They brought Maul up in the crowded service lift, two guards flanking him on either side with another at his back, jamming the barrel of his blaster against his spine. Gazing up into the reflective surface of the lift’s interior, he recognized the face of Smight, the young recruit who had first screened him when he’d arrived.
“What are you looking at?” Smight asked him.
Maul’s lower lip drew back enough to reveal his sharpened canines. “Touch me with that toy of yours again,” he said, his voice utterly expressionless, “and you’ll find out.”
Smight’s face constricted, but he didn’t poke Maul with the blaster again.
When the lift came to a halt, the COs ushered him into the gleaming office whose sleek and elegant interior couldn’t have been more dissimilar from the rest of the prison. Stepping through the doorway, Maul saw the dark-haired woman with cold blue eyes standing just inside behind the desk. Her gaze was steady enough, but the smile on her face looked as if it had been glued into place by a pair of none too steady hands.
“Inmate 11240,” she said. “I’m Warden Sadiki Blirr. You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake your hand.”
Maul said nothing.
“We’ve had some unforeseen developments down in medbay this afternoon.” She nodded at the monitors behind her. “Our surveillance of that time period is incomplete, and I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me fill in the gaps.”
Maul didn’t respond.
“You heard the warden,” one of the guards said, not Smight this time but a heavyset man with thick black eyebrows. “Tell her what you did to Voystock.”
“He had an accident,” Maul said.
“You’re a karking liar,” the guard snapped, reaching for his blaster.
“Actually,” Sadiki said, waving him off, not taking her eyes from Maul, “I’m not even remotely concerned with what happened to Officer Voystock—or who was ultimately responsible for him getting exactly what was coming to him. By all accounts, he was as lazy as he was stupid, and he died in the process of aiding and abetting an ultimately unsuccessful escape attempt. None of which is particularly unusual around here, except that he went about it with remarkable clumsiness and incompetence.” She gave a slight shrug. “Whatever fate befell him, I’m sure he deserved it. He will not be missed.”
Now her smile was different, absolutely confident, even radiant, and Maul realized that his initial assessment of the warden had been wrong—the nervousness he’d perceived had been nothing more than an affectation, meant to throw him off his game. In a strange way, he almost admired it.
“What I am extremely interested in,” Sadiki continued, reaching behind her desk and taking out a tablet so that Maul could see it, “are these electroencephalograph readings. Perhaps you recognize them?”
Maul glanced at the screen, watching the easy waveforms oscillating across it, rhythmic sine waves of deep sedation.
“This is a recording of your brain activity from your initial med screen upon arrival at the Hive,” the warden said. “And here you’ll see something very peculiar.” She tapped a switch and the waveform jumped, lurching into an erratic, spiking landscape of sharp peaks and dips. “What’s happening there?”
Maul met her gaze with absolute indifference. “I have no idea.”
“Really.” Something subtle twitched at the corner of the warden’s lips. “See now, that’s really interesting, because you’ve got my medical droid completely stumped. If you look here”—she pointed at the screen—“there are certain very specialized aspects of your cortex activating that the droid has never seen on any level of REM sleep. Apparently this particular waveform is called an omicron spindle. My droid says it’s only seen it in certain very proficient telepaths. Which makes you very special indeed.”
Maul’s face remained cold and expressionless. Sadiki reached out and touched his face, tracing her fingernails down over the curve of his jaw. Leaning in, she dropped her voice to a whisper.
“You’ve got a secret, friend. And here’s the crux of it. I don’t think you’re in my prison by accident—and I don’t think you’re here to fight.”
“Then maybe you should let me go,” Maul said.
“Oh,” she said with a smile, “I could never do that. Not now that you’ve become such a favorite in the galactic gambling community. You’ve become quite a star, Jagannath. That is what they’re calling you, isn’t it? The Tooth?”
Maul stared at her narrowly. At length his attention was drawn to the desk that occupied the far side of the office. Underneath it, something was glowing very faintly, casting an almost imperceptible green light across the tan carpet. He looked up at Sadiki, who still held the tablet in her hand.
“Let me see that.”
“This?” She hesitated a moment, then handed it to him. “Suit yourself.”
Maul took the tablet and regarded the flat display screen for a moment, where the waveforms of his brain’s electrical activity twitched and spiked. He shook his head. “This means nothing to me,” he said, and with a flick of the wrist tossed it across the office so that it hit the floor under the desk.
Sadiki gazed at him serenely. She didn’t seem at all bothered by this small outburst; if anything, it seemed to validate her own suspicions about who he was. “You’re quite an exceptional specimen, aren’t you? Exquisitely trained, practically custom built to survive in almost any environment—fierce, quick, resourceful, and adaptable against any imaginable obstacle or opponent. A precision instrument of savagery.” She paused, her voice softening slightly. “In a way, you really are the perfect inmate for Cog Hive Seven. You are the one we’ve been waiting for.”
Maul’s eyes darted under the desk, where the warden’s tablet had landed. The display screen reflected upward to reveal what he’d thought might be there—a tiny streamlined piece of electronics emitting a faint green light from the underside of the desk. He gazed back at Sadiki. “Are we finished?”
“Not quite.” She gestured at the guards. “Leave us.”
Smight appeared uncertain. “Are you sure—”
“Now.” Sadiki gestured them out with an impatient jerk of her head, shutting the hatchway behind them and sealing it. When she turned back to face Maul, her expression had changed yet again, becoming focused and intense.
“You weren’t supposed to survive your match with the wampa,” she said. “You’ve deduced that for yourself, I suppose. In fact, I’d be willing to bet there are a great many things that you know but that you’re not sharing with me. Like why you’re searching for Iram Radique.”
Maul’s expression was unchanged. “Is that a question?”
“You may think that your true purpose here can be kept secret, but rest assured”—her face twisted, becoming angular and harsh—“there is nothing that goes on inside these walls that I won’t find out about. You will inform me what you’ve already discovered about Radique’s whereabouts here, and who sent you here to find him.” She waited. “Was it the Desilijic Clan? The Hutts?”
Maul said nothing.
“Very well.” She smiled, but there was no joy or pleasure in it. “Have it your way. And in the meantime—” Sadiki’s lips drew back slightly further, showing just the lower rim of her teeth. “Rest assured that I’m going to keep matching you. Eventually I know you’ll tell me everything.”
Maul didn’t move. “That all depends.”
“On what?”
“On who else is listening.”
She blinked at him, not comprehending. “Meaning what?”
Maul nodded back at the desk. “That device hidden under your desk is a miniature microphone. I’m guessing that you didn’t place it there yourself—which means you probably had no idea that it was there.”
“What … Sadiki turned away from him and went to the desk, bent down to look underneath it, yanked the device loose, and then stared back at Maul. The expression of shock and dismay in her eyes was profoundly gratifying.
“So,” Maul said. “I assume we’re done here?”