Trigger warnings: character causing themselves pain to counteract faulty technology, dissociation-like symptoms and discussion of them
Just breathe.
Echo slips the drive into the central computer. The others are supposed to be asleep but he sat down and immediately heard Wrecker clattering around on the deck below and then Crosshair hissing at him to keep it down. They're not sleeping – they're lurking, making themselves keep busy with some other task so they don't hover or ask him about the data he and Tech downloaded.
He's grateful for the space – for however long it lasts.
Echo takes a measured breath, two, and then slots the socket to interface with the system.
There's a lot of data; by the file names, most of it looks to be logistical notes about genetic sequencing and tamping down Fett's aggression and independence to create the model soldier. Echo snorts.
They got that wrong the first time around.
Echo flips back to the oldest file in the sequence. Some Jedi master named Sifo-Dyas commissioned their creation; in his preliminary dealings, he asked for the control chip's implantation 'to safeguard against treachery and ensure complete loyalty.'
But why would a Jedi master create a contingency that could be used against other Jedi?
It doesn't make sense.
Echo whips through the rest of the files. Sifo-Dyas made several trips to Kamino, asking for various modifications to the program or demanding an update on the army's progress, but the reports citing his name abruptly stop before the cloning process even begins. Echo furrows his brow. Maybe he died.
But there's another report from less than a month later about the same project. The Kaminoans wouldn't have done that without the proper funding or a client with which to consult.
He remembers a late night, sitting with Rex and Fives and Cody and staring out across a barren desert. They didn't know, Cody told them. The Jedi. They didn't know about us until almost Geonosis. Kenobi ended up on Kamino and they told him one of their own had us built without their Council's approval.
So Sifo-Dyas acted alone. The rest of the Jedi didn't know. Could it have been a second rogue Jedi, someone Sifo-Dyas confided in and asked to take over in the event of his demise? Or was it a third party that saw their chance and moved to take it? Someone with a grudge against the Jedi? Someone who wanted a way to wipe them out with their own army?
Who in the hell would be capable of that?
He loses track of time, going through the files. Whoever took it over is only ever named as GAR Client; there's no identifying information, just a contact number Echo knows at a glance will no longer be in use.
Dead end. All of this data, all of that effort – and it's a dead end.
Echo drives his palm into the bridge of his nose until his eyes stop stinging.
He's reached the end of the relevant information, but he still has one more file to go through. One more file he pulled without telling Tech.
Fives.
Echo's hand is shaking. His heart churns in his chest.
A thought, and he's in.
"What did you find?"
The screen was glowing a cool blue the last time he raised his head. Echo blinks against the darkness. "Nothing," he says hoarsely. His eyes ache. He's painfully aware of the tear streaks scarred into his face. "There was nothing. It was a dead end. They never name the client."
Hunter eases into the chair next to him, hunched forward with his hands folded in his lap. He stares straight at the console. "I know," he says. "Tech went through that data after you passed out."
That's a kind way to put 'cried until you were too exhausted to stay awake.' "Oh."
"I meant, what did you find out about Fives?"
The lump is back in his throat, suffocating him. Echo swallows thickly. "Nothing I didn't already know," he says, and curls his hand into a fist and drives his fingernails into his palm. "Just what Rex told me."
"It's different reading it firsthand."
Echo scoffs. It sounds more like a choked sob. He blinks, faster, faster. "They were going to euthanize him," he bursts out, and his voice cracks. Should have been there. Should have been at his side. Should have stood with him, watched his back, kept him safe. Fives.
Hunter's face is grim. "Damned Kaminoans."
Echo coughs something he hopes sounds more like a laugh. "There was nothing in there either," he says. Just their notes on Tup and Fives. Just ideas about how to prevent anyone else from ever realizing the chip existed again. Ways to manipulate them. Keep them in line. It makes his blood boil.
Look at what they did to Fives.
"Nala Se drugged him," Echo whispers. It was one line: just a statement at the end of the file, like sending him to hell was an afterthought. "She drugged him after he had surgery so he'd be incoherent. So he'd look crazy. So no one would listen to him."
"I'm sorry."
Echo slams his fist into the console. "I have to find who did this," he grits out. The tears burn their way down his cheeks. "I have to find who's behind this. Who's behind all of this."
"We'll try our best."
"No!" Echo barks. "No. I have to do more than try."
Hunter's quiet for a moment. "We'll do whatever we can," he says at last.
"I should have been there."
"It's not your fault."
"I should have been there," Echo repeats hoarsely. "He was always there."
Hunter's hand lands on his shoulder and squeezes. "We'll do whatever we can to save everyone we can," he says. A shadow of a smile plays at his lips. "Reg or not. Deal?"
"Deal," Echo says.
