Echo's heart pounded with a jolt. The cold sent of antiseptic's flooded his brain blocking out any sensations other than cold metal pressed against his bare skin. For a second that was all he could focus on, cold metal and that awful smell of antiseptic's. His head was pounding. It felt like he had just horribly lost a sparring round to Fives. Fives! Where was he? Echo threw his eyes open and tried to make sense of what he saw. Harsh, concentrated white lights blinded his eyes. Echo tried to use his wrist to block the light but both of his arms were secured down to the table-and oh God- that smell of antiseptic wasn't letting him think. Kamino, his head concluded, it smelled like Kamino. There was no way this was Kamino, the lights used on Kamino weren't this bright, ever and Kamino was always loud.
"Subject 1329 is awake. Sedate it, now." Echo could only see the white lights and was far to terrified to make the "don't go into the light joke" Fives would want him to make, but he was sure that voice wasn't any of the Kaminoians. It sounded human which meant it probably wasn't a separatist… The lights dimmed enough so he could see the rest of his body. Well, what was normally his body but was currently covered in blood.
"My name is Echo." His voice sounded like he had gargled with sand paper. Echo coughed and it felt like hot knives were being stabbed between his ribs. He couldn't take his eyes of the blood. Why wasn't he dead? Echo had seen battlefields all his life and there was never this much blood without a dead body. That meant it wasn't all his blood. Please let in not be Fives's blood. Not Rex's either. Or Cody's.
"Sedate it." The voice ordered again, with much more force this time. God, his head hurt. The lights went out.
Echo bolted upright. There were no bright lights this time. Only complete darkness, and cold. So freaking cold. If he had been able to see a foot in front of his face he was sure he would be able to see his breath. The cold air brought clarity. It all came back to him. The Citadel. The mission. The carbonite. Freeing the hostages. The shuttle. The explosion. Fives screaming his name. The stabbing pain that followed. He remembered being dragged. Had Fives dragged him? Had Rex? That didn't add up. If one of them had pulled him to safety he would be with them. Unless he died and this was hell… not likely. In most of the reading he had done hell was all covered in fire. This was just dark, freezing, and miserable. Where was everyone? His left hip ached. Echo tried to shift weight onto his foot so he could rotate it, but he couldn't feel anything below his waist. A scream of panic welled up in his throat but he managed to swallow his fear.
"You haven't used your legs in while," he whispered to himself "They're probably just asleep." But the memory of the cold table and all the blood nagged in his mind. If he strained in the bonds that controlled his wrists for the moment then she should be able to feel his mid thigh. There was nothing. Where there was supposed to be flesh his fingertips felt nothing. His hip socket was empty. A million and one thoughts occurred to him. He would never wear his armor plates again. He would never hear Fives tease him again. Yesterday was the last time he would turn in a report. Yesterday was also the last time Rex would sigh exasperation because he had written a 15-page report for a simple patrol. General Skywalker would never ask him to write a clear explanation for a mission when everything had gotten blown up and they didn't want the 501st to look like they were having too much fun. He would never hoist Commander Tano up again because she was too short to reach the controls on top of the Twilight but she didn't want anyone else to prime the guns, though to be fair she had grown enough she could jump and reach them of she had too. This time Echo couldn't stop the sob that escaped his mouth. He was going to die either in a dark room alone or on a cold table watched someone who didn't even consider him a person, just some experiment to be toyed with. Both of those options sucked.
"Are you sure it's sedated? It's squirming about an awful lot." There was the first voice from the cold table. Echo wasn't even really aware that he had been squirming but it that meant annoying his captors he was going to do everything possible to continue to do so. Yet, his arms felt too heavy to move and his legs- nope, not going down that road again. Echo thought to himself.
"It has to be. We've used more sedatives on stronger Jedi and they've slept for hours. It may be mentally awake but physically it can not move." This was a new voice Echo did not recognize. It did not sound mechanical yet there was a removed quality of the voice, like someone once organic had been replaced by computers. Improbably, yet that seemed to be just about what they had been doing to him the past couple…how long had it been? How long since the explosion at the citadel? How long since the cold metal table? How long since the dark room? He wasn't even really sure if he had dreamed the whole dark room or the table or if he had even really been there to begin with.
"It is not a Jedi. Administer more. I want little mental clarity. If it wakes up then we cannot complete the brain scan. We need that algorithm or else Wat Tambor will take our heads." Echo could feel metal prods being pressed onto his skull. He caught a shallow breath; he shouldn't have been feeling metal on his bare scalp. His hair should have been where this prods were. Those fekks. I can survive torture and experimentation but touching my hair is where I draw the line. He thought to himself. If Fives were here… Oh God that was a possibility Echo didn't want to consider. Fives would have escaped already or at the very least figured out what was being done to him. Echo audibly gasped when he felt the metal probes pierce his skin. It hurt worse than needles or scalpels.
"We have the algorithm. Plant the nodes on its skull and move on. We have enough paperwork to do." One of the voices commented. The algorithm. No. Anything but that. Please take anything but that algorithm. Echo felt the probes slide out of his skull slowly. He had to do something. Anything. Anything was better than them getting that algorithm. He couldn't move, there was nothing, nothing stood between his brothers and a loaded gun.
"It's showing increased mental agitation."
"Administer 10 CC's of Crotozen."
"Done." Echo felt like his head was being cleaved open with a hammer. Fire coursed through his veins forcing shallow breaths to move even less air. He could feel small cold metal bits being pressed into his skull. Echo sucked air in through in clenched teeth and whispered his name, no one was listening, but it felt good to say it out loud.
