His presence among them focused their rage. As the tumult grew, he could not distinguish individual words. He heard only a single, prolonged, hate-filled roar, a wave of fists and bared teeth. It echoed his own emotion, fed it, amplified it.

From somewhere ahead, a fist-sized piece of duracrete arced over the crowd toward him. Without moving, he stopped it in mid-flight with the Force. He let it hang suspended in the air for a moment, so the crowd could see it, before he used the Force to crush it to pieces.

The crowd went silent again as the pebbles and dust rained down on the road, on their heads.

“Who threw that?” Malgus asked, the heat of his anger stoked.

Sirens wailed. A cough from somewhere. Fearful eyes everywhere.

Malgus raised his voice. “I said who threw that?”

No response. The crowd’s anger turned to anxiety.

“Disperse,” Malgus said, his own anger building as theirs receded. “Now.”

Perhaps sensing his anger, those near him started to back away. Some at the fringe of the crowd turned and fled. Most held their ground, though they looked uncertainly at one another.

“We have family inside.”

“I need care,” someone else shouted.

Malgus fell into the Force as his brewing anger bubbled to the surface. “I said disperse!”

When the crowd did not respond to his demand, he slammed a fist into his palm and let anger-fueled power explode outward from his body. Screams sounded as the blast shoved everything away from him in all directions.

Bodies flew backward, slammed into one another, into the walls, against and through windows. The transport he’d rode on lurched from the blast. The doors of the medical facility flew from their mounts and crashed to the ground.

The sirens continued to wail.

Partially vented, he came back to himself.

Moans and pained whimpers sounded from all around him. A child was crying. Bodies lay scattered about like so many rag dolls. Shattered glass covered the ground. Speeders and swoops lay on their sides. Loose papers stirred in the wind.

Unmoved, Malgus walked the now-clear path into the medical facility.

Inside, patients and visitors cowered behind chairs, desks, one another. Malgus’s breathing was the loudest sound in the room. No one dared look at him.

“Where are the Jedi?” someone said.

“The Jedi are dead in their Temple,” Malgus said. “Where I left them. There is no one to save you.”

Someone wept. Another moaned.

Malgus found an overweight human man in the pale blue uniform of a hospital worker and pulled him to his feet by his shirt.

“I am looking for a Twi’lek woman with a scar on her throat,” Malgus said. “She suffered two blaster wounds and was brought here earlier today. Her name is Eleena.”

The man’s eyes darted around as if they were seeking escape from his head. “I don’t know of any Twi’lek. I can check the logs.”