Fox got one day off every two weeks, and if you asked him that was already too much. This time, though, he was happy to have a free day for once. It gave him an opportunity to work out something he'd let lie for too long.

"So why'd you invite me out?" Rex asked from across the table Fox had found them at 79's. "I assume this isn't a social call."

"I wanted to talk to you about your friend. ARC-5555."

Rex looked flatly across the table at Fox. "You mean Fives?"

A server handed Fox a drink and he took a long pull from it before setting it down. He usually wasn't one for alcohol, but he was off duty and he figured this conversation would be a lot easier drunk. "Yeah," he said, wiping his mouth. "Fives."

"I don't know what there is to say," Rex said. "He's dead. You made sure of that. Sir."

"Have you looked into what he was babbling about? When he died?" Fox said, choosing not to rise to Rex's bait.

Rex glowered at Fox, but Fox only passively soaked in his anger. This was what he had expected, and he was prepared for it.

"I tried, but there's not much there. I made a report but I don't think anyone's ever going to see it."

Fox leaned back in his seat, eyes going distant as he remembered that day. The ARC trooper had had a wild, unhinged look about him—exactly what Fox would look like if he lost himself, too. "Chancellor Palpatine told me to bring him down. He told me very specifically. I think there must have been something to it for the Chancellor to devote his individual attention."

"Look, I get it. You were just following orders, and I understand you can't exactly disobey an order from someone like Chancellor Palpatine," Rex said. "I don't blame you, but I also don't want to talk about it. Especially with you."

Fox set his drink down and levelled a serious look at Rex. "I'm not here to ask for your forgiveness. That would be a waste of both of our times. I'm here to do right by a brother who was wronged, and to make sure that his claims are looked into. He was suspicious of Chancellor Palpatine before anyone else was, and I think he might have been onto something."

Rex set his jaw, his eyes narrowing at Fox as he considered Fox's words. "I don't know if you'll be able to find any more than I did. Fives went to Kamino with Tup, the trooper who went crazy and killed that Jedi. Something happened on Kamino, and Fives broke out. Then he ended up on Coruscant. You know the rest."

"And did you ever find any evidence for what he said? About the mind control chips?"

"The Kaminoans fully admitted to the existence of the chips, they just said they didn't have anything to do with mind control," Rex said with a shake of the head. "But… I also didn't look as hard as I could have. We were in the middle of a war, and I was deployed again only days after Fives' death."

"Well, we're both in a better position to look into it now."

The server finally came with Rex's drink, and Rex thanked her before taking a careful sip. He considered Fox for a long moment, the neon lights of the club reflecting dully off of his well-worn armor. "Why are you doing this, Commander? And why now?"

A glib response—something about duty or responsibility—nearly rolled off of Fox's tongue. Then he realized he had no reason to hide from Rex. It might even be freeing, to tell someone at least some of his thoughts. One of the benefits of having clone brothers was that they were relatively likely to understand your point of view.

"I served directly under the former Chancellor for three years," he said, Palpatine's pleasant, hateful face appearing in his mind's eye. "He had absolute control over my life and the lives of my men, and he had the craftiest, most insidious mind I've ever seen. If there was any scheme he put into play that had the potential to outlive him, I want to root it out and destroy it."

"Hmmm," Rex said thoughtfully, leaning back in his seat and staring blankly at his near-full drink. "I'm in, if you're looking for help. Fives… Fives gave his life to tell me what he knew. I owe it to him to see this through til the end."

"I'm not asking for help, but if you're offering I welcome it. It will probably take time to investigate. We might have to go to Kamino."

Rex grimaced distastefully—an expression Fox understood well. Some troopers looked on Kamino with fondness or protectiveness as their home planet, but more and more it was starting to feel like the beginning of Fox's indoctrination.

"That's fine," Rex said. "And the new Chancellor… is she for real?"

Chancellor Chuchi's graceful, dignified features replaced Chancellor Palpatine's in Fox's mind, and he smiled. He wasn't certain of much in this new, post-war world, but this was not a difficult question to answer. "Yes. She is. You might even be able to do some good on this committee of hers."

"Alright then, I look forward to it. It's not my preferred way of fighting, but you don't always get to choose how you're used, do you?"