Waking up that time felt like falling out of a dream only to discover that you were in bed. Except this was a friggan operating table and that fekking smell of anti septic was so strong it was blocking out everything. Operating on impulse he tried to swing a punch a shifting sound to his left but his arm wouldn't move. It was the same drugs that had been bothering him since the beginning.
"Begin flow of fentanyl." It was a new voice. Echo pried his eyes open with almost superhuman effort. All he could see straight on was the harsh white lights but if he glanced down… there were lines on his arm. They were about to cut his arm off. Hadn't they done enough? They had already stripped him of his dignity, his legs… his favorite body glove. He had lost his family and everyone he ever cared about and here they were about to slice off his left arm. Someone lowered a mask over his mouth and nose but Echo turned his head. He was not about to make this easy for them.
"Come on now, either take a breath of this stuff or lose your arm fully conscious. Use that brain you kept the algorithm in, this is better." Echo weighed his options. Yes, he had been conscious in the past but never long enough to think anything through. Mainly it was wake up, realize something bad was about to happen to him, panic for a minute, then get knocked back under. Echo pressed the side of his head to the metal table. If this was the biggest F you he could make to who ever was doing this to him than that's what he would do. He had been the rule follower of Domino Squad but being the rule follower in Domino Squad was like a sniper working with pilots. The sniper would get pegged as the happy one when the reality was the sniper smiled once every 38 days and the pilot smiled once a year. Echo would watch them do it, it would hurt but maybe it would bother them enough to leave him alone.
A minute and a half in he knew that this had been a bad idea.
Two minutes in he was regretting every choice he had made in the past year. (All one of them.)
At three minutes he heard Hevy calling him stubborn. "I'm sorry ok? You can be the stubborn one please just pass out now."
At three and a half minutes he heard Fives just telling him to give up and pass out. But it couldn't have been Fives. Fives was still alive, Fives was still alive. That was another mantra that Echo repeated to himself. He had no way of knowing it was true, but hope was such a precarious thing.
At four minutes he heard Cutup say that pain was only funny when it happened to someone they hated. Then again he also might have said "Lame, see ya later brother. I'll be elated." Echo decided the first one was more probable given how as a cadet Cutup had run into a trashcan and screamed, "fight me" at it.
Then…it was over. Echo sighed in relief and almost prayed that he would bleed out so it would all end. Death would have to wait, he heard the tell tale sound of a blow torch clicking on and passed out when they pressed the flame to his bloody remains of an arm.
The next time Echo awoke he knew something was different. Darkness enclosed the area but there was a little light shining through pinprick-sized holes in the ceiling. It was some sort of pod. He was standing again. They had grafted metal legs onto him. He was standing again. It felt…normal. Maybe normal wasn't the best description but it was closest he'd come to being himself since the metal table. His arms had been stretched arcos the pod and it looked like they had attacked something metal to the stump where his left arm used to be. It had been wedged into something. This right arm had been cuffed tightly to the wall. There wasn't enough light to make out anything else.
Echo bit his lip and silently repeated his name to himself. Echo. Echo. Echo. Echo. He had chanted his name roughly 128 times when the lights went out. Echo didn't panic, the only moment he considered panicking was when the holes that used to let light in began emitting a dark gas. Whatever this gas does there is not way I can avoid breathing it, but I can make them work for it. Echo bit the inside of his cheek and waited. The gas continued to fill the chamber as Echo fought the urge to breathe. Hold it for just a little bit longer. He thought to himself. Echo kept his mouth clenched until he was sure his lungs were about to burst. It did occur to him to just suffocate himself, to end it all on his terms. Anytime the Separatists went to through this much trouble with one clone it spelled disaster. But if he didn't open his mouth and breath then that would be the end. Dark, small, chambers were bad places to die, Echo took a deep breath of the gas and let his head slump down to his good arm. Screw you, Seppie monsters.
The door to the chamber slid open and Echo knew without a doubt that he would have tossed himself at the figures that stood there were he able to move.
"Magnificent. Doctor, you have done splendidly." Wat Tambor stood before the chamber and Echo wanted to scream. He recognized Wat Tambor from a briefing Fives had slept through when the first became Arc troopers. "Finish attaching the nodes and complete the memory wipe. It is paramount it has no qualms about our business." Did they know he was conscious and just unable to move or did they think we was just passed out. Tambor growled before turning and walking out.
A memory wipe…so he wouldn't remember the past year or however long he had spent rotting away in this hell. Well, technically wiping memories was impossible. Memories could only be hidden in the brain. Perhaps so deep that they would never surface but they would show up in dreams every now and then. The Doctor nodded before taking a syringe off a tray. Echo didn't wince as the needle pierced his skin (not that he really could) but he took a small ounce of pride in that fact. Echo wasn't aware of the drug as it worked its way from his one good arm towards his brain. Technically the drug was headed for the heart to be sent to his brain. That was how Echo knew he was scared. He only got technical when he was scared. There was the sound of the chamber door slamming closed. This was it. My name is Echo. He chanted to himself. My name is Echo. My name is Echo. My designation is CT-21-0408. My name is Echo. My designation is CT-21-0408. My name is Echo. My designation is CT-21-0408. My designation is CT-21-0408. My designation is CT-21-0408. My designation is CT-21-0408. My designation is CT-21-0408. My designation is CT-21-0408. My designation is CT-21-0408. My designation is CT-21-0408.
Because There is no way Echo wasn't awake for at least some of his time as the Techno Union's Winter Soldier. Anyway we all know how this ends, Rex, Anakin, and the Bad Batch all bust Echo out then they spend the rest of the war causing mayhem. Reviews will be printed out and turned into a pastry to eat so I may strengthen myself for the coming XC season. (I'm kidding.)