21 BBY
Captured Pelta-class medical frigate, Revenant
"We are such fragile things, don't you think? It takes amazingly little effort to end a life. An infection, an insect bite, a blow to the head, you get the idea. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we never had to worry about such things again? Can you imagine it? A galaxy without death?"
The woman who spoke idly toyed with a small red pyramid that she held in her hands. It glowed bright red. She wore a white lab coat with the sleeves rolled up, exposing her arms, and her black hair was tied back into two buns. She would have beautiful, if not for her corpselike pallor and the criss-cross of scars that covered her skin. They lined her face and her arms and much more, they ran the entire length of her body.
The clone trooper who lay strapped to the operating table said nothing. The gag in his mouth prevented him from doing so. Although, even without it, she was sure that he would have given her nothing but stony silence. She rather admired the man's courage.
She leaned in close and ran a hand through his hair "Don't fret, if this works, you won't die…well, you won't stay dead. It'll be as if you're going to sleep, and then you'll wake up again in a few moments. So, keep your fingers crossed."
"Stop kriffing with him and just get on with it, Watki." A deep, mechanical voice spoke up, and Doctor Mika Watki looked and faced the speaker.
A blue figure stood in the corner. He looked like something out of a nightmare. He was a horrific fusion of man and machine. Nothing organic existed below the torso, there were a series of metal plates in place of his ribs, and three containers filled with a dark liquid were visible, two protruding from his back and a third where his stomach would have been. What skin he had was dead and rotting, and in places, torn open entirely, revealing the cybernetics underneath. Razor-sharp mechanical talons had been grafted onto the back of his fingers.
His face, however, was the worst of all. He had no lower jaw, and a gaping hole where his throat had been. Most of the skin was missing from the right side of his skull, revealing the durasteel plates that had replaced bone. His eyes were cybernetic. In life, they had produced angry, menacing red light. As he was in his current form, they were a cold, lifeless blue.
She found him beautiful.
Doctor Watki turned back to the bound trooper and gave him an apologetic smile "Forgive Darth Acheron, after spending so many years in his holocron, he tends to get a little impatient."
The being who stood before them was not truly Darth Acheron, of course. Rather, he was the gatekeeper of Darth Acheron's holocron. Still, given that he held the memories and personality of the long dead Sith, he might has well have been the real thing.
"I agree with the spectre, we should hurry this along. Count Dooku is anxious for results."
Sitting on a bench was a fourth being. A Zeltron male in his mid-forties. His head was shaved clean, although he had a thin moustache. He wore a black tunic and had a lightsaber clipped to his belt. Birco, one of Count Dooku's acolytes. He had been a Jedi Knight once, but that had been before the Separatists, before the Clone Wars. He had his eyes trained on Darth Acheron, they never left his form.
Watki smirked, leaned in close to the trooper and said in a stage whisper "And he gets jealous of how much attention Darth Acheron gets."
"Jealous of a holocron? Hardly." Birco snorted, though he threw a glare in the gatekeeper's direction, which was quickly returned.
"Now, now, don't fight, we need each other after all," Watki chided.
Neither Darth Acheron or Birco said anything, they just kept glaring at each other.
Watki sighed and turned away from the two "Seven-three-one, is the latest serum ready?"
"Ready to inject, doctor." A MED-47 droid rolled up to the group on four wheels. In its skeletal fingers, it held a syringe filled with a murky, crimson liquid.
"Thank you, Seven-three-one, you may proceed," Watki said with a nod.
From the operating table, the clone trooper looked up at the Separatist doctor with venom in his eyes.
"Sssh, it's okay. This will only hurt for a moment, then you won't have to worry about pain ever again," Watki said soothingly. She smiled down at the clone trooper, but there was no warmth in it.
The trooper bucked and jerked against his restraints, but they held tight. The droid slowly edged closer to the bound clone trooper, before placing the needle against a vein in the man's neck. Seven-three-one turned to Watki, who nodded. At that, the droid pierced the trooper's skin and injected the fluid into him. The man tensed up, before his body went slack and his eyes closed.
"Trooper? Can you hear me?" Watki asked after a moment.
The trooper's eyes fluttered, before opening fully. His eyes were glassy and lifeless. When his eyes settled on Doctor Watki, the trooper started thrashing frantically, fighting to get free of his restraints. His teeth gnashed wildly against the gag.
Watki sighed "Regrettable, another failure." She turned her gaze to the holocron's gatekeeper "You told me it would work this time. Instead we have another mindless revenant on our hands."
"I said it might work. I told you before, my…colleague, had more experience in this field than I did."
"He was the one who brought you back from the brink of death?" Watki asked.
Darth Acheron looked down at his mangled body, before narrowing his eyes "Yes."
"And he did a wonderful job," Birco muttered, his eyes fixed on the dead Sith with disdain.
Darth Acheron turned his gaze to Birco and growled.
"And your colleague, did he leave a holocron, as you did?" Watki asked, stepping between the man and the hologram.
"I believe so," Darth Acheron said, eyes still locked onto the Zeltron.
"And do you know where he left it?"
"I have a few theories, but nothing solid."
"Well then, why don't you make a list while we talk," Birco said, before motioning to the holocron in Watki's hand.
The gatekeeper's form vanished in a flash, and the light emanating from the holocron faded.
Watki frowned at him "I really wish you wouldn't do that. We need him and his research. It does us no good to antagonise him."
Birco shrugged and went silent for a minute "I'm not jealous," Birco said carefully "But I am disconcerted with how much attention you give that thing."
Watki her arms around his neck "Birco, he's just a hologram. How could that ever compete with you?"
Birco looked unsure. Watki smiled sweetly at the Dark Jedi, then leaned in and kissed him. When she broke it, he looked considerably more at ease.
He really was so easily led.