"Pleased to meet you, Ms. Livzi." Kaden holds out his hand, clasping hers. Goodness, underneath her brave exterior, he could sense the poor girl was terrified. And no wonder. Lieutenant Alvinn seemed much too stern. "I'd be happy to take you home, if you'd like." She'd be much more comfortable with a Jedi rather than a security officer.

"That won't be necessary," Lieutenant Alvinn butts in. Kaden doesn't need the force to sense her irritation. "I was hoping to ask Sara a few questions."

Oh! That's right, for all he knew this girl could be a criminal. Kaden's pulse quickens. This sort of thing was what he had been brought on for. "Why don't we all go together, then?" He says. "As a Jedi Knight," he can't help the satisfaction out of his voice at the new title, "I'll know if the girl is lying. That way we can have her on her way in no time."

He gives Sara his most comforting smile.

Well, fuck. Lisa sure didn't want to try to leverage Kara with some kind of empath in the room. At least she's now 100% certain he can't actually read minds, given what she was thinking about. If she's playing a possible criminal, it won't be her who gets the empath cop to go away.

Lisa opens her mouth like she's going to say something, then quickly closes it. One quick, noncommittal nod. She returns to looking down and away.

Kara leads the three of them to the lift, a nondescript set of steel doors, and punches in the floor for her office. She doesn't bother to dwell on what a disaster this is. Kaden would know if Sarah was lying, which removed the possibility of playing Sarah off as a drugged up rich girl. Unfortunate, considering that was the persona she had been playing in the car. Anyone reviewing audio logs who could cross reference with this conversation would be suspicious. But that was a problem for another time. For now, she had to communicate what she wanted to Sara while hiding it from Kaden.

"Sara has the potential to be our first lead," she says, hoping the girl won't be confused by the switch in cover story. "As far she's explained, she's been kidnapped from another world. She has no idea where she is, or how she arrived here. It could be the work of our traffickers." She snuck a look at the young Jedi as the lift shot upwards. His face had lit up at the mention of a lead. "Which I suspect means she has no idea what a Jedi is, or what you can do, so she may be a little frightened."

Kara didn't even bother to wonder if he'd take the bait or not.

"Oh! Of course," he turned to Sara, beaming as they got off the elevator. "The Jedi Order is an ancient order of protectors united by our ability to harness the power of the Force, an energy field that binds together all beings in the universe. We safeguard peace and protect the innocent, assisting the galactic government wherever they need it, asking for no reward of our own." For fucks sake. Kara regrets her ploy. "Using the Force, a Jedi can accomplish any number of amazing feats. Sensing emotions, moving objects, even seeing the future." This could be the introductory video played for tours at the Jedi temple, for all the originality and realism it contained.

Wait. Kara thinks back to her last visit. It was the introductory video that played outside the Jedi temple. "Using our powers, Jedi have kept peace in the galaxy for centuries." He gives Kara a conspiratorial smile, as if he wishes to acknowledge their mutual satisfaction with his explanation. She tries to reciprocate, with marginal success. 

"However, my personal specialties are mental in nature. I feel other people's emotions strongly, and I am an expert at finding lies and secret motivations. Some people are just unusually good at reading those around them, even among the Jedi." 

Oh for fuck's sake.

Ohhh, he's an idiot. Not that that makes him having power totally unimportant, but this dramatically decreases how horribly this can go. She allows her relief to show on her face.

"Wow! That's very impressive. I'm glad we have people like that helping make things nice. Lieutenant Alvinn was right, I have no clue how I got here or where I am! This planet looks like it sure has a lot of people; how many are there? How many Jedi are there?"

Lisa is excited to figure out just how far she can go with legitimate curiosity plus never actually telling a lie.

"Well," Kaden says, giving Sarah another wide smile. "You're on Coruscant, the jewel of the Republic, home to a trillion citizens. There are only about ten thousand Jedi total, many of whom make their home at the Jedi Temple not too far from here." They pass into Kara's office. Decorated just enough to seem lived in, a few statues, a photo of her nominal husband, and a screen displaying a picture from a world that advertised itself as a "beach world". The picture of the beach world is the only one that brings Kara any joy, given how few people seem to have any trouble with the concept of a planet solely composed of places where land and water met. 

She motions for them to sit, and passes behind her desk, pulling out a pad to take notes. "Sarah," she says, meeting the girl's eyes. "You're not in trouble; we're here to help." In fact, Kaden would probably chop of his own arm before he let anything happen to the child he met only minutes before. The nice thing about Jedi Knights is they were predictable. "Kaden is just here to make sure you're telling the truth, but there's no reason to try to deceive us." The girl seemed bright enough that she'd understand omissions were fine. The girl's unsettling canniness was one of today's many mixed blessings.Can you tell us anything distinctive that might help us locate your world? Anything about your abduction, or how you got to District 17?" Kara is eager to learn about the girl's provenance. Beyond that, though, she hopes that Kaden will reveal something about the motives of whomever had sent him.

Stupid. Kara was being too careless with her thoughts. She lets herself well up with an almost maternal concern for the girl, and tries not to think about the irony inherent in picking such a frame. 

"Well, I lived in a city with a little under a million people. The planet was called Earth, but I don't know if anyone outside the planet called it that. Maybe fewer than ten billion on the whole planet. No one really talked about other planets much, on Earth. We had several horrible monsters who also lived on the planet- actually, one was attacking my city- Brockton Bay- during the last things I remember. Imagine a humanoid about two stories tall, with three eyes on one side of its face and one on the other, and no other facial features. It had a long tail, could move ridiculously fast, and could move the water around itself without touching it. It actually caused a tidal wave when it first attacked the city. The last things I remember were being knocked off the roof of a building and falling. The most likely things that I think might happen next were: I'd die, I'd be picked up by emergency medical teams -there was a powerful official who had a way to track non-refugees in the city during the attack-, or maybe, if that tracking system failed from water damage, I could have gotten picked up by scavengers; I assume there were many kinds of those during and after the attack. But the last thing I remember was falling off the roof, soaked in water."

