This story is told in 8 semi-self-contained plot-lines (plus a postscript), each consisting of 3 chapters. Because there is an overarching plot which spreads across all 8 parts, it is published here as a single story.

Please note that, though this story should be able to stand alone, it is a sequel to Just Another Clone.

My knowledge of Star Wars is limited to the following: Episodes I-VI (the live action movies), the first season of CGI series The Clone Wars, anecdotes from my brothers (who actually play the video games and have read some of the books), comments from reviewers of my previous Clone Wars story, and the extreme minimum of internet research (i.e. looking up the definition of "walker"). It is therefor advisable to consider this AU.

Note that the "Red" (among other characters) of this story has no relation to any official "Red" character in Star Wars. I did some reading on Order 66, but there seem to be conflicting reports on it. In the context of this story, Order 66 is treated as a command, not a program.

I feel sort of like this became a never-ending saga and probably goes on far longer than it should. Due to some things going on in my personal life, the ending wound up being a bit rushed (the postscript was meant to be a full Part 9). A bad ending is better than none at all, right?.

As per usual, I will upload one chapter per day (Barring anything out of the ordinary. I will attempt to give readers a head's up via A/N). This was written for my entertainment, and is being published for yours. If you find yourself not enjoying it, then you should feel perfectly free to stop reading. Heap praise or criticism upon it, whichever may suit you best. Or say nothing about it at all, if you would prefer.

Part 1 – Madhouse

"A thousand times they brought me here; to play, and sing their funeral song"
-Cathy Royal (Adam-12 episode: The Princess and The Pig)

The Clone lifted his head on hearing the distant screams.

The sound bothered him, though he could do nothing about it, and knew well that it would do him no good to dwell on it. But the cries were anguished, full of fear, crying out for mercy hopelessly, aware of the futility of screaming but unable to do anything to stop, calling out in vain for help which would not -could not- come.

An involuntary shudder ran down The Clone's spine. He could so easily be next. Clones braver than he had been dragged out, kicking and fighting it all the way, only to be broken somewhere beyond his sight, their haunting cries echoing through the dungeon, a chilling warning of the future that awaited any who set foot outside their darkened cells.

The end was coming. The Clone could feel it. His number would soon be up. He wondered what lay beyond that doorway at the end of the corridor. What secrets were locked behind it, what did it conceal that was too terrible for even the strongest clone to endure?. Soon he would know.

That, at least, was something.

The Clone had lost all track of time. His only measurement for it was the cries of the demented, wounded and dying. Meals, if you could call them that, were served only irregularly, and The Clone elected not to sample the stuff, which was sludgy and smelled like motor oil. It wasn't finickiness on his part, he was hungry enough to have eaten an entire speeder. It was because he'd noticed that those who ate of the strange food invariably became insane and ill. Some died.

While The Clone held out no special hope that he would be rescued or find a way to escape, he was not so foolish as to fully eliminate the possibility of it. He had faced starvation before, had beaten the odds and survived where many others had not. He counted this fact unimportant in his resume, attributing his survival more to luck than anything to do with him.

Perhaps he was wrong, but perhaps he was right. He never bothered arguing the point.

There was little chance of his being found. The Clone remembered well how that day had gone. Droids, led by Grievous, had come upon sleeping clone troopers. There had been two lookouts, but neither lived long enough to raise the alarm. The clones had been taken virtually without a fight. The Clone still had energy enough to be infuriated about that. Clones are not given to surrendering themselves, primarily because it's not in their training, but also because it invariably does them more harm than good. Yes, he was still alive, but was that any consolation at the moment?.

Being alive meant only that he could anticipate a world of hurt before being put to a slow and painful death. Something to look forward to.

The captured clones, disarmed and severely beaten (just about the only way to subdue a clone is to beat him senseless or break every bone he's got), were transported to this facility, whose location The Clone didn't know, and suspected that nobody else did either. Except Grievous and his workers, of course.

