Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars or any part of the franchise; all rights and ownership belong to Disney.

A/N: Hang on to your shebs! You're in for a bumpy ride.

~ProphetessMinty

Chapter 9
(A Year Ago)

Far away, in a vastly arid wasteland, there laid a man unconscious in the dust. The dry wind blew lightly over the desert floor, picking up sandy debris along the way. The gritty dust tinkled lightly against worn out metal as it scattered about. The man's body twitched as the air current picked up, slapping at his white and yellow body armor like a wake-up call. Just about every inch of his suit was riddled with dents; some small, some large. Parts of the metal plating had been charred by extreme heat as the edges appeared bubbly.

The tally-marked helmet he wore was spider cracked on the right side, with a piece of metal lodged within the center of impact. When the man came to, the wind had turned into a gust that pushed at him with urgency. The helmet's viewport buzzed with snowy chatter as it switched back and forth between the static and a desert view. The more lucid he became, the more aware he was that everything hurt.

His head throbbed violently. His tongue tasted of tangy metal, causing him a bit of nausea. Breathing was difficult, as an unnatural wheeze had set in. His ribs creaked with every breath and his core felt heavy with burden as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Gently, he worked his hands alternating between opened and closed. Next, he moved his arms and legs; rolling the joints in each section with tentativeness. He was intact…more or less.

Suddenly the wind died down, and an eerie quiet crept in. Gingerly, the armored man rose to his feet as he fought to overcome the waves of pain. He hunched forward, holding his arms to his chest, as if he was holding his ribs in place. Quickly, he surveyed the area and found himself to be alone among the heaps of metal and debris. A sudden tremor shot through his hands as visions of memory leaked into his forethought like a slow trickle.

Behind his eyelids, he saw flashes of an intense explosion and blur of motion as he remembered being blasted across the desert floor. He remembered the loud blast of Rhydonium that had rocked the area with concussive energy. Bits of memory reminded him of the plumes of smoke that had engulfed him and the ash and fiery shrapnel that had subsequently rained down from the heavens. Piles of ash blanketed the ground and the desert appeared to be a grey plane of existence.

Surely it was a miracle that he had survived the chaos.

Slowly he limped forward, his feet dragging in the dust. Here and there he would stumble over droid parts, concealed by heaps of dust and ash. He kept his pace until he reached the city entrance next to the mining platform. The first block of buildings, nearest the mining wreckage were toppled to the ground. Some people laid upon the desert floor as if asleep. Some walked around in confusion, their eyes as blank as their faces. A small, scaly creature ran around with a leash trailing behind it.

The man walked on for another block and stopped in front of a partially demolished diner. A part of the establishment's sign had been snapped in half and swung about by its wiring. The west and north-facing walls had caved in, leaving the south and west-facing walls to stand. Slowly, ever so slowly, he pulled off his helmet, taking in the smell of fire and ash.

As he surveyed the small diner, a flood images poured into his mind's eye. He had worked here as a dishwasher, barely managing to get by, not knowing he had been enslaved. He was living a lie, not realizing that he was suffering under the owner's hand. His abuser was a fat and calloused Sullustan named Borkus. The man spat disgustedly at the memory, onto the diner's stoop, watching as globs of blood pooled together. Suddenly his head ached, and a hand shot straight to the source.

Quickly, he removed his gloved hand and saw that it came back shiny and wet with a deep red fluid. It was in this moment, that he heard a desperate and strained cry of laughter. As soon as he looked around, the noise had ceased. There was no one there with him. He was all alone.

A gentle breeze picked back up, lapping his boots with sand. The laughter came again, but this time it was uproarious. Then the bouts of laughter turned boisterous and crazed. The man swiftly found himself in a roller coaster of anger and sadness; relief and disdain. The medley of feelings was bittersweet.

His chest shook and heaved in fits of ludicrous laughter at the impossibility of it all. He survived. He was free. And he...was very mad. He laughed like a lunatic into the face of madness staring back at him from the diner's broken glass.

In his lunacy, he walked himself to a small spaceport a couple blocks over. The port was devoid of workers and customers which meant the plethora of docked spacecraft was ripe for the picking. The unnamed lunatic found himself a Corellian G9 freighter—Rigger-class—sitting by itself at the far end of the port. As he approached the shuttle, he stared at the lowering gangplank. Its gears whirring with effort, until it reached the ground. As if in a trance, another fuzzy memory resurfaced.

