"Murder-bot!?" Hunter reacted.

Before Raine elaborated, the call ended, and their hologram disappeared. Hunter removed his helmet and stroked his chin thoughtfully. What was Raine talking about? Hunter had prepared the surveillance and infiltration equipment needed for the bounty hunter to kidnap Senator Meris, then had the loader droids take it to a drop pod, just as his uncle had ordered him to. Surely when Raine said murder-bot, they weren't talking about the Beskar assassins? They should have no idea they exist, let alone had the opportunity to kill one… Unless…

"Hunter…"

Hunter's blood ran cold, as his uncle's voice interrupted his potentially disloyal thoughts.

"Uncle!" Hunter greeted, spinning around, seeing his uncle entering the small castle room, where they kept their transmitter.

"What's the status of Senator Meris?" Philip enquired.

Hunter wracked his brain for an answer, realising he was very much at a crossroad. Since finding out his uncle cloned him and never let him know, Hunter's faith in his uncle was shaken. If he told him what had really happened, could he really trust his uncle to give an honest explanation? The alternative was to assume his uncle HAD dispatched an assassin to eliminate the bounty hunter, and to tell him what he expected to hear.

"Th… the bounty hunter hasn't answered my calls since the drop pod arrived…" Hunter said, feeling his heart drop, fearfully. "They… must have taken the tech and ran…"

Philip gave a deep sigh. "Oh well, such is the danger of working with mercenaries… It's of no consequence. The risk Senator Meris poses to us is minimal."

Philip went to leave, but before he did, Hunter called after him. "Uncle…"

Philip turned.

"I've been wondering…" Hunter nervously began. "This… war against the Jedi… it's to save the rest of the galaxy from their tyranny… right?"

The older Mandalorian raised an eyebrow suspiciously, and didn't reply.

"It… it's just… I've been studying the Mandalorian creed…" Hunter began to talk more quickly. "A… and there's a lot of stuff about wielding power to lead people who are weaker than you… but also about protecting them? And… and I just wanted to make sure when we attack the Jedi… no one else will get hurt…"

After an agonising pause, Philip smiled warmly. "Of course. Our ancestors would be proud of you, Hunter. I can assure you that the Beskar assassins are ruthlessly accurate. I promise you that not a single drop of civilian blood will be spilled."

Hunter smiled back. "That's a relief. Thanks uncle."

Philip turned around again, and left the room. As soon as he did, Hunter's smile vanished. He wasn't a fool, he had always known his uncle was extreme, and aggressive, Philip made no secret of how that was why they didn't interact with other Mandalorians, but Hunter had always wanted to think that the two of them were on the same page. Now, there was no doubt in Hunter's mind that his uncle had attempted to assassinate Raine Whispers, to tie up the 'loose ends' he had mentioned. Hunter understood why his uncle had lied about this, it was against everything the Mandalorians stood for, but what else was he lying about?

Hunter put his helmet back on, and followed his uncle out into the hall. His heart hammered against his chest as he focussed on putting one foot in front of the other. What he was thinking was deeply treacherous, and he felt as though his thoughts were echoing through the castle, for Philip to hear.

Hunter saw no sign of his uncle, as he navigated the halls. The older Mandalorian had been spending a lot of his time performing last minute maintenance on the droids recently, hopefully that was where he was now.

Casting nervous looks left and right, Hunter slipped into his uncle's small workshop. The large, circular room was lit by flaming torches. There were several worksurfaces, including a large, circular one in the centre, all of them covered in blueprints and sketches, including the pages torn from Steel and Blood, and half-finished prototypes of weapons and droid components that Philip was working on. The room also bore tribute to Mandalore's history. On one wall, a mighty tapestry depicted Mandalore the First slaying a Mythosaur, and between the workstations stood suits of armour, so battle scarred and damaged, that they were no longer functional.

Hunter approached a horned, Mandalorian helmet, mounted to the wall, recalling a moment in the past, when he had approached it out of curiosity, only to be scalded by his uncle, and ordered to stay away. Philip had gone on to rationalise his anger by saying that the helmet was a precious heirloom, but that hadn't explained what he could possibly fear happening to the almost indestructible armour.

Hunter ran his hands over the helmet, then reached inside. He felt around for a second, before his fingers fell upon a switch. Hunter's eyes widened and his heart skipped a beat. Biting his tongue anxiously, and fearing what he'd find, he flipped it. The following seconds dragged by agonisingly, until finally, a section of wall next to the helmet depressed several inches, before sliding away, revealing nothing but blackness on the other side. A chill blew through the workshop that made Hunter shiver, and he couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't a natural cold.

