Chapter 3: The Cost of Walking Away

Read this entry before Class 3: S1E7: Announcement

Chapter 3- The Cost of Walking Away

Cassian Andor’s Journal

I keep thinking about how close it came to working the way it was supposed to.

We had a plan. A clean one, at least on paper. Timing, positions, roles—everyone knew where to be and what to do. It almost held together. Right up until it didn’t. That’s the part I can’t shake. Not the chaos at the end, not the shooting or the alarms or the weight of the credits in my hands now—but the moment before, when it still looked like something that made sense.

Nemik believed in that plan. He believed in all of it.

I didn’t.

I told myself that was the difference between us. He saw something larger, something worth trusting. I saw angles, risks, exits. I kept moving because I always have. That’s how you survive. You don’t stay long enough to be caught in someone else’s idea of how things should work.

But it didn’t matter in the end. Belief didn’t save him.

And doubt didn’t save me from any of it.

Skeen thought he understood the system. Said it was all the same no matter who was in charge—that there were no rules, just people pretending there were. He wanted out, same as me. Just with a different number in mind. I saw it in his face before he said it. The way he talked about the Empire, about the job, about what came after. Like the whole thing was just another opportunity.

He wasn’t wrong about one thing.

The rules don’t mean what they say.

The Empire keeps talking about order, about law, about structure. They build it up like it’s something solid, something you can rely on. But I’ve seen what that looks like up close. Rules that change when they need to. Laws that only seem to apply in one direction. You follow them, you still lose. You break them, you lose faster.

It’s all written down somewhere, I’m sure. Regulations, procedures, maybe even something they’d call a constitution—some original idea of how this was all supposed to function. Limits, protections, rights people thought they had.

Doesn’t matter now.

What’s left are the parts they choose to enforce.

Civil liberties. I’ve heard the phrase before. People talking about what they’re allowed to say, where they’re allowed to go, what they’re allowed to be. It sounds like something real when you hear it the first time. Like a guarantee.

But it fades.

Not all at once. That’s the trick. It disappears slowly, piece by piece, until no one can point to the moment it was taken. You adjust. You stop expecting things. You learn what not to say, where not to stand, who not to trust. After a while, it doesn’t even feel like something was lost.

It just feels normal.

That’s how it happens. Not with one order, not with one decision. It’s smaller than that. Easier to miss. They tighten something here, rewrite something there, enforce one rule harder than the others. Each step makes sense on its own. Each one can be explained.

By the time you notice, it’s already gone.

I don’t have a name for it. Nemik would have. He had names for everything. The way systems change, the way people get pulled into them, the way something that looks stable starts to shift underneath you. He would’ve written it down, turned it into something clear.

All I know is what it feels like.

Like the ground isn’t where you thought it was.

People talk about the Empire like it just appeared one day, like someone flipped a switch and everything changed. That’s not how it was. It was slower. Quieter. People arguing about policies, about security, about who needed protection and who didn’t. Leaders saying what people wanted to hear. Promising strength, stability, control.

That’s how they got it.

Not by breaking the system—by using it.

And now it’s too late to matter.

I’ve got more credits than I’ve ever seen in my life sitting in front of me, and all I can think about is how far they’ll get me. How many systems I can cross, how long I can stay ahead, how quiet I can be. That’s the plan. It’s always been the plan. Keep moving. Stay out of reach.

Disappear.

Because that’s the only way out, isn’t it?

You don’t fight something like this. You don’t fix it. You don’t wait for it to change back into whatever it used to be. You leave. You take what you have and you go somewhere it doesn’t matter.

Somewhere it can’t follow.

I keep telling myself that.

But Nemik’s voice is still there, buried somewhere under everything else. Talking about systems, about pressure, about how things only hold as long as people let them. He thought people could push back. That enough of them, together, could stop it.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe that’s why he’s dead.

I’m not staying to find out.

I’ve got the credits. I’ve got a ship. That’s more than most people ever get. I’m going to use it. I’m going to get as far away from all of this as I can, find somewhere quiet, somewhere forgotten.

Somewhere the Empire doesn’t reach.

That’s what I keep telling myself.

That there’s still a place like that left.