This was fun! Telling the most ridiculous story possible while under lie-detection, just to see what they do with the fact that it was all true! And talking about her past didn't make her automatically reach for her power, which meant Lisa was actually not making her headache worse for the first time in the past hour. One in a hundred million or less for having Jedi powers was way below Earth Bet parahuman numbers. Lisa wasn't sure yet if that meant anything yet. She was explicitly not reaching to figure more out about her two companions, just getting things from the conversation was enough... for now.

Kara glances over at Kaden, who is looking at Sarah fondly while bobbing his head. He takes a second before he realizes what she wants, then nods and gives her a cheerful thumbs up. Kara wonders if he has been sent as an act of revenge against her specifically by some unknown nemesis.

They speak with the girl a bit more about her planet, getting a feel for the tech level and potential location, most of which Kara will have to cross reference later. Sarah fits Kara's profile perfectly: A backwater planet, a force sensitive girl. The memory lapse is strange, even stranger now that it's been confirmed by Kaden. Discovering Sarah doesn't feel so much like progress as like a bewildering, new type of dead end. But if the girl was force sensitive, she'd be a tool Kara could use going forward.

"Well, we can keep you here for now while we try to locate your planet. We'll probably want to ask you some more questions, but I'm sure you'd like to rest." She wants to wrap this up as fast as possible so she can talk to the girl in private. "First though, we need to get you to the medical center. You're going to need a number of vaccines right away."

They stand moving towards the door, Kaden leading the way. He turns back, tilted towards Sarah. "Hey," he says in a conspiratorial voice. "While we're down there--" no no no no god damn it "--we can get your midi-chlorian count." He nudges Sarah with his elbow "Maybe you'll turn out to be a Jedi too."

"Wow! I wouldn't even know what to do if I was! If it's going to be a lot of tests, I think I'd rather rest first, but I defer to your expertise; it sounds like you both really have my self interest at heart."

Lisa stays placid and calm, largely unthinking. If things go especially bad in the next hour, she's about to give herself a new monster headache.

Kara tries not to sigh as she rises. "Unfortunately Ms. Livzi, every moment you're around us is another chance for your body to be colonized by some pathogen everyone on Coruscant became immune to a thousand years ago. Exposing a native to a spacefarer's microbiome used to be a popular way of wiping out entire planets. You'll need an immune-booster immediately. The only reason I didn't acquire you one immediately is I wasn't convinced you were telling the truth." She catches Kaden frowning at her out of the corner of her eye as they began heading towards the medical lab. Probably "galactic genocide" was not on the list of Jedi approved conversation topics.

Normally, they'd have to head somewhere specialized, but Kara had spent the last few years looking for people unlawfully taken from backwater planets; which meant she had everything on hand down in the med bay. She keeps to herself on the way down, letting Kaden regurgitate more Republican propaganda as they walk. Sarah nods along, looking up at him with wide eyed adoration, which, given what Kara has seen of the girl, is almost certainly fake. A part of her had idly wondered if it would be kinder to simply let the girl go and become a Padawan, but Kara suspects that the girl would fall to the dark side on her first day, and god help anyone who was nearby.

The med bay is more or less empty today. It's nothing fancy; just a few cots, used about as often for officers who need a nap for serious injuries. There is a nurse droid, IS-TN, some humanoid model with glossy grey plating, who Kara hasn't really bothered to get to know. Kara more or less ignores her. They seat Sarah in a substantial chair, hook up some monitors, and get started. Kara installs an immune-booster, a typically painful process, and somehow Kara gets the sense that Sarah deliberately generates a wince fake enough to elicit a sympathetic pat from Kaden and yet not quite realistic enough to fool Kara. 

Maybe a day was generous. This girl would fall to the dark side in an hour.

Then comes the tricky part. Maybe Kaden forgot about getting the girl's m-count, but Kara can't risk him doing the test on his own. She grabs a reader, and while her back is to the other two, pricks herself with the needle of a second one. She palms the test showing her m-count, keeping her hand slightly behind her body. Angling the display on the fresh test away from Kaden, takes a drop of the girl's blood. The reading lights up in green block letters, causing Kara to stiffen in surprise, but at least she won't have to do the swap. Which is good, because she really wasn't sure she was good enough to get away with lying to a Jedi Knight.

She angles the reader towards Kaden, showing him the reader, and he gives Sarah a roguishly sympathetic smile. "Sorry sweetheart, 985. Looks like you'll be staying with Kara here instead of coming back to the temple with me."

Kara stays quiet as she packs up the test, trying to figure out the implications of that reading. It's not that 985 was unheard of in humans, though it was maybe three standard deviations lower than the median.

It's just 985 was as low as the meter was built to register.

Lisa will wait to talk until they're back in Kara's office, if it seems like it's safe to talk. She's not going to start talking crazy immediately, though.

"Something was wrong with the machine, wasn't it? Midi-chlorians must have something to do with whatever Jedi do, and mine can't be high or Kaden would have made a big deal of it. So low, then. But Kaden wasn't worried about it, so it can't be that people who will never be Jedi all become crazed killers or something. So why are you nervous?"

"Also, how much more do you want to know about my...home planet?" Lisa glances around the room- Kara seems smart enough that this should be enough for her to pick up on, if it's relevant.