Abattoir/Part 10

Alecto blinked against the glare; after the dark of the jungle it was blinding. She sat down to rest her ankle, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Even once they had, it took her a long time to be certain.

The third level of the Abattoir was the size of an arena, a hundred meters across with a five-meter ceiling…she thought. Maybe it was less. Or more. All was sandstone—walls, ceiling, and floor, all the same ridged dull gray. The same pattern repeated every meter; the whole room swam like a massive optical illusion. Alecto struggled to her feet and hobbled a few steps, then had to drop back to her hands and knees. Her ankle was on fire, but the vertigo was worse; just looking at the room turned her sense of balance on its head. There weren't even glowpanels so much as lines of glow in the mortar between stones. She could see perfectly, and that perfect vision was of moving walls, sliding floors, and tunnels that were solid when she clawed her way over to pat them. Looking back the way she had come, the door was gone too.

There were no sounds but the ones Alecto made. Every wall was uniform. Everything was the same. Nothing stood out but the corpses.

All of them here were Anzati, and most of them were little more than skin stretched over skeletons. They hadn't decomposed, she realized; they had simply starved. The few others had smears of brain matter on their foreheads or pools of jelly in their empty eye sockets; they had clearly foreseen the inevitable and shortened the wait.

To escape she had to find the way out; she grasped that much. But everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter, Everything was the same,

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. There was a dead Anzat on the floor. Everything else was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the SAME.

She crawled a meter. EVERYTHING WAS THE SAME.

She crawled a meter. EVeRytHinG wAs thE saME.

She crawled a meter. eVERytHIng wAS the SAMe.

More meters. More of the same. Crawling until her palm started to bleed again, her knees throbbing on the stone, Alecto was starting to sympathize with the Anzati who had taken matters into their own hands.

She crawled a meter. Everything was the same.

She crawled a meter. Ev3rything was the s@me.

She thought perhaps the center of the room might be the key, but getting there was easier said than done; she could barely advance a dozen paces looking at the far wall before her stomach quivered. She could not afford to vomit; what little food she'd eaten the last few days might have to last her for a while. The far wall might have been ten meters or ten kilometers away. Everything same the was.

Where is it? she demanded of the dark side. Where's the way out? It didn't answer; perhaps the Force thought everything was the same.

Was It here in the room, too? She thought not—anything that wasn't SAME was obvious—but she couldn't be sure; she was too dizzy to look around for It. It could be right behind her, for all she knew.

She spun quickly everything was the same and looked that way.

She fell asleep. When she woke, everything was the same.

She would die in here. When she did, everything would be the same, except with her added to the mix. Anzati and walls and walls and an alien and walls. Not the same! She wasn't the same as the Anzati, not at all! When she died, everything wouldn't be the same! It would be worth it just for spite. No more same. So much same. Everything was the same. Eternivyhg was the smae.

Everything was the same. Everything the same. The same. Same.

An Anzat had bashed his brains in, leaving the rest of himself relatively intact in this sterile place where everything was the same. Alecto crawled to him, to that island of not same, and laid her head on his distended belly, resting peacefully. His clothes were intact; Alecto thought there might be something to think about with that, but she was too busy thinking of same. She napped again there.

When she woke again, Alecto opened her eyes…and then squeezed them shut. She knew what she would see—everything would be the same. She had now slept twice in this place. How long had she been here? Her mouth was dry; her stomach twisted with hunger. Moreover, she sensed It was here now, even if It hadn't been before. That was not the same, but it was hardly an improvement.

Another few…hours? days? of crawling across the Sea of Same and she would exparch, assuming those same same walls didn't starting looking attractive to her head too. There was a trick, a secret, a something different in the same. Everything was the same, but it couldn't be.

Alecto forced herself to think, eyes still shut tight. The first level of the Abattoir had tested her fighting skills, her physical toughness. In the second it had been survival skills, the ability to elude and evade rather than defeating in straight combat. Both were skills assassins needed, so what did the Brotherhood seek here? What could they be looking for?

She opened her eyes and looked and everything was the same and then she laughed and laughed and she kept laughing and everything was the same and she laughed until she stopped laughing because she stopped breathing because she stopped living and when the next Anzat came in she was one more corpse in a big room where everything was the same—

No.

She kept her eyes shut. Without any visual stimulus, without even the scrape of her own dragging steps to disrupt the silence, the pain all over her body amplified, but she focused through it. She patted around blindly until her hands came on the corpse of her Anzat pillow. She rifled through his pockets and belt until she found a handful of credit chips. Sitting up, her left leg extended ahead of her, she levitated two credits and reached out with the Force.

