The Twi’lek known as Zero stepped around the corner and into the mess hall. He emerged as he always did, without fanfare, always within a crowd of inmates large enough to mask his point of entry. As far as appearances went, his was a model of absolute subtlety: one moment he wasn’t there, the next he was.
All around him, the hall was already getting busy. The dinner hour had just begun. Falling silently into line behind two prisoners who’d just picked up their trays, he edged closer to them.
“Any news?”
At the sound of his voice, the other two inmates turned and glanced back at him with a squint of recognition. “Hey, Z,” one of them said, his mouth twisting into a gap-toothed grimace. “Where you been keeping yourself?”
“Here and there,” the Twi’lek answered vaguely. “Who’s asking?”
“Just curious, is all. We were all wondering what happened to you when that bomb went off.”
The Twi’lek frowned and shook his head. “That was no bomb.”
“No?”
“The kitchen staff found a pressure cooker full of chemicals lodged inside the dishwasher.” He glanced at the line of inmates waiting to be served their evening meal. “Guess we’ll all be eating off dirty trays for a while.”
The second inmate blinked, processing the information. “Somebody sending a message? Creating a diversion, like?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What, then?”
Zero didn’t answer, scanning the room in front of him. The inmate to his right, a convicted smuggler and three-time loser named Miggs, gave a shrug. “Yeah, well, whaddaya gonna do, am I right?”
With a distracted nod, Zero stepped forward. They carried their trays into the serving line, bypassing a half-dozen members of the Gravity Massive, their faces bruised and swollen. At least one of them was still actively bleeding through his makeshift bandages.
“You hear what happened to them?” Miggs asked.
“Run-in with the Bone Kings,” Zero said. “Word is they hashed it out in the tunnels last night before the bout.”
“Figures.” Miggs held up his tray so that the service droid on the other side of the counter could slop a ladle of colorless protein gel into it. “Ugh, this stuff smells even worse than usual.”
Behind him, Zero raised his own tray. With a click of recognition, the kitchen droid paused and then turned to lift the lid on a different serving tureen, extending tongs from its manipulators to serve Zero a steaming portion of succulent-smelling meat and fresh vegetables.
“Traladon steak, medium rare, with Ramorean caponata and a side of fresh sufar greens,” it announced.
“Thank you.” Zero nodded and took the tray, carrying it forward while the droid went back to the vat of gray, semi-liquefied gel for the next convict in line.
“You see that fight, by the way?” he asked.
“You kidding?” Miggs glanced at the con who had followed them into the main dining area, to their usual table at the far end of the room. “Halleck and I clocked the whole thing on holo from the gallery, watched it like eight times already, right?”
Sitting down, the inmate behind him, Halleck, bobbed his head up and down. “Squall of a thing, too. You shoulda clocked on it, Zero, for real.”
“Is that so?” The Twi’lek cut off a thin slice of steak and sniffed it before putting in into his mouth. “What happened?”
“That red-skinned freak, the one they call the Tooth? What’s his name, Jagannath?” Miggs shoveled in a bite of his own food and gulped it down, wiping the corner of his mouth with his shirt cuff. “They put him in there again, and the powers that be or whatever, they match him up against this crazy snow beast—”
“A wampa?” The Twi’lek cocked an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that they actually still have one of them here.”
“Had one,” Miggs said grimly, picking up his fork again. “So anyway, it starts out pretty much exactly like you’d expect. This wampa’s just pounding the unholy guts out of old Redskin—really making him work for his dinner, right? I mean, it’s not even fair. We’re all thinking Mr. Tooth is gonna lose a lot more than his tooth this time, you know what I’m saying?” Another bite, loaded in, chewed twice, and swallowed. “Then all of a sudden, just when you think it’s over—bam!” Miggs slammed his fist on the table and paused for dramatic effect. “The Tooth, like, actually reaches in and tears open the thing’s chest—”
“Is that so?”
“—and then he shoves his hand into the thing’s stomach up to his elbows, grabs the thing’s heart, and, like, crushes it in his bare hands.”
“Mm.” Zero took another bite of steak. “Impressive.”
“I’m not even yanking you, man—they showed the whole thing. And then, boom, the wampa just kinda sags back and dies on the spot.”
Miggs shook his head again. “Totally nonlinear. Makes you think, though.”
Zero stopped chewing. “Does it?”
“Yeah, I mean …” Miggs picked up his fork, nudged his food around the tray, and put it down again. “ ’Cause, I mean, when you cogitate on it—if they’ve got a wampa in here, then seriously … who knows what else they got locked up downside, you know?”
“Such as …?”
