Dear readers,

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update this story. I've been meaning to for the last few months, but have had a difficult time writing this chapter. Action sequences – and torture – are not easy subjects to grapple or even imagine, so I've been letting it stew for a while. Anyhow, rest assured that I do intend on finishing this story – and that I appreciate every review I've received. They help motivate me to keep going! So thanks. Hopefully it won't be long till I get the next chapter up. Thanks for your patience!

Apokoliptik

* * *

There was a faint hum in the darkness. It filled the air and crept out of the walls and floor. And though it was barely audible, it could not be ignored.

Greta was lying on the floor of her cell in complete darkness. Even in her semi-consciousness, she heard the hum - the deep pulsing of the Deathstar's core. It was the only thing she noticed over the throbbing in her head and the warm stickiness gluing her face to the floor. Whatever they had injected her with had begun coursing through her veins, and she could feel, along with the hum, the quickening of her heart and the spasming of her muscles throughout her body.

These were only the most recent experiments she was subjected to. Since being sent to the Imperial labs, Greta had been given a regular dose of inhibitors, adrenaline and powerful stimulants injected into her cerebellum, making her sensory perception and motor control keen and precise. Another slew of needles affected her conscious and emotional processes in attempt to control her will.

In the early days, Greta resisted with passion. But as the months went by, her inner voice began to quieten, and other voices that told her how she would have revenge on Boba Fett, grew louder.

From the beginning of her internment, Vader oversaw that the trauma the labs would inflict on her would take advantage of Fett's betrayal. It was satisfying to see how many prisoners he had been able to manipulate using their hatred. It proved him right and confirmed the superiority of the dark side over the weak, humanistic philosophy of the Jedis.

The hum of the Deathstar seemed to ebb away as her conscious slipped farther into the darkness. It could have been minutes or hours, but with her now-enhanced hearing, she snapped to attention – and to the pain in her body – when she heard traces of distant footsteps heading her way. Slowly, she grew aware that she could see in the dark. First, she noticed the ceiling: she could see the striations and cracks. Sitting up, her head swam, but she could see the pool of blood she had been lying in, glistening from the shred of light coming from beneath the cell door. She frowned, then felt a strange numbness on the left side of her face. Reaching up, she felt a cold, metal object directly over her eye. She prodded her face, trying to remove the object. Doing so only caused her pain, like she was tearing out her own eye. In horror, she realized that this was her eye.

In the months as she grew complacent, Greta's mind had begun to shut down. But this – this violation – brought her back to her senses. As the footsteps grew louder, she smelled the one she hated so intensely. And she was not going to let him get away with hurting her anymore.

The cell door opened. She was already on him, knocking him back with a series of hard blows. With each hit she delivered, the stronger she felt. She felt the electrifying surge of hate each time she landed a blow. The voices in her head urged her on, driving her movements into instinct. No more did her muscles spasm; instead, they locked and released with clockwork precision for every movement. The man, though clad in armour, staggered back, but did not make an effort of fighting back.

Finally, Greta knocked the man to the ground, his armour clanging on the steel floor. She pinned him to the floor with her hands around his neck.

"Kill me," said the man. "Do it."

Greta looked at him in silence. Something deep within was urging her on. A dark, compulsive rage coursed through her veins. But something inside intervened. Her own voice was unequivocal: Don't do it.

"Fuck you," she growled. "I'll never be like you." Then, a searing pain in her side. He had got between her ribs with a vibroblade, pushed in hard and twisted. Now free from her iron grip, her enemy lifted his helmeted head, just enough for her to see herself in his T-shaped visor. She hated what she saw – the bionic eye, her bloodthirsty expression, her sunken features. Her rage subsided as the pain quickly overtook her senses.

"If you don't kill me," he mocked, now standing over her crumpled form. "I will eventually kill you."

Greta spat the blood from her mouth at his feet. "I will never forgive you. I will hate you for the rest of my life. But I cannot kill you."

"Your hate means nothing," he replied, "without the desire to kill." He yanked her to her feet by the hair. "Your next session awaits."

* * *

Greta's anger today was admirable. She had thrown herself into fighting him harder than he'd ever seen. He was quite satisfied with himself. But there was still a long way to go. There was still too much of the original Greta behind the rage. So, he had chained her up to the ceiling with electroshock nodes placed all over her body.

"Do you know why I do this to you, Greta?" he had asked, waving the trigger in front of her face. She looked away.

"I never loved you. Why would I?" His T-shaped visor leaned closer to her face. "Look at yourself."

Greta had been spent from the previous rush of adrenaline and the knife wound in her side. She would not lift her head to look, but he had grabbed her by the jaw, forcing at his visor. "You see this worthless piece of shit? She's a coward. She won't defend herself by killing the man who betrayed her. This is how you treat worthless shit."

He thrust her head away, letting her go. Then, searing pain. Blinding light. Her body spasmed under the electroshock. Then off. She hung limply from the ceiling.

"Say it," his voice echoed in her ear. "Say, 'I will kill you.' "

Greta numbly had shook her head. He threw the switch again . . .

In his quarters, after returning an unconscious Greta back to her cell, the man removed his helmet and smiled. Boba Fett should be so lucky if he looked like this, he thought, running a hand across his shaven head, looking at himself in the mirror. Ascii, as the man was called, was one of the Empire's most ruthless agents who tortured and manipulated lab subjects for military research. What made him so terrifyingly effective was that he studied his subjects' pasts to find ways to completely unhinge their mental balance. When studying Greta's file, he found her past, and her relationship to Boba Fett, intriguing. It was then he decided he would conduct his tests under the guise of Boba Fett, donning an exact replica of his armour.

The results had been mixed. Harnessing Greta's anger had been easy; destroying her self-will was not. It was Vader's orders that her anger be the only thing left of her, but for many months, she resisted, attempting to preserve her sense of right and wrong. Today, she was so close to losing all of it. Soon, he would make her kill, even if it killed her in the process.