Fox thought of the past three years of his life spent coordinating security details, fielding citizen complaints, and kowtowing to a corrupt Chancellor, and he had to agree with Rex. He raised his glass to Rex and smiled bitterly. "To being used."

"To being used."


Fox seemed agitated when he relieved Deadeye after his day off at 0000, yet another piece of garbage dumped on the top of Riyo's trash heap of a day. She'd been forced by her packed schedule to skip lunch and dinner, and her final meeting of the day had involved an angry Mon Mothma explaining exactly why the voluntary service bill had actually been a failure.

You gave opponents of clone rights the opportunity to look good without having to vote for anything of substance. We needed to attach the voluntary service clause to a bill with real teeth, to pressure senators into either supporting a real program with funding or looking like they support slavery!

Riyo groaned as she stared at her datapad, Senator Mothma's words echoing over and over again throughout her overtired mind. She had to admit that Mothma had a point.

Fox stalked about the room on his security routine, his presence more dour than normal, and Riyo didn't have the patience for that tonight.

"Can you please stop that?" she asked, head held in her hands.

Fox rose from where he crouched on the floor, inspecting the sliver of space between the bottom of the door to Riyo's balcony and the carpet. "Stop what, ma'am?"

"Just… that," Riyo said, gesturing in his general direction unhelpfully. "The pacing, the brooding."

"I can't help my face, Madam Chancellor."

Riyo stared at him like she was seeing him for the first time. "Did you… did you just talk back to me?"

Fox's back stiffened and he froze midway through his inspection of her coat closet. "I wouldn't dream of it, ma'am."

Riyo frowned at his back. "Really? Well that's too bad."

She waited for him to respond, but he didn't say anything. Back to the duracrete wall, it seems, she thought.

With a sigh, she sat down to a stack of security clearances she needed to sign off on—tedious but important work. She turned her entertainment system on to a holodrama, confident that the distraction wouldn't render her incapable of signing her name. The drama she first turned to was an old one that Riyo had already seen several times before—it was a favorite of her mother's—but it was just the thing to provide background noise to Riyo's work.

She got into a groove, her pen whipping across the flimsiwork with expert precision and speed, her ears barely registering the show but taking comfort in the sound nonetheless. Then she got to a clause in one contract that required actual, focused attention, and she turned the show off.

The sound of shuffling feet came from behind her, and she paused, barely resisting the urge to look back. Was that…? No, it couldn't be.

She finished reading the clause, arriving back at the more mundane parts of the contract, and clicked the entertainment system on again. In the world of the holodrama, Waya's father was threatening to cut off his inheritance if he didn't break things off with his girlfriend, a mute woman he'd met once when they were both hospitalized as children. It was mawkish, overwrought, and preposterous, but there was comfort in the familiarity and heightened emotions.

A tickle emerged in the back of her throat, and Riyo let loose a series of hacking coughs. Am I getting sick? Shoot, if I-

Riyo's thoughts cut off as a muffled noise of frustration sounded from the back of the room. She froze, eyes flitting to the side though of course she couldn't see behind her. She narrowed her eyes and an idea came to her. An experiment, so to speak, to test her hypothesis.

She set her flimsiwork aside and sank back into the couch, crossing her arms as she started paying more attention to the show. Waya had started feeling faint and coughing up blood, and he was on his way to the doctor for a diagnosis.

The doctor set his datapad down, a sober expression on his face. "I'm sorry, Mr. Chee, but it appears you have-"

Riyo flipped the channel.

The unmistakable creak of plastoid armor sounded behind Riyo again. She turned around a triumphant look on her face.

"I knew you were watching!"

Fox stared straight ahead, his helmeted face betraying no reaction. "I'm always vigilant, ma'am."

"No, no. I'm not letting you off the hook. You were watching the show."

Silence.

She narrowed her eyes at him, waiting, but he still said nothing.

"Fine," she said, turning around and tossing her hair. "Then I won't tell you Waya's diagnosis."

She turned the holo back on and Waya was on the floor crying, distraught from the doctor's news. His girlfriend Shenna kept trying to reach him, but he wouldn't respond. The scene was long and drawn-out, and nobody mentioned exactly what was wrong with Waya.

"...Is it Dantari Flu?" Fox asked.