While the credits were drifting, Alecto amplified her hearing until a blaster shot or even a scream might have deafened her. Tinnitus set her ears ringing, and she heard her own heartbeat, the whisper of breath into and out of her nose. By the time the credits tapped against opposite walls, the sound made Alecto jump.

But they were not equally loud. She tapped them again, then scooted slightly closer to one. She tapped again, crawled to reposition, tapped, repositioned…

She levitated another pair of credits and sent them off perpendicular to the first pair. She tapped, repositioned, tapped, repositioned, tapped the first pair again, repositioned…

Her knees were bloody from favoring her ankle as she crawled on the rough stone, but all four credits sounded exactly the same. She had found her way to the exact center of the room. Judging by the sound, it was perhaps sixty meters across, seventy at the most. The dark side lusted for action now that she had a plan, but she restrained herself, forcing patience.

Pulling the credits back to her hands, she set them down and stripped off what remained of her tunic, feeling the tepid air on her bare skin. The exercise would have worked better with her whole body, but if she stood the pain in her ankle would be too distracting. She pulled back her heightened hearing, dropping into a meditative state until her skin was hypersensitive. She could feel each ridge of every cut in her lower back, every stretch and distortion of her swollen finger, the way pus oozed under the cut on her palm, the cake of dried mud on her face and hair…

And she felt the faintest whisper of breeze.

She crawled that way, aware of every centimeter of stone she touched with knees and palms, advancing with agonizing deliberation so as not to lose that hint of fresh air. She stopped and listened with her skin, crawled a little more, stopped and listened, crawled a little more. More than once she lost it anyway, but settled herself down to focus again until she felt that faint tickle on her skin.

Then she felt the tickle of breeze under her palm as she laid it on the stone, and opened her eyes.

Everything was the same…except the little flecks of mud she had shed in two days of aimless wandering. She had been here before, apparently. Setting a credit down on the spot, Alecto struggled to her feet. Her left ankle wobbled under her weight, so she leaned the majority of it onto her right as she surveyed the area. Everything was the same. Everything was the same…

Alecto closed her eyes.

She had found the door, but that didn't guarantee she had found the way to open it. She considered brute-Forcing it, but had a sudden and deep instinct that that would not work out well for her. Instead she focused on her desires, her will to make the galaxy as she wanted it to be. She desired many things—the service of the Brotherhood, a favored seat at Darth Saleej's council, not to mention the chance to wrap her hands around Azeroth Seji's throat and squeeze until the cold gleam in his eyes faded and the twitching stopped. Just now, however, what she desired most was to escape the third level of the Abattoir.

She could sense It watching her as she limped across the room, eyes closed as if she was trying to deflect blasterfire rather than hunt a grain of sand on the beach. Was it preparing to strike, or simply waiting to see what she did next? She might be more tempting prey if It gave her time to exhaust the last shreds of hope and sink into despair. Alecto felt a twinge of fear, knowledge that if she opened her eyes everything would be the same, and the dark side sent a hot shiver through her guts; her ankle ached a little less, and she walked a little straighter.

She stopped, taking a credit from her belt and flinging it forward. She heard the impact some meters away; she had not yet reached the wall. She called on the Force, commanded it to point her way more clearly, but it did not obey. You have all you need, she thought it said. If you are Sith, prove it is enough.

She opened her eyes and looked and everything was the same and then she laughed because it was all the same the same same same same samesamesamesamesamesamsamesamesame…

Wait.

Not everything was the same.

Alecto looked down at her feet. The floor had the samesamesame pattern. She tented her hands on other side of her eyes like blinders, balancing on her good leg as she stared just within that box. She looked at the way the ridges curved, staring until it started to swim just from repetition, forcing herself to memorize the pattern. When she could have drawn it freehand, she slowly took her hands away, angling her eyes up just a little to a different patch of floor. Everything…no, this was the same. Not everything, but this. She looked at the next patch, and that too was the same—that, and nothing more.

The next patch…was not the same.

Alecto stared, trying to figure it out, until she realized the ridges were canted the opposite way. From across the room it would be indistinguishable; even from the wrong angle she might have missed it. She almost set a credit on the spot and hobbled away to test her theory, but recovered her sanity in time. Keeping her eyes fixed on the ridges, she dropped to her hands and knees, crawled over, and pressed the ridges.

A tile in the floor sunk a few centimeters; it was barely larger than Alecto's hand. Her heart leapt into her throat as a rocky groan echoed through the room; by the time she shifted to sit and stared the way she had come, the hidden staircase had already descended into the floor. She put her tunic back on and limped across the room as quickly as she dared, focusing on the dark spot in the floor and not the endless ocean of same, not stopping until she had reached the stairs and shuffle-hopped her way down to the next level.