"And they all got the same heartbeat, but hers is falling behind...

Nothing in this world could ever bring them down...

Yeah, they're invincible and she's just in the background."

'Cool Kids' - Echosmith

When one's ass was on the line, it was easy to point fingers and try to put the blame onto someone else's shoulders. If the burden of the offense was shared, then the punishment was as well. And perhaps, hopefully, mercifully…the pain would not be so great. No matter what form that pain was in.

General Hux was a fanatical devout to the First Order and to its shrouded in darkness patriarch, Supreme Leader Snoke. He didn't like pain, wished to preserve his own skin, but it was the thought of a demotion that had him now pacing and sweating under the starched and pristine cut of his uniform.

Captain Phasma knew pain was as much a part of a soldier's life as obedience and patience with one's superiors, but it was the idea of not living up to her own high standards that had her carefully monitoring the breathing underneath her helmet.

Kylo Ren, apprentice of Supreme Leader Snoke did not fear pain, but thrived on it, knew power could be derived from it and the follower of the Darkside strengthened by it. But it was the sting of failure, the burn of humiliation that had twin demons of fury and worry coiling in his gut.

The three were gathered in the Finalizer's conference room, all others shut out to insure privacy. A databank of Phasma's division of Stormtroopers was open on a wall unit and it was FN-2187's dossier that spilled out across the corner of the room, on display.

An hour had passed since the Resistance Pilot and FN-2187 had made their escape off the Finalizer. A select team of TIE pilots and ground assault Stormtroopers were being briefed on a second landing on Jakku to track the Pilot, the traitor and the BB-8 unit the Order was hunting. The damage that had been done to the main docking bay was efficiently being set to rights. But there was now other damage that had to be contained.

"This was his first offense." Captain Phasma had already repeated it once, but she did so again, to stress the point that the soldiers in her division didn't simply go rogue without their superior officer taking note of it.

"Which offense?" The rumble of Kylo Ren's voice behind the mask was mild and almost too polite. But both the General and the Captain knew there was a world of temper behind it, emphasized in the faint hiss of the second word. "Choosing to disregard a direct order or releasing a prisoner and absconding with that prisoner in a stolen TIE fighter?"

Hux stepped in, his tone sharp. "FN-2187 has showed absolutely no signs on non-conformity. None of my men do. The programming of the Stormtroopers is fail proof. Their minds, their memories are wiped. They are blank slates for us to write upon."

But Ren was rounding on him, the ragged black robes flaring as he loomed over the other man, his head tilting under the cowl.

"General, you told me this programming was instituted at birth. An infant's mind does not need to be wiped of memories. Your stories are not matching up." The deep voice had gone even lower, word spaced apart, a hint of the barely leashed rage running underneath them.

Sensing that violence might soon erupt between the two men and who would most definitely be on the losing end, Captain Phasma stepped up to the data spilling across the wall and pulled up FN-2187's history.

"FN-2187 was taken from his birth parents at a slightly more advanced stage. This is not common, but there are examples of this amongst the ranks that have never exhibited any signs of non-conformity. Sir, I believe that FN-2187 is purely an anomaly and no indication that the program is a failure." She addressed this to Ren, who stared at her for a long moment. His head slowly turned back towards Hux, who pulled himself up to his full height and gave the other man a narrow-eyed stare. That stare held, the tension stretching between the two men until finally Hux broke and gestured sharply to the data with a curled lip.

"Those loyal to the First Order know what a great honor it is to give their offspring up to the service of the Supreme Leader. The child offered to the Order is not always an infant. Minds raised within a true patriot's household are more trainable and malleable, even at an older age." A gleam of malice came into his pale eyes and his lips curled up at the edges as he gazed over at Kylo Ren. "In other situations…there are desirable qualities that cannot be programmed. They must be inherited, passed down through the blood and these qualities constitute a necessity to harvest candidates from other means, once they begin to exhibit these qualities. Surely even you, Ren, understand that it's entirely possible that…" He paused and that malice turned to satisfaction. "Sometimes, bad blood will tell in the end."

The fury was once again palpable, emanating from the black-robed man in hot waves. Ren's hand trembled with the urge to yank his saber hilt from his belt. The thought of sending the shaft of molten light straight through Hux's sneering face was unbelievably seductive. He drew in a two sharp breaths through his nose, exhaled them slowly, then whirled towards the data. Losing control was exactly what Hux wanted him to do.

"Were there any Stormtroopers that FN-2187 was close to? Close enough to have perhaps seen this treason coming, even when his commanding officers did not?"