Riyo allowed herself a smirk of victory, but she made sure it didn't show when she turned around. "No."

"...What about Pyroliosis?"

Riyo scrunched up her face. "Pyroliosis? He's a businessman, do you really think he's hanging out in zenium mines?"

Fox sighed, the sound exaggerated by the helmet's vocoder. "Just tell me."

"So you admit you want to know?"

"Why else would I be asking?"

Riyo grinned, her eyes sparkling in genuine pleasure. "It's liver calcification."

Fox was silent a long moment. "Oh. That's… not very interesting."

"This show already has a trauma-induced muteness, long-lost loves, disownment, orphans, and terminal illness, and you think it needs more drama?"

"Hmm," Fox said, his stance shifting slightly. "Well when you put it like that, maybe not."

Riyo let out a full-bellied laugh, the first she'd indulged in in a long time. "I don't mind if you watch the show with me, Fox. It's kind of nice. It almost feels like having a friend over."

Fox took a while to respond again, and Riyo had the distinct sense that that was not the mood he was going for. "As you say, ma'am."

Riyo's mouth twisted and she turned back to her flimsiwork, reminding herself that this was still progress. She sighed as she recognized the next item up on her to-do list: read Senator Orn Free Taa's budget proposal. It was complicated and he was particularly long-winded, but it had to be done.

She looked back up at the holodrama, eyes considering. Shenna had gotten ahold of Waya, but he was trying to break things off with her to spare her the pain of losing him to his illness. She turned up the volume and got back to work.

Behind her, she heard the smallest hum of approval. She allowed herself a secret smile and settled in for a long night.


"Brom, you sure the power is off on all those battle droids?" Bacara asked through his comm, nerves alight as he made his way carefully through the Separatist cruiser.

"Yes, sir. Nothing on this boat should turn on unless it has an independent power source."

"Hmm. About as good a guarantee as we can get," Bacara said, signaling his boarding team to advance to the next hallway.

The Separatist cruiser was eerily quiet with all the droids powered down, their metallic corpses resting soundlessly in the sterile hallways. They'd done this the safe way, disabling the cruiser's power from afar then waiting for all the droids to run out of power before boarding. It was the kind of tactic that wouldn't work in the height of the war when the enemy could call for backup, but now that so few Separatist fighting forces remained it was the best option.

They made their way slowly and methodically towards the vault, a fortified room near the center of the ship. That was where the cargo was supposed to be, the cargo they meant to prevent from reaching Count Dooku's hands. There was a chance the Seppies had destroyed the cargo before they'd run out of power, but it was a risk Bacara was willing to take if it saved clone lives. Either way, whatever it was wasn't getting to Count Dooku.

At length they blasted their way into the triple-sealed vault, ready for anything on the other side. All that greeted them was a single cryo-stasis pod, in the middle of the large room and attached to a small, independent generator. Inside the pod slept a single clone trooper.

Bacara stood in front of the pod, his nose only inches from the troopers.

"What do you think, sir?" Solus asked, blaster held at ready.

Bacara's eyes narrowed and he considered, hand on chin. "Not sure… Just one clone trooper? Not even an officer. This is probably an intelligence situation."

"Sir?"

"This trooper had information Count Dooku wanted. Bring him aboard."

They brought in the clone engineers and carefully detached the pod from its power source. The engineers brought the pod aboard the Venator, and Bacara sent a transmission to General Mundi for more instructions. The General was on Coruscant for some kind of Jedi meeting—he'd been away more and more frequently ever since the Chancellor had been deposed.

Bacara explained their findings to the General over holo, and the old Jedi's translucent blue visage nodded thoughtfully along.

"Should we wait for your return to wake up the trooper, sir?"

"I don't think that's necessary," General Mundi said. "That poor man has likely been in stasis longer than is good for him. Wake him up and let him know he's safe."

"And get his debrief on why Count Dooku wanted him?"

"Of course," General Mundi said with an incline of his wizened head. "But that isn't the highest priority. The war is over, Bacara, and it's doubtful this trooper's information will be saving any lives."

Bacara's brow furrowed, and he was grateful for his helmet. Why wouldn't General Mundi want the information as soon as possible? He knew the General didn't exactly have a head for military strategy, but this was just strange.