He remembered staring into the small face of a Zilkin Colonel—named Gascon—who was surrounded by a motley crew of astromechs. "You will be remembered, Captain Gregor," he said as a look of bravado passed over him. "We'll take your heroic story back to the Republic and we will watch for your return."

Gregor walked into the ship, holding his pounding head in his hands. Pressing a button on the door's control panel, the cargo hold closed behind him. Stumbling to the cockpit, he tried to pronounce the name his memory gave him. It should have been familiar. It was on the tip of his tongue. As he tried to speak, he found that the name slipped away back into the recesses of his mind. Soon, he sat himself down in the pilot's seat, distraught over having lost the name.

"Germaine," he thought.

"No," he said aloud.

"Grant," he thought again.

"No!" he yelled. "What's my name?"

He went through a list of names he could think of starting with "G": Graham, Gary, Grayson, Gavin, Gerald, Grady, and Gregory. Suddenly he froze, pondering the last name he had come up with—"Gregory". He tried out the name pronouncing it differently every time. As he did this, he realized he was close, but "Gregory" wasn't it. "What was the name?" he questioned himself.

"Gre," he tried.

"No," he answered himself.

"Greg," he tried again.

"No. That's not it," he said between gnashed teeth.

"Gregor!" he yelled in frustration.

The man went quiet as realization ran through him and a toothy smile met his lips. Out loud, he said to himself, "My name is Gregor."

(Current Day)

The clone Commander was laying down on the bed, staring at the ceiling, when the doors to the suite had opened. "Mar'e!" Wolffe exclaimed. At last! Tentatively, he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. "I thought you boys got lost on the way ba—", the Wolf pack leader began before trailing off. Coric entered the room first, gently guiding the hover-stretcher that Rex was pushing. Gregor was unconscious and strapped to the gurney with a sort of peaceful look on his face. Wolffe eyed the medical bandage patch attached to Gregor's newly shaven head. The center of the patch glowed blue as its ray shield was currently active. "What happened to him?" he asked suddenly concerned.

"Surgery," Coric responded quickly as he and Rex parked the gurney at the foot of the bed.

"Well, I can see that," Wolffe said with a raised eyebrow.

"You'll have to ask the Captain. I have to make a formal report since Captain Gregor required surgery. Standard ops," the medic said as he excused himself.

When the door closed, Rex took a quick glance over his shoulder. Turning back to Wolffe, Rex took a vial from his pants pocket and handed it to him. "This is gonna sound crazy, Sir." Rex said nervously, "But please...hear me out."

The one-eyed Commander surveyed the contents of the vial before regarding Rex with a curious expression. With a nod of approval, he handed the vial back to the Captain. "Go ahead," Wolffe affirmed soberly.

"What I'm about to tell you, General Skywalker and I have not discussed with anyone," Rex began with a quiet voice. "It wasn't included on our official reports."

Wolffe perked up, hunching forward as he crossed his arms over his knees. The Wolf pack leader nodded and waited patiently. Again, the Captain looked over his shoulder and recounted all the events of Fives' death; including the chip. As the 501st Captain finished explaining the conspiracy Fives had died for, Wolffe took a moment to stand up off the bed. "So, this—thing—you had extracted from Gregor's brain is this...chip?" As Wolffe asked this, he strode over to Gregor who remained unconscious. His brown eyes glanced over the Commando, before turning his gaze to the Captain.

"Yes, Sir," Rex affirmed.

"I don't know about this," Wolffe said scratching his neck. "This sounds—"

"Ridiculous?" Rex interjected. "I know."

Wolffe nodded.

"I couldn't believe it until now, Sir. But...the moment the medical droid extracted this," Rex said waiving the vial in front of him, "that's when I knew. When I saw it with my own two eyes, I knew, Fives was right." Rex paused, taking in Wolffe's perplexed expression, hoping for a spark of hope to ignite. "You saw the vial, Sir. You saw the chip. This—this—is what he died for." Wolffe turned away, running a gentle hand through his short, black hair.

As the door to the room opened, Coric walked in with his nose stuffed into his data pad. Rex calmly stowed the vial into his pocket as he and the Commander exuded an air of calm. "This is incredible," Coric said before pushing the data from his tablet to the bedside monitor.

"What is?" Wolffe asked glancing to the screen.

"This...is your brain scan on the left. The one the medical droid took before we cleaned out your eye socket," Coric pointed to the left side of the monitor. "And this brain scan is Gregor's," he said pointing to the right. "Notice anything in common?" Before Wolffe could answer, Coric answered his own question. "There's a dark spot in the same exact place and with the same exact feedback. I thought it was a tumor...but...it's not." Coric turned away from the monitor, looking to Rex and Wolffe. "I don't know what this is, but it looks...foreign," he finally proposed.