It feels hollow. Fives died for this – died trying to save all of their brothers. It can't be just enough. That's not nearly enough. It has to be everyone. Not one clone gets that damned chip activated. Not one clone gets any more of their agency stripped away.
Deal, Echo says, but it's not with Hunter.
It's with Fives.
Echo spends the rest of the day in his quarters, combing through the data. The client is never named. They can't trace them that way.
The Kaminoans didn't manufacture the chip themselves. They mass-produced it through a third party…that was promptly swallowed up by the Techno Union. Tech's probably already made note of and written off this information as another dead end. They can crack that Union vault just the same as they cracked the Kamino one and it won't bring them any closer to unmasking the shadow behind the scenes.
Echo eases back on his bunk and presses his eyes closed so he can't stare at the empty ceiling above him. Rubs at the bridge of his nose. His head aches. He should sleep.
But darkness feels too much like a cold void. Feels too much like stasis, that lucid never-ending nightmare where they tore him apart and he pulled himself back together again. They took and took and took, and for a while, he fought them and failed and fought some more. Thought of Rex and Fives and Jesse and Kix and picked himself up and went down swinging.
You can't beat me.
But they didn't have to beat him. They could just take what they wanted. And soon he realized – so could he.
Echo stopped fighting and started infiltrating. The conduit went both ways. Why wouldn't it? They never anticipated his leaving and he wasn't dangerous while he was in cold storage. He had access to every byte of data that ran through those servers, any project the Techno Union ever communicated about having been commissioned for or completed.
Plenty of those requests came from the Republic. Not as many as came from the Separatists, but enough that he felt his heart drop every time he encountered one in the data stream. It made logical sense – the Republic needed third-party manufacturers just as badly as their opponents, and the Techno Union was more than happy to feed both sides of the conflict for their own profit.
He knew that. It still stung, though, that the Republic had consistent dealings with the same organization that held him for torture and experimentation for so long.
Echo shoots upright.
Plenty of those requests came from the Republic, most of them stamped with the Chancellor's signature and authorized under his emergency powers. But, catching up on what had happened in the war while he was locked away, he knows the GAR never saw any of the heavy artillery Palpatine authorized, or the walkers, or any of the new fighter craft.
The Chancellor accused Fives of trying to assassinate him. Nala Se documented drugging Fives. Why drug Fives if there's nothing to hide? Why lie if you just want him brought in alive? If the chip is just meant to suppress Fett's aggression and serve as a failsafe for rogue Jedi, then why outsource it? Why go to all this trouble to keep its programming a secret?
Where did all of the equipment go? Why hasn't the GAR seen any of the upgrades it could so desperately use? Why did the Chancellor authorize their construction if he never intended to put them on the battlefield?
We don't know how high this goes.
Echo's blood runs cold.
"I think I do, Rex," he whispers. "I think I do."
Coruscant
19 BBY
One month before Echo's extraction
At first, he thinks it was just a nightmare.
Fox wakes up in his bunk the same as always. Hygiene. Gear up. Get to work. It's rote by now, a routine he's executed every day since they withdrew from Geonosis and he was assigned to the Coruscant guard.
None of it would be out of the ordinary except that, try as he might, he can't break it.
It's like he's a passenger in his own body, free to spectate but helpless to interact or interfere. He walks but he's not consciously moving his legs; he's being moved. He speaks, but he's not opening his mouth; it's being opened for him. The words are his but he's not saying them. It's his voice. It's him.
But it's not.
Fox goes about his day, tracks a target and brings them in, and then retires to his quarters again. His hands pull the covers up. His head hits the pillow. He feels it. He feels everything.
When he sleeps, he dreams of a void.
When he wakes, his heart is pounding. Fox shoots upright and whips the blanket off. His hands are shaking, but he can move them. His legs, too. He almost folds forward on himself in his relief.
Just a dream.
His comm. buzzes; he scrambles for it. "Fox," he croaks, and clears his throat. "What is it?"
Another fugitive. Another Senate committee for which they need security. He assigns the appropriate squads and sends them to work. His comm. buzzes, his unit's report for the previous day.
When they apprehended the bounty hunter.
When he couldn't move his own body.
Fox's mouth goes dry.
"Sir! We have shots fired in the Senate building!"
He doesn't have time to think about it for the next day, or week. Exactly nine days from the first incident, he wakes up – and he's a prisoner again. Bile wells in his throat, but he can't do anything about it. It burns. He wants to scream. He can't make his mouth move.
Just make it through the day. It's just twenty-four hours. Make it through the day. Make it through the day. Make it through the day.
Make it through.
Make it through.
He wakes screaming. His shirt is sticking to his back and Fox realizes with a shuddery breath that he's plastered in sweat. His hands are shaking violently. He can't make them still. He can barely remember to breathe.
At least he can choose to breathe.
