Midnight Rose

[Belle]

Sylvester exited Seagrave's office. He walked down the short hall to the lift, boots sounding against the cold, unadorned floor, the walls starkly lit by the icy glow of the strip of lights that ran across the ceiling. Keying for the first sub-level, he sagged against the side of the cold, steel box as a faint mechanical whir rose around him, announcing the descent.


Like most, Sylvester had never asked to be a part of the Omniverse. Before, he had been just like any other kid: friends, parents, school. He slacked on the latter, but never hard enough to fail – that would have earned him a real ass-kicking from his dad, after all. His mother had been sweet and kind, for all the good that did. He lived in a corner of the suburbs, quiet and unremarkable and boring. A few years into high school, the prospect of freedom so tantalizingly close, it came, though not in the way he had ever expected.


The Omniverse commanded, and they all were slaves to its whims. He had been registered and dumped into Coruscant's lower tiers like so many pieces of garbage; like a rat that scrabbled on the inside of a bucket for escape. Seagrave told him an interesting statistic, once: eighty percent of the people that entered Tier Four never left. The streets were littered with the victims of this hard statistic.


Well, he wasn't a victim. While the others begged and scraped, Sylvester decided he would be different.


It had started small: taking food when someone wasn't looking, or snatching a credit or two from a street performer's box. He felt bad at first, but the guilt quickly faded as his seemingly endless hunger grew, gnawing at the pit of his stomach. When he got caught, his legs were faster than anyone else's. Or so he thought for a time.


As the lift beeped with every successive floor, he touched the scar that ran from brow to cheek with his artificial hand, over what had once been a natural eye. One lonely night, a gang of Stripes had 'educated' him on the cost of weakness. They hadn't left him for dead, no – they had very deliberately kept him alive, an object lesson to any pickpocket that thought they could filch from their crew.


They thought they had castrated the fight out of him. Maybe they might have with someone else. Instead, a liquid anger boiled up inside him, consumed his every thought as he floated in a hospital's bacta tank.


Once he was back on the street, he had tracked down the one who had taken his body parts from him.


Then, in a back alley on Jade Street, Sylvester took those parts in kind.


It was the first time he took a life.


After that, people started to take more notice. From that point on, there was something different about him, something that had nothing to do with his missing limbs. Something that he had gained – an edge to his thoughts, a willingness to go further than anyone else. He fell in and out of gangs without care of the enemies he made – he was young, stupid, and thought that a knife and notch in his belt was all that mattered.


And Hell, who could blame him? He got a new hand and an eye, almost the same as before. He got credits. He got food. He got a place to sleep. He never had to beg from anyone to get where he was. He was as much a self-made man as anyone in Tier Four could be.


The lift blipped, higher pitched this time, and the doors slid open. Sylvester stepped out, hands in coat pockets, and headed towards the armory. Officially it was open only to the tower's non-automated security. Unofficially, it was a place that any 'operatives' or 'agents' could stock up for their 'enforcement.'


Sylvester snorted. Mister Fancypants could use all the sophisticated words he liked. In the end, he was just as much a street thug as Sylvester himself – Sylvester just had the balls to admit it.


Sylvester pulled out a card from his coat pocket and swiped it at the reader by the door. Obediently, it hissed open.


Even before being abducted into the Omniverse, he had always hated being told what he could and couldn't do. That wasn't unusual – plenty of people liked to go their own way, or at least pretend like they were rebels. And like so many, Sylvester had never really grown out of that 'phase.' So when 'Lord Hono', as he liked to be called, offered Sylvester a chance to go into the forbidden zone? He had jumped at the chance. He never dreamed that he would have that kind of trouble with an old woman, a girl, and a dog, of course.


The shelves inside the armory were neatly stocked behind a thick, durasteel mesh. A square portal had been cut out just above a desk surface that passed through the barrier, allowing the humanoid, faux-gold plated droid on the other side to interact with agents.


Sylvester placed his ID down on the counter top. The droid – ABB-Y5 - inclined itself over, its glowing, unblinking eyes scanning, then straightened up. “How may I assist you today, Master Adams?” it asked. It had no lips, only a small, rectangular hole where a mouth should be.


“Today, Abby?” Sylvester smiled. “Today you're going to help me get even.”