The chastisement hit close to the mark for both of the others in the room, but more so for the Captain, who moved quickly towards the data to pull up more dossiers. "He trained with FN-2199, FN-2000 and FN-2003. They were part of my most accomplished class. FN-2003 expired in the conflict on Jakku, FN-2000 has been in officer training and has not had contact with FN-2187 as of late. And FN-2199 is unquestionably loyal, to the point of violence against those who are not."

Kylo stared at the data, taking the time to force himself back under control, his gloved hands gripping one another tightly behind his back. "And is there anyone outside of those three, Captain?"

There was the briefest of hesitations, one that General Hux latched onto. He stepped closer, deliberately pushing his shoulder into the chest of Ren, trying to muscle him out of the way. "Who is it, Captain Phasma?"

"The Zeltron female. ZL-U58."

The rumors were flying, hissing from one mouth to another. There was an underlying current running beneath the divisions of Stormtroopers, an energy of malcontent and anger. It was a very incorrect assumption to think that these soldiers were mindless troops who were no better than flesh-covered droids, without emotions or thoughts of their own. Those thoughts might have been heavily influenced by rigorous programming and conditioning, but they were thoughts regardless and the emotions were running high amongst the ranks. They had just seen one of their own, a comrade, a brother in arms…commit high treasons and then fire on his own fellow soldiers. The cold and broken bodies of over a dozen Stormtroopers were being removed from the floor of the main docking bay.

It was, perhaps, an indication of how strong and successful that programming and conditioning was that it was talk of traitor scum and getting retribution and not whispers of revolution and escape.

If there were those who thought of revolution, of escape…they kept it to themselves.

ZL-U58, desperate for an escape from the whispers, curses and speculation, lost herself in the mindless honing of her body. In the Finalizer's physical training rooms, she ran on the grav-mill, setting the program for a grueling uphill terrain on a sweltering jungle planet. By the time she hit her stride and her muscles were hot and her body moving fluidly like a well-oiled machine, her stomach had settled from the tension and stress, but her brain was still painfully full of…her friend.

Former friend, she reminded herself and set the program to a short cooldown, but she hopped off before it was even finished. She moved to weights and punished her body through curls, dead lifts and presses before even that wouldn't rid her of the circling thoughts that she should have done something to stop him. Lying back on the bench in her thermal tank and shorts, her muscles trembling, ZL-U58 shut her eyes and flung one arm up and over her face.

She knew she wasn't alone in the room, could hear the clang of weights and the murmur of other Stormtroopers, but she felt alone…isolated and brutally so, carrying the burden of guilt and the impotence of knowing she hadn't done enough to stop FN-2187. The others left her alone, as they so often did. Not many of them, despite being excellent soldiers, had much to say to an alien woman except when they had to or they were drunk enough on off-duty nights to try and find out if she was as adventurous as other Zeltron were.

ZL-U58 had just about decided to sit up and perhaps go pound on a combat droid when a shadow fell over where she lay on the weight bench. Her arm slid away and she peered up into the eyes of the other Stormtrooper that loomed over her.

FN-2199 was built like a brawler, over six feet of him well packed with muscles that were always coiled and ready for a fight. He wore his red hair military short and his blue eyes were all soldier. His aggressive nature and brute strength made him a lethal asset to the riot control Stormtroopers. He was unquestioningly loyal to the First Order, could always be counted on to go through the door with his unit and had been one of the four that had made up FN-2187's training class and a friend to the other man.

87's defection would have been a terrible blow for him.

"I find it funny," he began in a tightly controlled voice that warned ZL-U58 that she wouldn't like what he had to say. "That you were talking to him on the transpo, that you were seen going into the refresher with him." He stared down at her and licked his teeth, then squatted down till he was face to face with her. "And I find it funny that at chow, only you two weren't there."

ZL-U58 snorted disdainfully even as her warmed up muscles began to tighten and tense all over again. She sat up quickly, forcing FN-2199 to either bash skulls with her or draw back himself. Swinging her legs over the side of the bench, she shoved a hand through the messy blue waves coming loose from the knot she'd forced it into earlier. Resting her bare arms down on her knees, hands dangling between her legs, she just arched one slashing brow as she gazed blankly back at him.

"So…just to be clear here. You found it suspicious that a man and a woman disappeared into a refresher together, then skipped out on chow to be alone together? Shocking….what ever could we have been doing?" She tilted her head, fluttered her lashes and the corners of her mouth lifted in a little smirk. Would she throw her own respectability out the window to avoid having such dangerous suspicion cast her way? Absolutely.

