Y'all. It is December 20. You know what that means:

SPOILER BAN!

I hope everyone has fun watching RoS, but love it or hate it, no spoilers, and everybody get along! Mila and I will whoop you if you don't haha! But for now, enjoy this INSANELY overdue update! Life's been great over the past few months but it's been BUSY. I've missed you guys!

Now shut up and read the update! And enjoy Episode IX! I'm scared because a lot rides on this one, but I'm choosing to remain hopeful! I'll let you all know what I think with the next update!

Chapter 5: Things Hidden

Agent Lana Solomon was tired.

Tired of guessing, tired of fighting. Tired of the New Republic.

Tired of grief.

He was everywhere. In the shine of an officer's plaque, in the drumming of boots on the ground. In his sons' smiles—in their laughter. She lost count of how many times she had turned to ask his advice, to look for him in a 250th muster call. Jaren Criss echoed in her soul.

Her husband, dead.

Six months had passed, yet Lana still couldn't wrap her head around it.

She put on a brave face for Liam and Evan, who shouldn't even know the meaning of the word death, who looked for their dad everywhere and saw him in everything, just as she did. She held them when they cried, comforted them when they suddenly missed him.

When she was alone, she crumbled.

Why did this have to happen? Why did he have to die?

What had happened to him in the first place?

Lana's fingers scraped the corner of the holo-frame on her desk, ghosting past Jaren's smiling face. Wishing for the warmth of his skin beneath them. Longing for answers. Command had promised her the full story, yet every time she asked, she was denied. She should have had the mystery holovid the second Jaren had sent it to her. She was family.

She was also a Senate Intelligence agent, trusted with the greatest secrets the New Republic had to keep. She should have known, and she didn't.

That, perhaps, was the most agonizing thing of all.

Lana's body rose from its seat and meandered through her office door. Stale white hallways glided past her peripheral, and it was late enough at night that the din of outside Republic City traffic had all but disappeared. Once she arrived at her destination, she laid her hand against a scanner before the doors unlocked and hissed open.

Towers of phosphorescent data greeted Lana as she stepped inside the Senate Intelligence Archives. She wound down endless rows of information—her route now as familiar to her as the hallways in her apartment—found the stack she was looking for, and flagged down a droid to retrieve the data card she wanted. She watched it slowly ascend, pinch the card between its claws, and float back down.

As soon as she had it, Lana shoved the card into her datapad. A few mechanical taps of her fingers later, and she brought up the same folder she'd brought up every day since she'd been widowed.

250th Pathfinders – Records of Engagement.

She opened the folder and scanned through it until she found the correct year. The footage from Dantooine, she had memorized. She had led the team that analyzed it.

Lana's finger hovered over the word Rattatak, her mind already generating the obnoxious red access denied alert that had jeered at her every other time she'd come. Why did she keep trying, when she knew what the outcome would be? Was it stupidity that kept bringing her back? Desperation? The plastic heat of the screen stuck to her fingertip—

—and the file opened.

It opened.

Lana's heart pounded her breastbone. Her hands shook. After too long without knowing, had the Senate finally given her clearance? Was she finally on the verge of—

She stared at her datapad. Blinked. Scrolled up and down so furiously the tapping of her finger against the screen echoed across the room, but there was only white.

No footage. No audio recordings. No reports.

Heart still hammering, Lana drove a diagnostic chip into the side of the data card. Code sprang to life across her screen, numbers and symbols that she deciphered as easily as Basic. Dates and times the files were added, the size and type of data, who had successfully accessed them—

Except the last name wasn't a name. It was a code—one that Lana had never seen before.

Immediately followed by the date and time the files had disappeared. Teeth clenched, Lana kept scanning the code, looking for anything unusual—

Lana almost hadn't seen it. A piece of the code was missing.

Which meant the Rattatak files hadn't been wiped, or removed, or archived elsewhere.

They had been stolen.

"I don't understand, Agent Solomon."

"Neither do I." Lana's composure trembled more than she'd have liked it to. The wind bit at her skin as she watched traffic dart past her apartment balcony. She strangled her comm between her fingers.

Her contact wasn't angry, but she wasn't thrilled either.

"Perhaps—"

"It was a shot in the dark, Agent. Don't worry too much about it." A pause, filled with the roil of background noise and the crackle of a shoddy connection. "We can manage without it."

"With respect, ma'am," Lana said, "you didn't manage last time. Or the time after that. I… I will keep looking. Your operation will fail without—"

"Agent—"

"There must be hard evidence supporting your accusations exactly, or else the Senate—" Lana cut herself off, squeezed her eyes shut. "Forgive me. It's hardly my place to lecture you."

Silence. Lana feared the interaction had ended, but her contact's voice crackled through her comm. "No." How could she still sound so patient, when the lost data must have been crushing her twice as hard as it did Lana?

"You're right, Lana. Words aren't enough. Not usually."

A distant call to attention made it through Lana's comm, by a voice she'd known since her academy days. One she hadn't heard in months, and hadn't planned on hearing again.

"It's a gamble, Agent, but we're running out of time," the contact continued, "If you can't track down those files in time, then her words will be better than nothing."

