I could hear them talking through the steel walls. One would think that shouting would have been infinitely more terrifying, but in fact it was not. Polite, even voices always evoked the most terror in me.
You're always afraid.
Yes, I could feel it now as I focused in on the swirl of emotions which quickened my pulse. The fear polluting my veins with adrenaline, clouding a mind that should have been clear and prepared to receive orders. I closed my eyes and the thudding sensation of my heart pelting against the walls of my chest reminded me of the cadence of Captain Phasma's boots striking the floor. All those years of training...I shook my head and the thought flew out before it could form. I went back to the image of the boots, how they sounded, the sweet sensation of apathy they inspired during drill exercises. These were familiar things that offered no comfort outside of the hope of distraction. I wanted to focus on anything other than what I knew was happening behind the door in front of me.
This was not supposed to happen. I was a dreaded anomaly. Some would call me a failed experiment, one that happened so rarely that it was often forgotten such errors existed within the realm of possibility. I should be grateful that they took me in despite my shortcomings and kept me even after I failed test after test and proved unwilling to submit under their authority. Grateful that they had given me a chance until I was too old and past the point of fixing. I was a broken vessel. Their ideology leaked out of the holes in my head like water through a cracked vase.
The doors slid open. Footsteps emerged, accented by long, effortless strides which could belong to no one else but whose presence I had dreaded for the past hour. They stopped abruptly as the partition closed behind her with a low hiss and the air pressure within the cabin stabilized. I fixed my eyes on the unmistakable silver-gray boots which fell directly in my line of vision. Captain Phasma. The meeting which determined my fate was over – it had been decided and there was nothing I could do or say to try and change their minds.
Her voice, which I could almost imagine was cool like steel even without the filter of her helmet, cut through the silence without warning. "Rise and step forward."
I stood on legs which threatened to give out beneath me at any moment. Stripped of the armor I no longer deserved to wear, I felt naked, fully aware of the eyes which looked on me with disapproval from behind the blackened visor. Often, I wondered what color they were. Blue like the ice in her veins? Or were they warm and brown and full of regret, a color which betrayed the existence of a soul in what I had always thought was simply the husk of an empty machine. It wasn't that I ever hoped to find out – but now that the opportunity would be gone forever and something like disappointment resonated in the back of my head like an echo.
It all blazed through me in the span of a moment, the time it took for her to shift her weight from her right leg to the other. It had been a long day for her. Overseeing drill exercises at 0500, which did not end until 0700. Reconditioning took hours. She would not be seen for the rest of the afternoon, a sign that Hux was in a fit of productivity which called her away. So, she was human. Who would have thought?
"FN-1761." I flinched at the sound of what constituted as a name on this ship. My identification number. "You are hereby sentenced to decommission from service under the authority of the First Order. The procedure will take place in three days' time, during which you will be held in a high security cell and await your sentence. Your blaster, armor, and PIN identification badge shall be collected from your quarters. Come with me."
The sharp clean edges of the world around me went fuzzy as she motioned for me to follow her. At my fingertips, the air seemed to pulsate and writhe. I could barely breathe. No longer did my heart pace nervously back and forth with breathless speed; it had stopped completely, suspended in that agonizing moment of realization, and the lungs below it begged for air. Decomissioned. It was the word I had been dreading to hear. My condition was incurable after all.
Tears collected in the corners of my eyes and I wiped furiously at them, watching them smear like liquid glass across my pale skin before disappearing completely. The Captain led me down a series of hallways, weaving through crowds of officers on their way to the bridge, down narrow, smoking corridors that glowed red through the grates of the floor as we descended deeper into the heart of the ship. I would be beneath the feet of my comrades, where, no doubt, Captain Phasma had finally decided during the course of the meeting was the only place I belonged.
I waited behind her as she input her identification code into the locks on the cell and did not balk as she directed me inside.
After all – I had only myself to blame.
.
.
.
The days passed without my knowledge. There was no semblance of time in that place. I could only mark that they had come and gone by the sound of activity above my head – when it had begun to falter into sluggish indolence, I decided it must have been the beginning of the night shift and the day was over.
Most of the hours I spent huddled against the wall, a balled-up standard issue blanket underneath my cheek. The wool grated against the sensitive skin of my eyes, already red from an endless stream of tears that began a few moments after the Captain's last footfalls faded into the silence of the brig. At first, I had tried to stop them. Tried to remember that they had done all that they could do to recondition me. It seemed they had a mind of their own now. And after years of holding them in, I finally decided it was time to let them have the freedom they had so long desired and wept freely.
That had been the first day. I was too tired to cry anymore.
More comforting were the dreams. Dreams I had trained myself to put aside once the vivid images faded into obscurity under the artificial lights. I had other things to focus on then – calibrating my blaster, counting laps during physical training, the pain of the recondition process as they sent electric pulses through my brain. Now that they were gone, and I had no reason to deny them any longer, I devoted all of my energy and concentration into remembering them.
Green hills rolled out before my feet. Bursts of color peppered them as they grew further away, the hue most intense at the foot of the mountain peaks which glinted silver behind a veil of early morning mist. The heat of burgeoning sunlight poked holes through gauzy strips of fog which covered the wilting heads of sapflower blossoms. They began to open and rise toward the sun, the heaviness of fresh dew evaporating from their petals.