Ostensibly, General Grievous had set the facility up as an interrogation facility, but he and the clones both knew that this was not true. More like he was looking for new and improved ways to kill clones, though the truth went still deeper. Grievous, though seldom present because he was busy running an army, liked knowing that, somewhere, there were clones being tortured in his name. It pleased him to think that he wielded such power, even if it was only with the permission of his master.

A living clone is about as likely to speak to a Separatist as a dead one, and everybody knew it. But that didn't stop the people working here to claim they were doing it "for science". Jac knew all about their science. Poke him with the pointy bit and see if he screams. If not, upgrade your pointy bit, add some new features and try again. Repeat until bored or subject expires.

The screams quieted down, but there hadn't been the sound of death at the end. The subject was either unconscious, or the "scientist" was bored. Or his "tool" had broken. Something.

Jac settled back into his hunkered position in the corner. This corner he had claimed for himself when his cell mates started to act funny. They might have been his brothers once, but they had become less than wild animals, vicious and without thought. At least an animal had some sense. Jac cast a wary glance at the others who shared the ten-by-ten space with him.

Near the door, one lay dead. It was hard to say whether it was the food or his own injuries which had killed him in the end. But there he had dropped, and there he remained even now. In the corner opposite Jac's, another sat with his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around himself, shivering and shaking though it was hardly cold enough to be doing that.

In the middle of the room was the most disturbing of all. He sat in a little pile of dirt, legs spread before him, making little furrows with the edge of a metal plate, then carefully filling them in. Every now and then he would lift the plate, hit it against his head with a loud 'bang' and murmur nonsense to himself.

When he'd first started to lose it, this clone had become violent. For what seemed like days, Jac had fended off senseless attacks, and he may even have killed him if he'd gotten the chance. But, after awhile, the other clone gave up, plunked himself down in the middle of the cell and hadn't moved since. There had been others, but they were gone now. Nobody who was taken out ever came back.

Clang!. The clone with the plate struck himself.

"Thou hast done awful, bad things," he murmured, either to the plate or himself, it was hard to tell "thou art worthless, vile and pathetic. Thou art filth unworthy of redemption!."

Where he'd picked up the peculiar way of speaking, The Clone didn't know. He hadn't talked that way before. The Clone wondered if he'd read it somewhere, or once encountered those who did speak that way. He supposed it didn't really matter.

"Forty one, forty two, forty three... one... two... three," the clone in the corner's response meant no more than the initial statement of the other.

He was forever counting to forty three, sometimes sobbing as he did so.

The Clone refused to eat the food with good reason.

The one with the plate set it on its edge and dug around in the dirt some more. There was a metal floor underneath the filth, but he'd never dug deep enough to find it. The Clone had, when he first arrived and sought to escape. He had found no way to do so.

The screaming had started again. The Clone hadn't even noticed it. He shifted slightly, and stretched the cramped muscles of one arm. Then he hunkered down again, prepared to defend himself lest one of his demented companions attempt to put an end to him.

He ached to his bones from inactivity. He'd mostly recovered from his injuries, but didn't dare to exercise much. It would leave him open to attack. He wondered if there was anything more jarringly unnatural than a clone being afraid of his own brethren. He supposed not. But then again, he'd been wrong about that kind of thing on more than one occasion.

The Clone had a name, one he hadn't heard in awhile. His name was the direct result of the opinions of those around him. JAC, which stood for Just Another Clone. It was a comment which had been made by so many that it eventually caught on. Jac didn't mind the monicker, he thought it was actually kind of fitting. He'd never been a particularly outstanding soldier.

Or, anyway, he didn't think so, and everybody else seemed to agree with him.

He'd forgotten the names of the other two in with him, but that was hardly a surprise. Jac was one of those unfortunates who got bounced around from one battalion to another, generally through no fault of his own. He sometimes thought he must have met the whole army by now, but he rarely saw the same faces twice. Was the one in the middle Jester, Joker... Joel... something like that maybe?. He didn't know. He decided he was too tired to care.

