She opened her eyes, staring at the oddly familiar roof of the home. Coming in from an open window, the sounds of a town coming to life found their way into the room. The chirping of birds, native to the planet, with the chirps of astromechs. The hum of a repulsorlift engine. And the noise of the white-armored stormtroopers on patrol. She sat up, surveying the room with a practiced move.

  She had expected to die, who wouldn’t after watching their hometown get nuked, alongside their family and friends? She just had not expected where she had died. On a military base, on foreign soil, guarding a VIP. At Least it was quick, she thought. She didn’t even get to see the mushroom cloud, she’d seen one too many, anyways. WW3 had begun half a year before.

  She was conscripted into the army after watching Boston vanish in a mushroom cloud. And now, She was in a void. Nothingness.

  

  

  

  

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  The void began to vanish, as new memories appeared in her head. Memories joined her previous ones. Growing up in Boston; Growing up in Kelthia. Accelerated basic Training; Nuclear Weapons. War. Fearing the Separatists. Fearing the Empire. Her parents dying, one by separatist tank, the others by a nuke swallowing Boston. How scared she was getting deployed to the base. How scared she was when the Republic was abolished by the Emperor.

  She found herself out of the bedroom, now in front of a sink, retching into it as the dissonance of her memories began to calm. The sense of oddness continued, as she began taking in the room she was in. A Kitchen she remembered growing up with. Eating in, yet completely unfamiliar to her.

  The caf machine’s wheeze echoed the death rattle of Earth’s reactor pumps. Janice’s hands moved on autopilot—chipped blue mug, cracked activation rune, the same motions she’d used to prime missile silo generators in another life. Steam curled up, conjuring ghosts: frost on her breath in a Massachusetts winter, the tang of irradiated coffee in a tin cup. The mug trembled.

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  A datapad lit up from a notification, her eyes darting over to it. A single document was still glowing on the datapad she eyed on the counter. Twelve names. Twelve neighbors. , the mechanic who had fixed her speeder, blazed at the bottom. She could still smell the ozone of the Imperial lieutenant’s gloves as they’d pointed to the mechanic’s name. Kelta had said, the word a live wire pressed to Janice’s spine, Her electronic signature glared back now—a jagged scar across the screen.

  Outside, a speeder bike shrieked. Stormtroopers swarmed Orim’s garage across the square, white armor gleaming under the sun. The old Togrutan’s claws scraped duracrete as they dragged him out. A stun baton flashed. Silence.

  Janice retched into the sink, again. Caf and bile swirled, brown as the Charles River after the bombs fell.

  She tapped the notification, from Lieutenant Kelta. “Public statement required by 1800.” Her thumb found the phantom groove of a dog tag beneath her tunic. Same chain of command. Same stink of burning.

  The air vent creaked.

  She thought it was too rhythmic for settling metal. Janice froze, hearing Sergeant Haskins’ voice from basic training: Zelvir’s clinic glared through the window, its durasteel shutters shut. She wondered if the Twi’lek was safe. He wasn’t on the list, he should be. As she glared out the window, the datapad dimmed, no longer showing the twelve names. Beneath the floorboards, under moldering credit chips and a dead woman’s savings, her father’s vibroblade slept. It hummed in her mind.

  She had to get out of her home. Her feet carried her to the market. Overripe shuma fruit oozed across vendor carts, their sickly-sweet rot undercut by the sharp tang of fear-sweat. Janice’s boots echoed loudly on the permacrete, each click like a detonator counting down. A Rodian mother shoved her child into the gap between a shattered news kiosk and its flickering holoscreen, showing the Empire’s latest propaganda reel that showed smiling stormtroopers handing out ration packs that no one in Kelthia had ever received.

  “spice! Pure Kessel cuts!” barked old Tull Ren, his milky eyes tracking Janice as she passed his stall. He slammed a durasteel lid over his wares, the clang reverberating like a cell door slamming. “No discounts for collaborators,” he added, louder than necessary. A trio of stormtroopers turned their heads toward the sound. Janice kept moving. At the dried fruit stand, Mrs. Vek deliberately knocked a basket of warty purple fruit into her path. “Oops,” the Devaronian hissed, fangs glinting. “Wouldn’t want to stain your pretty Imperial boots.”

  She nearly missed the hand coming toward her. Blue fingers clamping around her wrist, yanking her into the stinking dark. Zelvir’s face hovered inches from hers, one lekku severed halfway down its length, the stump wrapped in filthy bacta gauze. His remaining lekku twitched toward the cracked security cam overhead.

  “They’re alive,” he rasped, pressing something cold and angular into her palm. A data chip etched with script. “The ones Kelta missed. Mining tunnels under the southern ridge.” Janice’s throat tightened. “Zel, I didn’t—” The Twi’lek shoved her backward into sunlight, his voice booming with theatrical venom. “Move along, ! Decent folk have no business here!” She stumbled, the data chip biting into her fist, as white armor rounded the corner.

  Somewhere, a speeder bike engine whined to life. The stormtroopers laughed at a joke only they could hear. Janice walked faster, past the bulletins plastered with twelve faces under the word

  The chip in her hand burned hotter with every step. She practically ran home. Home smelled of dust and digital decay. Janice kicked off her boots by the door, the same ingrained habit from both lifetimes, though now the gesture felt hollow. She went for the safe under her bed, it yawning open, disgorging its pathetic treasures: a holopic of her Kelthian parents standing before their farm, credit chips untouched since the day the Separatists glassed the eastern pastures. The vibroblade she grabbed. She slammed it shut, the clang echoing like the blast door of an Earth bunker.

  Zelvir’s warning coiled in her gut. “They’re watching through the pipes,” her father had joked, sweat beading on his neck as the news showed missile trajectories over Europe. The vibroblade went up to the air vent, It's edge biting into the vent’s rusted screws, each twist screeching. When the grille clattered free, three crimson lights winked back at her.

  Imperial Mark VII surveillance bugs.

  One of the bugs pivoted, lens focusing. Janice practically rushed for her datapad, pulling up the Governor’s latest decree to mask her shaking. “...loyal citizens shall report seditious elements...” The words blurred. A high-pitched whine built in her ears—not the bugs, but the old warning klaxons from Earth’s silo complex.

  A speeder bike’s scream tore through the twilight. She reached the window in time to see twin taillights vanish into the southern woods—toward the collapsed mining tunnels where Zelvir’s data chip swore rebel survivors huddled.