“Well, I mean, like the Wolf Worm.”
Zero gazed at him opaquely. “You really believe that?”
“Dunno, man. I heard rumors, is all. Way down inside the prison where nobody ever goes.”
The Twi’lek was about to comment when he felt something bump against him hard enough to knock his tray sideways. He turned around and saw the inmates standing directly behind him.
Bone Kings. Four of them. Zero studied their faces, one by one.
“Nice meal, Ze-ro,” the bald, bearded inmate in front said, drawing the name out with deliberate, singsong mockery while he eyed the half-finished steak and greens on Zero’s plate. “You know, there something I’ve always been meaning to ask you. How come you always get to eat better than the rest of us?”
“I would think that would be abundantly obvious,” Zero said. “I walk a higher path than you do.”
“Is that so?”
“In almost every conceivable regard,” Zero said, “yes.”
A silence fell between them. He recognized the man in front of him as Vas Nailhead, boss of the Kings. Nailhead was a flesh-eater, known among the gladiatorial fighting circuit for devouring at least some part of every living thing he’d ever killed. Word was that he enjoyed a cult following and was one of the few inmates to receive fan mail, packages, even the occasional wedding proposal—although rumors circulated that he actually had a family and relatives back on Tepasi.
“Funny thing is …” Nailhead leered at him, spit bubbles clustered at the corners of his lips—he was literally foaming at the mouth. From inside the left sleeve of his uniform, a long hard shape protruded against the fabric, its sharpened tip just visible at the end of his sleeve. “I bet your blood comes spilling out just as easily as anybody else’s here. What do you think?”
On either side of him, in his peripheral vision, Zero saw Miggs and Halleck rising gamely to their feet into a protective stance. He gestured for them to sit down.
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I’m sure that Mr. Nailhead was just getting ready to apologize for his unseemly behavior.”
“Wrong again, Ze-ro.” Without waiting for an answer, Nailhead reached down and grabbed Zero’s collar, yanking him to his feet so abruptly that the Twi’lek’s tray flipped over and went clattering to the floor, spilling the remains of his steak and greens across the tiles beneath their feet. The sharpened shaft of bone in Nailhead’s sleeve had edged up so and was now pushing into the soft place beneath Zero’s neck.
“See, we learned something new last night when we faced off against the Gravity Massive in the tunnels,” Nailhead said. “Us and them. Worked it out together, you might say.”
“Oh?” The Twi’lek’s gaze remained absolutely steady. “And what might that be?”
“We don’t need you nearly as much as you need us. Fact is, the only reason you run the place like this is because these maggots think you do. Once they stop thinking it, you stop running it.”
“Fascinating,” Zero said. “It’s a miracle that none of you was hurt, thinking so hard.”
Nailhead grunted. “Not half as fascinating as it’s gonna be when we haul you off to the tunnels and rip out your throat.”
“Is that what Delia would want?”
Nailhead stiffened. He pushed the sharpened bone slightly deeper into the soft tissue of Zero’s throat, fixing him with his stare. “What did you just say?”
“Your sister,” the Twi’lek answered. “She still sends you letters, doesn’t she? Because she thinks about you. She remembers what life used to be like on Tepasi. After everything you’ve done, she hasn’t stopped hoping you’ll come back and be the boy that she remembers. The one who could always sing and make her laugh with every verse of ‘Sweet Fronda Fane.’ ”
Nailhead drew in a shallow, audible breath and cocked his head ever so slightly. Behind the erumpent tangle of his beard, all the ferocity had drained from his expression, leaving his face strangely slack and vacant.
“How did you …” He swallowed and continued, his voice oddly hoarse. “How did you know about that?”
“I’ve been here a long time,” Zero said. “You learn all sorts of things when you’ve been here as long as I have. A person of interest such as myself hears things. About your family and your sister in particular. And of course, I can always pass on messages in either direction.”
Nailhead released him and took a step back. For an instant a spark of what could have been actual civility shimmered in the cloudy depths of his eyes—a distant clarity that reflected back on the man he might have been beneath years of suffocating depravity.
“Perhaps it’s time you return to your friends, Mr. Nailhead.” Zero spoke in the same gentle, patient tone with which he might suggest an evening stroll through the common area. “It sounds as if you still have some thinking to do.”
Nailhead took another step away, his hands hanging limp at his sides. He said nothing, didn’t even blink, just turned and began making his way back across the dining hall to where the other Bone Kings were waiting.
“Whoa,” Miggs exhaled as he and Halleck watched Nailhead depart. “Zero, man, that was crazy, even for you. How did you—”
He looked back at the table and stopped.
Zero was already gone.