He didn't sleep much these days. Too dangerous. And there was too much noise anywa. However much he tried to deny it, Jac was unable to harden his heart to the high pitched cries of his agonized, dying brothers. There were times he felt like screaming right back, just to let the world know that there was more than one suffering down here. But he didn't. He never made a sound. Sometimes it seemed as if making a sound would open him up, and let all the crazy right in, and he'd been right alongside the others, digging in the dirt and spouting meaningless phrases to pass the time.

There were times, a few times, that he thought maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

The screaming became louder, more frantic, and then suddenly fell away in a death rattle. Jac shuddered, but otherwise made no move to react.

For a moment, just a brief moment, his deranged cell mates fell silent and looked up. For just a second, their eyes seemed clear. Miserable, but clear. Then they glazed over. One hit his head again, the other resumed counting, though Jac noticed his accidentally skipped over two numbers, and had to add them in later in the count. Jac wondered if the numbers stood for anything. Names, battles, ships maybe?.

Did it matter?. Jac decided he didn't care about that either.

Fact was, he was caring about less and less all the time. He didn't like it, but that's how it was. And if there was one thing about life he'd learned, it was that life didn't give a damn whether you liked it or not. Life did as it pleased, and everybody else better just get used to the idea. Or go insane.

A depressed clone doesn't live long, he reminded himself.

But when you're depressed, you don't tend to care all that much. And Jac didn't.

A clone's favorite pastimes are equipment maintenance and sleeping. As Jac couldn't do either, he took up a very dangerous thing for a clone to practice. Thinking. Reflection mostly, sometimes planning, now and then a little daydreaming. This wasn't the first time Jac had been left with time on his hands, he was getting pretty good at thinking. Too good for his own good, he was sure.

But it wouldn't do to just sit and do nothing at all, that was a good way to lose your mental faculties and find yourself in an early grave for lack of purpose if nothing else.

And Jac had learned from experience that the clone who lived to fight another day was almost always more valuable in the long run than the one who got himself killed first rattle out of the bucket. Jac wasn't old by clone standards, but neither was he especially young. He'd been around the block a time or two, seen more things than many and survived more than most.

And all of it had somehow led him right here. Well, it wasn't so bad. Not really. After all, his reflection gave to him memories of jobs well done, people alive now today that wouldn't be if he hadn't done his job. All in all, it hadn't been such a bad run.

That's quitter's talk, right there. You're not dead yet, some part of him whispered.

He sometimes wished that piece of him would shrivel up and die. Then maybe he could have a little peace. Rest in peace, more like.

There's a difference between wishing you were dead, and accepting that death's waiting at the end of the line. For a long time, Jac had been in the latter category. He'd known he was going to die almost from the moment was born. In a way, that's what he was created for. It had never bothered him. But these days, he got to thinking, which led to wishing and... well, it was all downhill from there.

I've been doin' this a long time, he reasoned with himself, I'm just tired. Too tired to care what happens one way or the other. Too damn tired to go on.

This horrified the other part of his brain. Unbeknownst to him, at this point in his line of thinking he grunted painfully and shifted as though uncomfortable.

You weren't too tired in the desert, carrying a Jedi with you, now were you?. You weren't too tired to tell the truth when they threatened to kill you for it. So you're a little hungry, you've been through worse and pulled through okay!.

Jac twitched, half-asleep though he didn't know it. Too dazed to know the difference.

That's just the trouble. I've been fighting so long, been through so much... I just don't have any more in me. I gave all I had to this war, this damn fool war I don't even believe in.

You're just a coward. A stupid, lazy, good-for-nothing coward. You want to whine and complain, why not just join your friend in the dirt, start digging crazy circles and smacking yourself on the head like a badly made mechanical toy. How 'bout that!?.

Jac didn't have an answer for himself, so he shut up.

"I really thought that one had some fire left in him," voices, out in the hallway, talking to each other.

"Yeah, but you can't win 'em all. Oh well, plenty more where he come from, am I right?."

They shared a cruel laugh at the expense of their unfortunate captives. The door to the cell opened, but Jac didn't so much as twitch. Didn't even breath. He couldn't have gotten up if he wanted to, exhausted by arguing with himself. He watched them out of dull eyes.

