Centered, resolved, he revved the swoop's engine and bolted out of the cargo bay into the corridor, firing his blaster as fast as he could pull the trigger, hoping the Force would guide some of his shots.

Blasterfire from Harbinger's security forces answered his own, sizzled past his ears, and thumped into the swoop. It bucked under him like an angry bantha, but he held his seat. He picked a spot in the hall-where the two humanoids sheltered behind the loading droid-ducked low behind the windscreen and, still firing his blaster wildly, flew right at them.

Jaden expected to find the hatch rusted shut, or protected by a security system. Instead they found it propped open a few centimeters. Khedryn and he stared at the hatch for a long moment, the wind howling past their helmets.

"What do you make of that?" Khedryn asked, nodding at the item holding the door open.

Jaden knelt and picked it up-the back hand plate from a suit of Imperial stormtrooper armor.

"Is that from a stormie suit?"

Jaden nodded, turning the plastoid plate over in his hand. "It is. Odd."

"Probably been there for decades," Khedryn said, but he did not sound as if he believed it. He looked over his shoulder as if he expected a squad of the 501st to come charging out of the snow.

"Probably," Jaden agreed. On edge, he pulled the heavy metal door open the rest of the way. It opened onto a small foyer. A transparisteel observation window on an inner wall opened onto a guard station. Another hatch, thrown open, revealed a hallway that led deeper into the facility. Over the hatch, written in Basic in stenciled letters, were the words:

Jaden reached out with the Force, seeking any Force-sensitives within range, but felt none.

"Follow me," he said, leading Khedryn past the post and through the hatch, his lightsaber a torch in the otherwise dark corridor. Khedryn activated a glow rod and added its light to the weapon's glow.

Walking those metal-floored, abandoned halls, Jaden felt as if he had stepped into the past as surely as Relin had stepped into the future.

"Ten degrees Celsius," Khedryn said, taking the information from his suit readout. He unsealed his helmet, letting it hang from its connectors down his back. "Someone is keeping the place warm."

Jaden unsealed his own helmet, his breath steaming in the air. They walked on, their feet moving through the detritus of a rapid retreat: scrap electronics; flimsiplast, the ink long faded; stray data crystals; oddly, a hairbrush.

Khedryn cleared his throat, a nervous sound. "What do you suppose happened here?"

Jaden shook his head.

They moved through hall after hall, room after room, and everywhere it was the same-debris littered the floor in the silent, cool air. They found nothing to indicate the facility's purpose.

In time they came to a series of small, sparely furnished personal quarters where clothing still hung in closets, where beds remained unmade. The whole facility felt to Jaden like a doll's house in which a child had lost interest and just left off in mid play.

He examined the clothing and shoes in the closets. In addition to ordinary clothing, he found a neatly pressed Imperial uniform and several lab coats. The label sewn onto the coat's breast read DR. BLACK.

"Thrawn-era uniform," Jaden said, noting the cut of the cuffs, the rank insignia. "Imperial Medical Corps."

"Medical corps?" Khedryn said, his breathing a bit too rapid. "A bioweapons research lab, you think? I did not think to scan for an aerosolized bioweapon."

"You had no reason to," Jaden said. "And what's done is done. If there were something in the air, we'd be suffering effects already. I feel fine. You?"

"Fine."

"Then I think we're all right."

"Maybe we should put our helmets back on."

"We're all right."

Khedryn seemed to accept that, and the two of them searched the chest of drawers, the side table. Jaden felt awkward pawing through another's personal effects, but saw no other choice. He rifled through toiletries, a reading light, a gift set of novels on data crystals inset into an elaborate box. Eventually Khedryn pulled a personal vidlog from the back of one of the drawers.

"Here," he said in an excited tone. He tapped at the buttons, soft at first, then harder. "Not functional. With some time Marr could probably recover the data."

"Leave it," Jaden said. He started to move on when something struck him and halted him in his steps. He looked around the room to confirm his thought, then spoke it aloud.

"There are no pictures."

"No what?"

"No pictures, no holograms, no vids. Of friends, family. Look around."

Khedryn turned a circle, his eyes askew. "You're right. Maybe they took them with them?"

"Maybe," Jaden said, but thought not. They seemed to have left in a hurry, abandoning all manner of personal effects. They would have left at least some pictures or holograms.

"Let's keep moving," Jaden said.

They soon came upon a recreation room where two card games and a match of sonic billiards appeared to have ended abruptly. Khedryn examined the cards at one of the tables.

"Sabacc," he said, and flipped over the cards for all but one of the hands. "Cheap deck and not a good hand among them. Unlucky bunch." He seemed to hear his words only after he said them and colored at their implication. "At cards, I mean."

A galley off the recreation room still had sludgy caf in two of the pots, stores of dry goods, fresh food long rotted. Jaden eyed the walls and saw a large square speaker beside one of the air filtration vents. He imagined an alert blaring out of it, everyone leaving what they were doing to respond, but ultimately fleeing the facility in a hurry.

Assuming they had gotten out. He was no longer so sure.

"What is this place?" Khedryn said, his outstretched arms taking in the whole of the complex. "Have you noticed that there's nothing to indicate what it is? Nothing. But Imperials used to put labels on everything. Normally the hallway walls would be crowded with written directions and arrows pointing to weapons lab this, research area that. This place is secret even from itself."

Jaden agreed. Something about the facility felt off. Too secret.

"There has to be a central computing core," Jaden said. "Let's find it."

Continuing through the corridors, they found still more sleeping quarters for laboratory personnel. The lab coats again had names sewn onto the breasts. After seeing a few more the pattern became clear-DR. BROWN, DR. RED, DR. GREEN, DR. GRAY.

"What the kark?" Khedryn asked, holding up another lab coat to read the name-DR. BLUE.

A picture started to develop in Jaden's mind. "None of them knew the real names of the others. That's why there are no pictures or holograms in their quarters. Nothing personal, nothing with which one could later identify another."

Jaden knew that at some top-secret Thrawn-era facilities the participating scientists would be forced to endure surgical alterations of their facial structure while on assignment, changing back to themselves only after their work was completed. None would be able to recognize another afterward. He wondered if that had happened in the facility, and if so, why.

"And no instructions on the walls," Khedryn said. "Visitors knew nothing. Probably the doctors had the facilities map imprinted into their memory." He licked his lips nervously and stared at Jaden for a long moment, even his lazy eye fixed straight ahead. "I think we should leave, Jaden. There is something wrong here."

Jaden agreed, but he could not leave, not yet. "I cannot, Khedryn. But you are not obliged to remain."