A LONG TIME AGO…

JAINA SOLO SITS ALONE IN THE COLD, HER KNEES DRAWN TIGHT TO her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs to conserve body heat. She is fourteen, and she hasn’t slept in days because her captors flood her cell with harsh bright light at odd intervals. She has never been so hungry, and her body aches from the daily beatings her tormentors call “training.” She knows what they are trying to take from her, and she refuses to surrender it. But she is alone and frightened and in more pain than she has ever before endured, and her will is a strand of spider silk holding a crystal chandelier. One more beating, one more sleepless rest period, one more hour spent shivering on a bare durasteel bunk, and she may drop that chandelier. And that scares her more than dying, because it means submitting to her fear, embracing her anger…because it means turning to the dark side.

Then the place in her heart that belongs to her brother begins to warm, and she knows Jacen is thinking of her. She pictures him sitting in his own cell in another spoke of the space station, his brown hair wavy and tousled, his jaw clenched with earnest resolve, and the warm place in her heart starts to grow. She stops shivering, her hunger fades, and her fear turns to resolve.

This is the gift of their twin bond: that neither Jaina nor Jacen is ever truly alone. They share a connection through the Force that will always sustain them. When one grows weak, the other strengthens. When one hurts, the other soothes. It is a bond that cannot be broken by any power in the galaxy, as much a part of them as the Force itself.

So Jaina puts aside her despair and turns her thoughts to escape, because when she and Jacen work together, nothing is impossible. They are on a space station, so they are going to have to steal a spacecraft. They will have to find a way to deactivate the hangar’s containment field, perhaps through sabotage or by forging a launch authorization. And that means they are going to need some time before the guards realize they’re gone—especially since they have to free their friend Lowbacca before fleeing.

The only way to tell time in the cell is to count heartbeats, and Jaina is too busy planning to do that. So when Jacen’s place in her heart begins to grow larger and more full, she has no idea how much time has passed. But she has felt the sensation thousands of times before, and she knows what it means: her brother is coming.

Jaina’s pulse begins to pound with excitement, and soon she can feel Jacen’s pulse pounding to the same rhythm. He is very close now, coming down the corridor outside her cell—and she cannot sense any other presences accompanying him. She doesn’t want him to know how frightened she has been—or how close she has come to breaking—so she begins a Jedi breathing exercise to calm herself.

Then she feels him stop two cells away.

Not there, dummy, Jaina thinks. Keep coming.

There is a flutter in Jaina’s heart as Jacen grows confused, and she worries that her brother is about to open the wrong cell and ruin their escape. She reaches out to him in the Force, trying to physically pull him toward her, and soon the control pad outside her cell door begins to click.

Jaina breathes a sigh of relief, then folds her arms across her chest and leans back against the wall. She knows this is going to take awhile, because Jacen is really bad with machinery.

Somehow, though, he deactivates the alarm before he unlocks the cell, then manages to unlock the cell without activating the intercom to the control center. Finally, the door hisses open, and Jaina sees her twin brother standing outside, smirking at her with a replica of their father’s famous lopsided grin.

“Hi, Jaina,” he says. “I don’t suppose you’d like to—”

“What took you so long?” Jaina demands, interrupting her brother’s fun. He is always making jokes and wisecracks, and they are always lame. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

She slips off her bunk and steps through the door past him, then looks down the corridor in both directions, searching for guards or other signs of trouble. Jacen isn’t much better at planning than fixing machinery, so—however he managed to get this far—there is a good chance that the guards are on to him by now.

But the famous Solo luck seems to be with him today, and Jaina sees nothing but the closed doors of other cells. She would like to free the other captives, but she knows better than to try. Their wills have already been broken, and one of them would be sure to alert the guards. So Jaina simply closes her own door and leans closer to Jacen.

“What now?” she asks. “Have you figured out where Lowbacca is?”

Jacen flushes, then drops his gaze to the floor. “Not yet,” he admits. “I was sort of hoping you might have a plan.”

Jaina smiles. “Of course I do,” she says. “Didn’t I say I’ve been waiting?”