Deprivation

[Arya Ravenwing]

Let me out of here... let me out of here. Let me out! Get out... get out of here. The woman pulled at her hair from where she lay awkwardly on the floor, her bare toes touching a cold metal drain in the middle of the room. Let me out of here... let me out of here. Let me out! Let... me out! No... no, no, no! I don't know anything. Nothing. I...

A siren wailed in the close quarters of Arya Ravenwing's cell, jerking the woman more fully awake. As soon as it ceased her eyes drooped again, lids fighting to stay open.

She'd been deprived of sleep for five days.

[R. S. Esalis]

Furrowed brows descended over ice blue eyes, as the woman who they belonged to read over the continuous reports filed by her underlings.

Documentation upon documentation of the same thing; the same results were everpresent. With a frustrated sigh, Director Esalis closed the file. Leaning back, she stared at the ceiling of her office. There had to be an angle she wasn't seeing - something that would yield any useable shred of information.

Still lost in thought, the Director keyed her comm unit.

"Madame Director?"

"Clean up Ms. Ravenwing, give her a fresh set of clothes, and have her brought to my office."

Yes ma'am.

[Colonel Karrnage]

"More dialogues?"

Karrnage fidgeted in his seat, adjusting his spectacles.

"Perhaps we should mix the stimuli? Delirium and homeostatic deprivation should make any willful deception or resistance difficult to muster."

[Arya Ravenwing]

She was barely conscious as a pair of troopers stuffed her into an refresher for a shower of cleansing ions. Arya slumped against the cool walls of the stall as the invisible particles bombarded her skin, invigorating it and dispersing the dirt that had coated her. Her eyes closed and she quickly fell asleep standing upright.

After only a minute the ions ceased and she was being hauled out of the refresher stall and slapped awake. Rough hands dressed her in a loose grey jumpsuit and the smuggler was forced to walk through several corridors. It was dizzying - each corridor looked identical and Arya was so disoriented from lack of sleep that she felt that she was walking in circles.

Eventually she was deposited on a cool metal chair and she found that she was sitting at a table. She tried to rest her elbows on the smooth surface before her, but was instructed to sit upright in her chair. Arya leaned back against the seat, and her eyes soon drooped closed again. The troopers who flanked her jabbed the Lupine in the ribs with a shockprod, jerking her awake once more.

[R. S. Esalis]

"Now now, Arya," Esalis purred, "you know better than to fall asleep at a time like this."

Waiting until the Lupine's eyes met hers, Esalis spoke once more.

"The good Colonel would very much like to, as he put it just a few minutes before you arrived, stimulate you further. I'm afraid I can only keep him at bay for so long unless you help us.

"Have you had a chance to read up on the journal I gave you?"

[Arya Ravenwing]

Her vision blurred and her eyes filled with involuntary tears as she was forced to meet the woman's eyes. The smuggler nodded, wiping at her weary eyes with a shaky hand.

I did. Her voice cracked as she spoke. "I did. Please... water?"

[Colonel Karrnage]

"Tell us about the contents, Madam Ravenwing."

Karrnage smiled thinly, wringing his gloved hands as he sat. He reached forward, picking up a glass of water, which he drank from.

"We are intensely interested in what you have to say."

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya hunched down in her seat, only to be pulled upright again by her guards. "Read as much as I could." She sagged forward, exhausted, but was pressed back into her seat. A hand gripped her shoulder, pinching a nerve as it held her in place.

"Its mostly nonsense - names... dates. Some markings... tattoos." The smuggler was too tired to keep her watery eyes open, squeezing them shut, if not for long. Tears ran down her cheeks. She'd tried to read the journal, but was too exhausted to make heads or tails of anything she'd read. "The writer thought there was a planet that had ... significance."

Arya forced her eyes open, blearily meeting those of Esalis. "She called it..." Her body swayed to the side, head drooping until her chin resting on her chest. "...called it..."

[R. S. Esalis]

The Director knitted her brows in momentary thought. It hadn't occured to her that some of the markings may be tattoos.