Someone called out to me from behind, and though I could never remember the name that captured my attention, I would always turn to see a woman standing before a small hut – one of many which nestled against a backdrop of purple brown mountains and carefully tended Chak-root farms. Bursa dotted the skyline, heavily laden with sagging pouches and folds of linen in rich shades of russet, scarlet, and jade. Spice filled the air. A mild breeze filtered in from the east and rustled the perfume of fresh rain which rose in plumes from the damp earth. My toes wiggled in the mud.
The woman approached me. Her eyes were small and kind, the years of hard work carved into a face that still held small traces of its former beauty. Hands which kneaded a tattered rag between callused palms were smattered with freckles from their hours spent in the sun. She spoke to me, a voice which matched the gentleness in her lined face. There were never any words, but I always followed her into the hut – glancing over my shoulder one last time at the majesty of the mountain peaks which stood like guardians at my back.
My eyes would fly open, meeting the bare sheet metal of the cell's ceiling instead of hazy color and rain-soaked hills. A longing would fill me as I grappled with the last vestiges of those fading memories and I'd wonder…
Could these dreams be memories of the home that had been destroyed by the Rebellion?
.
.
.
I stared at the floor as they walked inside the cell and seized both of my arms in their grasp.
A vice grip closed around my wrist as survival instinct finally began to kick in and I stopped dead in my tracks. One of them yanked me forward without a word. Those gloved hands belonged to former bunk mates, to blank faces across the table at every meal. Men and women which had surrounded me since we were younglings. And yet – did they feel anything, knowing the fate they were delivering me to?
I suppose that was why I was the one in shackles. The questions I asked were dangerous, the emotions they could not purge with reconditioning and therapy and medication even more so. I told myself there was no other way. Perhaps, I could make a new life. I knew nothing of the outside world save snippets of information about the dangerous Rebellion, but there were worlds which had escaped the reach of their influence…weren't there?
A renewed sense of dread gathered in my chest like a ball. There was no use. Decommissioning was very nearly a death sentence…
They tried. Over and over again, chance after chance. It's my fault – isn't it? There's nothing more they can do to help me.
At last, they stopped – awaiting orders. Low ceilings framed a short passageway with three doors on each side. The last door to the left opened as though on command and an officer of the First Order stepped out, inclining his head toward the Stormtroopers which flanked my sides. "Bring the prisoner inside."
They complied without question and dragged me toward the chamber. The officer directed them inside where a single chair surrounded by straps and wires stood in the center. Immediately the officer began to bark orders and the troopers carried them out with precision and ease, strapping me down and attaching the wires to my temple, neck, and chest.
As they worked, I turned to look at the officer standing at my side. His face was as expressionless as stone and just as cold, even as he felt my gaze and returned it.
"Sir, if I might ask – where will I go once I have been decomissioned? Is there a specific planet where you send rejected troops?"
The officer's lips quirked upward at their corners. It was almost a smile, but infinitely more cruel. "Planet? No, we simply send you the furnace."
My blood ran cold at the word furnace.
"F-furnace...sir?"
"What do you think decomissioning means, girl?" He snorted, pausing to order the troopers who brought me out of the room. "Your life will be terminated and your body burned, according to strict sanitation codes."
He left the room as it came crashing down around me. The lights above began to flicker on and off as the whir of a booting computer filled my ears. Termination?
"Please – wait!" I struggled against my bonds, my head whipping to the side as a medical droid came to life in the dark corner. It blinked at me, inclining its head with the same unfeeling expression on its face as the officer who had just told me I was going to die. "Stop! I'm sorry – please, I'm so sorry!"
Sobs wracked my body as I struggled even harder against the fastenings, but they were too tight. I could barely move. My ribs crackled as the restraints cut into my abodomen. All around me, gravity seemed to shift and sputter with a sense of foreboding in its fluid motions - like a soft breeze picking up in a prelude to a summer storm.
The droid came closer, raising its arm to reveal a long needle full of effervescent yellow fluid.
"Please – I don't want to die!"
The pressure which had been building in the moments since I had been strapped to the chair reached a breaking point. Before the droid could take my arm and administer the needle into the crook of my elbow, the air in the room seemed to burst open and spill out through the cracks in the door. For a moment, all the oxygen disappeared. My eyes rolled back into my head. A loud crack resounded as the light above me popped and went out. The droid pulled away and dropped my arm, retreating back into the corner where it had first appeared.
Electricity sparked red and white in the darkness as the room. I looked around, sucking cold air into my heaving lungs. It was as though something had exploded – but what? Had a processor shorted in the droid? A power surge shutting down the ship's computer?
Overhead, the voice of General Hux filtered through the intercom. "2-1B, administer the medication."
"N-no, please, n-"
The droid once again took my arm and within the span of a heartbeat, pressed the needle into my arm. My head grew heavy as the medication took immediate effect. Within moments, I could barely keep my eyes open, but I clawed at the restraints cutting into my arms and chest even as the strength was sapped from every muscle in my body.
Lights flickered somewhere in front of me as I slipped into unconsciousness. It registered vaguely in the last vestiges of cognizance I had left that General Hux was in the room.
Hands seized me and lifted me out of the chair.
But I was already gone.
author's notes: /waves. hi all. i don't know if you remember me, but i'm back! i've been struggling with writer's block for years and really stopped writing for a long time. i think i nearly forgot how and am definitely rusty and still struggling. i don't even know if i can even finish this, but i wanted to try something. and i LOVE star wars. ugh it's so wonderful and amazing and great.
disclaimer - all characters besides my OC belong to J.J. Abrams. Star Wars belongs to George Lucas.