Chapter 107 · The Room That Listens

The rebel hideout looked like nothing from the outside: just a half-ruined farmhouse in a forgotten stretch of the Lothal plains, its land long since fallow and its silos leaning like broken bones against the horizon. The skiff slid into a trench beside one of the towers and vanished beneath a rusted metal canopy that groaned under its own weight.

The descent took them underground.

Far underground.

Cool air replaced the dry heat of the surface. Cement tunnels branched off like arteries from a central corridor. Old wiring buzzed overhead. The place had clearly been built by people who no longer trusted daylight — or perhaps daylight no longer trusted them.

Eli and Stent were marched down a narrow passage into a chamber barely wider than a cargo closet. The cell door hissed shut behind them, sealing with a lock that sounded far too heavy for such a small room.

Dim lights steadied overhead. The walls were duracrete. The floor was cold enough to numb through boots. There was one bench — metal, bolted down — and a drain in the corner.

Eli flexed his wrists behind him. The binders bit skin.

“Sit,” a rebel guard ordered.

Eli did. He didn’t want to make things worse.

Stent remained standing until the guard gestured sharply. Only then did he lower himself onto the bench beside Eli — exact posture, controlled breath, his calm somehow amplifying the bleakness of the room.

The guard left. The lock clamped down again.

Silence.

Only then did Eli exhale, long and shaky, and twist enough to check Stent’s restraints.

“They didn’t have to tie you this tight,” he muttered.

“They assessed threat level correctly,” Stent said.

“That’s not the point.”

Eli leaned closer, trying to see what angle the binders sat at. They were cinched too far up Stent’s forearms, digging into the skin, restricting more movement than standard rebel cuffs ever needed to.

“You okay?” Eli whispered.

Stent turned his head slightly. “I am functional.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

A beat. Then — barely audible: “Yes.”

The cell’s cold air settled between them. It smelled faintly of metal, dust, and something older — the kind of smell spaces acquire when too many confessions have happened inside them.

Eli rubbed his shoulder against the wall where the stun rod had hit, switching to cheunh in a deliberate way. “They’re scared of us.”

“Of me,” Stent corrected, using the same language. “Not of you.”

Eli frowned. “We’re a pair. They don’t get to separate us like that.”

Stent’s eyes softened just enough to betray a thought Eli wasn’t meant to see. “They already have.”

Outside the cell, distant footsteps echoed, slow and deliberate.

Kallus.

He entered without ceremony.

No dramatic stride, no squad at his back, no interrogator’s posture meant to intimidate. He simply stepped into the cell like a man returning to a room he already knew too well. The door shut behind him with a hydraulic hiss, sealing them in with a soft sound far heavier than it should have been.

He didn’t sit. He didn’t lean. He stood in the center of the room, hands clasped behind him — a posture Eli recognized instantly.

Old Imperial habit. A ghost of training that never fully left the body.

Stent straightened on the bench. Kallus noticed.

For a moment, none of them spoke.

Then Kallus exhaled, slow and steady — the breath of a man preparing to walk into a truth he didn’t trust.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s begin.”

His eyes were on Eli first. Not because Eli looked easier, but because Eli was the one he understood.

“Who sent you here?” Kallus asked.

“No one,” Eli answered.

Kallus tilted his head. “That’s your opening statement?”

“It’s the truth.”

Kallus shifted his attention to Stent — and the temperature of the room seemed to change with it.

“You,” Kallus said. “The Chiss officer. You haven’t given your name.”

Stent met his gaze, unflinching. “I was not asked.”

A flicker of irritation crossed Kallus’s expression. “Fine. I am asking now.”

“Stent.”

“Your full name?”

Stent’s silence was deliberate. Choiceless but defiant.

Kallus’s jaw twitched. He turned back to Eli.

“Why did you come to Lothal?”

Eli kept his voice even. “To find someone.”

“Who?”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

Eli wet his lips. “We’re looking for Thrawn.”

The silence that followed wasn’t disbelief.

It was impact.

Kallus inhaled once, sharply, before he managed to mask it. “Thrawn is gone.”

“We know,” Eli said.

“Then what exactly are you ‘looking’ for?”

“The truth,” Eli said. “A lead. Anything.”

Kallus’s eyes hardened. “I’ll repeat the question: Who sent you?”

“No one,” Eli said again. “Not the Empire. Not Imperial remnants. Not anyone with a political agenda.”

Kallus stepped closer. Not looming — evaluating.

“And you expect me to believe,” he said slowly, “that a former Imperial strategist’s aide and a Chiss officer just wandered in here by chance? Onto this world? After that battle?”

“It wasn’t chance,” Eli said. “But it wasn’t the Empire.”

Kallus’s expression sharpened. He turned to Stent.

“You,” he said. “What are you?”

Stent replied with the bare minimum the question required. “Chiss.”

Kallus let out a humorless laugh. “I gathered that.”

Stent didn’t correct him. Didn’t elaborate. His silence was its own barricade.

Kallus pivoted back to Eli. “What’s your allegiance?” he asked. “Right now. Today.”

Eli didn’t hesitate. “The Ascendancy,” he said. “Not the Empire.”

The words landed like cold metal dropped on stone.

Kallus blinked once. Twice. Then: “…That’s a poor joke.”

“It’s not a joke,” Eli said.

Kallus’s voice dropped to a low, dangerous register. “Then explain to me why two people claiming no loyalty to the Empire are hunting its most infamous admiral.”

“We’re not hunting him,” Eli said, voice tightening. “We’re trying to bring him home.”

Kallus froze.

His jaw worked once. His eyes flicked toward Stent. Then back to Eli, something unraveling beneath the surface of his expression.

The room went still. Still enough that Eli could hear Stent’s measured breathing. Still enough that Kallus’s next words felt like the moment before a storm breaks.

“Say that again,” Kallus whispered.

But Eli didn’t repeat himself.Not yet.

Kallus had to be prepared for the truth