didn’t strike me as a pathologist mastermind, she seemed like more of a… an enforcer.” He gestured at Dag as he said it, as though to subtly say somebody like you who punches things.

He went on, giving Knight Kaze a firsthand lesson in why so many people in the galaxy wanted to throttle the infamously long-winded professor, and why no one should ever tell him to “start talking”.

“That’s not to say we can’t find her—you all must keep records of your personnel, right? Is there a New Jedi Order directory we can access? Or hell, maybe we could just ask someone, ‘Do you know where Alema Rhysode is?’ I mean, it can’t be that hard to find her, especially if she doesn’t know we know she’s involved in all this. Unless she’s smarter than us, in which case she would probably have already skipped town, and we’re screwed. Well, I’m screwed. You’ll be fine...”

Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Nimdok did talk a lot.

Throwing himself in murky waters was something so typical of him but right now every bit of information seemed vital so he assimilated every syllable the talkative Master uttered. As gregarious as Dagon was, he always seemed a bit aloof when fixated on an investigation. Experience had taught him to trust nothing but hard, solid proof. Nimdok hardly was one.

"Hmm, Rhysode's a familiar surname.. but Alema Rhysode's not New Jedi." they were a small order, a rag tag band of scumbags compared to their Silver cousins. There had been, however, an influx of new initiates and returning Jedi wanderers into the fold recently. He scratched his chin, "...unless someone else has given her Kai's location, then she would've had to use the New Jedi database to find him. Those are always accessed with credentials; identity and whatnot." Alliance 'recommendations'

Turning to face the two armed figures shadowing the two Jedi, he gestured at Nimdok, "I'm taking him under my custody." a simple nod and the two guards dispersed, then, "Come."

---

"Well, you're right for one thing, she sure isn't a mastermind..." he smirked, gesturing at the screen before him showing Alema Rhysode's identity. "...she sure accessed the database, so--"

He paused. I'm thinking like a detective. I need to think like a Jedi.

"--it's not that surprising, actually." murmured Dagon, Ishida and Sardun crossing his mind. "She is a Jedi, after all, and Kai is a product of Sith Alchemy." not every case had to be complicated, sometimes it's so simple that you throw it away. "Fending off the dark side is kind of our job." he said the obvious, then tapped into her profile. A few deets in there. "A Jedi Hunter--" ah, now I know why the name's familiar; I'm certain it came up as an old associate of Sardun's when I was piecing information about the Crusade. "A few of them did arrive here recently, from what I last heard, but most left. Apparently not Alema."

"Gimme a sec." he reached for the inside of his jacket, took out a small gadget, looked left, then right, then left and right again before he plugged into the terminal. One of Yula Perl 's tricky gadets. A handy slicer tool. The screen flashed then numerous more options showed up. The back end of the system. "Let's see what her activity in the database was." tracking a user's activity on any system was a common functionality in every network. This was no different.

"She was looking specifically for Kai." Dagon scowled grimly at the screen. And the case's no longer simple. "So she knew he was on Coruscant but uncertain if he was in our custody. Or she didn't know he was on Coruscant but wanted to know if he was in our custody."

He was cramping, sitting for so long. And time was ticking down.

I'll think on the way.

"We need to go find her. The Seekers that came often frequented a small, ancient temple not far from here. Apparently, it used to be the Seekers' place of 'worship' eons ago, or something."


Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

“The name is familiar to me as well,” Nimdok said, smoothly transitioning into a history lecture. “Ganner Rhysode was a Jedi who fought in the Yuuzhan Vong War. He went out in a blaze of glory, fighting off hordes of Vong so that Jacen Solo could escape. It was such a memorable end, he was deemed worthy of becoming a part of Vong mythology, as ‘the Ganner’...”

He stopped long enough to listen to what Dag had to say. “Oh, just because you don’t know her doesn’t mean she isn’t New Jedi. The average person can only know about a hundred people before they start forgetting names and faces. Well, the average human, anyway… oh, thanks.” He waved goodbye to the dismissed guards’ backs. “I wouldn’t have minded them tagging along. I’m not a very good fighter. Usually have a bodyguard or bring a friend along. Only reason I didn’t have one tonight was because… well, I’d have to kill you if I told you.”

Okay, maybe he wasn’t usually this talkative. The smirk that followed his clichéd remark was definitely a nervous smile.

***​

“Wow.” Nimdok muttered, thoroughly unimpressed. “It even has a cute little picture of her.”

As it turned out, Alema was a red-skinned Twi’lek with green eyes. There were some rather ornate black tattoos on her lekku. That was one distinguishing feature he could work with. The better question was, how on earth had she managed to fit those gorgeous headtails of hers into that helmet?...

Dag was muttering something about how it was the Jedi’s job to hunt down the Dark Side, and how Kai was a Sithspawn, and so on and so forth. His words were punctuated by several awkward pauses. Nimdok glanced over at him with a raised eyebrow, but Dag’s eyes were wandering, looking around to make sure no one could see before he stooped to insert a sketchy-looking device into the database.

The Jedi Knight’s hands trembled a little when tasked with something as delicate as plugging in an electronic. Odd.

“You were the one who found Kai and brought him here, right?” Nimdok asked casually. “If a Jedi is supposed to ‘fend off the Dark Side’, why did you bring a Sithspawn into the Temple?” He could think of a few obvious answers to that question, but he really wanted to gain a better insight into what Dag thought of all this.

