From twenty meters back, Maul watched Zero emerge through the line in the mess hall. He waited while the Twi’lek sat down, picked up his fork, and began, thoughtfully and deliberately, to eat.
Three bites. Four. Five.
Maul sat down across from him.
“Hello, Zero.”
The Twi’lek’s fork fell from his hand with a clatter. His jaw fell open to reveal the half-chewed mouthful of food he’d been in the process of swallowing. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
“Jagannath,” he whispered. “You’re supposed to be—”
“Dead?” Maul glared at him. “I can understand your confusion. When you left me on the factory floor, I was on the verge of being pulled to pieces. Yet here I am.”
The Twi’lek managed to swallow, but he still couldn’t speak. His eyes darted right and left, the muscles of his throat twitching visibly beneath his skin, as if he were struggling fruitlessly to digest the physical evidence of Maul’s presence here.
“You—you don’t understand,” he said. “You can’t be here. He thinks you’re dead.”
Zero started to stand up, and Maul’s hand moved faster than the eye could see, grabbing Zero’s fork and slamming it down so that it impaled the Twi’lek’s sleeve, pinning his arm to the table.
At the next table, three big inmates rose to their feet and started toward Maul.
Without taking his gaze from the Twi’lek, Maul spoke, just loud enough for Zero to hear. “Tell them to sit back down.”
Zero looked up at his bodyguards. “It’s all right,” he said in a thin voice. “Go sit down.”
The inmates returned haltingly to their meals.
“It’s an interesting thing,” Maul said softly. “Whom we serve and why. At first you told me that Iram Radique doesn’t exist. The next thing I know, you’re working for him.”
“You have no idea—”
“I took the old man with me when I walked out of the factory floor,” Maul continued. “He’s not doing well. That blood infection’s going to kill him. But he did tell me something interesting before he became completely delirious. He told me that you answered to a different name.”
Zero’s face showed no expression. “Which is?”
“That’s what you’re going to tell me.”
“Jagannath, please.” The Twi’lek’s voice was low and urgent. “You must listen to me. I’ve been in this place from the beginning. There’s a reason I’ve survived this long.”
“Right before I killed Rook,” Maul said, “I asked him if there was someone else—someone above him, who worked directly with Radique. He drew something with his finger. At the time I thought it was just a circle. But it wasn’t.” He leaned in closer, until his face was almost touching the Twi’lek’s. “It was a zero.”
“Rook?” The Twi’lek shook his head. “Rook was just—”
“A decoy,” Maul said, and nodded, his voice holding no inflection whatsoever. “I see that now. Handing him over was your way of taking my attention from where it should have been the whole time.” He glanced at Zero’s tray, where the Twi’lek’s special meal sat half eaten. “You know, I noticed that you always enjoy a better quality of food than the other inmates. One of the benefits of being the one who can smuggle things into the prison, I assume. Unfortunately, it also makes you far more vulnerable.”
“I slipped a crushed gram of white metaxas root into the vat just before you came through the line today,” Maul said, in that same dispassionate voice. “Coyle tried to give it to me earlier. Fortunately, he still had it when I came back and asked for it again. I’m told that it’s odorless and flavorless, but fast-acting.” He glanced down at the half-finished meal. “And you’ve already eaten enough to kill you.”
Zero stared down at the tray in dawning horror, and then shoved it away from him, as if mere physical proximity might be enough to stop what had already begun. “Wh-why …?”
“There is an antidote,” Maul said, opening his hand to show Zero a small clear vial of gray powder. “Something I lifted from medbay. If I give it to you in the next thirty seconds, you’ll survive.”
“I already told you—”
“I’ve seen Radique’s face,” Maul said. “Now I need to make arrangements with him. I’m willing to pay three hundred thousand credits for a proscribed nuclear device—I have the money here. I will make contact with the buyers personally and arrange for their arrival to take possession of the weapon.”
“He …” Zero’s hands had begun trembling. He gazed at them in terrified wonder, then back up at Maul. “He’ll never agree to the deal.”
“Why not?”
“He knows the Bando Gora. They tried to kill him once already. They are sworn enemies. He’s made a blood oath never to do business with them.”
“Then you’ll have to change his mind, won’t you?”
“You—fool—” Zero’s entire body had begun to shake. When he spoke again, his voice was trembling, the words spilling from his lips in halting bursts. “You have no idea—what you’ve done—”
His head fell to the table with a crash.
With a grimace of irritation, Maul hoisted Zero’s face out of his food, inspected his eyes, and let his head drop again.
He left him like that and walked out of the mess hall.