Of All Evil I Deem You Capable (Kylo Ren x Reader)

Chapter 1 - It's You

Each slow second that you wait for the colossal blast door to open drains your heart, nullifies the air in your lungs; you're unsure of how you still have strength to remain standing. Four years of religious dedication to working and honing your skills hauled you up the tech roles of the First Order until you landed in the one that permeated your mind since you set foot in the academy: a Ship Operating System (SOS) engineer. Now you'd be able to revel and savor the fruits of your labor, to have outside validation that you are worth something.

At least, this is what you tell yourself with each new goal you set in your career. Time after time you remain satisfied for a week, maybe two, and then another milestone comes up, another nearly unachievable feat set by yourself that reinforced your constant panic of falling behind, of not being good enough, of doubting yourself every step of the way.

Wonder how long I'll last this round.

A loud clamor hauls you out of the hollow abyss of your thoughts. Like curtains, the impenetrable doors open, allowing you to scope out the place that you had fantasized about since you graduated from the Academy. An officer calls out to the group, guiding you inside the sprawling chamber. Walking in a neat row, you step into the first day of your new life, yearning to commit every detail and every thought to memory.

The area spans for hundreds of meters, rivaling the size of a docking bay. A ceiling rises tall, high enough for a Jet Trooper to hover around with ample room to spare. Pill lights adorn the panels attached to the walls, extending inward, for so long that the room itself seems to be an infinite illusion as if two mirrors face each other.

The sheer scale of what awaits you shrinks your ego to space dust; to finish the job, a viewport showcases a canvas of stars and grinds away whatever lingering sense of self importance, hammering down how you're nothing but a blip in the mesh of space-time. Of course, being that you're standing on the ground level of Starkiller Base means that the sight granted by the gigantic screen is a projection that lags one nanosecond behind; you're no more than a picture of a woman looking at a picture.

Your domed, black helmet lets you gawk at every quadrant of the chamber while shielding from prying eyes. Not that anyone is looking; all officers in loco delve into their work, tuning out any stimuli that don't originate from their datapads or the crawling text on the viewport. The dull sameness of the uniforms conceals most identifying features of the officers, even considering their body language. A brief scan of the room is not enough for you to find your roommate amidst the present workers, but you vow to keep an eye out and find her if you have the time.

Or maybe she'll find you. Spaced out rows of individual workstations span around a dais in the middle of the room, arching larger and larger as they grow distant; like ripples in a pond.

An array of thin, white circles lights up on the obsidian floor, projecting a hologram with the faces of each new arrival, guiding the taciturn group into their assigned spots. The projection turns green as you assume your designated place and a hexagram with your name and overall performance score floats above your helmet. Where you stand, right in the middle of the front row, bestows you a great view of the chamber, letting your eyes roam and take in the near-silent flow of working officers while you wait for further instructions. The viewport now casts the image of far away stars throughout its length, of TIE fighters flying in chaotic entropy, rushing in and out of the boundaries of the screen. At the same time, numbers and labels and alerts float along each ship displayed on the monitor, a dump of information you're enraptured in trying to understand.

Once all of you are standing in the right slots, a different officer crosses the length of the massive chamber, marching your way with calculated, economic steps. She's tall, standing out as the only helmetless individual, sporting broad shoulders and a head with cropped, dark hair that sits in tight curls over her skull.