Travis slowly walked down the long dark corridor, his footsteps echoing in sharp claps off the polished stone floors and hardened dark wooden beams of the walls. The echos seemed out of sync with his steps, as if he were hearing two or three steps for every step he actually took. They came faster and faster these phantom steps, even though his pace was constant. He ignored the incongruity. It was unimportant. He'd been here before. He focused on what he knew would lie around the corner fast approaching. His heart begin to race. The familiar feeling of panic and helplessness washing through his body; dragging him on helplessly forward. Then rounding the corner, he froze.
It was always the same. The enormous hallway ahead of him was filled with people, faces he knew well, but could not recall. Their muffled, indecipherable pleading falling on his ears at a deafening level. He didn't have to understand them to know what they wanted. They always wanted the same thing these ghosts. They lined the hall. This enormous hall, some 15 meters high, over 100 meters long; constructed from the same dark stones and timbers as the little corridor he'd just been dragged through. Richly colored tapestries of deep greens, blues and reds hung billowing in an unseen breeze between each of the floor to ceiling windows which lined the length of the hall. Outside, the single red dwarf star of his adopted home system, Coridan, swung wildly through the sky. Sunrise and sunset coming just seconds apart, adding their momentary glow to the scene inside the hall; the deep red beams of light drawing out the richness of the decorations; flooding the faces with a hellish glow. beginning
Then they were there, the doors at the end of the hallway, flanked on either side by the tall presence of a Coridan Royal Guard clad in their traditional crimson uniform. The two imposing figures overpowered only by the enormity of the doors they protected. He was there now, just meters from the doors. Running. Falling forward down the hall at an impossible pace. The faces in the hall reaching out to him, grabbing, pulling, clawing at him. They pleaded in their foreign moans for him to stop. Suddenly his mother was there, clutching at his arm, blocking his path, "Billy don't go! Please!" She threw her head back in a wail that sent a cold shiver down his already quivering body, "Billy! No!" He continued on, the unseen force pressing him forward, threatening to knock him from his feet. The guards his only remaining obstacle. Travis felt his arms pinned. They had him. One guard on each arm. They had him. He couldn't move, but he had to. He had to get through the door. He had to stop her!
The wave of intense pressure built in his chest and flooded though him. Every muscle tensed. His entire body cramped convulsively. Then with a silent thud the pressure released; his body feeling as if it had been asleep and tingling back to life with a rush. With the thud, guards and doors both tumbled away. A wave of nausea washed over his body. He was free. He had to stop her! He couldn't let her do it...not his Magge!
Before him, at the far end of the aisle leading from the door to the speakers podium above the Council chambers, he saw her. The familiar subdued blue cloak hugging her small frame. He knew it was her. He could feel her still in his arms...his Magge. She had to be stopped!
He watched as she slowly walked away from him, approaching the podium where Ambassador Resno spoke in the same indecipherable pleads as the ghosts of the hall. Step by step, she walked closer in her innocently seductive way. He felt her still in his arms.
"You didn't leave me a choice." The voice, her sweet voice, came from just to his right. Phantom whispers in his ear. He turned to her eyes. Those beautiful emerald eyes filling his vision...the sadness showing...the pleading for the answer to why. "You didn't leave me a choice Billy. I loved you. Why?" Then they changed, those eyes, filling with hurt and anger. Her vengeful laughter piercing his soul, growing, thunderous laughter. He saw her now. At the podium. The laughter ringing in his ears with deafening force.
It was always the same.
She never turned. She simply stopped. Her small shaking hands reaching up and pulling the cloak from her shoulders, it fell to the ground revealing the vest of explosives strapped to her tiny body. The laughter imploded.
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