"What's happening to me?" he asks the medic, a raspy plea. The infirmary is a cool blue he wants to find soothing. He's only in a hospital gown; it's not cold. He's still shivering. Can't move. Can't move. Can't move. He flexes his fingers just to prove that he can.
His medic hesitates.
"Exon."
"I can't find anything wrong with you, sir. Your brain scans all turned up normal."
"I told you—"
Exon hesitates. "It could be psychological. You might be dissociating."
"I didn't dissociate."
"You're displaying all of the symptoms."
"I'm telling you," Fox growls. "I didn't dissociate."
"Memory loss. Feeling disconnected—
"Exon," Fox snaps. "Forget it."
"We should evaluate you further, sir."
"I said forget it. I'm fine."
"I want to help." Exon's eyes are dark, wide: superior officer or not, he's still one of his brothers. "Please. Tell me how I can help."
Fox doesn't have an answer for him.
When he gets back to his quarters, he locks the door. Slides the dresser holding his fatigues in front of it. Seals his pistols in his locker with his vibroblades and shatter gun.
Then Fox sits on the edge of the bed, folds his hands in his lap – and waits.
Twelve hours later, he feels it – a stiffness creeping up his spine and into his brain stem. There's a lump in his throat. He swallows past it, pressing his eyes closed and focusing on one breath, two – another and another, again and again. Open your hand. Close it. Open your hand. Close it. Repeat. Remember your training. Repeat.
Don't freeze.
His breath stutters. Fox chokes. There's an icy chill, and suddenly, he can't move.
His palms are still tingling from where he drove his fingernails into them. He gets up, gets dressed moves his dresser, and leaves.
When he wakes up, he doesn't move. He lies there and stares at the ceiling with red-rimmed eyes. His comm. buzzes.
Exon.
I want to try a level five atomic scan. It might pick up something the other scans missed.
Fox doesn't have time to go to the medbay. There's a bomb threat at the Senate. By the time he finally makes it to Exon, it's been well over a week.
"I need that scan, Ex-"
It's not Exon, it's some aruetii medic in a white lab coat. Fox stops cold in the door. "Where is Exon?" he asks coolly.
The man's tall, skinny, dark haired. Friendly face. Fox hates friendly faces on civilians: their smiles are always closely followed by a condescending comment that assumes clones don't have the first clue.
"Hi! Doctor Ryl," he says, fidgeting with his glasses. He holds out a hand. Fox stares disdainfully at it until the shabuir gets the idea and drops it.
"Where is Exon?" Fox repeats coldly.
"He was reassigned. I'm the new – where are you going?"
What the hell is a civilian medic doing on a military base?
Fox's head is screaming. He tugs his helmet on and heads to check up on the squads in the Senate and on the landing platforms. There's an important diplomatic envoy arriving today. He can't afford to curl up in his bunk and drive his palms into his eyes until the pounding in his skull fades away.
Exon, his files tell him, has been transferred halfway across the galaxy to a medical envoy that follows the fleet collecting the wounded. Fox drops his head into his hands and groans.
Damn it.
The headache is still there in the morning, a throbbing pulse that he has to blink to see past.
Halfway through the day, midway through the files piled up on his comm., he feels it: the creeping stiffness.
Not again. Please, not again.
"No," Fox snarls, and clutches his head between his hands and drive his fingers into his temples. It multiplies the headache tenfold, but the stiffness fades away. He holds on for a long as he can stand to.
When he lets go, his head is screaming.
The stiffness doesn't come back.
It's pain, then.
The second he's safely back in his quarters, Fox tears apart his gauntlet. It's not that difficult to wire in a simple electroshock device. He takes one careful breath, two – and squeezes.
It feels like a line of fire is ripping up the nerves in his arm. Fox's eyes water.
"Osik," he wheezes.
He takes the voltage down.
At first it's only once every couple weeks. Then it's once every couple of days. Then he has to increase the power of the shock, huddled over his gauntlet in a Senate supply closet while the sick stiffness winds its way up his arms, creeping ever-so slowly toward his fingers, and his eyes are blurred, wet, and he's begging please, please.
He's careful to keep the shock small enough and short enough to avoid any lasting damage, but if he has to increase the frequency, he'll have to decrease the power. And then it won't work at all. And then he'll be locked in his own body with a murderous headache and no way to treat it – and maybe no way back out.
Maybe one day he doesn't wake up at all.
Most nights, Fox doesn't sleep. His helmet stays on almost all of the time. His stim supply is running dangerously low. One day blurs into the next blurs into the next. Can't ask the new medic for help. Can't trust him – he shouldn't even be here.
It'll look suspicious if he goes to another base looking for care.
Fox chuffs a hopeless laugh over some late-night caf. When did he start worrying about what looked suspicious?
"We're tracking an assassination attempt on the Chancellor. Clone. ARC trooper CT-5555. Fives."
