CHAPTER 1 THE JUNGLE WAS ALIVE and Rey was alive with it She darted through the dense brush never stopping never slowing She dipped under half hidden branches and hopped over exposed roots She brushed a webweaver off her shoulder and dodged the flick of a zymond's poisonous tongue When she came upon swampy ground she grabbed a creeper vine and swung over it Her breathing remained steady throughout and she didn't break a sweat despite the humidity Rey might have been a creature of the desert desert accustomed to the sand and sun of Jakku but on Ajan Kloss she moved through the jungle as if she'd lived there her whole life Such was the power of the Force For those who opened themselves up to it even the most foreign environments could become like home As fast as she ran however Rey could not shake off her pursuers They whizzed through the air behind her four combat remotes one blue one white one green and one red targeting her with stingbeams Though she couldn't
sense the robotic devices the same way she could living organisms she was able to track them by discerning how they interacted with their surroundings The chrome of their surfaces made glittering reflections in rainwater puddles puddles The puff of their maneuvering jets quieted the noisy tree chirpers And the beams of their lasers emitted the scorched scent of ozone All these sights sounds and smells clued Rey into the remotes locations so she could stay one step ahead of them and their precisely timed shots She had another pursuer a friendly one who whined while struggling to keep pace Colored orange and white with a domed head and a spherical body the astromech droid BB 8 was designed for starship maintenance and hyperspace navigation not high speed chases through wild jungles The uneven land and thick vegetation made travel challenging for a mechanical being that rolled rather than walked or flew Still using every gadget available to an astromech BB 8 managed to stay within beeping distance Rey had told her little friend to stay back at the base but of course BB 8 had refused The droid was above all else stubbornly loyal But the remotes weren't going to quit because her unwanted helper lagged behind They kept zapping at her while she kept running toward her goal lightsaber lightsaber hilt in hand Their laser beams could inflict a nasty sting as their name implied but Rey wasn't worried so much about the pain as she was about slowing down Every second was precious if she wanted to impress her teacher and achieve a personal best
She snagged a branch that blocked her way vaulted over it and then snapped it back at the remotes The branch smashed into the white remote and hurled it into the bushes A beam from the blue remote singed the air over her as she ducked and instead struck its green counterpart causing the electronic device to fizzle and die She took care of the blue remote by blowing on a fanged flower that she dashed past Alerted by her breath its petal mouth did the rest snatching the orb from the air When Rey came to the edge of a gorge she didn't pause to get her bearings Following her teacher's instructions she picked up an old A wing pilot's helmet from a tree stump and jammed it over her head Rey pulled the helmet's blast shield over her eyes and then did something that made BB 8 shriek so loudly Rey heard it through the helmet's mufflers She ignited her lightsaber and stepped onto the tightrope tightrope bridge that spanned the gorge The red remote whistled after her Blind as Rey might be with her eyes she wasn't blind in the Force Though she couldn't see the remote she knew where it was in connection connection with everything else and could anticipate its next moves When it fired at her from behind she batted away its shots with her lightsaber blade Coming to the end of the tightrope she jumped onto firm ground and tossed off the helmet She didn't bother to glance back at her pursuer but immediately went to work climbing a giant broadleaf tree From an upper branch fluttered a piece of red ribbon It would be hers
As she neared the ribbon the red remote swooped toward the tree Rey launched herself off the tree and sliced the ribbon with her saber as she fell The red remote's beam missed her and shredded the end of the ribbon instead Her boots thudded on the ground but didn't stay there for long She tucked the ribbon in her sash and ran across the tightrope her capelet fanning out behind her BB 8 met her on the other side of the gorge and sped after her offering offering congratulatory beeps She was going to pass this test in record time The general would be proud Then Rey stopped her heels kicking up dirt and leaves Hovering before her was the red remote Its maneuvering jets hissed at her The blasted thing was tenacious she had to give it that But it was time to end this game The blue blade she held had once been wielded by Luke Skywalker and his father before him It had been damaged on more than one occasion most recently in Supreme Leader Snoke's throne room The kyber crystal that powered the blade had shattered when she and Kylo Ren had fought for the weapon But Rey had retrieved its pieces and through a careful study of the texts she had taken from Ahch To she had mended the crystal and rebuilt the lightsaber Nonetheless before she could bring the blade up in front of her the remote hit her in the shoulder with a stingbeam She winced but the pain could have been worse That beam was on a lower setting The red remote was toying with her The next round of shots bounced off her blade and were sent back at the remote In each case the remote dodged