Flipping open her copy of the journal, she stopped at a page half full of symbols, each with a name in the Lpine writing beneath it. Turning the text so that it face Arya, she pushed it toward the Lupine.

"Can you tell me what these words say under the drawings?"

[Arya Ravenwing]

She concentrated, focusing on the words written beneath the brands. "Apex Losstarot. Apex Loveloxx."

Arya shook her head, "I don't ... know what these words mean."

[Colonel Karrnage]

"The two families."

Karrnage's eyes lit up behind his spectacles.

"Well, families...species...religions. Nobody is to say. The duality is precisely clear. This consistency is reassuring."

The Colonel removed an ice cube from his glass, and slid it across the table, so that it rested in front of the Lupine.

"We should wish to hear more, of coure."

[Arya Ravenwing]

The smuggler took the ice cube with both her hands, and raised it to her lips as quickly as she could. She didn't want to give either of the two across from her the chance to take it away. Despite the cold, Arya put it in her mouth and sucked on it, not willing to waste a drop of moisture. She couldn't remember when they'd last given her something to eat, or drink. Perhaps it had been two or three days.

After a long moment, when the ice was gone, she shook her head. "I don't know ... what you want to know. The names ... dates ... I think they are ... family trees."

[R. S. Esalis]

"If they are family trees, then I think it would be safe to assume that these symbols are used to denote each House."

Turning to the last page, she pointed to the crescent moon, intersected at the bottom by a concave half-circle. Arya had said it was the symbol for Losstarot. Below it was a smaller symbol - a broken pyramid.

Esalis pointed to the pyramid.

"What about this? What does this mean?"

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

She reached up to her bare neck, fingers fiddling as though they were wrapping around the chain she usually wore. "She wrote about ... it may be some sort of actual building."

[Colonel Karrnage]

"The symbol of the house, a broken building. A broken house? The broken house of Loveloxx?"

Karrnage glanced back to the Director, probing her for any other insight.

[R. S. Esalis]

With a gentle shake of her head, Esalis pursed her lips.

"I don't know," she murmured, "The style of the two drawings seem very different to me, but from the little that we know of the Lupines I could very well be wrong."

Leaning back in her chair, the Director stared curiosly at Arya, trying to pick apart the other woman with her gaze. Such an anomoly she was; it mildy confused Esalis that Arya knew nothing of her own species. The dead padawan had seemed to express such pride in her lineage...

Esalis' brows furrowed then, as her thought processes brought her to the padawan. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. Her next words would be as new to the Lupine as they would be to Karrnage, as she hadn't divulged Khendon's 'revelation' with him yet.

"I've been recently informed that there is another like you - still alive. In fact, it is the author of this journal. If this information is true, then it seems that there are now two of you left."

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya blinked. Slowly. Another like me? Her befuddled brain tried to make sense of it. Her mother had died - she'd buried her. The author of her journal was dead. There were no others.

But there were two journals. Two authors. One dead, one alive. Arya blinked again. "Too bad she wasn't a male. I could use a good lay." The words came out of her mouth, but she couldn't be sure she'd actually said them. Perhaps she was asleep right now and dreaming.

[Colonel Karrnage]

This was off the reservation, so to speak.

Karrnage looked sideways at Esalis. What was she doing? This had to be a bluff.

He returned his attention to Arya, who wasn't forthcoming with anything to confirm or deny.

"We have other ways to release your endorphines, if that is what you need to answer us."

At his verbal cue, a brawny uniformed Imperial stepped through the office's doorway with an electroprod in his hands.

[Arya Ravenwing]

She looked from the new trooper to the guards already with her, all armed with shockprods. Arya forced herself to focus on Karrnage. "Have you asked me a question?"

[R. S. Esalis]

"Not yet," came Esalis' interjection.

"When we do however, I would think that it be in your best interests to facilitate us without having to force our hand to use more... unpleasant methods of persuasion."

Folding her hands together, the Director continued.

"So, let us begin with a few of the basics.

"When you change - is it completely voluntary, or are there triggers that cause it as well?"