His knees trembling, Hunter stepped through the doorway into a short tunnel. The door slid shut behind him, plunging him into utter blackness. Hunter engaged the torch on his helmet, finding uncarved rocks in all directions. This was clearly a natural cave, that preceded the construction of the castle. After just a few steps, the walls and roof of the tunnel vanished, and Hunter walked into an impossibly large cavern, and his eyes were drawn helplessly to what floated in the air before him.

In the centre of the cavern, hovering eerily in mid-air, was a glowing, red crystal, the size of a Republic cargo freighter. It didn't bob, or waver in the air, but hung motionless, as though gripped in place by some gigantic, invisible hand. The occasional bolt of red lightning leapt from the crystal to the distant walls of the cave. Hunter stood transfixed, staring at the crystal, through the visor of his helmet. He could have sworn he could feel the malign power radiating off the rock. Hunter had studied Jedi extensively. He knew Kyber crystals were conduits for the Force, that Jedi wielded, most notably in their lightsabers. He didn't know much about the Sith, and their tendency to 'bleed' crystals, turning them red, but there were two things that the crystal had made abundantly clear- The castle had clearly been built by ancient Force wielders, who had chosen this location for its proximity to the crystal. The second thing, was that his uncle was a foul, murderous hypocrite.

Hunters mind and senses were overwhelmed by this new discovery, so he stared at the crystal for a full minute, before he realised he could hear a quiet tapping sound. Hunter spun around, and took in the cavern's other contents, for the first time. The floor of the cavern was built around an ancient shrine, beneath the crystal, and at the outside, were statues of the primordial Sith who had harnessed it. The source of the tapping, though, was something newer.

Near the entrance of the chamber, was a relatively new array of scientific equipment. Hunter was no expert, but he soon deduced that the assortment of probes, needles and processing tools were what Philip had used to create him. His most helpful clues were the large vats of glowing, green bacta lining the walls. Each one, Hunter was sickened to notice, containing a deceased clone, identical to him. There was no question of the clones being genetic failures. Most were a couple of years older than Hunter, and each one had been murdered. Most of them had been shot in the head, but some had been dismembered, one of them torn in two, at the waist.

The tapping was coming from one of the tanks closest to the laboratory, and it contained the gruesome menagerie's sole, living occupant. The person in the tank could have been genetically identical to Hunter too, but it was hard to tell. For one thing, he was much older, around the same age as Philip, the other thing making him hard to identify, was that he was mutilated beyond recognition. He had no arms, and great chunks of his flesh were missing from much of his body. His head was bald, and his eyes were weary and grey. He wore a breath mask, keeping him alive in the bacta tank, and he tapped on the glass with his foot.

Avoiding the urge to vomit, Hunter raced over to the tank, removed his helmet, and frantically tapped on the controls, lowering the fluid level, and detaching the occupant's mask.

"Are you Caleb Whittabane!?" Hunter asked, breathlessly, as the man spluttered and coughed.

"You need to run!" The man croaked, without answering. "My brother knows you're here! He's coming!"

Another shiver ran over Hunter's skin. He looked over to the door, then back at Caleb. "I'll come back!" He promised. "I'll get help! I'll find the Jedi!" Although he wasn't yet fully convinced the Jedi weren't the fascists who had driven Philip to extremism, he knew they were the ruling power in the galaxy, and his uncle's enemy.

Hunter raced for the door to the workshop, wondering how it was opened from this side. He felt relief, as the wall slid aside, as he approached, then horror, when he saw his uncle, on the other side. Hunter screamed, and fell over backwards.

"Uncle! I… you… you lied to me… about everything!" Hunter's voice went from fear, to anger, as his sentence progressed. "The Jedi didn't kill Caleb, you attacked him! You… tore him to pieces!"

Hunter crawled backwards as Philip approached. The red glare of the crystal seemed to reflect off Philip, more than anything else in the chamber. He looked over to Caleb, and shook his head, sadly. "Like I said, I'm no Kaminoan… I can't make a perfect clone from a single cell. Still… I hoped the clones' imperfections meant they wouldn't betray me like he did… But alas, as hard as I try, all of you fail me after a few years…"

"We… we didn't betray you Philip…" Caleb coughed. "You're the one who betrayed everything it means to be a Mand…"

Philip walked past the vat, and wordlessly pressed a button, silencing Caleb with his mouthpiece, and refilling the vat with bacta. Then, he turned to Hunter, and marched towards him. "If it's any consolation, the work is finished. I'll need no more of Caleb, after I dispose of you…" He promised, as he reached down, to the youngest clone's neck.