It doesn't matter what you think, Bacara, he reminded himself sternly. You follow orders.

"Very well, sir."

He signalled the engineers to go ahead and, surrounded by a platoon of troopers just in case, the cryo-stasis chamber slowly thawed, then hissed open. The trooper's visage became more clear and Bacara could see that he was a medic, likely from the 501st judging by his armor color, with regulation brown hair just covering the remains of a tattoo that extended into his hairline above his ear.

The man's eyes twitched a few times, then flew open.

"What's going on? Where am I?" he gasped.

Though he was unstable, he didn't look armed or dangerous, so Bacara stepped up to him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. "You're safe, soldier. We recovered you from a Separatist cruiser, but you're in Republic hands now."

The man's eyes looked wildly around before finally settling on Bacara. "C-Commander?" he said, eyes flitting to Bacara's pauldron. "I have news… Urgent news! It can't wait!"

Bacara's grip tightened on the man's shoulders. "What is it?"

"It's… It's… Fives. He knew. They said it was a malfunction in our inhibitor chips, but… but they lied."

"Soldier, do you think you want to sit down and take a breath?" Bacara asked. "Why don't you tell us your designation number first?"

The routine question seemed to calm the man down and his breathing evened out. "CT-6116. Kix, sir. Medic in the 501st."

Bacara led him over to a stack of crates in the corner of the storage room in which they'd awoken him. He helped Kix sit down and gave him a minute. As anxious as he was to find out what the medic had to share, overwhelming him and getting garbled intel wasn't going to help.

"Thank you, sir," Kix said after he'd caught his breath. "What I found out—the reason they kidnapped me—is that the inhibitor chips in our brains have a secret purpose."

"Inhibitor chips?"

"Yes. That part's not a secret, though most clones don't really know about it. All clones have an inhibitor chip in their brain, supposedly to regulate the more violent tendencies of our donor."

Bacara supposed that made sense, though he didn't really like the feeling of it.

"What nobody knew, except probably some Seppies, is that the inhibitor chips have a secret function," Kix continued. "If a certain order is given to a clone, they will execute the Jedi, no questions asked. No trial, no questioning, and no ability by the clone to resist."

"What?"

Kix nodded, his eyes going wide as if realizing the enormity of the information all over again. "There was a malfunction and one of the clones executed the order early. You probably heard about it—General Tiplar?"

Bacara nodded. All the commanders had been briefed on that strange event and told to look out for any potential issues in their own battalions. General Tiplar's death had something to do with these inhibitor chips?

"Somebody's setting us up to kill all the Jedi on a single word," Kix said.

"Are you certain of this?"

"Yes, sir. If you give me some medical equipment I can even show you. It's in all of us. Just give me any clone and I'll point you right to it. It's called Order 66."

"That's… alarming, soldier."

The soldiers who stood at the ready around Bacara and Kix murmured amongst themselves. Solus stepped up to Bacara and leaned down, keeping his voice low. "Sir, I can contact General Mundi immed-"

"No," Bacara said, holding up a hand. "No, we need to investigate further first."

"But sir-"

"Don't you understand, Solus? If the Jedi were ever to turn on the Republic, who could stop them? They're nearly unkillable and have huge political sway in the capital. This chip proves that we were meant as a failsafe, in case the Jedi ever went rogue."

"The Jedi going rogue? That's preposterous."

"That's exactly what we would think, because we've been trained to follow them. So if a need ever arose to bring them in, it might require some extra help to do so," Bacara said.

Solus's eyes grew wide. "You're suggesting that this chip that Kix is talking about might be a good thing?"

Kix shook his head frantically. "No way. It's a Separatist plot, or, or… or something. They had Fives killed because he found out."

"We have to share this with the General. There's no way around it."

"And we will," Bacara said firmly. "But we need to investigate first. This could be a failsafe that the Republic itself built in to protect itself. And who do we serve, ultimately? The Republic, not the Jedi."

"If you say so…" Solus said.

"I do. Now let's get Kix to the medbay. Let's see what this chip is all about."


AUTHOR'S NOTE: the holodrama is based off of a Taiwanese drama I watched in high school called Silence. And I did not make up any of the crazy plot points.