But he stared back, his eyes narrowing before they dropped, following the length of her loose hair, over her face, then down, insultingly, over her body. The thermal tank and shorts didn't leave a great deal to the imagination, but they were practical and standard issue, nothing that any other female didn't wear and she had never felt uncomfortable in them before. But now she did and she knew that was his intention.

"I could maybe believe that if you'd ever given anyone else a bang in the refresher, but that's just not your style, 58. That changing suddenly? Decided to be a typical Zeltron whore after all?" Even though she felt zero interest from him despite the way he had let his eyes travel over her, FN-2199 lifted a hand, set it deliberately on the swell of one breast rising above her neckline and squeezed.

In that instant, ZL-U58 saw the dislike settle over his features, felt his disgust at his own actions and knew without a doubt he would still carry it out if he could prove she had become a traitor. Nausea slid greasily through her system as, for one brief moment, she considered playing along to try to dislodge the suspicion from her shoulders. And in the next moment, as insult and rage poured in, she knew she couldn't possibly do it.

She reacted quickly and viciously, head butting him hard with a crack of skulls as she shoved off the bench. Seeing stars, she kicked him dead center of his solar plexus as he stumbled back from the blow to the head. The anger was like a hot, red haze over her vision as FN-2199 lunged to his feet and tackled her. They went flying to the mats, her back hitting first and stealing her breath, giving him enough time to power one fist into her already bruised face. And he didn't hold back unlike General Hux probably had. Pain exploded across her left cheekbone and eye, but ZL-U58 drove her right fist into his ribs, then slammed her thigh up into his groin. A sound of agony escaped his lips and she used his distraction to shove up, send them rolling over the mat until she was straddling the other Stormtrooper. She plunged another fist into his face and drew back for another blow.

It was like being tackled all over again, a powerful blow to her center mass that flung her clean off the other Stormtrooper and sent her flying across the training room. Her back struck the wall with bone-rattling force and sent her sprawling to the floor, breathless and head-spinning. Her entire body ached and shuddered from the impact. Vision wavering, she pressed up on one arm from the floor and peered through her tangled hair at the room. FN-2199 lay in a similar heap on the floor on the opposite side of the room, a hand pressed to his head as he tried to push himself up. Between the two of them stood the silent and imposing figure of Kylo Ren.

The masked head tilted as he pushed back the cowl of his robes, then turned to look between the two prone Stormtroopers. "Say what you need to one another," he ordered, his tone mild as it rumbled through the helmet's apparatus. "Then you will come with me, ZL-U58."

The training room had grown silent, the other Stormtroopers working on cardio programs or working with weights stopping what they were doing to stare.

"Bitch." FN-2199 wanted to double over and retch from the blow to his balls, but he kept himself upright, pressing to his feet. He might have considered tempering his response, but he didn't fear Kylo Ren as so many others seemed to. "The Resistance uses alien scum like you all the time…did you make him turn traitor? Fuck with his head like your kind can?"

Her skull pounded and her face was going numb as she shoved to her feet to face FN-2199. She wouldn't think of what it meant that the Supreme Leader's enforcer had come for her. Not while she burned up inside with what she needed to say. "Stay away from me. Don't you ever touch me again," she snarled, shoving her tangled hair from her battered face. "I'm one of you. Fuck you, Nines. I'm loyal. I'm loyal!" She pounded her fist to her chest. "You ignorant son of a bitch. What I am doesn't mean I'm any less than you." Stars, she was sick of this, she was so sick of it. Sick of knowing what she saw in the mirror made her less in the eyes of everyone. Sick of always having to prove her being an alien didn't make her any less a soldier. Sick of what the last twenty-four hours had opened up inside of her and how it was tearing her apart to feel so much of what was hers and what belonged to others. Sick of thinking of FN-2187 and Poe Dameron and hurting because of both of them. And now they were gone and she was still here and still hurting. And Kylo Ren had seen inside her head and now here he stood…and he'd come for her.

FN-2199 was staring at her and it might have been with regret or perhaps just indignation that all of this had been witnessed. She wasn't sure and she sure as hell did not care. ZL-U58 turned towards the silent form of Kylo Ren. "I'm ready, Sir."

He stared at her for a lengthy, tense moment, then just nodded and turned on his heel and stalked out of the training room. Casting one more scathing look at FN-2199, at all of them, ZL-U58 followed Ren.

My next updates will probably start being once a week, what with working on my masters. Thank you all so much for the reviews, the favorites and follows! If you want writing updates and can tolerate lots of Star Wars gifs and memes, please follow my tumblr at bluemilkinaredsolocup.