My legs were still shaking, and my arms clung to Vila as I somehow righted myself, sitting up. The movement alone was a challenge, and my head felt like it would be split apart at any moment. My vision was blurry, and my eyes hurt, making me see flashing white points of light wherever I looked. They blurred the afterimage of that child, his eyes, his blood, my blade in my hands... I could still hear the sound of the battles, which echoed behind my ears like an illusory pain of a thousand needles... But Vila's hands, her voice, her smell, those were real, and the visions were not. So, focusing on her, I managed to anchor myself.
"You're back," she whispered, and only then did I realize I had finally stopped sobbing... Honestly, I wasn't sure when it had started.
"Barely," I croaked, trying to laugh but managing only a rasp instead. "I think I'm okay… Yeah... It's... fine."
"You're not," she said softly, brushing my hair back. "But you will be. You're stronger than this place gives you credit for."
Behind her, even HK wasn't making a sound. After looking around, I noticed that he stood there like a silent sentinel at the edge of the control chamber, his red optics dimmed, and his usual whirring subroutines suppressed while scanning the room.
[Statement: No further jokes will be made, Meatbag. Not today... This place is… wrong.]
I blinked my eyes, fighting back another burst of pain, hearing him speak. HK… saying that? Was he hit in the head? No matter... My throat tightened again, but I forced the tremble back down, unsure what to say to him.
"Thanks…" I murmured, then slowly, painfully, I pushed myself to my feet. Of course, Vila helped me with it, as one hand was always close in case I stumbled. Luckily, my body wasn't actually hurting; it was my head and my mind that suffered damage, not me physically. "I'm good," I repeated. "It's just a bit of vertigo."
Saying that, I slowly turned toward the central console, the one I had touched when all this memory transfer, or whatever it was, started. Gazing at it, I narrowed my eyes, trying to get a feel with the Force. I could still sense the residue of that horror beneath my skin, in my bones, but it was also connected in a way to the console.
And what a horrible console it was. It was similar to HK in that it was wreathed in the Dark Side, but while HK was touched by it, this thing felt like it was made out of it. They were on a completely different level. Wanting to do nothing with it, I forcefully pushed the feeling down, not wanting to fall back into those memories. At least... not for now. I knew it was not gone but buried in my mind... But it had to be because we needed to leave, and I could untangle it all when we were finally out of here, back to the Academy.
"Kael, you sure you should—?" Vila began asking.
"We have to," I interrupted her gently. "If I saw what they did, and it was a memory of this place, then we are in the belly of the beast, so to speak. And we best not linger, or we will be consumed by its stomach acid!"
She didn't argue.
Glancing back at the machinery, the mainframe pulsed again, flickering in red-orange and then turning violet in a steady rhythm like a coded pulsar. I didn't reach toward it, but then I had to realize... It was already too late. The pulsing, the changing colors, it was already in the middle of booting up; it was reactivating itself!
"Not good!" I said as my hand shot out and my fingers hovered over the surrounding interface, where the alien glyphs reacted at once and began glowing. "It's going online!"
"Doing what?!" Vila asked, nervously.
These damned symbols... Wait... They… they weren't so alien anymore. I could read them. Probably, the memory, the unwanted side effect of its imprint, had left more than just horror behind, along with some understanding of this particular language.
"These should be Rakatan symbols," I said aloud, running my fingers just above the ridged surface of the panel, trying to find a way to stop it or deactivate it. "I feel it is... An... Old dialect… Possibly a control variant, separate from the main language, maybe an offshoot." I muttered, trying to pronounce some of them.
"Kael?"
"It's okay." I smiled at Vila, "Not all memories are bad, it seems."
[Observation: Translation subroutines confirm partial overlap. Your verbalizations are consistent with the Rakatan structure that was known in their final era. Addendum: Possibly right at their fall.]
"Wait! You can read it?!" Vila snapped at him at once, looking surprisingly angry.
[Statement: After pronouncing them out loud, a new memory fragment was reactivated in my core. Conclusion: Kael's words jogged my memory. Yes. I can read them now.]
"Lying bastard..." Vila grunted, but I just squeezed her hand to refocus her thoughts.
"I think I can access this system now." I inhaled deeply, "These symbols indicate... a... Let me see... Hm. It should be the planetary climate regulation, biomass evolution... and terraforming status control."
"Terraforming?" Vila asked again, stepping beside me and trying to see, but she could understand none of it.
"Yes." I nodded, activating some of the controls and reading the appearing holographic texts, looking for a big, red, off button. Of course, there wasn't any. "This entire complex... This is its control nexus. Not this one room, but the sections around this one, and it has... twelve in total. The one we are in was one of the command centers for a planetary-wide transformation. According to this..." I pointed at a massive inscription scrolling upwards at a slow speed, projected right above the mainframe. "This planet was designated to become 'Rakul Rak'ta.' A second homeworld for the Rakata."