It hits Fox like a brick of durasteel. Fives is one of Rex's men. One of the 501st. One of their finest.
"No one fires except me," he tells his troopers on the way to the warehouse. They have orders to use lethal force, but he switches his blaster to stun. It'll deliver a hell of a hit to whatever it blasts and knock them to the ground, but it won't kill them.
It's what he sets his pistols to every night, in case he falls asleep. In case one day he wakes up and gets to it, in case he isn't lucid and turns it to his own temple.
His head is pounding. Pounding. Pounding Somehow, it feels worse than it has before. Fox curls his hand into a fist but doesn't hit the shock trigger. Not yet. No stiffness. Not yet.
The gunship lands. They charge out. He can barely remember to make his legs move. His spine aches. He can feel the panic welling up in the pit of his stomach, that old, familiar cold. He glances at his rifle in the space between steps. It's set to kill.
He switches it back.
Rex and Skywalker are contained in a ray shield. Fox's head is screaming – all white static. Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, eliminate the traitor, fire—
Not on Fives. Not on Fives. Not on another brother. Not on Fives.
Not on Fives.
"Don't do it, trooper!" Fox barks. "Don't do it!"
His thumb passes over the setting. Kill. He barely has time to switch it back.
Fives lunges for Rex's pistol. Fox snaps off a shot.
Fives falls.
"Fives!" Rex cries. "Fives, no, Fives—"
"Get this ray shield down!" Skywalker snarls.
Fives is in Rex's arms, heaving for breath, and Fox stops in his tracks. Checks his rifle.
It's set to stun.
Fives goes limp.
It's not enough to kill him. It wasn't enough to kill him. He didn't kill him.
"I've got him, Rex," Fox says a long beat later. His heart is in his throat. Every second counts. It's not enough to kill him. It couldn't have been enough to kill him. "I've got him."
Rex lets go of Fives numbly. Skywalker's hand lands on his Captain's shoulder. Rex leaves it there.
Fox hoists Fives and hauls him to the gunship bay, slapping the door controls on his way in. The others are still milling about in the warehouse, checking the scene and recording data for the report they'll have to file later.
Fox rips through the emergency supplies crate. Bandages. Bacta patches.
Adrenaline.
He jabs it into Fives' neck, searching for the release on the chestplate and popping the seal. He flings the armor away and slams down – once, twice, again, again.
"Come on, Fives," Fox growls. "Come on."
It wasn't enough to kill him. It just delivers a shock. It wasn't enough to kill him.
Fire, fire.
Not on another brother. Not on Fives.
Set to kill. Switch it back. Fire, fire.
Not on Fives.
"Please," Fox whispers. His head is going to explode. There are tears in his eyes. "Please, Fives—"
Fives jolts alive with a rattling wheeze that sounds more like a strangled scream. His eyes are wild. "Rex," he croaks, and his voice is so strangled and small. Scared. Fox seizes both his shoulders and makes him meet his gaze.
"No," Fox says. He wants to collapse for the relief. "No. Not Rex. Just breathe."
"Rex," Fives coughs, and sucks in a long and painful breath. "I have – I have to tell Rex about the chip, I have to—"
His mind is going a mile a minute. Chip. "What chip?" Fox asks urgently. He rips off his helmet and throws it aside. "Fives, what chip?"
Fives is staring at him with open-mouthed horror. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
He doesn't look in the mirror anymore. Fox doesn't answer him. Fire, fire. No. Not Fives. They'll fire on Fives if they find him. "You're dead," Fox blurts. "They can't know you're alive."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Fives demands. He's not strong enough to yell, not yet, but he will be in a few moments and there's no way Rex'll miss that.
"You tried to assassinate the Chancellor," Fox says. "So – so they tell me."
"You look like you crawled out of a morgue."
"Can you focus?" Fox snaps. "What chip, Fives?"
"The one they put in our heads. The one they can use to control us," Fives hisses. "Make us do whatever they want. I think they're planning to use it against the Jedi."
Control them. Make them do whatever they want. "A chip," Fox repeats desperately. "A chip that takes over."
"Rex," Fives says again. "I have to tell Rex."
"Rex isn't here."
"Please."
"He can't know," Fox repeats stupidly. "No one can. If this is a conspiracy, if someone's out to get you – us – all of us—"
"Wait," Fives says slowly. "Wait. You actually believe me?"
"There's something wrong with me," Fox blurts.
Fives looks him up and down. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I can see that."
Fox doesn't respond, just stands and raps on the wall to tell the pilot to take off. No one wants to ride with a corpse – especially when that corpse is one of their own.
Especially when they made that corpse.
Fox chuffs a laugh.
"What's so funny?" Fives asks dryly.
"You just died, but it's me that looks more like a corpse."
Fives doesn't laugh.