REY lay restrained on the interrogation bench. But she didn’t feel like a prisoner. Something had happened when she had pushed back against her captor’s mind. She’d felt a release, as if a pair of shackles had shattered. Shackles that held not her wrists but her…self?

She didn’t fully understand. There would be time for further introspection if she got out of here. As of then, it didn’t look like it was going to happen. The restraints clamping her to the bench were not going to snap, no matter how hard she pushed. And even if she did break out, she’d still have to deal with the stormtrooper inside her cell, guarding her door.

But maybe there was another way out. She had pushed back at her captor through sheer will, the force of her mind. Maybe with a little luck she could call on that strength again.

“You,” she said to the trooper.

The trooper looked at her, his expression unreadable behind his helmet. That made what she was about to try easier. She was not distracted by his individuality. She saw only a faceless drone of the First Order. And one thing drones did was obey commands.

“You will remove these restraints,” she told the guard. “And you will leave the cell, with the door open, and retire to your living quarters.”

The trooper continued to stare at her. He must’ve thought her crazy to believe that he’d listen to her. Maybe she was.

Rey tried again. Directing the will of her mind past his helmet, into his mind, as she had with her interrogator.

She repeated her command, enunciating each word in her speech and in her mind so it would echo in his.

The trooper walked toward her, his blaster rifle at the ready. “I will remove these restraints. And leave this cell, with the door open, and retire to my living quarters. I will speak of this encounter to no one.”

He did as commanded, liberating her from the shackles. She continued to recline on the bench, stunned that her prompt had actually worked.

The trooper turned and went for the door, still carrying his rifle.

“And you will drop your weapon,” she said.

There was no hesitation. “I will drop my weapon,” he said. He set it on the floor, opened the cell door, and headed out, presumably to his living quarters.

She remained on the bench. The cell door was open. The rifle was on the ground. The stormtrooper was gone.

When he didn’t come back, Rey knew she wasn’t crazy. She also knew that what she’d just done had nothing to do with luck.

Finn should have been resting on the Falcon’s trip through hyperspace, but his mind wouldn’t switch off. He tried playing holochess, losing twice to the computer in record time. Nothing would distract him. Nothing would calm his mind. He recalled his visions of glory on the First Order transport to Jakku. His exuberance.

He thought of Slip.

Finn could’ve easily shared FN-2003’s fate. And if he had, what would the state of the galaxy be now? Would BB-8 have made it to D’Qar? Would Poe have been another of the First Order’s victims? Would Rey still be salvaging wrecks, safe from capture?

Finn hadn’t been taught to contemplate such questions. He’d been trained to shoot and fight. He knew he’d have to rely on those skills when they got to Starkiller Base—if they got there. He still had no clue how the Falcon would slip through the planetary shields in the first place.

Quitting the lounge, Finn bothered Han and Chewie in the cockpit. “How are we getting in?”

Han continued to work his controls. “No planetary defense system can be sustained at a constant rate. It would take too much power. The shields fluctuate at a predetermined rate. Keeps anything traveling less than lightspeed from getting through.”

“But how are we getting in? Without being cut in half by the oscillating shield?” Finn asked.

“Easy. We won’t be going slower than lightspeed.”

“We’re gonna make our landing approach at lightspeed? Nobody’s ever done that!”

Chewbacca growled something that made Han grin. “We’re coming up on the system. I’d sit down if I were you,” Han said to Finn. “Chewie, get ready.”

Finn dropped into a seat and buckled himself in. Han and Chewbacca watched the scroll of data on multiple monitors. “And…” Han paused. “Now!”

The two pilots worked in tandem, pulling levers, pushing buttons, turning dials. When they came out of lightspeed, Finn blinked and saw he was still alive. They’d beaten the odds. Scanners showed they had jumped inside the shield of Starkiller Base.

But at the speed they were going, Finn wondered how many blinks he had left. They were on a swift trajectory to crash into the planet’s surface.

“I am pulling up!” Han shouted at his copilot. “Any higher, they’ll see us!”

The two managed to level the Falcon before it crashed, but they did not avert a rough landing. Splintering the treetops of a large swath of forest, the Millennium Falcon finally skidded to a halt in a snowfield.

Kylo Ren marched down a rock-cut corridor on Starkiller Base. The buildup of energies in the planetary core mirrored the tempest brewing inside him. The girl, he’d been informed, had somehow broken out of her cell.

He didn’t ask many questions of the officer who had reported the escape, or the trooper who had guarded her. He went to see for himself.

The cell was empty.

He activated his lightsaber. Screaming and slashing, he sawed apart the interrogation bench, then went to work on the walls.

The furnace of his heart had a source of its own dark energy. It was called fury.