Listening to us, HK made a low mechanical hum, somewhere between a processor cycle and mild surprise. Maybe both.
[Commentary: That name roughly translates to 'Throne of Suffering' or 'Cradle of the Strong.' Depending on the interpretive inflection of the speaker. Realization: My creator... I am becoming a protocol droid. Please disassemble me if that happens.]
"It tracks," I said bitterly, feeling my jaw tighten. "They were reshaping this entire world using Dark Side-infused technology. I saw it, or to be precise, I felt it. Going by the records here, this planet wasn't always like this. Yes... Here it is... It was once frozen to its core. Ice-covered and barren."
"And they turned it into a jungle, huh?" Vila nodded slowly, her face hardening. "Dark Side... You don't need to say much more, Kael. I can guess what you have seen... It was death, wasn't it? A lot of it..."
"Not just death." I turned to face her, meeting her eyes. "They brought in slaves from all over the Rakatan Empire. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands... They were thrown into pits, into arenas like the one I saw... Then, they were forced to fight, suffer, and kill each other. That raw pain, terror, and bloodshed was harnessed to fuel these machines. The more they suffered, the more power it generated... That's how they changed the world."
[Thoughtful Agreement: That kind of Dark Side usage is in line with how the Rakatan Star Empire managed to create the Star Forge.]
Vila's expression didn't flinch when she heard him. Instead, she kept looking at me, ignoring HK, and I felt her trembling beside me as she placed a hand over mine.
"You saw too much."
"Not enough," I whispered. "Because then I could stop the reactivation..." I answered as I bit my lips, flicking through the different consoles, searching for... something! But most of them were badly garbled up, corrupted, or inaccessible. But... there was enough to piece the logs in here together.
I looked back at the mainframe and focused, letting the Force pool in my hand. With how much fear and suffering I experienced, it didn't push back on my access, and it was letting me in. Drawn by it, I laid my palm gently on the control plate, and it flared to life under my touch without giving me a nightmare this time around. Just as I did, all the lights snapped on across the chamber and even outside, through the buried complex.
I was late.
Somewhere, some reactor had activated, humming through the walls and floor as holograms flickered into existence. There were maps, energy grids, and pulsing networks of crimson lines that spiderwebbed across a 3D model of the planet that was now projected right before us. There it was, the entire world… And it was laced with these systems from its core to its poles... It ran beneath the jungles, beneath the ocean, the continent, and entire networks were buried deep in the crust.
And all of those were coming back online.
"It's all connected," we both breathed, gulping loudly after witnessing its immense nature. "The terraforming was almost complete... This facility was one of many, but this one-! Ah!" I motioned toward the central spire on the holo-map... this was the master node. Where we were standing right now. "I think I just reactivated the entire thing..." I gulped.
"And if this one wakes up…" Vila said slowly, looking at me.
"All of them do." Saying that, I turned to the last blinking section on the console. Its glyphs were older, distorted, and barely functional, but I understood them enough to know what they were detailing. "There's a lockdown still in place. Something sealed this system a long time ago."
"I can easily guess what: Every oppressor has to face a rebellion." Vila snorted, "It is inevitable. Good. They deserved it!"
"Yes, but..." I frowned, hesitating, staring at the prompt before me. It wasn't a question. It was a single statement. "Override lockdown initiated," I read aloud... "It had already finished by the time the lights came back on."
Hearing that, HK tilted his head.
[Inquisitive Statement: That sounds... problematic, is it not?]
"I think this whole place was stuck in some kind of perpetual hibernation," I muttered, my brows furrowed.
"Can you tell what happens if you cancel it?" Vila asked quietly, looking around, "I have a bad feeling about this, Kael!"
"It's already too late, and I can't know everything..." I shook my head, grimacing. "The process is done already, and the facilities connected to the terraforming project are being systematically rebooted. The lockdown has been lifted..."
Just then, voices began to emerge from the consoles, and although I could understand it, Vila couldn't.
:: Primary Containment Lock Released ::
:: Core Access Pathways Restoring ::
:: Mind-State Reservoir Reconnection in Progress ::
:: Collective Sentience is Online ::
:: Uploading to Acquired Hosts ::
"Kael?" Vila asked, voice tight. "I can't tell what it's talking about, but your expression isn't something I'd like to see now!"
"Fuck..." I whispered. "I released it."
"What is 'it'?" she demanded.
"I don't know..." I looked at the projection of the globe and pointed towards the northern poles, where Vestara's disciples went, "But whatever it is... was there. And it is now... awake."