In a dark room, on a space station floating somewhere in the outer rim, a young girl sat cross-legged on a mat and contemplated her pain. The rough threads dug into her scraped legs. The cold, dry air bit at her shoulders and cracked lips. Pangs of hunger stabbed into her sunken belly like needles. Her lungs burned from subtle poison coursing through the room’s atmospheric recyclers. The wounds she’d received for talking back, three shallow gashes across her shoulder, ached as they pulsed in time with her weak heartbeat. All she knew was pain, from which there was no escape. Yet she ran anyway, deep into herself, trying to find a place where the pain couldn’t reach her.
She did not know why she was here, and she found it difficult to care. All she knew was that the man in black had said that if he wasn’t satisfied with what he saw when he opened the door, she would die. What could she do but believe him? A man who brought this much suffering to children would not hesitate to kill her, or the others.
There were others, she knew. She had heard them sobbing on the shuttle through her hood, and occasionally a scream of agony filtered through the vents, a psychological poison to match the toxin. But she did not know their names or their faces, so she fled from those sounds as well.
When the man in black found her, she was half starved, her flesh and her lungs heavily infected. She could not open her eyes to look at him, but she felt his gloved hand touch her cheek. It was not a gentle caress, but a grab. Even with a fraction of his strength, he forced her head to turn. She felt rather than saw the moment their eyes met, like a spiritual shock, and after a moment in silence, he asked her a question.
“Who are you?”
Her shallow breath hitched. This was the same question he had asked her before. The first time, she had received a slap across the face, and a warning. The second time, she was wounded. Those same angry wounds cried out from upon her shoulder, as if warning her the only way they knew how that she would not have a fourth chance to answer the man correctly.
Perhaps patience was the man in black’s only virtue, for he said and did nothing while the girl before him measured her response. The pressure on her cheek was constant, and this close, she could smell cinnamon on his breath. It was a pleasant scent which belied her first impression of the man, in his black robes and horrifying harlequin mask.
She pictured him as she’d first seen him, staring down at the children with cool blue eyes, the light of the shuttle making them gleam like ghosts in the darkness. He was flanked by two sinister looking protocol droids in red plating. She remembered her fear of him, but she also remembered the shuttle pilot who’d rounded the wing to speak to the man in black. She remembered a motion, and softly spoken words.
The little girl’s arms trembled as she drew them into a V in front of her neck, placing her left palm fimly over her right first, fingers straight. Her throat rattled as she forced out the phrase she hoped would save her life.
“I… am yours… Lord.”
