Chapter 5: THE CANTINA DISASTER
Two days. Eight jobs. Two hundred credits.
I was learning the rhythms of Nevarro's underworld. Rikka operated a small but efficient operation—courier work, mostly, with occasional surveillance tasks that paid better but carried higher risk. I stuck to deliveries. Kept my head down. Built a reputation for reliability.
The bounty hunters hadn't found me yet. Maybe they'd given up. Maybe they were waiting for me to make a mistake.
Tonight, I was going to make several.
The main cantina occupied prime real estate near the guild hall—three stories of noise, smoke, and credits changing hands. Traders, hunters, merchants, criminals—everyone came here eventually. Everyone with money to spend.
Everyone I could touch.
The plan was simple. Move through the crowd. Make casual contact. See what appeared.
Wealth attracts wealth. Touch the right person, steal the right item.
I ordered cheap caf at the bar and positioned myself near a high-traffic area where patrons squeezed past each other to reach the gambling tables. The crowd was perfect—dense enough to make contact inevitable, distracted enough not to notice.
A Devaronian merchant brushed past me, his expensive robes marking him as someone worth touching.
I let my shoulder bump his arm.
The jolt. The transfer.
Something appeared in my inside pocket—I'd learned to direct the arrival point, somewhat. A gold chain, thick and heavy, probably worth a hundred credits.
It worked.
My heart pounded. The Devaronian kept walking, oblivious.
Again.
I moved deeper into the crowd.
The next contact was a human woman in trader's garb. Her arm touched mine as she reached for her drink.
A ring appeared in my pocket. Gold band, small gemstone. A wedding ring.
Don't think about it. Keep moving.
A Rodian. Shoulder contact.
A vibroblade materialized against my hip. Concealed carry, apparently.
A Weequay. Brief touch on the wrist.
A credit chip, denomination unknown.
Each contact produced something. Each theft went unnoticed. I moved through the cantina like a ghost, collecting possessions from everyone I touched.
This is power. This is survival.
The thought was intoxicating.
Then the Zabrak grabbed my arm.
"Watch where you're going, human."
His grip was firm. Skin on skin. The jolt came—
A packet of death sticks appeared in my hand.
The Zabrak saw it. His eyes went wide.
"What—those are mine!"
I yanked free and pushed into the crowd. Behind me, the Zabrak shouted something I didn't catch.
Too fast. Moving too fast.
I tried to slow down, but the crowd pressed close. More contacts. More transfers.
A bounty puck appeared in my pocket. Someone's datapad materialized in my hand. A small knife. A religious medallion. Items multiplied faster than I could hide them.
"MY CHAIN! Someone took my chain!"
The Devaronian's voice cut through the noise. He was patting his neck, face twisted with fury.
"My ring! Where's my ring?!"
The human woman, frantic now, searching the floor.
The Zabrak was pushing through the crowd toward me, death sticks in one hand, pointing with the other.
"THAT ONE! HE TOOK MY STICKS!"
Every head turned.
Time slowed down the way it did in combat. Options narrowed to a single path.
Run.
I knocked over a table, sending glasses and chips scattering. The distraction bought me three seconds. I used them to reach the back hallway, shoving past a serving droid that crashed against the wall.
"STOP HIM!"
Footsteps behind me. Multiple pursuers.
The back exit was thirty meters away. I covered twenty before someone grabbed my collar.
My elbow found their face. They fell. I kept running.
The exit burst open into an alley. I turned left, then right, using the maze of backstreets the way I'd used mountain paths in Afghanistan. Cover. Speed. Misdirection.
Behind me, the pursuit sounds faded but didn't disappear.
I vaulted a low wall, dropped into a drainage channel, and pressed myself against the ferrocrete. My breathing was ragged. My ribs screamed from the exertion.
Wait. Listen.
Footsteps passed overhead. Voices arguing about which way I'd gone.
They moved on.
I stayed motionless for a full five minutes before I dared to move.
The warehouse I found was abandoned—some kind of processing facility, long since stripped of anything valuable. I slipped through a broken window and collapsed against a support pillar.
My pockets were bulging.
I emptied them one by one, creating a pile of stolen goods in the dim light. The gold chain. The wedding ring. The vibroblade. The credit chip. The death sticks. The bounty puck. The datapad. The knife. The medallion.
And a dozen other items I didn't remember taking. A stylus. A breath freshener. A child's toy that must have come from someone I brushed past without noticing.
Uncontrollable. In crowds, completely uncontrollable.
I picked up the wedding ring.
Simple gold band. Small gemstone—probably synthetic, but chosen with care. Someone had slipped this onto someone else's finger and promised forever.
Now it was in my hand because I'd bumped into a stranger in a bar.
My stomach heaved. I made it to a corner before the vomiting started.
When it stopped, I sat in the darkness and stared at the ring.
This power isn't a gift.
The Trandoshan's blade had seemed like luck. The credit chip had seemed like opportunity.
But this—this cascade of theft, this inability to stop taking from everyone I touched—
It's a curse.
I thought about the woman searching the floor for her ring. The confusion in her eyes. The marriage that would now have an unexplained mystery. The argument that might follow.
"Where did you really lose it? Were you with someone?"
I'd done that. Without meaning to. Without wanting to.
And I'd do it again, every time I touched anyone.
The bounty puck glowed faintly when I activated it.
An alien face rotated in holographic blue—some species I didn't recognize, with a reward amount listed in characters I couldn't read. But the puck itself was distinctive. Custom work. Expensive.
Whoever owned this will want it back.
Another enemy. Another complication.
I deactivated the puck and threw it against the wall. The holographic projector cracked. I stomped on the pieces until they were dust.
The death sticks went next—flushed down a maintenance drain I found in the back of the warehouse.
The datapad I kept. Information had value.
The credit chip I kept. Survival required credits.
The rest—including the wedding ring—I buried in a pile of debris near the entrance.
Evidence disposal. Crime scene 101.
But the ring haunted me. I could feel its weight even after I'd let it go.
I spent the night in the warehouse, listening to distant sounds of pursuit and argument. The cantina incident would spread through the underworld. A thief who operated by touch. A human male, roughly this height, roughly this build.
The bounty hunters looking for Ven Calder might make the connection. Or they might not. Either way, my window for operating freely in Nevarro City had just slammed shut.
New rules. New protocols.
No crowds. Ever.
No physical contact with anyone.
Gloves at all times.
Maximum distance from civilization.
I pulled my knees to my chest and waited for dawn, wondering if I could ever touch another human being without destroying something.
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