The Captain and Commander traded looks, confirming the same conclusion: the chip was real.

"I'll have to figure out where I put that sample. I'll need to submit it into evidence—" Coric started to say.

"Evidence?!" Rex fumed, taking a step toward the Sergeant. "I thought you were submitting a standard report?!"

"Yes, I was," Coric answered clearly startled by the outburst. "But I also had to report on the findings. Someone needs to know what we found."

"What did you say?" Rex inquired, suddenly shaking the medic. "What did your report say?"

"Basically, that we found an organic implant located in Gregor's frontal lobe. Why?" the medic questioned confoundedly.

Rex shoved Coric back, causing the medic to teeter-totter unbalanced for a moment. "The last time a man claimed that something had been implanted in a clone's brain—he died. Gregor isn't safe now. Neither are we." Coric stood gapping unceremoniously, looking back and forth between his superiors. Wolffe gave an affirmative nod as an answer to the clone's question.

"I—I—I didn't know," he said, suddenly sorry. "This is—this is all my fault," Coric admitted nervously. "I was just following protocol."

Rex quickly turned to Wolffe, "We have to get Gregor out of here. If they take him away…we'll never see him again. We need to find out more—about all of it. The chip. What it means for us clones and the Jedi."

The Commander nodded, "Agreed. This needs to be done."

"Let me help," Coric interrupted. "I got you into this mess and it's the least I can do."

Commander and Captain exchanged looks before nodding to Coric. The Sergeant went about the room, collecting some basic medical supplies into a small bag. "You're going to need this. It's cleaning products and pain killers for when you need them." Shoving the bag into the Captain's hands, Coric strode over to Gregor to check his vitals. "It'll be a little while longer, until Gregor wakes up. I don't know what kind of condition he'll be in, but just know, he may still be the same...or worse."

"Don't worry about the details, we'll figure it out later. Let's move," Wolffe ordered.

Coric moved out of the way as Rex and Wolffe took hold of the hover-stretcher and moved toward the door. The three of them quickly strode down the hall to the commons area of the triage center, when Rex urged them to stop. "Commander look at the security feed," he said pointing to some monitors located in an office near the exit. Wolffe looked through the window and saw a five-man squad heading toward them in a jog.

"That doesn't look good," Wolffe surmised.

"Who—what are they?" Coric asked with concern. "I've never seen anything like them."

Rex took special note of their armor. Their armor was decorated with red paint, like what the Coruscant Shock Troopers wore, but with a slight alteration. They had a black stripe that cuffed the upper right of their arms. "Doesn't look like CST standard issue. I don't think we want to find out either," Rex concluded.

"Might be an investigative squad," Wolffe pondered aloud.

"Then why do they have their blasters drawn?" Coric questioned apprehensively.

"Doesn't matter. Let's go," Wolffe ordered.

"You go. I'll stall them," the medic stated.

Rex was about to reject the offer, when Wolffe interjected. "If you stay, you might not make it out."

Coric thought for a moment, "I know, Sir. Now go!"

Wolffe and Rex didn't hesitate as they maneuvered Gregor's gurney toward a side door from the commons area. Coric watched as their backsides disappeared out of sight, leaving him alone amongst the chairs and tables. Seconds later, the CST-spooks barged through the triage entrance with guns primed. The medic trooper, slightly alarmed, did his best to display a professional appearance.

"Hands in the air!" one of them commanded as they aimed their blaster at Coric's head.

Coric did as he was told, being careful not to twitch. "I'm the on-duty medic," he declared quickly.

"On the ground! Hands behind your head," the same spook ordered.

Again, Coric did as he was told. Fear started to creep in as he laid on the ground, with his hands to his head. He tried not to think gruesome thoughts about sudden death, but it was unavoidable.

"Where is he?" the spook questioned.

"Where's who, Sir?" Coric asked with feigned ignorance.

"Clone Commando, CC-5576-39? Where is Gregor?" The spook demanded, shoving his blaster to the medic's head this time.

"I—I don't know. I don't know anything. He went crazy. Talking about nightmares. I filed a report, Sir. Should I show it to you?" Coric offered, fear cracking his voice.

"Take us to him immediately," the spook said with icy fervor.

"He's still recovering from the surgery. He needs his rest," the medic explained frantically. "Since I extracted the tumor—"

The last thing Coric saw was a flash of light and the treads of boots.

Then all was black.