As the shifty device discovered more damning info on Alema, Nimdok turned back to the screen. “Hm.” He propped his elbow on the desk and leaned his head on his hand. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think all this started just because a bored Jedi Hunter wanted to hunt a Sithspawn.” He looked at Dag again, this time trying to judge whether it was a good idea to ask his next question.

“I assume you are aware that Kai was on the run. He was very concerned about you getting in trouble too. Did you know that he had been feeding on the minds of criminals, with the idea being that he would show you what he found in their memories, to aid you in your detective work?” Nimdok suspected it was a flimsy (or perhaps even delusional) excuse to justify Kai’s peculiar form of energy vampirism, but there was always a chance that Dag had been using the kid for information. It would certainly explain a few things. But if it was wrong, well, Dag might see it as an accusation, even if Nimdok tried to be as gentle as possible about it. Like he was breaking the bad news to a dying man.

Oh, hell.

Regardless of how he answered, they were leaving for this small, ancient temple not far from here as soon as possible. “Who’s driving, you or me?” Nimdok asked, heading for the door.

Dagon Kaze​

 

[Dagon Kaze]

The average person isn't a super recognizer either.

But that bit wasn't special, it was Nimdok's admission of bringing bodyguards to combat that made him arch an eyebrow. Dagon couldn't imagine himself not being there in the heat of the battle; and not out of some ridiculous gladiator slash warrior code crap but because it was on the precipice, staring down at the maw of death, where he felt most alive. Something Asmundr probably assumed given Dagon's terrible lack of practice in meditating and something the Knight would never really admit aloud.

He had to ignore reacting to Nimdok's oddities and curious questions to focus on finding out more about Rhysode. Until--

“I assume you are aware that Kai was on the run. He was very concerned about you getting in trouble too. Did you know that he had been feeding on the minds of criminals, with the idea being that he would show you what he found in their memories, to aid you in your detective work?”

His face turned pale at the revelation, blankly staring at the screen before him. The flames of irritation began to stir in his guts. Irritation at his own stupid fears preventing him from helping Kai and at Kai himself. That vampirism wasn't any different than Amelia's, the same woman that had kept Kai a prisoner. But then again Kai was a newborn in an adult's body. A child without a guardian to teach him to know any better.

Ugh.

"No." the raven-haired Jedi replied cooly then suddenly snapped up on his feet to leave. "Let's go."

***​

It was as certain as the sun that Dag would be the one driving. For all he knew, Nimdok would end up straight up crashing into the temple demanding answers. Okay, that one was maybe an exaggeration but he preferred to be the one in the driving seat always.

He brought the speeder to a halt a block away from the temple and they took to walking. The temple itself was hardly noticeable. Cramped between massive, modern buildings, even its architecture of a clearly bygone era was easy to miss. So old was the temple that its door still had hinges, or rather was supposed to have hingest to keep it from being slightly ajar.

It creaked upon opening despite Dagon's cautious and annoyingly slow pull and revealed dark hall, largely abandoned, with only the light of day fighting through the dirt and grime of its ancient stained glass windows. Not a person in sight and hardly anything of worth marked the area.

Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Nimdok noticed Dag’s paleness before the Knight turned cold. What an interesting reaction.

“He clearly admires whatever you’re doing, and wants to imitate it,” Nimdok observed, tucking his hands into his pockets as they headed for the parking lot. “I don’t know why, but… well, I suppose it isn’t that hard to figure out. Jedi fit the requirements for childhood heroes.” He smiled faintly, as though looking back fondly on his own youth. “My point is, don’t feel so bad about it. It’s not your fault the Littlest Vampire idolizes you and wants to bring dinner home like a loyal dog dropping his prey at your feet. He just doesn’t know any better...”

***​

Fate had mercy upon Dagon Kaze that night, for Nimdok shut up for the entire duration of the ride. The professor leaned his elbow against the speeder door, his head propped against his hand as he stared out the window at the passing scenery. His gaze occasionally darted to his datapad, balanced on one knee, as he debated whether he should try to contact someone. None of his loved ones were within reach here on Coruscant. It was almost funny, really. He might be in the heart of the galaxy, but he was far from home.

The blissful silence came to an end when Nimdok caught sight of the ancient temple. He leaned forward suddenly in his seat, causing his datapad to fall to the floorboards with a thud.

“A temple exclusively for Jedi Seekers, eh?...” he murmured, practically vibrating. So excited was he to explore the place, he actually leaped out of the speeder before Dag could park it—only to stand awkwardly outside the ruins, unwilling to enter alone.

Dag’s torturously slow opening of the front door ended with Nimdok scraping past him as soon as the way was wide enough. For someone who seemed to run his mouth whenever possible, Nimdok was remarkably stealthy. His footsteps were silent as he entered the ruined temple, looking around with nightvision that made his eyes shine like those of a nocturnal predator, and his presence in the Force shrank down to that of a pinprick, effectively disappearing.

He started to change his appearance, too, perhaps thinking it would be best to not present to Alema Rhysode or any of her cohorts as Nimdok. But his efforts to shapeshift were soon stopped by a spike of pain in his gut that exploded into nausea and wooziness. "Chit," he whispered, reverting back in a cold sweat. It took him a moment to shake it off, but he was able to keep moving.

The temple structure wasn’t very large, but it did have more than one level. Stairs led up into dusty darkness, and steps led down into musty dimness. There was light emanating from the basement, and Nimdok could sense a living presence below their feet. Approaching the steps, he began to descend.

Dagon Kaze​