PHOENIX ━ dameron

010 | what once was

"I trusted you to tell me the truth," he told her.

A small part of her was caught off guard, but she knew better than to show it. "Then that was your own mistake."

"You played a gamble with someone's life."

"And he was gambling with your entire squadron's," Lyra argued back, voice catching with disbelief. She didn't blame Oddy, not entirely, but it had to be said.

"So what about on the runway when you said you had no leads? That was a lie."

"It was a lie," she admitted.

"How the hell did you even know?"

"His wedding ring. Have you ever noticed that he wears it around his neck and not on his hand?"

Poe scoffed and held up the chain of his own necklace. A silver ring hung on the chain and it glinted in the dim light of the street. "I wear this everyday. Saying he has a ring around his neck means nothing."

"Sure, but one week before Leia charged you with forming the Black Squadron, he was wearing it on his left hand. At first, I thought it was for practical purposes since he was doing more hands-on repairs, but there are no coincidences. He wanted to hide it, to ensure that there wasn't even a detail out of place that would give away his connection to Terex. I didn't put all of that together until I saw him out on the runway," Lyra explained, watching Poe's reaction closely. It was a puzzle that had only just been given its final piece.

"It's a wedding ring, what does that have to do with the kriffing First Order?"

"Leverage," she answered simply "One of the only connections that came back from the prisoner data was under the name Ilka. No last name, no date of last contact, just the location she's currently being held which is the Carrion Spike. Terex has never been shy about catering to his whims, he has servants of every species waiting on him hand and foot inside that ship. But, he's cautious. The First Order doesn't want him to get too comfortable, otherwise their leash on him gets loose. He forged the documents of his hires, going so far as to cover any code on the prisoner transfer database with a set of fake names."

"Which would make any names you found useless to us," Poe said, still trying to rationalize.

"No good to someone who only looks at the surface of things," she told him pointedly. "Ellis took away that layer of falsified data. You wipe the glass clean, and then you can see straight through it. Ever heard the name Sowa Chuan?"

"Sowa," he repeated, clearly annoyed. "No."

"Sowa Chuan is registered in the database as the legal wife of Oddy Muva."

"So let me get this straight. Ilka is Sowa, Terex took her hostage aboard his ship to blackmail a member of the Black Squadron because he wants to, what, find out what we're looking for and get there first?"

Lyra raised her shoulders. "Terex could care less about what you're looking for, he only wanted to impress his superiors.  And because he has a vendetta against you, the one who's personally holding him back from giving Resistance information to his First Order superiors. Call it a personal rivalry," she settled on.

"There's a line," Poe sniffed. His anger had softened, but he still had questions. "So you knew, or at least had a good idea that Oddy was the spy. You still agreed to come all the way to Kaddak. Why?"

"To use this to our advantage," Lyra told him. Unspoken was the nagging thought of what might have happened to Poe should she not have come. Kaddak was lawless and incomprehensible to someone who had never lived a half-life there.