Clang!.

"Thou art trash, fit only for burning!."

"Forty, forty one, forty two-"

"That one," a finger pointed to the corner, but not where Jac was "he'll do."

"Forty three... one, two-," when the man grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet, the clone began to wail "no,no!. No!. Three!. THREE!. Three!."

Clang!.

"Thou art rotten!. Stinking and wasteful!. Thou art!. Bad!. Vile!. Evil!. Dirty!."

Clang!.

Jac tried to become deaf to it, but he couldn't. The door banged shut, but he could still hear his brother's desperate wailing, even through the thick metal.

"Three!. Four!. Three!. Three and four and five!. Three!."

"Thou art a disease, bile and blight upon the land!."

Clang!.

All was silence for a moment. And then the screams began. A different soul, but the same voice, crying out meaningless numbers with every frantic breath as if it were the most important duty one could have. As if the Galaxy itself would shatter if the counting stopped.

Jac waited. Waited for the silence to return. Waited for Death to once again stalk these halls.

He was called Forty-Three, Jac remembered now. Jac always remembered the dead.

The plight of the clones had not gone unnoticed. At first, the Jedi had been unaware that there were missing. They had assumed that the clones were dead somewhere. A reasonable assumption, and one which was nearly impossible to disprove. And it wasn't like they had spare time to go about looking for dead clones. Not even clones in their vast numbers had that kind of time.

If they found their dead, they invariably took care of them in the way that clones do, but they didn't tend to actively seek the fallen. They had enough to do to keep track of the living.

But as the number of missing began to pile up, somebody did eventually notice. And that somebody mentioned it in passing to somebody else, who also thought it odd and mentioned it to somebody else again. Pretty soon, it was widely believed that clones were being captured and taken away for some reason. Among the clones who were not missing, there was widespread disbelief in this supposition.

Clones don't surrender. They don't just lay down and die. Not of their own accord. Not without an order. Sometimes not even then, though nobody mentioned this fact. Clones invariably went out of their way to avoid even admitting to the existence of deserters.

But Jac couldn't know that anyone was hunting for him in earnest. It's possible that he wouldn't have cared, even had he known. It wouldn't have changed anything. After all, what chance was there that the clones would be found wherever they were?.

But luck, destiny, fate, or the Force if you'd rather, had never abandoned Jac before, and it seemed unlikely that it would now. Jac was no Jedi, to be sure. He had no special powers, nothing special about him at all. At least, not to his way of looking at things. But it was a fact that Jac had survived much, and it seemed doubtful (even to him) that it had been sheer will power that had done it. And he wasn't about to start believing in magic. The Force was quite enough mysticism for one Galaxy.

Somebody had decided to take his brother's plate away. There'd been a battle for it, but a weak one, the insane and infirm seldom have much fight in them. When they do, it's best to avoid them until the moment of spirit passes, but for the most part, they don't have much to say about things.

He'd clung to his plate like it was a life preserver- and maybe it was -until the someone trying to take it away applied a boot to his hand. He'd let go then and, out of spite, the boot had crushed his hand. Now he lay at the back of the cell, whimpering his peculiar words to himself, sometimes screaming as one being tortured might, then shushing himself. He would sometimes whisper quiet epithets about nothing in particular, and then moan for a time.

Jac paid little attention to him.

Briefly, he'd tried to get a look at the damaged hand, but his brother had hissed, yelled, thrown dirt and even tried to bite him until he gave up and slunk back to his corner.

The door banged open. Jac opened his eyes, blinked in the sickly yellow of a light out in the corridor. A shadow stood in the doorway, but he didn't care to identify it. He wondered if, perhaps, Death had an actual form and had come just for him.

You're hallucinating again, that's what you're doing, Both parts of his brain agreed, so he closed his eyes and slumped back against the wall.

A little while later, when he opened his eyes, the figure was gone. So was his brother.

Now he was really alone.

Always have been. Ain't nothin' new, Said one part of his brain.

The other was too groggy to come up with a response, and so it didn't.

For the first time in he didn't know when, Jac slept.