Her data had said most of her new recruits had never seen a battle, and Mila found herself wishing they never would. They stood immaculately at attention in front of her, faces shining. Eager. Fearless. Scarless. Mila had been like that once—dying not to pull her punches, practically begging for a war to start.

If only they knew what they'd gotten themselves into.

"Gentlemen." How many times had she made this same speech, or at least a version of it? "Ladies. I'm Captain Dameron. You've all been assigned to me. You are here because you know the truth. You're here to fight the good fight, to fight the First Order."

The Order will break them. It broke you.

Her stomach churned. She swallowed hard.

"I'm here to get you as ready for it."

They'll never be ready. You weren't. You still aren't.

Mila let her eyes wander across the recruits. Boys and girls as young as eighteen. Men and women who looked like they'd fought with the Rebellion—or at least like they were old enough to have. Very few with any military experience, let alone combat experience. A familiar freckled face, fair skinned and fair-haired. The last time Mila had seen her was at Muran's funeral.

Aly Lin-Sarlin? She was just a child! Was she crazy?

Only one face in the ranks didn't shine, and Mila finally saw it. The bags beneath her eyes were stark against her milk-white skin; her eyes themselves were a bright, striking grey. Had there been a light in them once, it was extinguished now. She might as well have been a walking corpse.

After she took them through physical training—which, judging from their flushed faces and heaving chests, they'd barely survived today—she somehow have to get them to fire a blaster without blowing their faces off, show them to pathfind. For the few white bands she saw in the ranks—Aly included—she and Darren would put them through medical training.

And if she didn't succeed—maybe even if she did—the First Order would eat them alive.

"Over the next few weeks," she went on, but it was like hearing her voice come out of another person, "you'll be tested like you never have been before. You have limits? You'll blow them down—" assuming they don't take you down first.

Yours sure did.

Pathetic.

Any one of them dies once things heat up, and it's your fault.

You think you can get them to win a war? Maybe if they had anyone but you, they could. If they knew how broken you were—

"—am I clear?"

A thunderclap: "Yes, Captain!"

Some of their enthusiasm slipped through the bars of Mila's cage. Maybe they would be alright after all. Maybe she could do this.

Doubtful.

"We'll start with combat training." Mila fought to ignore that nasty voice in her head, unsure if the conflict inside of her was as hidden as she thought it was. "First, the basics. Then we'll start throwing in weapons and—"

"I can fight."

The voice floated from the back of the ranks. Cold. Detached. Defiant. Mila searched for the owner—the corpse woman, whose exhausted eyes so reminded Mila of her own. And she had no patience for it.

"Back in line, soldier," was the automatic response, and it came out harsher than Mila had intended it.

Any remorse she felt evaporated when the soldier stood her ground.

"I can fight," the soldier repeated, more definitively.

Mila beat her rising temper down—something new she had to fight, and one of the battles she hated most. "Then why are you here—" she stole a glance at the soldier's lapel "—Lieutenant?"

"Got shot, Captain. Ordered to reconditioning."

You're clearly thrilled about that.

…but anyone else would have felt the same. It excused nothing, but still. Mila sighed, suddenly feeling a little sick. "Got a name?"

"Val Luther."

Mila waved at the permacrete between them. "Step forward."

Her eyes narrowed, Luther complied. Was it from disdain or distrust that she looked down her nose at Mila as she towered over her, or was it both? She wouldn't give herself time to mull over the question. They had a war to fight.

Mila raised her arms to guard her face. "Show me what you got."

The two soldiers circled one another, careful steps crunching against the ground. Mila analyzed Luther's body language for hints at her first move. Tried to plot her own. Breathed in, out.

The twitch in Luther's built shoulders warned Mila to duck before the first punch came. She grabbed Luther's arm and twisted, using her little body as a lever to slam Luther to the ground. Mila's knees trapped her down.

"Yield, Lieutenant."

Luther's scowl hardened and she bucked her hips, sending Mila sprawling on the permacrete. Air burst from Mila's lungs. Her back and chest throbbed as she fought to breathe. She coughed. Staggering, she tried to stand—

—only to have Luther clamp her hands around her neck.

D'Qar vanished. Smoke stung her eyes, her throat. People screamed as they burned. The agent smirked down at her, his pale eyes shining with glee.

Flailing, Mila rammed her knee into the agent's stomach, rage burning through her veins like poison. She snarled, snatched his collar in one fist while the other slammed into his face—first to his nose, so the tears that flooded his vision would keep the blow to the side of his head concealed until it landed. Another. And another.

She hadn't killed him the first time they'd met like she should have. She would now.

"Captain Dameron!"

She raised her fist for the last blow, her knuckled sticky with his blood.

Good.

"Mila!"

Green. Fresh air. Overcast sky. And—

"No…"

Luther stared up at her, blood pouring from her nose, red bruises swelling on her cheekbones, her temple, her eyes.

"Oh no, no, no…."

Her hands shook. "Darren… Darren, take—take the rest of them to—"

Darren quickly waved the rest of the recruits from the scene, jogging alongside them as they started to run the perimeter of the base again.

Mila caught Aly's eye from the crowd as it disappeared. She'd blanched, stared at her like she was a wild animal.

Maybe she was one.

What had she done?